I should support this statement with quantitative data – like my weight – but I won’t. Because I can’t. Because I haven’t stepped on a scale in years. In fact, the last time my ass saw a scale was in 2009 when I was a lifeguard at the university’s Student Aquatic Center. I was also a swim instructor, and the dual titles were enough to entice any potential bar trade. I’d quickly follow “I’m a lifeguard,” with “But I also teach kids to swim,” and be balls deep by the time I said “swim.” It also helped that I was in the best shape of my life, and had somehow found a way to tan my ginger skin. Since birth, my skin has maintained a nice “newborn mouse” tint, but after years of burning my flesh while cutting the front yard, I miraculously turned brown after prolonged exposed to the July sun on the lifeguard stand. I was golden, full of energy, and best of all, skinny.
I should also mention that this was the summer of Extreme Body Reshape. I forget exactly how I found out about the mystical weight loss pill, but my source had led me to Korean nail shop on the south end of town. I paid the woman wearing a bird flu mask 75 dollars for a box of 30, and popped the first one before pulling out of the parking lot.
The little bit of fat that was on me had fallen off within the first week, but my relationship with my boyfriend at the time, Wit’s End, had been stretched like a rubber band. Extreme Body Reshape caused violent mood swings, and I would go from belly laughing to chair throwing within seconds, and Wit’s End got the full force of my manic outbursts. One day, I came home from a shift at the pool to find him sitting Indian-style on the floor of my living room, eating chicken off of a styrofoam plate.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Eatin. I got me some barbecue from that Rupaul place by Albertson’s,” he said without taking his eyes off of Judge Mathis.
And then something inside me shattered like an ice sculpture.
“The restaurant is called 2Paul’s, you fucking hick!” I yelled.
“Stop hollerin at me! Wait, who’s Rupaul, then?”
“SERIOUSLY? GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT!”
I threw Wit’s End out of my apartment three more times that month. Soon after, I finished the pack of Extreme Body Reshape and I went back to my anxious, ambivalent personality – only skinnier. And following several new boyfriends and three years, I’d still managed to maintain the approximate weight. And then I started dating Heath.
From the day I met Heath, I've lived in a thick culture of comfort – the kind that fills the room when we're together. I mean culture in the tangible sense; the kind that ferments. We'd lounge on his bed or sit across from each other at dinner, and I'd feel steeped in satisfaction and content. It wasn't long after we started dating that my happiness began to breed something else. Fat.
Across my first few months as Heath's boyfriend, I ate like Kelly Clarkson. My daily 5K runs had turned into eating marathons. I wanted to spend every free moment with him, and since neither of us cook, most meals were served to us by someone wearing a name tag. One morning, I caught myself in the mirror and noticed a visible difference in my side profile. I was suddenly a victim of the boyfriend layer.
Let me be clear: although my new torso looks like it's being tortured in a pair of skinny jeans, I wouldn't call myself fat. Just gay fat.
My people's culture (not fermented) conditions many of us to work towards being muscular, skinny, lean, or at the very least, toned. Any body that veers away from the American gay male archetype is fat. So I guess that's me now: straight skinny/gay fat/human happy.
For the moment, I like the extra poundage. Actually, my gut and love handles are the least frightening of my excess baggage. But who knows? Maybe tomorrow I'll find myself face down in a plate of barbecued chicken and realize that I need to get back on the weight loss wagon. Thankfully, I know better than to shoot for that image of a plucky, skeletal, bipolar lifeguard again. Instead, I'll shoot for something closer to home. And if it means I get to stay with Heath, I'd be willing to keep the love handles.
I mean, they're technically the first gifts he ever gave me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Eatin. I got me some barbecue from that Rupaul place by Albertson’s,” he said without taking his eyes off of Judge Mathis.
And then something inside me shattered like an ice sculpture.
“The restaurant is called 2Paul’s, you fucking hick!” I yelled.
“Stop hollerin at me! Wait, who’s Rupaul, then?”
“SERIOUSLY? GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT!”
I threw Wit’s End out of my apartment three more times that month. Soon after, I finished the pack of Extreme Body Reshape and I went back to my anxious, ambivalent personality – only skinnier. And following several new boyfriends and three years, I’d still managed to maintain the approximate weight. And then I started dating Heath.
From the day I met Heath, I've lived in a thick culture of comfort – the kind that fills the room when we're together. I mean culture in the tangible sense; the kind that ferments. We'd lounge on his bed or sit across from each other at dinner, and I'd feel steeped in satisfaction and content. It wasn't long after we started dating that my happiness began to breed something else. Fat.
Across my first few months as Heath's boyfriend, I ate like Kelly Clarkson. My daily 5K runs had turned into eating marathons. I wanted to spend every free moment with him, and since neither of us cook, most meals were served to us by someone wearing a name tag. One morning, I caught myself in the mirror and noticed a visible difference in my side profile. I was suddenly a victim of the boyfriend layer.
Let me be clear: although my new torso looks like it's being tortured in a pair of skinny jeans, I wouldn't call myself fat. Just gay fat.
My people's culture (not fermented) conditions many of us to work towards being muscular, skinny, lean, or at the very least, toned. Any body that veers away from the American gay male archetype is fat. So I guess that's me now: straight skinny/gay fat/human happy.
For the moment, I like the extra poundage. Actually, my gut and love handles are the least frightening of my excess baggage. But who knows? Maybe tomorrow I'll find myself face down in a plate of barbecued chicken and realize that I need to get back on the weight loss wagon. Thankfully, I know better than to shoot for that image of a plucky, skeletal, bipolar lifeguard again. Instead, I'll shoot for something closer to home. And if it means I get to stay with Heath, I'd be willing to keep the love handles.
I mean, they're technically the first gifts he ever gave me.
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