'Fat' is the first short story of the first short stories book by Carver, Will you please be quiet, please? I'm going to spoil it in writing it.
I have bought every single short story book by Carver, if I'm not wrong. To give one example, I have Beginners, but I also have What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, which is the same thing only shorten. But yes, I was wrong, because I've not bought Furious Seasons and other stories, which looks to me just a compilation.
Translated in Spanish, I only have Vidas cruzadas and De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de amor. But in the end I'll buy all of them in Spanish or Italian, who knows, because it's great to kill two birds with one stone. It's a shame that buying cheap second hand books in Italian is not easy when you don't live in Italy.
I've read 'Fat' two or three times in English and as many in Spanish, from an online version, because I didn't buy the Spanish version yet, but I will.
The main characters, a waitress and an incredibly fat customer. The waitress served him with sweetness and gentleness. The customer eats with incredible appetite, and is always so grateful and so polite.
The waitress' co-workers realize her special consideration and make fun of the customer, without him knowing, and also of the waitress, in this case right to her face. The waitress doesn't pay attention of this and defends the customer, and she never loses her temper or anything like that.
When the waitress comes home, at bedtime, she lets her husband fuck her without ever thinking about it. She could see herself being very, very fat and her husband shrunk over her. And eventually she is convinced that her life will change.
And yes, the woman is trapped in her own life. Just as the customer, who told her that he was trapped in his own life, while eating, because he had no option but to continue eating in such a way.
And yes, indeed, the woman fantasizes about becoming a fatter version of the fat customer as a way of escaping her own life: 'one man's trash (his obesity) is another's treasure (being fantastically fat)”.
I have an absurd prejudice, but a very own mine, it's believing you must be Argentine in order to be a great short story writer of the 20th Century. Well, Carver is a great short story writer of the 20th Century, as well. Against all odds...