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Garrison Keillor
Late starter
After years of obesity I lost 100 pounds, but women can still smell my inexperience and lack of confidence. I'm about to give up hope!

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By Garrison Keillor

July 24, 2001 | First, let us discuss "skeevy," the word that popped up last week in a letter.

One reader says that she and her girlfriends coined the term during a junior year in Florence in the '80s, from the Italian word "schifoso," meaning "disgusting, revolting." They referred to guys who pinched their butts as "skeevy."

Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue

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Another reader says "skeevy" is slang for "lecherous," from the Japanese "sukebei" (a lewd or lecherous person).

Yet another says that her Italian mother from Calabria used the word "skeeve" -- for example, "Her bathroom is so dirty I skeeve going in there" -- usually accompanied by a flick of the fingers across the chin. She says, "It's southern Italian slang. We heard it used on 'The Sopranos' when Carmela told Tony how she skeeved his Russian mistress."

There is also a mag called the Skeevy Digest and a Web site, skeevy.com.

The College Slang Research Project records skeevy as meaning "shady, unsavory, icky." (CSRP has a terrific Web site.) And it's good to see the word "icky" again, which I haven't used in 50 years. Surely there is a place for it in everyone's vocabulary.

This just in from France: "Heartbroken and Terrified (she wants kids, he doesn't) should go off and have a big adventure NOW and not obsess about the biological clock. When I was her age I split with a man -- also older -- whom I'd been with throughout my 20s. It was wrenching and horrible and I could barely function at work. So I quit my job, gave up my apartment, put all my belongings in storage, withdrew my bit of savings and went to Europe. I didn't do anything wild, just visited relatives, friends and friends of friends. Those seven months were wonderful: I met lots of people, saw new places, learned to be alone and it opened me up. And I met my husband on a ferry from Sweden to England. And here we are, in France, with two kids."

Dear Mr. Blue,

For many years I was morbidly obese. By the age of 19, my 5-6 frame was a bloated 286 pounds. Never really a big eater, I always suspected there was a problem with my genetics somewhere, since every attempt I made at reducing failed miserably.

I grew up in a dysfunctional household, and as a consequence have very low self-esteem; I have pretty much reconciled myself to a lonely life. I've always adored women, but kept my distance. They have always ignored me, for obvious reasons. I never dated in high school or college. I would fall in love with girls, but learned to stifle and control it through the months of emotional hell that followed. I remember these times as the most painful of my life. To this day I have never told another soul that I love her. My self-rejection is on automatic. If I could turn a switch in my brain that would keep me from ever falling in love again, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Self-induced exile and self-defeat are how I spent my 20s and 30s. I stayed in my bedroom, reading classics and learning to draw, and put myself through college. I now make my living as a commercial illustrator and animator.

A couple of years ago a co-worker told me about a diet designed for people with an inability to properly metabolize simple carbohydrates. In seven months I lost 100 pounds. I've kept it off for two years now. I can never be lean -- that's not in the cards for me -- but at least I look human, and that's good enough. Unfortunately, it came about 25 years too late. I am now 40, and I've come to find that it's really too late to begin at this stage of the game. I'm so retarded socially. Believe me, no one is looking for a middle-aged adolescent virgin for a life partner, or even a date. I tried joining a gym and taking group dance lessons, but the timidity that most males outgrow by their late teens is too deeply ingrained for me to shed now. I know this sounds silly, but I think I was happier fat. At least I knew there was no hope then, so I didn't kid myself. I don't know what to do or what to say or where to begin. And women can smell a lack of confidence like a dog smells fear. After all these years, I still can't answer a simple question: What do I have to offer a girl, and why would one want to be with me?

Beaver Cleaver at Midlife

Dear Beav,

You could take this letter with some minor editing and make a comic book -- each sentence a panel -- and it would be a classic. I am quite sincere about that. It's a great Hans Christian Andersen story. I'm sorry you had to live it and couldn't just have imagined it, but it's a great story, and now what you need is some sort of an ending: What does all this come to? How does it resolve? In hopeless resignation? In some brave new action? In a romantic miracle? ("And then I met Rhonda, who also is shy and on the plump side ...") I only know that the early misery led to the 100-pound loss and that the loss will lead to something new. Your life is a work of art, and in the end, the underlying theme of great art is bravery and hope and love. Your bravery, expressed in art, makes it easier for me and the others to be brave. The shy adolescent 40-year-old plumpster is on his way to something and I have high hopes for how this tale turns out.

Next page | I'm sleeping with a married pillar of church and community
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