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Harold the Crab Vacuum

All > "Art" > Literature > Humor > Harold the Crab Vacuum by jlcoke

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I was riding the monorail back to my hotel in Las Vegas, drunk on "free" booze after losing my money playing blackjack all night, when I looked up and saw that the person sitting across the aisle from me was wearing a sticker that proudly announced, "I lost 74 pounds, ask me how!" The number was crudely scrawled in felt pen with the unmistakable handwriting of a junkie strung out on a bacon high and looked out of place amongst the neatly printed block letters that framed it. Even more out of place was the sticker itself when you consider that a man erupting sweat from every greasy pore and teetering on the brink of morbid obesity was wearing it. His suit was much too small and his shirt buttons looked like they were ready to explode from the pressure of his belly against the sweat-stained polyester. The area between the buttons was stretched apart, allowing his stomach to peer out of its synthetic fabric prison and come out for air in two-inch increments, the whole ensemble roughly resembling a polyester-wrapped pale meat balloon. He had either put on a few dozen pounds since his miraculous transformation and forgotten to remove his felt-scribbled badge of honor, or he must have thought to himself, "I'm pretty slim now, I can fit into this suit" and nobody bothered to tell him. Should I tell him? Probably not since he looked like he could — and quite likely has — eaten scrawny little smartasses like me whole. Something told me that if we were stranded on a desert island together it was highly likely I would awake to find him marinating me in some sort of makeshift sauce cobbled together from coconut milk and sand.

The interesting question, of course, is how many people see the sticker and approach this obese, sweat-drenched man to discuss his weight loss secrets? Undoubtedly the key to his svelte physique is some sort of miracle breakthrough herbal supplement available direct to the consumer only through the magic of multi-level marketing. The hook being that once your friends see the slimmer, sexier you, they'll want it too, and you can eat a tiny piece of the multi-billion dollar weight loss pie by signing them up as well. It's like Amway with speed. Every time I've heard the Amway pitch I've always thought that it would be the perfect avenue for a solid cocaine distribution network. A group of highly energized salesmen from middle class backgrounds who have already demonstrated a willingness to fill their garages full of shitty soaps and motivational tapes for a shot at the Great American Dream. These guys live on coffee and optimism, hurriedly scratching circles on napkins for every drunk in an airport bar that doesn't have the grapes to tell them to fuck off. Isn't letting them sell each other blow the logical next step? Evidently someone had beaten me to the punch while flying beneath the DEA radar.

As I stumbled off of the monorail and made my way toward the flashing lights I (wrongly) assumed were my hotel, I ran into more of these well-fed sticker wearers, each proudly displaying their incredible weight loss in the same hurried felt pen scrawling of the hopelessly deluded. Evidently, the herd was in town for some kind of convention celebrating not their weight loss or self-control, but instead their ability to convince every sorry bastard with an AbRoller hiding beneath their bed to take another swing at the dream. It occurred to me, isn't Las Vegas just about the worst location on the planet for a weight loss convention? Here are hundreds of people all gathered together in a city that embraces gluttony as a way of life; twenty-four hour bargain buffets, nonstop high-energy gambling, and cocktail girls wandering around handing out free booze to any idiot with a couple of chips in his hand. I was suddenly struck by the mental image of the attendees sitting at a buffet with inverted traffic cones shoved in their mouths, funneling cheesecake and prime rib down their well-buttered throats like human foie gras. Millions of deluded suburbanites on a weekend Orbitz value package dream of bankrupting Las Vegas at the tables, but these people actually had a fighting chance of doing it at the buffet. In terms of sheer morbid entertainment, I once watched a drunken Dutchman accidentally light his head on fire in Dam square during an impromptu New Years Eve fire-breathing show, but that paled in comparison to watching the gentleman who had supposedly lost 92 pounds cram crab legs into his mouth at the Cravings buffet on that hot July night. My grandfather once told me about watching the stock market crash, my mother spoke of JFK being shot, and I imagine that one day I'll tell my own — likely illegitimate — children about Harold and his heroic battle with the all you can eat seafood buffet. Godspeed, Harold.

The most amazing part to me is that these people claim to be health nuts. Weight loss warriors on the front lines of the American battle with obesity. They're shedding pounds and living the life of the bronzed and beautiful. We shouldn't look at where they are in terms of their weight loss, but instead measure them against where they have been. Harold the crab vacuum isn't your typical Las Vegas glutton trying to make sure that he gets his $20 worth, but is really a health nut if you look at him in the context of his 400-pound former self. Hell, the man lost 92 pounds and he has a breakthrough rooted in ancient Chinese medicine on his side — what's a fourth helping of key lime pie going to hurt? If the herd of sticker-wearers can all just buy, ingest, and sell enough herbal weight loss hope-in-a-pill, they'll be home free like Harold.

It's easy to look down on the Mongol hordes descending on the woefully unprepared buffet until you realize you're tripping over your own feet in the wrong hotel at 4:30 AM on a Wednesday. Being self-righteous is always harder when you wake up half naked in a bathtub surrounded by empty plastic mini bottles of vodka and your face is smeared with avocado you don't remember eating.

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