Meanwhile, I was aware I was growing larger and I felt inferior because of it. My brother, chastised for the litany of insults and taunts he frequently lobbed my way, resorted instead to calling me “big guy,” which was, technically speaking, not actually an insult like “fatso” or “tubby,” but a fairly benign (and accurate) description of my growing frame. “Nice one, big guy,” he’d say whenever he wanted to see me angry. “Having a snack there, big guy?” And I’d stomp my chubby feet and blow air through my nose and demand that my mom make him call me something less insulting, like “four eyes” or “baby Hitler.”

It didn’t help, though, that he was right. I was big, and getting bigger. In the winter of 1999, my brother and I went sledding on the hill across the street from our house. I squeezed into the pair of overall snow pants I’d worn the year before, except this year, it felt like a corset. I could barely fasten the zipper along my bust and stomach. I could feel my lungs straining against my gallbladder. I managed to cover myself securely enough, but the second we got outside, I bent over to position my sled, and those snow pants ripped open right along the butt with a deafening tear. The white stuffing from inside the pants gushed out like I was shitting dust. “Good going, big guy,” my brother yelled as I ran back to the house, covering my gaping ass in humiliation.

It wasn’t until high school that I began to feel serious shame for my weight, beyond the boyish taunts of childhood. By that time, I’d started to succumb to all the usual changes that plague young high school boys. Things were reshaping, hair was growing, limbs were extending. And high school was when I joined the rest of adult America and started taking antidepressants, which made my fleshy man boobs even fleshier. (Which is a legitimate and cruel side effect of antidepressants. Oh, you’re feeling sad because you’re growing up all chubby? Here, take some meds that’ll make you need a man bra.) Until then, of course, I could hide my girth beneath a heavy T-shirt or a jacket. The only people who had seen my bare stomach or thighs were my family, and even then, I’d kept my weight as concealed as I could. But high school locker rooms are where insecurities go to be exposed. It was the first time I could see the raw evidence of my body compared to other boys, how my stomach, which hung just slightly over the seam of my underwear, was nowhere near as flat or as toned as everyone else’s, that my muscles (or whatever there was of them) were hidden beneath a doughy layer of padding, that my thighs jiggled slightly more, and that I needed a thicker T-shirt.