Yesterday afternoon I poured myself a vodka soda and drifted out the French doors that lead to my back patio, where my wife and her sister were lounging, half working from home and half not. They were in the middle of a strange conversation as I closed the door behind me and found an empty chair.
“She’s one-thousand pounds,” said my wife, reading something on her laptop with a fascinated look on her face.
Her sister, who was lounging on an outdoor couch nearby, looked up from her own computer. “That’s heavy”.
“What’s more,” my wife continued, “she has sank several boats just by sitting on them.”
“No way,” said her sister, now even more intrigued. She wasn’t the only one.
“Wait a minute, who is this lady that weighs one-thousand pounds and sinks boats just by sitting on them?” I asked. I had a feeling this must be some internet lie my wife was reading, and I was incredulous.
Although to be fair, there are people who weigh close to one thousand pounds out there. They just aren’t getting on boats. They’re usually trapped on a damp mattress in a foul smelling bungalow, waiting for the fire department to knock down a wall and drag them out dead at some point in the future.
The girls laughed at my question. “She’s not a woman,” my wife said, “she’s a walrus.”
With this, she spun her laptop screen so I could see it. And sure enough, sitting there at the top of a news report was a photo of a very fat walrus’s face. It didn’t look any fatter than a normal walrus, an animal which is by its very definition is one of nature’s more Rubeneseque creatures, but nevertheless I got the impression that she was a hefty gal. Possibly one capable of sinking a boat.
“She’s a celebrity in Norway,” my wife went on to say. “She keeps jumping up out of the water to relax on people's boats, but she’s so heavy she destroys them. She’s already sunk several this week alone.”
I took a sip of my drink, trying to understand. “And she’s a celebrity? Is it because people think it’s funny that she’s so fat?”
My wife’s face became serious. “No. Because it’s not funny. Her name is Freya, and she is plaguing Norway.”
Plaguing Norway? More than Covid? More than freezing cold temperatures? If anything, I think it would be more accurate to say Freya is “irritating boat owners and insurance companies”. Accuracy aside, though, I loved the grandiosity of my wife’s phrasing. “Plaguing Norway”. This poor female walrus, who is simply looking for a place to relax and lay her fat ass in the sun for a while, is made out to be the scourge of an entire nation. If Norway was Ukraine, Freya would be their Putin. An arch-nemesis with tusks and a mustache.
But this seems to me like a case of a misunderstood monster, like the famous creation of Dr. Frankenstein who simply wanted to be loved. I don’t see Freya as some ferocious beast attacking boats for pleasure. I think she’s more like an embarrassed fat woman who can’t catch a break.
I’ve seen fat people break furniture before. Sometimes I think some of them must live with a constant low-burning anxiety that the next chair they sit in will crumble like it was made of matchsticks. Can you imagine what that must be like? Never knowing if you’re going to sit down comfortably or have your dignity and tailbone destroyed in an instant, possibly in front of teenagers who will laugh and photograph you?
Such things do happen to fat people. I remember at the end of elementary school in 5th grade, our school held what they called a “culmination” to send off the oldest students, who next year would go on to junior high. In reality this should have been called a graduation – we were even given robes and hats with tassels on them – but for some reason the term “culmination” was what it was given. It was at this event, at 9 years old, that I saw my first fat person break furniture.
Her name was Jessie, and she was easily the heaviest girl in our school, the poor thing. She was a first generation child of Latin American immigrants, wore faded Disney clothing, and had a reputation for being extremely kind… but none of these qualities would save her from the humiliation that awaited her at 5th Grade Culmination.
When the big day finally arrived, multitudes of parents were in attendance, sitting in folding chairs that were arranged in rows on the massive play-yard. A podium was wheeled out, where the principal of the school would later give some sort of a speech about how impressive it was to graduate the 5th grade.
The ceremony was to begin with all of the graduating students walking out to the applause of the parents, each taking their seat on a few rows on benches, one after the other, until the full gallery of kids was on display, ready to “culminate”. It all went according to plan for the first several minutes, each confused little goober shuffling out to thunderous fanfare and taking their place on a bench. And then came Jessie.
Smiling, sweating, and ready for her moment in the sun, Jessie waddled past the podium, soaking up the admiration of the audience on the way to her seat. The bench she was supposed to sit on already had two children on it, and Jessie was due to sit in the middle. When she did, the entire bench cracked violently in half, folding up around her like she'd fallen onto it from a great height. Her graduation cap fell over her face, tassels assailing her eyes and mouth like the tentacles of an angry squid as she flailed trying to right herself.
Parents gasped. Children laughed. Teachers and school faculty rushed to help. What happened after that I don’t remember, and I doubt anyone does, because it doesn’t matter. The most important thing about that day was not the culmination of the 5th graders, it was the sight of a fat girl breaking a bench in full view of her entire community.
Sadly, this was not the only moment in Jessie’s young life that she suffered humiliation in front of a crowd. I can think of another incident... one I played a direct role in.
I sat near Jessie during during that school year. Not directly next to her, but sort of across a big table several students had to share. During one class when the room was silent and everyone was diligently working, I farted loudly. Explosively, almost. It alerted the entire room of children, who all looked up from their desks like startled meerkats who had spotted a predator.
There are moments in a person’s life that define their character, and for me, this was one of them. I found myself at a great moral crossroads – how would I react to this embarrassing situation?
“Jessie farted!” I cried in disgust, pulling my shirt over my nose and pointing across the table.
“What!?” Jessie began to protest. She might have made a go of turning the blame back on me if not for three things that came to my aid in that moment. The first was Jessie’s famously poor verbal skills - even on a good day with everyone's full attention she had a hard time getting her point across. The second, which only doubled on top of the first, was that Jessie was surprised by my brazen accusation and at a loss for words. The third was that, no matter how much she tried to deny farting, the laughter and jeering of the other students drowned her out.
Even today, nearly 30 years later, Jessie shoulders the blame for that awful fart. And, like an assassin who kills with a blow-gun and recedes quietly into some shrubbery, I have successfully evaded detection.
When I look at Freya the Walrus, I can’t help but see Jessie. A poor, misunderstood creature, taking the blame for things beyond her control. I think my experience being both witness and active participant in the humiliations of a nine-year-old fat girl has uniquely positioned me to sympathize with this pariah walrus.
The other part of the Freya story that got me thinking was the fact that she was a “celebrity animal”. There seems to be a distinct difference between American celebrity animals and European ones. In America, our celebrity animals are all captives – Shamu, Beethoven, Lassie. They're actors, mostly. Narcissistic frauds.
It’s so American if you think about it – all bluster and bullshit. Shamu lives in a fucking bathtub and is beaten and abused by buxom women in wet suits until he reluctantly performs. His celebrity, like the celebrity of humans, is a façade of glamour that hides a miserable, rotten reality.
European celebrity animals, on the other hand, tend to be free and wild – famous for who they actually are and not what some cruel animal tamer has turned them into.
Take Fungie the Dolphin, for example. Fungie lives in Dingle Bay, Ireland, and is famous for frolicking alongside boats and being friendly to humans. I know this because I personally visited Fungie on his home turf several years ago.
I waited 20 minutes and paid several Euros to have a 13-year-old cigarette smoker take me on a boat tour of Dingle Bay, with promises of meeting the world's second most famous dolphin (the first being Flipper, of course). After about 10 minutes of cruising in circles (during which time the adolescent boat captain sucked down two Marlboros), Fungie appeared off the port side of our vessel.
True to his reputation, Fungie jumped and played, excited to have our attention. I couldn't tell if he was following us, or if we were following him, but whatever the case our dolphin watching continued for about thirty minutes - right to the point of being boring, actually. When the tour was finally concluded, we went back to shore, and I was left thinking, as I have after other celebrity encounters, "sometimes it's best not to meet your idols. They will only disappoint you."
I looked up Fungie on Wikipedia during the writing of this piece, and was disappointed to learn that he died in 2020 at forty years old. This makes him, apparently, the Guinness World Record holder for "Oldest Dolphin". Even in death, it seems, Fungie needs to be the center of attention. Pathetic.
I can't help but think that if Norway was smart, they'd turn Freya into a tourist opportunity like the Irish did with Fungie.
"Come see Freya: The World's Most Dangerous Walrus".
"Norway Is Under Attack: Sign Up To Fight The Existential Threat"
Maybe Norwegians are just not as into animal exploitation as Americans and Irish people are. Their whole approach to the crisis seems to just be shocked indignance: why is this asshole walrus victimizing us? Can you believe it?
As my mind returned from this whirlwind tour through childhood memories and animal celebrities, I swirled my vodka soda, tinkling the ice in my glass.
"That's a pretty cool walrus," I said to my wife, and took a drink.
****UPDATE 8/25/2022 - It has come to my attention that Freya the Walrus has been euthanized by Norway sometime last week. The national struggle is over.
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