⭐Behind the Fiction: The True Story That Inspired Fat, Forty, and Frumpy.

If you read my short story, Fat, Forty, and Frumpy, you might think the appliances Josh gave Carly for her landmark birthday were straight out of a 1950s sitcom.   But truth is always stranger than fiction.  

 

The gift the real-life "Carly" received from her husband was so thoughtless and heartbreaking that I changed it for the story, worried my readers wouldn't find the truth believable. Instead of appliances, her high-powered executive husband handed her a box containing a pair of luxury ballpoint pens worth about $200.  It was a cold, corporate gesture meant for an employee, not a milestone gift for a wife of sixteen years.

 

The Real-Life Spark:

In my former life, I worked as a crew member for a large airline.  It's a different kind of job.  You routinely have breakfast in one country and dinner in another, six thousand miles away.   You work with a different crew every single trip.  You experience things, see places, and meet people most never will.  

But what really struck me is that you never see some of the people you work with again.  Ever.  Yet during those long flights and layovers, you hear all kinds of stories.  And the stories that stir you are the ones that stay with you forever, and they're the ones you write about.

 

That’s exactly what happened when I met the real 'Carly,' who was forty-five at the time.  Looking at her, I figured she was about thirty-two.   She was immediately charmed.  But I wasn't trying to flatter her.  She was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen, and she reminded me of that old saying my grandmother loves to espouse, "Black don't crack."  

At any rate, at the beginning of our trip, we ‘clicked.’  For the next five days, we ate all our meals together and went sightseeing and nightclubbing on our layovers.  The 'Carly' trip was pure fun, the kind that feels more like a vacation than work.  We laughed and giggled like two thirteen-year-olds.  We also talked openly about our lives and struggles—sharing stories that made us laugh or made us sad.

 

Fiction vs. Reality:

Naturally, "Carly" is a pseudonym.  To protect her privacy and ensure total anonymity for everyone involved, I changed all names and family details and omitted locations.  While the identities are safely guarded, the emotional truth remains.  To build a more cinematic narrative, I flipped and stylized several elements of her actual life:

The Roles: In reality, Carly was the flight attendant, and her husband was a high-powered business executive.  And if I told you his name, no doubt, you'd recognize it.  In the fiction, I swapped their careers to play into the classic "pilot and flight attendant" trope, which amplified the story's themes of isolation and temptation.

The Separation: The real-life ending was a stunning betrayal.  Her husband left her for a twenty-eight-year-old, closed bank accounts, canceled credit cards, and never returned.  He didn't realize the twenty-eight-year-old could not have children until two years later.  He then tried to get custody of his own children from Carly.  

But in one of those strange twists of fate that life throws at us once in a while, the judge hearing the case was a 50-year-old female whose husband had tried the same thing with her.  Needless to say, the real-life 'Josh' lost that battle.   

Carly saw him about three years after he walked out.  They were at a party in a hotel ballroom with about 500 other people.  The man Carly was with said her ex's eyes followed her all evening.  When he called her the next day, she blocked him.  He was still blocked when we flew together.

What Stayed the Same: Carly really was approaching 40 when she started her intensive weight-loss regimen.  She successfully lost well over 70 pounds through sheer determination.  When she showed me photos of herself before the weight loss, I didn't recognize her.  The photographs she showed me of her ex made me wonder how on earth an unattractive little geek like him ever got a pretty woman like Carly in the first place.  

When she saw my expression of surprise, she laughed until she peed her pants.  When I voiced my astonishment at how she could ever have been attracted to him, Carly said the initial attraction was his profession, but after sleeping with him, she said it was the best sex she'd ever had, before or since.  I thought that with a face like his, it'd have to be.

Writer's Lesson:  I left the airlines a few years later, and I never saw Carly again after the trip we flew together.  However, I never forgot her.  Turning this memory into fiction taught me that real life rarely hands us a perfect, satisfying ending.

  

So, I thought I'd create one for Carly.  Giving her that vintage Corvette and a definitive mic-drop departure was my way of gifting a strong, tenacious woman the victorious closure she deserved. 

I've often thought of the real-life Carly and wondered how she's faring.  Wherever she is, I hope she's happy.

I Will Survive—Gloria Gaynor (1978)

"It took all the strength I had not to fall apart"

Because if you can lose over 70 pounds in one fell swoop and keep it off for over 5 years, you can do any damn thing.  Go Carly!

Thanks for Reading!

© 2022 Jade Love

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