Weighing In Vain.
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006Am I going to lunch or am I going to the gym?
Earlier this week I pulled my lined black leather jacket out of the recesses of my closet, since it suddenly became rather chilly outside and I’m still getting over a nasty cold. It’s not one of those long narrow leather jackets, but a waist-length one that’s cinched with elastic at the bottom. I bought it a little larger than necessary, so that in the middle of winter I could layer sweaters and stuff beneath it. However, the little bit of wiggle-room in the sizing when combined with the elastic at the waist still makes me do a visual and mental double-take as I walk past the glass-walled buildings in the city. Yes, I know it was just the jacket creating the cruel optical illusion of a black muffin-top, and yet still my mind says OMIGOD am I really that fat? And (why) do I really care?
At the height of my career as a drug addict, the appetite-suppressing and finance-reprioritizing properties of crystal meth wore me down to a Flockharty 105 pounds. Far from healthy, nowhere near attractive. And yet, even when I was weighing in on the more socially acceptable skinny side of the line, I was pretty much the only guy in every club who never took his shirt off. I don’t know why, but I never did. I suppose it has something to do with my lifetime subscription to Body Issues - one of the costliest things I ever got for free. When I eventually started getting sober, my metabolism normalized and I started eating appropriately (neither a health food freak nor a junk food junkie), and I got myself up to a much more reasonable 145ish. Obviously, the weight didn’t distribute itself the way I would’ve liked, so I decided to start working with a trainer to learn what people do in a gym. I’d never been an exercise-y person. I mean, I swear I must’ve been absent the day the taught all the other little boys to LOVE exercise and to ENJOY the thrilling high of a great work out. Growing up I used to think this aversion to anything that might be considered "sports-oriented" had something to do with my being gay, until I went to college, came out, and began to realize that the bodies of most gay men are far more chiseled than most straight men! So now I believe this psychological deficiency is a direct result of my skipping kindergarten. (Though, seriously, aren’t 5-year-olds just a smidge young to be pumping iron with one hand and doing chin-ups with the other?)
Anyway, I worked rather committedly (and rather expensively) with a trainer for over a year, at the end of which I’d seemed to have ended up exactly where I’d started. Still rather unmotivated and ignorant in the ways of a gym, and utterly flummoxed as to why my clearly visible - though admittedly relatively minor - spare-tire was still in full effect after a year of working out regularly WITH A TRAINER. I half-assedly continued to attend the gym solo for a while, not really knowing what the hell I was doing there, and then pretty much stopped when I started training for the marathon. Logic told me that if anything would whittle me down, this would be it. Marathon training! Running for six months! Clearly that was the solution! Well, the marathon is just a little over a week away now, and I’m sarcastically happy to report that my midsection’s ill-proportionedness (it’s a word because I said so!) is still there. Fortunately, the training program has been an unexpectedly enjoyable experience and I’ve met lots of swell people doing it. And I do look forward to "runningwiththepeopleinmytraininggroup". But still, I remain utterly incapable of looking forward to "running".
A couple weeks ago I went to the Miss Adams Morgan pageant. The event was a rockin’ good time, and I spent much of the night marveling at the insane levels of creativity on display, the likes of which I rarely experience in the conservative, politically-minded social circles of gay DC. My date for the evening was a beautifully sculpted, scantily-clad man. He was incredibly considerate and kind to me all night, and yeah, he was right, I did look damn cute, especially since I was wearing the "your shoes are so cute I hatechu" boots. But not surprisingly, as the evening progressed, the scantily-clad hottie ended up basking in the spotlight center stage and loving it, as any star would, while I was the bit-part character actor meandering somewhere stage left, the one who’d ironically actually majored in theater, wondering whether he’d ever be cast as the lead. ["Boy, Dorothy, you sure know how to beat a metaphor to death!"] Suffice it to say, it wasn’t the first time I felt as though Mr. Cellophane shoulda been my name.
This city - and pretty much any city I’ve ever been to - is chock-full of hot men of the gay variety who are ready and willing to shed their form-fitting shirts and grace the cover of Men’s Health magazine. They’ve undeniably earned the kudos they receive, slaving away for as many hours as it takes to meticulously carve themselves out of cream cheese. And yet, despite wishing I knew some miraculous way to wake up hot and sculpted and willing to walk around shirtless tomorrow morning (TrimSpa, baby?), I do indeed like me just as I am. If I met me out somewhere, I’d totally get my number, walk me home, and fight the urge to call myself later on that night. So I suppose I should just be okay with my own personal mini-Firestone. Learn to love it. Give it a name. Talk to it. Pet it. Embrace it the way those other boys embrace their abs classes and protein bars. Oy, if only I hated myself a little bit more…
Fuck it. I’m going to lunch.
