The Chronic

I’m currently dealing with chronic pain as the result of a back problem brought on by a lung problem that had me with just about enough energy to get up, go to work, and go home and that was it for, oh, 2015. All. Of 2015. Forget going to the gym as I had been, just trying to get rid of the crap that had taken over my chest was about all I could manage to do. So, going from “pretty perky” to “inert” when you’re in your early 40s translates to a back issue that has been hanging around for the better part of a year. Physical therapy has made me realize I do not bounce back like I did when I was 30, or even 35. I have cried a lot in the last few days as I have pushed my carcass and struggled with things that used to be quite easy for me. While I have laid on the floor and did my bridges and held my lower abs and quadraflexed my ponyhoists, I thought about how much I liked physical activity. (Except walking. Walking – unless it has a purpose of getting me from Place A to Place B – annoys me. It’s the Phil Mickelson* of exercise for me.) I liked going to the gym and dancing about and developing big-ass calves. Frankly, I liked to annoy gym personnel when I would tell them my goal wasn’t to lose weight. As a person, especially a fat person, my response is not supposed to be only “I am interested in getting stronger” when I’m at a gym. It should only be about losing this unsightly flesh of mine.

But that isn’t what this is about – well, it is, tangentially, probably. Trying to work my way back to a level where I can tolerate going to the gym makes me think back to what giant a-holes I had for gym teachers when I was young and how they helped to kill the fun of physical activity. There was simply no room for anything but winning and being athletically skilled and if you didn’t fit into that particular box, you were a useless loser. My elementary school gym teacher (also fat) mocked me in front of the entire class; my junior high gym teacher thought I should be keeping a food/exercise journal – never mind she wasn’t having anyone else in the class do it. (My mom put a stop to that red-hot bullshit.) I was never going to be “good” at sports or games, and boy did they love to make sure all of us non-good kids knew it.

To what end, I wonder? What good does it do a child and, frankly, an adult, being told that if you’re not a) an elite athlete or b) aspiring to be an elite athlete physical activity and playing games or sports is off limits? Every single fucking fitness ad or product is quite explicit that every human being should be looking to run a marathon, basically. Having a goal like mine – getting back to a point where I can get into the gym three days a week – is for jerks. If I really wanted to rank, I would be making a 5K my goal. Followed by a 10K. Followed by a marathon. Followed by THE IDITAROD…except I WILL BE PULLING THE SLED AND THE PUPPERS WILL BE RIDING IT.

I would love to see an ad for a gym or a fitness product or “Let’s Move” that featured people that looked like me, all tattooed and goofy and just drenched in sweat and weird-shaped doing fun things…for fun. Flopping around on the elliptical and mouthing the words to “Let it Whip” by the Dazz Band or just barely staying upright on the treadmill because the connection between my brain and my legs gets distracted sometimes by thinking about work or my book or Benedict Cumberbatch or where my husband and I should go to dinner on the weekend. The universe’s physical body default is not the Rock. Those of you who wish to resemble the Rock, go forth and be fruitful. Hone your eyebrow-raising skills and make me proud.

My activities might not result in anything more than my getting my big-ass calves even bigger and returning to my pre-funkylung state of being where I was feeling good and ready to fight. But that’s good for me, and if that’s all that people aspire to, that should be good enough, too. No one should feel like they have to run a 5K in order to be considered “worthy”. Physical activity doesn’t have to result in pounds lost in order to be worth doing. No one’s goal has to be some towering athletic achievement in order to feel like one has achieved. Shit, my achievement this week has been walking up five stairs without pain. Good enough for me.

(*I have an irrational dislike of golfer Phil Mickelson. He has not done anything to me personally, professionally, or otherwise; he has simply made the grave error of existing in a fashion that somehow displeases me. The only other member on the Mickelson’d List thus far: Paul McCartney. Though I believe there are more, I can only think of Paul friggin’ McCartney right now. Just typing his name is causing my face to tighten up into a twist of displeasure and disgust.)

A brief return...for a thinkpiece. UGH.

When I read the summary of what Louis CK’s episode, “So Did the Fat Lady” was about before it aired, I was quite curious to see just what he’d wind up doing.  I have a very, very sadly small pantheon of white male comedians who actually seem to “get it”, or at least, appear to make an effort to “get it” when it comes to issues of sexism, racism, misogyny, and the like.  Louis CK is a member, along with Paul F. Tompkins, and…well, there’s plenty room for more.  So come on, fellas, the snacks are top-notch.

I am a fat lady, the kind of fat that makes people really angry.  It’s my body type that’s more likely to be used in one of those “headless fatty” montages used on the news when they decide it’s time for the quarterly report about how awful fat people are.  I did my due diligence in my younger days of dieting, losing some weight, gaining it (and more) back, dieting, losing some weight, gaining it (and more) back.  I removed myself completely from the world when it came to romance and dating.  I believed 100 percent that a woman that looked like me had absolutely no shot at finding a fellow that would love me unconditionally, that wouldn’t see me as a make-skinny project, that wouldn’t keep my existence a secret because he wouldn’t want the world to know he stooped so low as to fuck a fat woman.  A part of my pain-in-the-ass brain understood that I actually did deserve love and was someone who was entertaining and festive and decent, but as long as I had an ass the size of Madagascar, it was simply pointless to make an effort.  So I didn’t.  Well, I wouldn’t until I’d reached some sort of “acceptable” size.

In my earlyish 30s, I discovered fat acceptance and began a lengthy re-acquaintance with feminism and figured out “holy fucking shit, I have wasted SO MUCH TIME hating myself”.  I got my head right and even though I still wasn’t terribly keen on venturing into romantic waters, I wound up the happiest, the most confident, the most comfortable and content I had been in a long time.  I finally understood that a goodly amount of the noise my head was filled with regarding the pursuit of the opposite sex was self-generated – maybe the reason why I never had a boyfriend wasn’t because I was fat, but because I’d bought the shit that was being sold to me and it turned into one of those handy self-fulfilling prophecies.  However, since I’d never actually participated in the rigmarole of dating, I couldn’t speak to whether or not my fat was truly an impediment.  I’d certainly had my stomach-churning crushes and felt like I had “loved” someone (though he didn’t love me back), and all the experiences had all ended with me feeling humiliated and worthless because the affection wasn’t returned.  But these were experiences I had had between the ages of, say, 14 and 20.  The one blind date I went on thanks to the personals section in the Chicago Reader went from gross (he interrupted me while I was talking and said “let’s cut the small talk and get to the sex”) to hilariously cataclysmic (he presented me with photographs of himself posing on a rug, wearing just a Speedo, then followed his disturbing presentation with a story about getting a handjob from a lesbian on a gay bar dance floor – oh, and he was wearing a wrestling singlet, as you do).  So I was a bit at sea as to how to go about pursuing a potential suitor…if I even wanted one at that point.

Long story short, the internet – the blessed, infuriating, bullshitty, wondrous internet – would eventually deliver a stone fox to me, and we’ve been friends for almost seven years, together for almost five, and married for just a smidge over two.  I never “dated” until I met my husband.  Oh, I made a halfhearted attempt at online dating and quickly realized it just wasn’t for me despite my having done a goodly amount of socializing online since the late 90s.  I had two things that were important to me, things I wasn’t willing to compromise on – I wasn’t interested in dating someone who was religious, and I wasn’t interested in dating someone who had children.  It would also be helpful if someone was feminist or feminist-friendly.  The suggestions provided to me by the service I used inevitably consisted of men with children, and those who didn’t have children were quite keen to have women with “weight proportionate to height” which I definitely am not.  I checked out free sites, pay sites, and at the end of it all, I couldn’t conjure up the energy or interest that was required to “date”.  Then I was resolute – if I was going to be single until my dying day, then for fuck’s sake I was going to make my life as entertaining as possible.  That resolution has had some revisions since then.

So I couldn’t necessarily identify with what Vanessa said during her speech about dating and flirting since I didn’t endure years of fruitless dating and I suspect I’ve flirted over the years, but I really can’t be sure.  But mercy, mercy me, I felt it, I completely understood when she said, “You know, if you were standing over there looking at us, you know what you'd see? That we totally match. We're actually a great couple together.”  I felt it when she presented Louie with those fucking hockey tickets that she insisted wasn’t some sort of demand for reciprocity in the form of a date or just a kind word or some affectionate attention, because God almighty, how often did I do that over the years.   There’s a certain hustle that goes into being a fat girl – my hustle consisted of having a sense of humor that was beyond, a personality that was funny and loud and funnyloud, doing whatever I had to do in order to make the life of the object of my affection wonderful and joyous and oh he’s asking out someone else and now they’re getting married and oh.  My hustle should have taken me into comedy or performing or acting, but good ole insecurity/my being chickenshit took me out, and if there’s a regret I cling to to this day, it’s that I didn’t take the best compliment I ever received from a teacher of mine – “You have a knack for making an unfunny scene funny again” – and run the shit out of it.  

I’ve read a few thinkpieces (let’s have that word destroyed, shall we?) about “So Did the Fat Lady” and they interpret Louie grabbing Vanessa’s hand as a sign that he just wanted her to stop talking and be quiet, or to end the awkwardness, or any number of things that would point to him not having had a moment of clarity.  To me, it was a moment – and maybe it wouldn’t stick with him, maybe that moment of courage would only be just that, a moment – where Louie decided to flout conventions, give the middle finger to all the guys who would give him shit for being seen with a fat girl in a romantic way, and hold the hand of this woman who was “very really beautiful”.  

Maybe I’m being optimistic.  I probably am – shit, I’m in the midst of writing a novel about a fat girl in her late 30s getting her shit together and finding love for the first time in her life which, if you know me personally, IS BASICALLY MY FUCKING STORY.  But it’s not hard for me to see it being dismissed as fantasy, wish fulfillment, complete bunk – once again, EVEN THOUGH IT ACTUALLY SERIOUSLY HAPPENED TO ME.  And fucking forget it ever being made into a movie, since romcoms are only allowed to feature thin women who have a tendency to be a wee bit clumsy because isn’t that just ADORABLE.  I couldn’t bear seeing someone who wasn’t me, frankly, playing the lead role.  After all, I spent so much time as a supporting player in my own life – I’m not giving up the spotlight ever again.