2
Brad
I was a fat little boy who inevitably became a big fat man. I would like to think that I possess other qualities, but I assure you that if you saw me your first thought would be 'fat.'
My parents were of normal size and shape. As was my older brother. And as, for that matter, is my son.
Because the only purpose of life that can withstand scientific inquiry seems to be to pass one's DNA to the next generation, I have passed on mine though a contractual agreement for artificial insemination with a woman who has never laid eyes on me. She seems to be a nice person and a good mother. She has married since our transaction and now teaches elementary school in Madison, Wisconsin. Each January she sends an annual report, including photographs, to one of my attorneys. David, my son, appears to be a happy normal child, who has been told his father tragically died just after his birth. I can only hope that whatever chance combination of recessive genes created me do not reappear in future generations. As a child I could feel my own parents glancing at me and wondering how this cuckoo had come to befoul their nest.
My father was a physician, an internist, and I was subject to every conceivable test and study to find a cause and cure for my obesity. Every gland and organ in my fat little body was probed and scrutinized. Many of these tests were painful, and all were humiliating. Not to mention futile. No abnormality, no correctable malfunction was ever discovered. I just was a fat kid.
To define terms, I am at age 31, 5'8", and I weigh about 350 pounds. Not enough to make the cover of the National Enquirer, but enough.
Nothing makes much difference. If I starve myself, I get down to 300; and during those intervals when I refrain from any effort at moderation, I probably approach 400. Neither of which extreme makes any qualitative change.
In DAS CAPITAL Karl Marx says that you can be the ugliest man in the world, but if you have sufficient wealth, the most beautiful women will serve you. Marx was condemning capitalism, but the very same words could be used to praise it.
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If I can relate Marx and Jean-Paul Satre-a not unreasonable association-the Frenchman wrote in his autobiography, THE WORDS, that as a child he knew he was ugly and his only hope of ever getting women would be through his intelligence and words.
As a child I reached a similar conclusion. No woman was ever going to love me for myself. No one was ever even going to have sex with me for myself. And no one ever has. If I wanted women-and I did, desperately as a child, more deliberately now-I had better become rich.
That wealth is power is a clichΓ©. My simple definition of power is that it is the ability to make someone say yes who wants to say no. If I were to approach a beautiful stranger and ask her to suck my cock or to let me beat her until tears pour from her eyes and screams from her lips, she would react with outrage and disgust. If I offer her a thousand dollars or five thousand, she will go out and buy the whip and chains herself. And a good many have.
Freud is increasingly out of fashion as science has found chemical and genetic causes for statistically aberrant behavior. Possible reasons why I enjoy dominating women sexually, as well as besting men in business, are only too obvious. But even if they are true, I have always thought that knowing the reasons for your behavior is much overrated, except in certain limited cases that used to be called hysteria. Particularly if you have no desire to change. And I would not change places with Tom Cruise.
I mentioned other qualities. I am not ugly. My features are regular and not in themselves unattractive. I have been told, perhaps honestly, that I have nice eyes and a good sense of humor. And no one has ever doubted that I am intelligent.
I grew up in Shaker Heights, which is a suburb of Cleveland and one of the wealthiest enclaves in America. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in finance, I went to Wharton for an MBA, and from there to a merchant bank in New York.
Although my coworkers would not want me to marry their sisters, they were quite willing to make use of my mind. And now that I think of it, a good many of them would now be thrilled if I married their sisters.
A man I knew at Wharton had a college roommate who was in genetic research. He had made a discovery that seemed to promise treatment for a type of diabetes. We pooled our resources, which at the time were not great. My entire capital was only $8,000, and while I could certainly have borrowed from my parents, just as certainly I did not.