I’m twenty-five pounds overweight. I have a stomach. Not a belly or potbelly. Not basketball-ish, more like sloppy-distended. Neglected, toneless. Harder to obscure or diminish by sucking in if I’m shirtless.
I plan to attack the problem at some point. Before turning sixty. A lot of things I plan on starting or being consistent with by the time I’m sixty. Sixty seems like a crossroads between I’m over it, and dying before my term policy runs out makes better economic sense, or fuck my heirs, I’m going to run this thing out as long as I can, eventually rotting away forgotten in a nursing home that accepts Medicaid.
What I’ve done so far, I’ve cut out the occasional key lime pie, quit the blueberry muffins, and I’ve saved several posts on Facebook for various abs or core exercises I’ll get around to. The effect of ten thousand steps a day has been negligible, other than a distressed spine and hip joint and intermittent back spasms. My pants and shorts are still difficult to fasten, even though I averaged four point eight miles per day last week, four point five the week before.
There’s a floor to ceiling mirror I pass on my way to my office. I watch myself. I move like the upper and lower portions of me are articulated. My upper body looks relaxed, my lower body looks jolting and distressed, like I’m walking with a prosthetic leg to my hip joint and I’m only now getting the hang of it.
***
I mall-walk around the outside of the Viejo Mall. Late winter, in the fifties, not much wind, blue skies, so I’ll get a little sun on my face. A pinkish hue that will become ruddier in a day or two. Anything but pale. We white people, we hate being pale.
As I’m walking I see my shadow, diagonally and slightly ahead of me. I wonder if I’ve seen this shadow in my dreams, when I was younger. I feel like I have. The shadow I see as I walk around the Viejo Mall is herky-jerky and misshapen. I have on a jacket that’s zipped, and protrudes more than does my protruding stomach, so the shadow looks neglectfully overweight.
If I’d seen this shadow in dream when I was young, I’d have refused to believe this was me. And what if, in this predictive dream, I’d been able to infiltrate the body and mind of this man in his fifties? It would have seemed worse than it is, to a young man. The hip pain, the tweaked back, shortness of breath, enervation, I’m accustomed to it, I make it work. As a young man I would have been horrified to know this was my fate. Or destiny.
Which leads me to wonder. Why not allow this to happen? If I’d been able to see this cartoonish shadow when I was young, or temporarily inhabit this fifty-something body, long enough to internalize its afflictions, maybe I’d have become obsessed with my health. Maybe I’d be better off these days. Just a thought. A suggestion for anyone listening.
***
Her latest apothegm: “I’m going to stab myself in the neck with a fork.” Examples of its application: Trying to schedule an appointment with the workman’s comp doctor; attempting to get AT&T Uverse fixed remotely (‘have you tried unplugging the modem?’); toilet paper and mask scams on Facebook. The empty aisle at Walmart where anything to wipe your ass is normally stocked, Huggies or the local newspaper your best remaining options. Or a bottle of Fantastik 409, hold it under you and spray upwards, a kind of do-it-yourself bidet, if you can live with the burning sensation.
