He was not fat. Truth to tell, he was not really even chubby, simply slightly soft-looking around the edges. But the name Fat Charlie clung to him, like chewing gum to the sole of a tennis shoe. He would introduce himself as Charles or, in his early twenties, Chaz, or, in writing, as C. Nancy, but it was no use: the name would creep in, infiltrating the new part of his life just as cockroaches invade the cracks and the world behind the fridge in a new kitchen, and like it or not—and he didn’t—he would be Fat Charlie again.

It was, he knew, irrationally, because his father had given him the nickname, and when his father gave things names, they stuck.

There was a dog who had lived in the house across the way, in the Florida street on which Fat Charlie had grown up. It was a chestnut-colored boxer, long-legged and pointy-eared with a face that looked like the beast had, as a puppy, run face-first into a wall. Its head was raised, its tail nub erect. It was, unmistakably, an aristocrat amongst canines. It had entered dog shows. It had rosettes for Best of Breed and for Best in Class and even one rosette marked Best in Show. This dog rejoiced in the name of Campbell’s Macinrory Arbuthnot the Seventh, and its owners, when they were feeling familiar, called it Kai. This lasted until the day that Fat Charlie’s father, sitting out on their dilapidated porch swing, sipping his beer, noticed the dog as it ambled back and forth across the neighbor’s yard, on a leash that ran from a palm tree to a fence post.

“Hell of a goofy dog,” said Fat Charlie’s father. “Like that friend of Donald Duck’s. Hey Goofy.”

And what once had been Best in Show suddenly slipped and shifted. For Fat Charlie, it was as if he saw the dog through his father’s eyes, and darned if he wasn’t a pretty goofy dog, all things considered. Almost rubbery.

It didn’t take long for the name to spread up and down the street. Campbell’s Macinrory Arbuthnot the Seventh’s owners struggled with it, but they might as well have stood their ground and argued with a hurricane. Total strangers would pat the once proud boxer’s head, and say, “Hello, Goofy. How’s a boy?” The dog’s owners stopped entering him in dog shows soon after that. They didn’t have the heart. “Goofy-looking dog,” said the judges.