Big Man, star of Big Man, Bigger Man, Big Man: Biggest, and Still Big, Still Man, sadly passed away last night in a dog-sledding-related incident. Though his death is tragic, loved ones say they are comforted by the knowledge that he died doing what he loved: streaking butt naked across the Iditarod starting line before the gun sounded, fully exposed to the icecast world at dawn, the pink sunrise bleeding across the white, the cold numbing his body, his body wrung with constant pain, the pain of swollen aching muscles torn past their limits again and again, the pain of calloused palms ripped against the barbells’ knurling, the pain of kidneys dully aching as they processed the testosterone ethanate, nandrolone decanoate, 5α-reductase, and the complete hormone stack that extends his Bigness ever outward, the pain of this very Bigness being an emergent feature, on some essential level, of his Big Body’s Big Capacity to hold pain without breaking, and the pain of being seen always, the pain of being captured and reproduced across the world on screens Bigger than he could ever dream of growing, and the pain of aging as a man known mostly for the size he takes up in the world while being, magically, devoid of body fat.
Yes, in the morning freeze, a hundred huddled eyes upon his perfect form, a form that for the only time in his Big Life didn’t feel anything at all, so numbed it was by that cold that with the sudden absence of his body, of Big Man’s Big Body, Big Man became just A Man, exposed and frigid so it shrinks, ok? I’m still Big, man, and alone, but who isn’t, alone—alone against the world, alone against the cold, alone against the cold cold world—and just when it all should have swallowed him in unshakable grief, this aloneness, he saw the dogs who didn’t know nakedness or the first thing about exogenous androgen administration, only the horizon, and the buried earthen howl that sings them ever forward. In his nakedness, sometimes, if the wind swung just right, he could hear it with them, a singular purpose, a movement, and what did a Man as Big as Big Man want if not to spend just one second as a movement and not a statue. Big Man ran and watched their eager eyes, moonwide with fervor, and his feet padded icy against the snow, and they all sang together, without a word, and Big Man is, was, happy and whole.
As he ran, he hoped he would wake one morning as a husky, trained and stubborn and ready, and the world would know him for the running of his feet, not being Biggest Sexy Man of the Year, and as his muscles ached in doggy age, as his ached now, he would not inject or cut or gorge or infect himself with somotropin growth hormone or anti aging peptides stacks or anything at all to help him keep going. No, he would find a fire, and a soft fur rug, and tuck his head into the crook of his lower body and sigh, breath pluming cloudily into the winter air, nose wet but drying against the cold, large liquid eyes blinking slowly shut, and he would sleep and dream of running and the dream would be so real it was as if he was running again for real and his joints would be loose and his heart would be young, and he would be just a sliver against the forever white, a grey streaking accident of purpose and glee, small so small upon the valley of endless snow, so endlessly happy despite, and sleeping as the cold came in, and letting the fire’s warmth roar even as its light dimmed, and letting the dream take him, and the buried howl sing him down, and that it’s ok, just rest boy, oh are you dreaming? What are you dreaming of old fella. That’s alright buddy. I love ya pal. Just rest. You ran so hard old fella, took to the ice the way most pups take to their mother’s teats, and you did so good, old fella, my love, you did so so good, so just rest now. Big Man knew Old Fellas are never Big Men, and that Big Men are never held by their master’s calloused hands by the fire and told to rest, but in that moment, he thought maybe they could, the pack of them, him and the dogs, convince one another that it was all, always going to be ok, and it was, as he lay his Big Body down, and the snow mounded above him fifteen miles from the starting line. And my, oh my were those mounds Big.
Big Man’s family asks for donations to his charity–Big Men Bigger Hearts–in lieu of flowers.
And join us for a 16-hour, director’s cut marathon of all four Big Man Movies this Saturday at the Lincoln Theater. RIP BIG MAN.
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Spencer Nitkey is a writer living in Philadelphia with his witch wife and a dog named after a French postmodernist. His stories have appeared in Apex Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Flash Fiction Online, hex literary, Lightspeed Magazine, Nature Futures, and many others. You can find more about him on his website, spencernitkey.com.