Its not like I’m huge or even humongous even, well, not yet anyway, it’s just that I sit a lot. Like I sit in my car as I drive to work only to get there to sit in my office or sit in a chair while I facilitate groups and then I do my charts and files behind a computer, so of course I sit through that too. And then lunch rolls around and I usually go out to eat and sit—as it’d be a tad off of me to stand or better yet jog in place while I’m at the local taqueria, burrito in one hand as I’m dipping tortilla chips into the salsa with the other, a soft-shoe shuffle of New Balance running shoes to accompany my meal!
And it’s not like the rest of my day is any better what with the commute home and then eating my dinner while I read the newspaper and then it’s time to write, and you guessed it—sit behind my laptop at home! And yes I can hear the yammering going on out there like: Why don’t you walk to work or take public transportation? And of course, stop writing at the computer all the time! Which I am only too sure that more than a few people wouldn’t be disappointed if that suggestion came true. But without going into too much detail my responses to those statements would be: Where I work there is no public transportation. Most citizens of this schizophrenic country of ours want treatment for dope fiends, they just don’t want it in their backyard, or their county even. And as for the idea to stop writing? Well why don’t I just stick a sharp needle full of drugs in my arm again and then come over and borrow some money while I date your daughter or your sister or some other close friend or family member. Because as I’ve said on more than one occasion this is something that keeps me sober and sane this writing deal, and if I was to give it up, well, I think that I’ve explained the shit out of that so why go on?
Of course there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t wanna smoke a nice Export “A” cigarette or continually shove Reese’s peanut butter cups down my throat until I explode. Or just layback spooning Nutella onto my Ben and Jerry’s while drooling on copious amounts of opiates. But I don’t! So, other than going back to being an anorexic drug addict or accepting the fact that I’m getting on in years and that extremely large stomachs are en vogue for male menopause victims, just what is the remedy here? After all I’ve joined a gym and even go now and then, I jog/walk two to three miles a night five times a week after work and during my long writing sessions, just to get the brain stimulated, I do a hundred pushups in five sets of twenty!
So then – why I be getting fat?
And besides not to brag or boast but on a cosmic plane my karma is finally looking good. I’m not engaging in criminal activities, I’m no longer a parasite on society and I try and help mo-fo’s who still are and the last “bad” thing I did was lie to the DMV in order to save money on my registration fees—and like who doesn’t do that!
Yet even after doing the right thing and all, here I sit—Buddha belly!
Of course the crackheads in my building’s hallways are rail thin, the dope fiend selling shoplifted batteries and razorblades out on Third Street is skinny junkie chic with a sweaty pasty face and I can bet that the last thing on his mind right now is unsightly weight gain. Though I’d trade a million pounds of being a fat slob rather than be him waking up dope-sick and in need of a fix tomorrow morning! Yet if I was pressed to make any kind of observation I’d have to say that everyone else around here, either out on the streets or living in my building, is pretty portly themselves! So it’s like what? In the water? Fat juice being pumped into the populace via the public utilities and this is the first that I’ve heard about it? Because as I look around and exceptin’ all the dope fiends and winos, ain’t a god damn one of these neighbors of mine anything what you’d call svelte or even fit! So what am I saying here? That I’m just another member of this populace of large super-sized individuals waddling obliviously to oblivion on their way to getting more Fritos and spicy pork-rinds as an in-between-meal snack! Or is it just natural that once you start getting older you tend to gain some weight?
And stuck in the middle of that thought is where I am when Frank and Mark decide to drop by my apartment and I’ve got to stop everything that I’m doing in order to deal with them because they’re drunk as hell, no let me rephrase that, they’re so wasted that they have no idea that they’re even here talking to me. And they’re slurring something about working on my car and yeah, it be great if they did but just not while they’re so drunk that they don’t remember what it is that they’re suppose to be doing. And I gotta like usher them out and close the door in their faces with their liquor scented promises of coming round tomorrow sober fading away as they stumble back down the hall. But ya know? Neither one of them is getting a beer-belly and they drink like fishes!
I can’t begin to tell you the sick thoughts that are going through my mind—like saving up for liposuction and stapling my jaw together so that I gotta eat everything through a straw! And then I know that I’m slipping because I’m looking for that quick fix to a very mundane problem and besides like don’t I already know what the answer is anyway?
Exercise!
Writing while running? Dinning al fresco on the treadmill? Bicycling 25 miles to work? Not in a million years did I ever think that I would have ever gained weight or at least been plagued by the fact that I have! Yet here I am eight years later after having gone to jail in 1997 weighing 125 pounds and wearing 29 inch waist Levis to 32 inch Levis and afraid to get on a scale!
And all I can think about as I write this at my computer is that sitting is making me fat!