Fat City

Researchers are calling it a public health crisis, an exploding "obesity epidemic." Californians, according to state health officials, are growing at an alarming rate . . . and they don't mean we're getting taller. One out of every two Californians is fat and almost one-fifth of us are dangerously obese. So put down that doughnut and look around. If it's not your spouse, your sister, your co-worker or your neighbor jiggling when they walk . . . chances are it's you.

He walked to the movie concession stand, warily eyeing the popcorn bin and its hot-buttered temptation. "I don't know if I should," said Brian Greene of Ventura, shaking his head. "It might kill me." "C'mon, you eat Big Macs, don't you?" Chris Pendergraft challenged from behind the counter at the Buenaventura theaters in Ventura. "Yeah," Greene said, hesitating. "Give me a medium. And can I get some extra salt on it?"

The lifestyle pages have been full of stories about boomers who are sick and tired of being healthy. They're falling off their exercise bikes and onto the couch, and there are even some who are picking up the old coffin nails again. ("Just one cigarette after dinner," one of these lapsed nonsmokers was heard to say. Yeah, right. As soon as we finish eating this one potato chip.

Whomp! Grunt! Slap! It's 8 a.m. on a Friday. I am in a room with 10 men averaging more than 300 pounds each, their corpulent bodies covered with dirt and sweat as they crash andcollide. They are bone naked except for loincloths; their hair is covered with thick grease and pulled into topknots. Smack! The room is dead silent except for heavy breathing and the slap of flesh. It is unadorned, except for a dirt ring.

He gave our sergeant major's teen-aged daughter the clap. Some weeks afterward, as if to illustrate the breadth of his interests, he told me about a novel no literate man could live without reading, a novel about boxing's small-time losers called "Fat City." This was the Army in 1969: just as boggled and maddening as everything else about a country rent by forces it couldn't comprehend. And the soldier who led me to "Fat City" has come to represent it in my memories.