Two more
July 19th, 2010The bar hangs heavy in the air above my chest, my arms are quivering as I contemplate the need which drove me to this position. A hundred and twenty pounds. A hundred and twenty fucking pounds. That is how overweight I am. The sweat poured off me in droves, dripping through my sodden shirt to fall to the rubber mat below the bench. No gym for me, I can’t abide working out in them anymore, but the setup in the garage is adequate for regaining my life.
Surgery? No f-ing way. It would work, I tell myself, it would work fast. Neither of those arguments is deniable. But I have no underlying health problems. My cholesterol? Reads like that of a twenty year old marathon runner. Blood sugar? Ditto. Blood pressure? 120/80…tops. Nothing to indicate why I am what I’ve become. Some might kindly say, I’ve “Let myself go.” The bar wavers as I laugh. Let myself go where? The buffet? I see the weakness within and look in its face each morning as I rise. There is no contempt anymore, I am long past that. There is no depression or anxiety, no calorie counting and starvation, there is only steely resolve. Down. Up is the hard part. A week ago I brought the bar down on the soft flesh between my thumb and forefinger of my left hand. This wound serves as a reminder to my fallibility and for some reason has comforted me and given me strength when my ‘steely resolve’ beings to waver. Up. One more to go. One more until I can crack a beer on the man deck behind the house and try to wait for the worst of the sweat to stop pouring out of me before I hit the shower. Alcohol is probably part of the problem. Nah, it’s the nachos. Moderation is key. I think back on when I lost my sense of moderation.
Senior year of college. I woke up one day and realized I had gained the senior ‘twenty’, not the freshman twenty. Thankfully a stint in a third world country melted those twenty pounds and twenty more off of my frame, giving me the lean look required to find a wife (if I may be so shallow). But Honduras, among its many gifts, also gave me the ability to eat anything I wanted at any time. Problem was I didn’t want much. Too goddamn hot, too much bland fare. Coming back to the states I could have anything I wanted for cheap and as much as I wanted. Pretzel combos. It started with those pretzel combos. Nacho cheese pretzel fucking combos, I love those things. I haven’t had one in…months. In a couple of years I will say ‘years’. Pretzel combos are the enemy. Down. I hold it there, the fine, strong bar, close to my chest, yet not quite touching it. I want to embrace it. I want to become it, that lovely skinny piece of metal, that never eats or hungers for pretzel combos. I’d like to live awhile longer. Thought speeds as light through my head. I want to see things, and do things and enjoy things that I won’t be able to do if I succumb to heart attacks or strokes or diabetes. I need this push. I need this up, as I need thousands more. It goes beyond zombie novels or family or friends, it is a selfish desire just to know, just to ‘be there’ when the future arrives and see what it is like.
Up. I carefully shift the bar backwards on the brackets of the bench, taking care not to pinch any fleshy bits. One reminder should be enough…I hope.