One of my male housemates is getting fat. He’s blowing up like a coloured party balloon. Before most of us are even conscious in the morning, he’s up boy scouting King Street and the other byways of Newtown for his big breakfast.Enmore Road with its shawarmas and exotic bread pizzas; or maybe a seat in the bar over a schooner and a plate piled high with roast meats, green beans, gravy and potatoes. He is a staunch friend to the Crispy Inn, the late night coffee shops with their cakes behind neon frosted glass, the charcoal chicken joints and the Asian takeaways. To him the culinary possibilities of South Sydney seem to be endless. You’d think he was attempting a fast-track degree in gastronomy and not comparative religion. You might forgive him if the remaining hours of his days were truly dedicated to his original chosen discipline; but here’s the rub: he got stuck on page one hundred and forty-two of the set text; the chapter on Buddhism. So now, “paradoxically”, he’s also undergone an eastern epiphany and has developed what could only be described as the full-blown “Gautama complex”.
What the F is that? You may ask. Well, in a big cloud of ignorance about what his own roots might just have to offer, between his ironic body building pursuits, he now haunts the various Buddhist outlets and book shops along the strip. He also grandly attends meditation and eastern self-help courses, and spends days in his bedroom with a big plastic bottle of Coke, a canister of Pringles and a half-bitten paintbrush, decorating his walls with multi-coloured mandalas.
It really is so sad. When he first arrived in our terrace as a younger, slimmer, version of himself, I actually somewhat fancied him. But now under the influence of his new vocation, his idea of flirting has devolved into veiled references to the Karma Sutra and occasional awkward conversations that are undertaken as he hangs by one hairy hand from the frame of my door.
But I think not, my young rapidly self-expanding chela; this girl is no poorly clad Devi standing on one leg with bovine, adoring eyes just for you. Instead I’m kicking back in the communal living room, comfortable on the couch. And between late night episodes of The Vampire Diaries, Rock Wiz, and Rage, I’m observing with some sickly fascination as your waistline overflows your shorts and creeps gently toward your crotch.
So even after a smoke or two, your No. 1 newly shaved head is no attraction. Rather, I see in my mind’s eye your extreme saffron days approaching; but it’s not the fierce aestheticism of an Indian master that’s shaping your last beatific image. Oh no; it’s the smiling tele-tubby, he who sits crossed-legged and smiling, drenched in his own cloud of stupefying incense. The happy, dimpled, obese One, that those clever Chinese artists seem to prefer.
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