Big as Life

This average head and these average forearms float in the vast rolling sea of the rest of him. It is as though the puckish inner Keitz had gone to a carnival and popped up inside a fat man suit. The upper arms are the size of a man's thigh. His belly spills like a 25-gallon sack of Jell-O toward his right side.

Yet he has a certain grace. When a CD is blasting, he nods his head and heaves his shoulders to the beat, impelling tsunamis down his torso. This is how he takes his daily exercise.

"There is nothing funnier to watch than a fat man dancing in bed," says Gina Keitz, 38. She is 5 feet 3 and weighs 225.

With a strenuous, side-to-side one-two-three! Keitz builds momentum to hoist himself up on his left arm. It supports him like a steel I-beam. This frees his right to reach a spatula.

On the menu is ground-beef stew, steamed lemon chicken and mixed vegetables. His wife says he cooks several times a month for her and his sister Jessie Keitz, 51, who lives with them.

Their monthly income is about $1,500 in Social Security disability checks received by Jessie, who has a mental handicap, and John, for obesity-related arthritis and asthma. He also has diabetes and sleep apnea. The household also receives $171 in food stamps. Gina worked two jobs at places like Wendy's and Waldenbooks until a couple of years ago, when she began taking care of John and Jessie full time.

"I can cook just about anything a chef can make in the kitchen as long as I have my ingredients brought to me," he says. "You haven't tried anything until you've tried my meatballs. My meatballs are the size of a baseball."

An electric wok for the stew is beside the bed. Keitz stirs and adds spices.

Before him on the mattress is a pack of six chicken breasts, two lemons, a pound of butter, basil, garlic salt, Old Bay, aluminum foil, a cutting board and a sharp knife. He calls for rice. Gina Keitz tosses a bag from the kitchen, and it lands with a thwop on his belly.

"She likes to see if she can make me jump," Keitz says.

He inserts lemon slices and spices under the skin of the chicken, then wraps each breast in foil on a bed of rice and vegetables. Gina Keitz puts the chicken in the oven.

While dinner is cooking in this demonstration of what Keitz can do from his bed, conversation turns toward all that he can't.