a lapdog in a sea of dobermans

behold the small frame!

“Do you consider me a small person?” I asked my friend Jessica. She eyed me as if she didn’t understand the question. “I mean, do I look small? Like have a small frame?” Mind you that I asked this as I was perched all frog-like on the end of a chair. She gave me the up-down and said, “Yeah, you’re kind of small. But not in a bad way.” Recently I’ve become aware of how “small” a person I really am. 5’4” and pretty narrow to boot. The only “big” thing about me is perhaps my gut, shoulders, and barrel-like chest. In high school the football coach always tried to recruit me, said my big shoulders would be an excellent addition to the team. I hated sports and hated physical activity, so I kept saying “No.”

Not that having a small frame is an awful thing. For example, I can do a lot of things normal-sized people can’t. Just a few weeks ago I was able to scale halfway up two buildings in an alley, sprawling my arms and legs out and carrying myself upwards. A pretty impressive feat, made possible by (a) my light weight and (b) the fact that I’ve worked out my arms, shoulders, and legs for the last year and a half. Last week a shift from a neighboring store came by to pick up some product; the product was on the top shelf in a corner, and she asked if I needed a ladder to get to it. “That’s not necessary,” I said, and I proceeded to scale up the corner of the wall like a fucking tree-frog and then grabbed the product and scaled back down. As she watched me a strange look took light on her face and she said, “I’m not going to lie, I’m kind of disturbed by what’s happening right now.” She said this jokingly, of course. And just this week (we’re on a three-week roll right now), the delivery guy who delivers countless boxes and crams them in our backroom said, “You’re a small little man, you can weave in and out of these boxes!” And he was right. The task fell to me to wiggle some product from the boxes, and I did it in a good three minutes—seems like “NBD” but if you’ve seen the towering stacks of boxes I have to sift through and meander around, you’d understand.

So, yes, there are definitely pros to having a small frame. But at the same time I hate it. I wish I were tall and filled-out like most guys. I wish I was a couple inches taller and had a thicker (albeit more proportioned) build. I always feel awkward (and not just because of my social anxiety) when I’m surrounded by guys who fit the cookie-cutter model of what a male 24-year-old should look like. I feel like a lapdog in a sea of Dobermans. I already look young, and sometimes I feel as if I look younger with each passing day (despite my steady diet of cigarettes and bourbon), and the small frame doesn’t help much. I could go on and on with stories about how people I know (as well as complete strangers) have pointed out how young I look. It gets tiring after a while. There’s not even embarrassment or humiliation anymore; just weariness. I want to look manly, burly, I want to look like a “real man” (whatever the hell that is), but I feel pigeonholed into this awkwardly-proportioned, ten-years-too-young body.

But, again, maybe it’s all perception. As my dear friend Mandy told me this past week, “Dude, you’re not small. I don’t consider you a frail, small being.” As she said this, I instantly thought of those little gray aliens from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” In reality, I do hold a meager resemblance to them, minus the balloon-shaped head and bulbous eyes (and the mouth that’s more of a clit than anything). She continued, “If I’m walking outside with you, I’m thinking you can punch someone if we run into trouble. That’s how I gauge it.” This caught me off-guard, and I made some pretense-laden comment, and she said, “You’re an idiot. You’re not small. You’re fine. You’re strong and you’re crazy. I’d feel protected if I was with you.” Strong and crazy. Yes, I’m strong; deceptively so, as my muscles would rather tone than build like most. And crazy? Hells yeah I’m crazy. I’ve only been in a fight once or twice in my life, and those were in my weaker years; and even then I won, because I turned into a hurricane of hand, feet, teeth, and fingernails. My nickname “koalabeast” has multiple levels of meaning. When the beast comes out, it’s a frightening scene.