State Fair

I’m on the outside and having trouble loving myself, but I’ve come to find these moods only take over when I’ve been spending too much time in my own head. They don’t keep me with the rest of the swine in this barn.

Too large for the normal pen and with an attractive distinction, I am the State Fair’s heaviest hog and demand my own keeping. I can’t even stand at 1,320 pounds: I’m half ham, half loin, and I don’t think I can take it anymore.

Look up Big Bill, he came before me. The biggest to ever do it, fully 2,552 pounds. He was supposed to shine at the Chicago World’s Fair but never showed up: Big Bill’s leg snapped under the weight of his own girth in transport, so that old hog became legend and bacon.

Walter is my name; it’s yelled at me through the bars of my pen at all hours of the day as a reminder. I don’t need reminding. They make jokes about me living in a pigsty, and I do have feed and straw caked around my snout, but they’ve got no distinctions of their own. I see only fat, formless pink legs, ruddy-faced complexions and some misplaced hope of a respite from their own hellish existence by coming to this parted-off room in a pavilion to stare at my lard.

To become anything you aren’t is to become swine, and none of them are who they pretend to be. So what if I choose to lay here while they busybody, inform and bring needless suffering into the world? So what if I let that all pass me by? Besides, I don’t want to stand up and break a leg.

You see me prostrate here and believe me ruled, but I look out and see only submissive faces. There is none among you who could take my place on the straw and, for 12 straight days, gather such an audience. My weight is transitory and my life is short-lived, but I rule graciously for a period and give what little I have to give.

I came up from Dodge County, weighing two-thirds of a ton, and I expanded everyone around me.