Big Fat Hairy Living

Bitchy, depressive pig bottom with poor work ethic and collapsed arches seeks fat old man willing to provide bedroom therapy for severe, deep-seated Freudian issues. Kinkier than everyone but Gord Reece.

Looking for men over 50 willing to rape and administer severe beatings (bruises/marks especially desirable.) Uncircumcised, large, and/or unusual looking penises preferred, but willing to suck almost anything. LTR-oriented only if you are 250-plus. Must be happy with a fat stubby penis and a supinating, limping gait.

Lazy, bitchy, and prone to whining. Hates job and will often complain about it. Often starts projects without finishing them. Prone to making strange barking animal noises in and out of bed. Enjoys the company of pigeons. Eats cake too often.

Men with small hands, small testicles, or no facial hair need not apply.

(Via Matt Johnson)

Cry me a river, you greedy cunt.

Commenter Steve Arrants, someone who is in a position to know, responds to my previous post about fat guys and gives us another, more likely story about how bears came to be :

The “Bear” thing started as a joke at the Pilsner Inn (not the Lone Star) because a couple of patrons were ejected from The Eagle during a Leather Sash contest for laughing. The DJ was playing “People Are Strange” by The Doors during part of the competition (swimsuit? harness?) and these two guys started laughing. So a few folks got talking at the Pilsner and held a contest that later got the word “Bear” attached to it. Bear originally was [unkempt] (by the time’s standards), blue-collar, unshaven, and not gym toned.

I don’t give a shit what Les Wright says, I was there, he wasn’t, and if it doesn’t fit his ziew of the zeitgeist, fuck him.

Thank you.

The straight world is noticing us fat fags again:

It’s Friday night in Wilton Manors, and Sidelines, a gay sports bar, is packed with slender boys. Carlos Lopez, 28, sits on a barstool near the door nursing a glass of whiskey. Trim and handsome, Lopez chats with Blake, a lean 29-year-old with chubby cheeks.

Blake, who moved to Florida from the Midwest last year, says he doesn’t really have one type of man he goes for.

Does he know that Lopez likes big men — really big men, as in guys who weigh 280 to 350 pounds?

“He likes fat guys!?” Blake says. He touches his cheeks. “Am Ifat?” he asks several times, sounding almost hysterical.

Blake is not fat. His navy-blue T-shirt hugs a flat stomach. His fitted jeans hint at long, toned legs. He simply has a body type that Lopez does not find appealing. Lopez is a chubby chaser.

The article ignores the phenomenon of fat guys who likes other fat guys and focuses exclusively on chubby chasers and the fat guys who are into them. It mentions the existence of bears, but it unfortunately quotes Les Wright:

Chubs are often lumped in with “bears,” gay men who are typically large and hairy. Bear groups organized partly in response to the outbreak of AIDS in the early 1980s, when the idealized lean body type became associated instead with a wasting illness. It was an inadvertently opportune time, says Les Wright, a San Francisco-based author. Wright, a 54-year-old gay man with a full beard who prefers hairy, blue-collar men, has chronicled bear culture in several books and is founder of the Bear History Project. “The bear stuff comes out of people in the gay community feeling judged and excluded,” he says. “We’re all the people who got squeezed out.”

This bit about bear groups being organized in response to AIDS bugs me every time I see it. It has never been supported with any evidence and the only source of this assertion is Les Wright. How can it possibly make sense that gay men would suddenly decide that they like fat guys simply because people were turning into skeletons and dying from AIDS? Even the inclusion of the word “partly” doesn’t save it. It just doesn’t make any sense. Why bears and not bodybuilders?

What’s worse is that the article contradicts itself. It discusses at some length how chubby chasers claim to be “wired” to like fat guys, but then accepts at face value Les Wright’s explanation of mysteriously changing preferences. There is no mention of the bear phenomenon being tied into the leather and biker communities, just Les Wright’s out-of-nowhere assertion that bear groups sprang up when skinny bodies became associated with death. The whole bears-because-of-AIDS thing sounds like something someone once wondered about out loud that has gotten transformed into an incorrect “fact.” Who can change what they’re attracted to like that?

The article closes with the old chaser line about how fat guys are (should be?) happy to get sex with chasers because they can’t get it anywhere else.

“They appreciate sex more. I don’t know why — maybe because they’re not gettin’ any. I know I wasn’t when I was big.”

Not this fat guy.

As I look back at it, that last post looks like a very embarrassing bit of compliment fishing. I’ve been having a bad few weeks at work, and couple that with a few months of wondering what there is left to write about after almost seven years and that comment got to me.

I do, despite my embarrassment at the obviousness of my attention ploy, want to highlight part of what commenter James wrote. It’s thoughtful and describes me well:

Uniquely, you are as passionate about cock as you are about design. You analyze architectural form and function in structures with the same critical eye as when you are checking out how some dude with a thick neck fills out his jeans.

You aren’t afraid to attribute significance to the things that make up your day with equal enthusiasm. It might be all about the TTC: one post might highlight ugly, incongruous signage, the next will be about blowing someone in one of their washrooms.

I guess it’s true that everyone needs validation sometimes. Thanks guys.

In response to my post about Joe Clark’s paper on type in the TTC, commenter bearcub writes:

I’ve been reading your site for a while and like the moments of incite about coming out, desire, etc..but then you post a post like this, it’s so bitter and nasty for no apparent reason. And I think, why am I reading this blog — and I doubt the sincerity of everything else you write? And I begin to think your depression is self caused because this is how you think of th world, and i’d be really depressed if i did that — so some other blog didn’t post a link to some other guy’s website (though i went there and it seems they really pushed people to go read this guy’s stuff).

It would be like me saying “wow, thickslab is there talking about peeing, and cocks, and fat necks but ignores the the provincial election — just like that loser”. Is this post a mistake?

Anyway, signed me extremely disappointed. I dunno if i’ll be back, i thought you were smarter.

At the time I made that post, the people at Spacing, whom I didn’t call losers, hadn’t linked to Joe Clark’s article. I haven’t been posting about the provincial election, mostly because this is a personal blog, not a political blog; I usually don’t write about day-to day political happenings. Still, commenter bearcub says that

1. He doubts the sincerty of everything else I write,
2. My depression is self-caused,
3. He is extremely disappointed and doesn’t know if he’ll be back, and
4. I’m not as smart as he thought.

Am I an asshole? Was he out of line? Give me a sanity check, guys.

I encourage you to comment anonymously if that makes you more comfortable telling me that I need to shut the fuck up and stop writing.

The incredible Joe Clark has posted a paper that he presented at ATypI 2007, the conference for the Association Typographique Internationale: Inscribed in the Living Tile, a history of type in the Toronto subway.

The paper has received over 900 diggs, no thanks to the people at Spacing, who are apparently too busy writing about film festival wine parties, Montreal, and animated GIF contests to have noticed it.

From today’s Toronto Star:

A Mississauga woman says she’s embarrassed and angry that she forked out more than $500 to get a “free puppy” from Nigeria, but wants to go public with her story to prevent others from making the same mistake.

“I really got sucked in. I feel so gullible,” Anita Hagerman, 44, said yesterday.

Even though the 11-week-old Yorkie was advertised as free, Hagerman last week complied with requests for three payments, totalling $500, to ship the dog to Toronto from Nigeria.

…

Hagerman is the latest victim in a worldwide “free puppy” scam originating from Nigeria. Scammers are placing ads online and in newspapers for popular breeds such as Yorkshire terriers and English bulldogs. They request hundreds of dollars in shipping fees, but the dogs are never sent.

I really find this mind boggling. How gullible does a person have to be to pay $500 for a “free” puppy, and from Nigeria of all places? Not the US, not Mexico, not the UK. Not even some place like China or India. Nigeria. Nigeria.