Exhale

It's hard to show your enduring love with celery sticks. Picture this: the warm glow of candles, soft mood music, you gazing deeply in your lover's eyes, whispering sweet nothings over a plate of celery and low-calorie ranch dressing.

See? It doesn't work.

Romance is all about excess: scrumptious food, lavish gifts, spending money you took from his wallet while he was asleep. The whole point is to lull the object of your affection/unwitting victim into complacency. And once your lives are impossibly entangled, through cohabitation, vows of commitment or blackmail, you reveal your true self.

The good news is that this ritual only lasts about six months. The bad news is that in six months, you could find yourself twenty pounds heavier, no longer the size fourteen (the size zero of drag queens) you once were. It creeps up on you, this weight, like a cold sore or megalomania.

I think you can pick out the truly committed relationships. They have a glow about them that comes from mutual trust, mutual support and mutual funds with a double-digit annual growth. They are the people who have eschewed the superficial; they don't live on a strict diet of celery and tomato soup to keep their abs rock hard.

The elastic waistband is an ally, a defiant fashion statement. These people are the shining beacons of the highest potential of humans. If you see them walking down the street--stop them--see if you can learn something from them, like the directions to a decent all-you-can-eat buffet in the Chicago area. Really, I would like to know. Please send this to me via e-mail.

My waist is slipping from me. My boyfriend is complicit in this. We eat lavishly, then neglect to go to the gym. This past Thanksgiving is just the gravy on the mashed potatoes. I ate all that. And the morning after, I stole into the refrigerator and ate some more.

But you can't really lie about your waistline. The signs give you away: your inseam, that fabric that should lie flat on top of your zipper, puckers open like a botched lipo scar. Your belly fat floats on top of your waistband like an inner tube in a swimming pool.

It's like for years and years and years of being 30, I found myself shopping for 32-inch jeans. I could no longer lie to myself or anybody else. That's not true. I may be a 33, 34, but I refuse to even consider that. No no no no no no way.

I wish this was like lying about my age, which I can perpetuate as long as photoshop and myspace exists. I'm quite popular on myspace. I just got an "add" this morning, which now makes my grand total of friends to four. It would've been five, but my mom refused to add me as friend. I'm so popular that as soon as I signed up, some dude named Tom wanted desperately to be my friend.


Saturday night, a rare stint at the bars. It's crowded. Gay men and women are slowly decompressing from their deep dive into the homestead, imbibing alcohol to fend off the bends.

I am standing among the perfect, the pretty. I am holding in my stomach, holding in my breath.

I had to do this, to squeeze into my jeans. You know the dance: a quick intake of air, then jumping about on hot coals. The inch from the button to the buttonhole, a marathon route; my navel caught between scylla and charybdis.

Even then, my stomach bulges out like foam threatening to spill over a piping hot latte. I hold it in to keep it flat, drawing only short breaths. When I talk, it's amazing I don't sound like Spongebob. Or Meg Tilly.

I've been here forty-five minutes and already I want to go home. I can't wait to get out of these clothes, these jeans.

And to exhale.

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Posts about the food in my life:

Starvation - The long way home is paved with very little food. Fake Plastic Food - The airplane food finally arrives. Discharged! - An obstruction in my bowels lands me in the hospital. Rock Bottom - An Oreo Story. When you've fished food out of the trash, then you know you've hit rock bottom.

Girl, Interrupted - The story of a lost girl and the media uproar. Love On An Empty Stomach - Food lulls you into falling in love. Comfort Food - $1.50 for a bowl of rice is insane. Bagel Sandwich - I could've been a millionaire but for a bagel sandwich.

I am holding my breath until you join the mailing list!

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Undateable

Kevin, you have become undateable to me, ever since you put up that picture of you smiling, shirtless, stroking your fleshy, pink hard-on in your online profile.

Now, why did you go and do that? Did you really think that we could still whisk away to happily-ever-after, after you've put up these pics? Could you have at least cropped your face out of the photo? Then at least everybody who sees it online will just assume that the picture is fake and belongs to some skanky 80 year-old geezer in a homophobic red state. That's what I did on my online profile.

I mean, who can tell anyway? These profiles, these pictures never tell the truth. When I first put up a pic of an asshole on my website, my ex-boyfriend hired a lawyer to remove the offending picture of his face. Since I won't be dating you, you won't ever have to worry about me sending your boss your naked picture when we eventually break-up. Our relationship has ended before it started.

I realize of course that dating doesn't have to end up in a relationship--and many people who go on dates don't--but I don't think that I even want to spend an appetizer or a movie ticket on you. Normally, to lubricate our way to the path between your legs, I would've at least would've bought you a cocktail garnished with the date-rape drug du jour. But now, not so much. You've proven that you don't have the self-esteem to lie on your profile and put up fake pictures. I can't date you--what would my friends think?

I had been harboring fantasies of you and me running off away together, ever since I first found your profile in gay.com. I imagined the two of us adopting children together from fashionable third-world countries: China, Malawi, Compton.

I imagined sophisticated names that will look attractive on a vellum business card or a glossy porno box, like Rafe or Britney. We would all adopt your last name MusclJock, as stated on your gay.com profile. If you prefer, we could hyphenate: No Milk MusclJock-Please. Or does No Milk Please-MusclJock sound better?

Sigh. In my mind's eye, I could see Britney, Rafe and I playing with my collection of Barbie dolls, still mint-in-box. We would gleefully dust and catalog the Barbie collection and bid on rare items on eBay. For Halloween, Britney would be a beautiful pink princess. Rafe could be one too--it's not like we'd need to shave his legs until he's thirty if he takes after me. If he takes after you, we may want to start saving for his depilatory/college fund early.

These dreams are slowly dying; it breaks my heart not to be able to drag our beautiful kids to soccer practice, recitals or a sweatshop, if we needed the extra cash for a suede couch.

I could put up the picture of you here for the people who occasionally read this blog, so people can admire your pink member, but I am afraid that you will get mad at me. Because even though we won't be dating, I would never, ever, want to jeopardize the possibility of our hooking-up.

(If you ever return my IMs, I'll send you the naked photo I took of myself in the shower)

-----

Special Dispensation - Only the Pope, or my friend Matt, can grant me a special dispensation to date Kevin.




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What Does It Say About Me?

"What do you think my beret says about me," I asked my good friend Matt.

He studied my beret and said, "I think it says that you are trying to look younger than you are."

"Really?" I asked, crestfallen. "You don't think it says that I'm creative, hip and will give you a blowjob if you follow me into the restroom at Borders?"

"No," he said firmly.

"What do you think about hockey jerseys?" I ventured. I had just bought one recently at one crazed shopping spree at the mall. What? They were 60% off!!!

"I think it says 'I have completely given up on life and I am just waiting for Heidi to tell me auf weidersehen,'" said Matt.

"I see," I managed to say. I still had the receipt for the hockey jersey but I have been seen around town in my beret. What was I thinking? Why couldn't I just be like every decent gay guy over thirty-five and post a picture on BigMuscle.com of my big, gaping asshole? But noooo, I had to be different, I had to wear a goddamn beret.

What is it that I am trying to say anyway? All I want is to be noticed, you know, so that I wouldn't be that guy who is left out, the guy in the corner jacking himself off in an orgy.

"Anyway, if you want to say something about yourself," Matt said, oblivious to my internal struggle, "I think you should get something more subtle, you know, like a t-shirt or better yet--get a tattoo."

"To hell with subtlety. I want a t-shirt that says 'I'm a bottom'."

"Well then, let's go find a t-shirt that has big block letters that spell A-B-E-R-C-R-O-M-B-I-E."

"Ok," I said excitedly. I could have a picture of myself wearing it on my new BigMuscle.com profile by tonight.

Right next to the picture of my asshole.





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