I am a month away from having abs, a strong hard abdominal muscle cascading down my stomach in little sections of six. All that is standing in my way is five pounds of fat. I have been standing in front of my mirror for two and a half hours, turning and turning, sixty degrees, forty-two degrees, seventy degrees, trying to find that oh so sculpture perfect pose that will best show off my shadow of abs to be. Elsewhere beyond my mirror, countries are exploding, babies are starving, and guilty sex predators are being set free with a slap on the wrist. But here in front of the mirror, five pounds makes all of that seems like a skinned knee, and here we are.
These five pounds are stubborn too, like a over weight teen crowding over the last serving of macaroni and cheese in the buffet line. I have been on three eight- week diet plans all at once, and finished them all in less then a month. The low carbs diet, the beach diet, the protein diet, those five pounds do nothing but laugh. Before all this, I wouldn’t even look in the mirror.
I am thirty-six, and thirty pounds overweight. I had belly fat, flank fat, and the most attractive of all back fat. At seventeen, I had the body of a Roman god, my stomach was thin and sleek, my arms were the size of melons, and my back had the small curve toward my buttocks. I was hot, and now nineteen years later, I look like my father. I turn thirty- eight degrees and I can see the diming shadow of my abs even better. I sometimes skip two meals to get my body like this. I would only eat dinner sometimes if I felt like it which usually consisted of; a measured four ounce slim piece of salmon with no seasoning or skin, a cup of baby roman lettuce salad with no dressing but a sprit of extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, and pepper, two cups of fresh broccoli with the heads cut off, and to wash it all down, eight cups of highly purified water. Everything finds its way down my slimming stomach, even if I have to starve myself to eat it.
I have been skipping breakfast and lunch for five weeks now, I would wake up in the middle of the night and perform sit ups in my bed because I was afraid that I had too much olive oil on my salad.
“Add one more pound to my stomach please.”
Pretty soon, my eye- sight began to fade, my hair started its wonderful process of falling out, and fatigue struck me all the time. But it will all be worth it when I have perfect sexy abs. I haven’t had a beer in over three months, when the Phillies beat the Rays in the World Series, I asked the bartender for a glass of water with a twist of lemon. I have become obsessed with my stomach. It is beautifully saved down to my thighs; I rub cocoa butter all over my body and strap a weight belt to myself when I begin my morning workout. You would think five pounds would be the easiest to lose, but it was the twenty- five pounds before it that were the easiest to trim. I hired a personal trainer to help me lose the extra weight, he taught me how to throw up if I was afraid that I ate too much,
“ Just stick your index finger down your throat until you feel a small ball, and wiggle your fingers.”
Fight back the gagging,
Fight through the uncomfortable feeling.
What ever you do, just get it out.
Sometimes my wife would catch me, curled over our toilet after dinner. I must have looked like a volcano. I would take my wife out to a fancy Italian restaurant, where nothing is under twenty dollars, not even the bread, and each table has their personal bottle of wine. I would break the bank at a place like that. Chicken- shrimp alfrado with a white wine sauce and baby scallops.
Roasted chicken breast laying on a bed oriental rice laced with a lemon-pepper dressing; all going down my throat and into my stomach, where it will stay if I don’t get it out soon.
“Finger down my throat and wiggle.”
I turn two degrees more and my shadow disappears, facial bones break the surface, my v-cut is deep, I ordered new pairs of jeans online; one-hundred- and sixty dollars each, by the time they arrive, my waist line would have dropped two sizes. I inspect my stomach constantly, anything that can reflect my image, I stop and run my hands down my shirt to feels the soon to be muscle. I inhale to see the convex lines, I exhale and see the soft mass that still remains. I channel my kinetic energy and will myself abs quicker, I am now at the gym five days a week instead of three. I schedule a yoga class everyday now. I haven’t had sex with my wife in ages, “ “Honey I simply don’t bun enough calories anymore.”
My friends gasped when they see me and say, “You look fabulous!” followed by a concerned, “ Is everything okay?” I notice a fine line between beauty and sickness- and how beauty comes first.
I am not a model, I do not go to the beach, I have two kids, and I am happily married. I have no reason to have abs, but if we do the math, we are owed abs, every middle aged male. We deserve to be called sexy by the twenty- three year old attractive secretary, we deserve other guys to look at us and say,
“My girlfriend would never leave me if I look like that guy with the fantastic looking abs.”
We deserve the right to look like a GI Joe, or an action figure. I turn back two degrees and examine the shadow of my abs again.
I will choose to be unhappy for a spotlight, I will add one more dumbbell to the bar, perform two hundred and fifty more sit ups, and walk to work wearing a bulletproof vest. I am just five pounds there. I turn and turn and turn, and still I am five pounds there. I imply all the geometric formulas in front of my mirror to get that mathematical perfect future glimpse of my abs, but I realize that those five pounds are a formula I am not able to solve. I am losing years off my life for just five pounds. Because in the pursuit of beauty, there is no finish line, or that perfect Roman god body, I will never look like Brad Pitt, or Tyson Beckford. No one can become perfect, there will always be something to lose, or gain. We are running a fools marathon, but I don’t care, I will run it anyway. I turn half a degree and perform magic. It looks like those five pounds transformed into muscle like the twenty-five before it.
