His stomach bloated with emptiness

And he’s gonna be celebrated as a hero, a survivor, and Parky will come out of retirement to do the interview

And Arty with moist eyes and a brave smile will explain how food was a constant, throbbing need

How in his darkest moments

He still dreams of cheeseburgers

Two moist and porous buns

Melted cheddar

A patty cooked rare

Cool serrated dill pickle slices

Chopped crisp lettuce

Sharp grainy mustard

Slicks of mayonnaise and—

PRODUCER: Tell us about girls.

ARTY: How you mean?

PRODUCER: Would you like a girlfriend?

ARTY: I’ve never had… like a date like on the sitcoms. A girl—she asked me out once but it was… she lost a bet. So I said she didn’t have to. She could just say she did and I wouldn’t say any different. She ’preciated that.

PRODUCER: Do you masturbate? Can you reach your penis underneath your stomach?

Pause.

ARTY: I don’t think about it.

PRODUCER: Can you say that? Can you say, ‘I don’t masturbate ’cause I can’t reach my penis underneath my stomach’?

ARTY: Why?

PRODUCER: Because we’ll edit the questions out later and it just sounds better, you know, if you say it. Like in your words. A statement.

ARTY: In the life Arty’s living in his head

His buttocks don’t grind like turbines

He doesn’t hate the way he smells

That meaty stench fused with bedsores that won’t heal

He doesn’t fantasise about slicing off all his flesh

In the life Arty’s living in his head

He doesn’t need to fill a hole the size of the world

And he isn’t scared of the big hot hole that is his mouth

’Cause in the life that Arty’s living in his head

He is just like everybody else

Arthur Arthur is just like everybody else.

181 DAYS

JOJO: He’s not like everybody else. Arty’s spent his whole life wishing he was normal but if wishes were cars then beggars would drive Ferraris, wouldn’t they? Saw on the telly there’s a man been living in a cave for 15 years in Indonesia because he looks like a tree. People are mean. They’d try to cut his roots off or something and they’re his feet. Out there is all well and good for some people but not if you’re big and not if you look like a tree. Sending him to school was child abuse in my opinion but when I tried to keep him home I had bloody Social Services threatening to take my payments and they don’t give a shit that my baby’s getting bashed and coming home with teeth missing, ’cause though he’s big, he’s always been a lamb. I told him, I said to him, I said, ‘Arty, flatten the little shits’, but he couldn’t, just not in his nature. So I know living in here’s not for everyone but neither’s out there. And you gotta think of the positive. Arty’s a big boy and there’s things he don’t have because of it, but at the same time he’s not out there getting stabbed for his mobile phone. So you see both sides of it, don’t you?