Fatty Bobsticks

Diary

Fatty Bobsticks will tell you, unprompted and often, that he is nothing like Fat Bob, and then in the same crowded market street he goes and does something so gloriously Fat Bob that even the ghosts of old dojo masters wince from the rafters. It happened on a packed thoroughfare, merchants and monks and market wives shoulder to shoulder, when Fatty, three cups of sake deep and riding some phantom clout he'd aped off a rumor, started hollering obscenities at a cluster of women just to feel the crowd's eyes swing his way. They laughed, someone tossed him a coin for the spectacle, favor earned the ugliest way a man can earn it, and Fatty told himself that was a win, floor secured, bags up. But the sake wore off faster than the shame did, and now he sits some mornings trying to meditate like the old samurai codes demanded, back straight, mind still, before he remembers the sound of his own voice in that street and folds over like a man rugged by his own mouth. He swears, loudly, to anyone who'll listen, that he is his own man and not some discount echo of Fat Bob's chaos, and then he goes and orders another round to drown out the echo anyway.