All Behind Me Now

Life is too short for a spunky li'l ole gal like me to stay all brokenhearted. But what can I say? I've had pretty rough go with the "mushy stuff." Couldn't say why--it looks like a lot of fun in the movies and on TV, but every time I try hopping a ride on the "Love Train" it speeds straight off the rails and over the cliff. Oooooooouuch! You don't know the half of it. Indulge me, if you will, for a brief historical recap of my encounters with love since moving to Utah.

Perhaps you remember Jack. Now there was a boy in love! So smitten was Jack that he insisted that I convert to his religion in order that we might spend all of eternity in each others arms. What a fairy tale it was, and how surprising, really, when a month prior to our blessed journey into the realm of celestial bliss, he started screening my calls.

Next came Jerry--the cure for the common cold shoulder. Jerry was the life of the party--a card-carrying jack-Mormon, shallow as a butter knife and cute as a button. Just what the doctor ordered. I don't know if I was ever really in love with him, but at the time, I was crazy about the fact that he wouldn't think twice about trading all the treasures of heaven for a weekend in Mesquite.

If nothing else, Jerry was a great big ice-pack for my beaten heart. He was never in love with me, but he gave me a reason to get out of bed and put on make-up and so forth. I suspect that in the end I was nothing more than a novelty-act to Jerry. I represented a whole new frontier and it fascinated him to no end. Unlike so many who succumbed before me, I refused to hop right in the sack with him, and for my efforts I avoided having my passion captured for posterity by his bedside camcorder. The fact that there are no college boys drinking beer while they watch me nakedly forsake my virtue is, so far, the only reward love has seen fit to bestow.

Now that several months have passed and I can look back upon my disastrous love-life from an objective distance, I've pretty much got it explained away. If you recall Jack was a full-blooded Paiute Indian, and I blame his "disappearing act" on the wanderlust bred into his genes. Conquer and move on. The way of his people--roll up the teepee and toodle-oo. I figure Jerry, on the other hand, is simply a victim of his gender--destined, like so many men before him, to become a dickhead.

I must say that the first cut was the deepest. After the "convert and desert-job" that Jack pulled I was all but bedridden for about a month. I was in bad shape alright, Spiritually shit-hammered, and lugging around a heart that felt about like a shot-put. Just to make it to the toilet and back I had wear a sports bra and hold my boobs together with both hands. The recovery process was painfully slow. I remember very little other than blankly trudging through the house, like a shell-shocked infantryman at Waterloo. At some point I began making frequent sorties back-and-forth from my room to the fridge, and was thus able to begin systematically eating my heart out. As a way to save time and money, I began to make my own Cherry Garcia. Using king-size tubs of Vanilla ice cream and box after box of cheap cherry cordials, I mixed and munched my way into sweet oblivion. Not to mention about 15 not-so-flattering pounds.

I've gotta hand it to Jerry--he turned out to be as twisted and crummy as a bread stick--but he did rescue me from my pitiful tailspin into obesity. If you're not up on the story, you see I'd foolishly assumed that Jerry and I were going steady. That was until I accidentally stumbled upon a funny little home video that featured Jerry in a decidedly reproductive activity with a girl whom I'm pretty sure was not me. Like I always say--you can't trust anybody not to screw.

Quite ironically I've since struck up a nifty little friendship with the girl caught on tape with her hand in Jerry's cookie jar. Which is really quite remarkable when you consider that, once upon a time, I called her a "spandex-wearing sperm-bank" to her face. To my surprise she found the remark amusing and was more interested in disabusing me of my false opinion about her fashion sense, "it's not spandex, it's cotton lycra--and you must be the Virgin Maddy?"

My new friend goes by the name Ginny, short for Virginia, but I call her Jizzy. (There was a doctor who diagnosed me with Turrets Syndrome when I was ten, but the prevailing opinion is that my condition is less a syndrome and more a conscious effort to spout out the first mean-spirited thing that pops into my head). I really couldn't say. In Either case, to me, Virginia is "still Jizzy from the block," and I torment her mercilessly with colorful verses that rhyme at the end with "ock." She's seems to have accepted this lyrical abuse as poetic justice. And for her part she occasionally makes a little sport at the expense of my fat ass. In this fashion a friendship has found a way.

Jizzy is a fitness freak and she's managed to get me pretty fired up about going to the gym and dieting and so forth. I've never been one to suffer from low self-esteem. I'll admit I think I'm fairly pretty, and even though I've always carried a little extra insulation, I've always gotten by with the jokes. I do suspect that by most standards of measure, I might be a tad overweight. (though I prefer "tubster" or "lardass") Strangely though, I really don't think of myself as being fat. I don't picture myself fat . . .at all. The picture I have of myself is "not too shabby" actually. And, even though deep down in my heart of hearts, I know I'm living in a world of dreams--for now I'm content behind the wheel of this Fantasy Boat as it lazily floats down Denial river. Why not?

The point being that "the gym" was a pretty tough sell for Jizzy. I've always felt like I carried my weight fairly gracefully, but, to be honest, next to Jizzy I'm nothing but a great, wobbling pumpkin of creature. She's so tight that if you give her a high-five--it actually produces an audible musical tone. Sometimes a chord.

Still the only reason I'm taking all this gym business seriously is due to one regrettable side-effect of my Cherry Garcia therapy. I'm ashamed to admit that all those divine calories coupled with my mopey lifestyle left me with a nasty layer of "back fat." Having backfat is just sad. It's like being surrounded by the enemy. It feels like you're wearing one of those water-skiing life-vests--and drowning anyway. The most pathetic part is when you start getting the creeps. I seriously get all panicked like I'm being followed--perhaps a stalker or rapist? Believe me, it comes as hard news when you realize that you're being frightened by your own flab.

So I'm going hardcore--6 days a week in the gym and Jizzy's got me on the low carb diet. Let me just first say that life without carbohydrates is scarcely worth the trouble. There's literally nothing to look forward to. The low-carb diet is a gaping, sucking black void, in which you're helpless but to tumble into your aching belly straight down to the bottomless pit. Okay--it's not that bad. But I'm convinced that the meaning of life can be found somewhere along the "Glycemic Index." Without a spoonful of sugar--it's all grim, desperate and ugly.

If you've never given the no-carb life a try you have no idea how ridiculous it is. I don't know how anyone can stick with it. Everything is gone. Everything. Fast Food? Forget about it--carb city. The only fast-food option that doesn't violate your sacred covenant is to suck the beans out of a burrito. (Note: this is a compromising act that is best carried out far from the prying eyes of those who would judge.)

The truly insane thing about Jizzy is that she's also a vegan. For a vegan, the no-carbohydrate diet is just inhumane. She lives almost entirely on Soy Beans and their gooey by-products, yet she remains faithful as monk. For example, to me a French fry is a glistening, aromatic symbol of everything that is right and good in the world. Yet Jizz looks upon a French fry like it was a used syringe washed up on the beach. What a gal. She's repulsed by french fries, she has zero body-fat, she can scarcely cast a shadow, and I love all ninety three pounds of her. She's my hero.