On Corpulent Men and Messy Interiors
I am in the midst of a hellish apartment search and I noticed that when I’m not agonizing about where I’m going to be sleeping next week, I fantasize about how I’m going to decorate the damn thing if I ever get my hands on a lease again. And all I can think about is messy interiors.
I have typically maintained my living spaces with an antiseptic zeal that befits someone who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, which is to say they always look impeccable, pristine, and museum-esque. I’ve had modern minimalist phases and neo-pastoral simplistic phases. I’ve felt inner rage when a roommate left the shower curtain askew. I’ve also lived with people who had all manner of aesthetics, from a goth who hung an axe above her bed to a sculptor who insisted that a potato was the appropriate centerpiece for our coffee table.
Which is all to say that I am rethinking my visual preferences. I’m interested in thinking about beauty again. After establishing that I can say whatever I want, I am relishing in a kind of post-red pill exhilaration and reconsidering my love of fashion. I am also noticing a resurgence in my attraction for a certain type of man.
Fat guys.
This is not a new preference. But it has always existed in a subterranean part of the soul I dared not own or proclaim. And I believe there is a confluence between my fascination with messy interiors and a love of corpulent men. Both invite a feeling of release, of sensuality, of enjoyment; both suggest that life is to be lived, rather than maintained or fastidiously protected.
I’ve always thought Meatloaf was kind of sexy. Something about the sweatiness, the scraggly hair, the romantic abandon. His hands look strong and his torso looks capable of keeping a woman warm at night.
Is there anything less appealing than a man who takes his vitamins, maintains an ideal BMI, and constantly reads books on self-improvement? No. And likewise, I no longer care to maintain a home that looks like a gallery. I want people to feel welcome when they step into my place. Like they can talk about anything, eat Cheetos and get the orange powder on the couch, keep their shoes on if they want to. Smoke. Drink. Confess the strangest thoughts in their heart.
When Christopher Hitchens died Anna Wintour shared an anecdote about an ideal he sought: that of the “ruined table.” A “ruined table” is what happens after you’ve shared a meal or drinks in company, and after several hours the surroundings are full of “cigarette butts, toppled wineglasses, dirty plates, and a cacophony of argument.” If the table is not destroyed, it wasn’t a good night.
Our culture is suffused with moral exhaustion. People have become calcified and rigid in the endless quest to keep up with an increasingly futile meritocracy, heaps of woke bullshit and interminable plague protocols. And if they haven’t hardened into a crusted shell of themselves they’ve simply retreated — expressed desire a little less often, relinquished the impulse to have opinions. There’s an ironing and a flattening of everyone’s inner roughness and even celebrities are not immune.
Take Gwyneth Paltrow, for instance. We now think of her as the epitome of a streamlined lifestyle, of California neutrals and harmoniously blended families (or at least the appearance thereof). It’s hard to remember she was ever like this:
Gloriously sagging tits, a stain on her long-sleeved t-shirt, and a cigarette dangling haphazardly from her lips — the world needs more of these things. It needs less spiritual bypass, or the process by which anything difficult or thorny is washed away by mindfulness and coerced piety.
I don’t find overweight men attractive because of some ideal of body positivity. I don’t assent to proclamations that fatness is healthy. I also don’t care about the inclusion of bodies or discourse about bodies of any kind. I just think fat men are sexy.
Not everything has to have a moral or political purpose. Some things are just aesthetic, erotic, or pleasurable. And that is enough.
Last night I had an argument with my mom on the phone about whether Ron DeSantis is “hot.” I said he is. She said he looks “bloated.” This is the kind of fight I want to have over a ruined table, surrounded by Cheeto dust and half-eaten plates of rigatoni. I know these are not the things that matter, but my mind is morally exhausted. And I need some relief.