I was stunned. I mean, I had literally no idea that I was gay, so to find out so suddenly was a real surprise. That’s a really big thing to just have dumped on you out of the blue.
I learned about my new sexual orientation during a recent run-in with a gang of middle-schoolers who were kind enough to inform me, in loud voices from across a parking lot, that I was, in fact, a major-league, card-carrying homosexual. I’m paraphrasing here.
I couldn’t believe it! I was shocked. Evidently, I had spent the first 28 years of my life wandering aimlessly in a heterosexual fog. To think, all this time I’ve been playing for the wrong team! I obviously owe those boys a huge debt of gratitude for shedding some light on the issue. I mean, who knows how many more years I might have squandered on the opposite sex if those boys hadn’t taken the time to enlighten me to the fact that I was a raging homosexual?
Oh, man, this was big. So much to digest at one time! I mean, you think you know yourself, but all it takes is a group of perceptive 12-year-olds in Marilyn Manson T-shirts, black fingernail polish and eyeliner to shatter all of the lies you’ve been feeding yourself over the years.
How was I going to break it to my wife? “Honey, I’ve got some bad news. Apparently, I’m a flaming homosexual. Sorry.”
“A homosexual? Oh heavens, that is bad news.”
“I know, I know. … Hey, let’s go dancing!”
“Finally!”
What bothered me even more than my surprise sexual orientation was the fact that there was something so extraordinarily gay about me that you could spot it from 100 yards away. What tipped those kids off? Was it my haircut? Was it the way I walked? Was it my Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirt? It was a complete mystery.
Telling my buddies was going to be tough. Not that I’m friends with a bunch of homophobes, but I wasn’t sure how they would react to this kind of news, especially coming from someone who just last week was crowned the King of Beef Jerky. Not that that makes me particularly masculine, but I’m willing to bet that not too many of my fellow homosexuals know their way around a bag of Uncle Farty’s Dried Cow Strips like I do. Anyhow, I knew I had to break the news to my friends gently. Maybe I could work it into the conversation during our next big video game tournament.
“Oh, sick! My guy just got his legs blown off by a bazooka! But not before I blasted Keith’s guy in the face with a shotgun! Ha ha, that was awesome! By the way, I’m really, really gay.”
Or maybe it would be better to drop some subtle hints first so it’s not such a shock, like during our next poker night.
Barry: “I’m in for five bucks.”
Dave: “I’ll see your five and raise it ten!”
Me: “I’m gay.”
Barry: “What?”
Me: “I said, ‘I’ll stay.’”
Barry: “… OK. Well, let’s see your cards. I’ve got three of a kind.
Dave: “I’ve got a pair.”
Me: “Ha ha, I’ve got a royal flush! Plus, I really am totally gay.”
I was nervous, though. Not just about telling my friends, but about being gay in general. Did I have what it takes to make a good gay man? What kinds of changes would I have to make to my life?
Did this mean no more peeking at the JC Penney’s lingerie catalog when my wife was out of the room? What about walking around in my underwear and playing air guitar to Springsteen? And oh my gosh, what about Krispy Kremes? Are those gay?
I knew I had one strike against me, which was that I wasn’t attracted to other men. But I wasn’t about to let that get in my way. I mean, if I’d managed to survive 28 years of heterosexuality without such basic assets as “self-confidence” or “biceps,” then surely I could survive this one little setback to my newfound orientation.
There was still one more thing about the whole situation that bothered me, though, and that was the fact that, you know, I’m not gay. Unless you count my Justin Timberlake CD.
Now, let me clarify that I’ve got nothing against people who do happen to be gay, unless those people also happen to drive Hummers, in which case they should be trampled by elephants. Of course, that’s more of a statement about Hummers than anything else; homosexual or not, if you drive a Hummer, nobody likes you. I really can’t stress that enough.
But Hummers aside, I certainly have no problem with people whose sexual orientations are different than mine. Or the same as mine, depending on whether you’re talking to that group of middle-school kids or not.
Please understand that the last thing I want to do is make those kids look foolish. They were just trying to help. When’s the last time you helped a stranger? No, I don’t blame them one bit for their little miscalculation. There are a lot worse things in the world to be wrong about. Like weapons of mass destruction. For example.
All in all, it was a very confusing phase of life for me, a phase I now affectionately refer to as “that afternoon when I was gay.” But I’m pleased to report that the waters have calmed, and I’m back to my old, jerky-eating, dirty socks-wearing, flatulence-lighting ways. God bless America.
I’m not what you’d call a manly man. I’ve never been very good at traditionally manly things like “fixing a leak” or “changing a tire” or “being able to grow a full beard” or “being shaped like a man.” I’m not one of those guys you turn to in an emergency, unless your emergency is a kidnapping for which the only ransom is a sonnet about boogers.
I can’t drive a stick shift. I can barely tell the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench. I can name more songs from the “Flashdance” soundtrack than professional athletes.
But none of these traits is as difficult to deal with as my complete helplessness when it comes to cars. My name is Jeff, and I am automotively challenged.
As a man, you’re expected to “just understand” cars in the way that virtuoso musicians “just understand” their instruments, or the way that Hummer drivers “just understand” how to cope with the fact that they are terrible people and nobody likes them. It’s not something you learn, it’s something you’re born with. Like how a good writer “just understands” that a preposition is something a sentence should never end with.
For most of my male friends, identifying and fixing a car-related problem is like a reflex, as automatic as blinking when you sneeze or paging through your wife’s Victoria’s Secret catalog whenever she leaves the house. But I was apparently born without the automotive gene, as well as the athletic gene and the gene that tells you not to wear black socks with shorts.
I “just understand” cars about as much as Anna Nicole Smith “just understands” molecular biology. Nine times out of 10, I can figure out where the key goes to start the car, but beyond that, they’re pretty much a complete mystery to me. Like my wife, but without all the shoes.
My helplessness in the face of mechanical problems is the giant oil drill in the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve of my self-esteem. Here I am, 28 years old and about as capable of fixing a car as Fox News is of reporting an unbiased fact. The embarrassment is crippling.
So you can imagine how, when my car sputtered to a stop outside of a party a few weeks ago, I was filled with absolute dread. I like my humiliation in bite-size portions. To be revealed as a helpless half-man in front of my wife is tolerable, if not routine; but to expose an entire house full of strangers to my wimpering girlishness was just too much.
In a moment of optimism, I thought that maybe the problem with my car was something so obvious that I could figure it out myself. Maybe I’d pop open the hood to discover a pack of squirrels hanging out on my engine, smoking cigars and playing poker. I’d put my hands on my hips and shake my head in mock frustration. “Look, guys,” I’d say, “You’re going to have to find another place for your poker game. Now shoo!” And then the squirrels would run off, problem solved.
“It was just a little issue with the gas-valve piston pump,” I’d tell the guys at the party. “I tweaked the alternator clutch hose and oscillated the catalytic viscosity belts. She’s running like new.” They’d pat me on the back, hand me a Coors Light and usher me into the den to watch some football, scratch ourselves, and braid each other’s back hair, or whatever manly men do when they’re left alone.
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t a pack of squirrels at all. Instead, I opened the hood to discover a bubbling globule of corrosion on the ... on the, uh ... thinger. Now, I’m no mechanic, but I was pretty sure I’d found the root of the problem.
The thing about manly men is that they can detect the sound of a hood being popped open from a mile away. They’re like sharks sniffing out blood in the water, except the blood is engine grease and the sharks have hairy forearms and need to pull up their pants in the back.
My chances of survival were becoming slimmer by the minute. I started to panic. My palms were sweating like Jessica Simpson at a spelling bee.
I jumped back into the car, sank down in the seat and began to frantically evaluate my options. One, I could set fire to the car. That way, I would look less like a bumbling idiot and more like a hapless victim.
“We were just pulling up to the party when the car suddenly burst into flames!” I’d explain to everyone as the firetruck pulled away. “I just wish I’d had some time to get under the hood with my tools and tackle this problem like a man! That’s what really burns me up!” Then the other men would pat me on the back, hand me a Coors Light and usher me inside the house, where we’d eat our weight in beef jerky and light our own farts, or whatever manly men do to show solidarity in a time of crisis.
Or two, I could be mature about the whole situation, walk inside the house and admit to the other men that I needed help.
I was just about to strike the match when my wife pointed out that people were already watching us from the front window. Defeated, I hung my head and began the long march up the path to the house of humiliation. Several men were already huddled by the front door, giving me a look of consternation that said, “This nancy probably doesn’t even have a favorite NASCAR driver.” I might as well have been prancing up the path in a pair of My Little Pony underwear. Which I technically was, but they didn’t know that.
I took a deep breath, glanced over at my wife and headed through the door to put the final nail in the coffin of my manliness. Goodbye, old friend. At least we tried.
That was her first mistake. Her second mistake was grossly underestimating the speed at which I could regress to the mindset of an 18-year-old.
There is a state of being that a man enters whenever he’s left alone, as if a veil were lifted from his eyes. I call it the state of Manlightenment, which, once achieved, is like being thrust into a long forgotten dimension, one in which entire meals are made of beef jerky; in which the only required uniform is your favorite pair of underpants; in which “T-shirt,” “hanky” and “napkin” all refer to the same piece of cloth.
As my wife closed the door behind her, I stood in the middle of the living room, paralyzed by the limitless possibilities now open to me. What would I do first? Surf across our hardwood floors in my socks? Rent the Rambo trilogy? Eat an entire chocolate cake with a pair of chopsticks?
I could do anything. I could put roller skates on the cat. I could bite the heads off all the Goldfish crackers and throw the rest back in the box. I could put on my wife’s underwear and prance around to Kylie Minogue songs. Not that I would, but I could. Forget I said that.
The only things standing between me and complete Manlightenment were the dogs. The dogs represented responsibility. They needed to be fed. They needed to go for walks. They needed to wear funny hats! Come here, doggies!
Minutes later, my dogs sat on the living room rug looking up at me, the Jack Russell in an adorable little sombrero, the cocker spaniel in a little pink bow that slid down over her left eye. They looked confused and ashamed, not very festive at all. Clearly what was needed here was a pep talk.
“Alright, listen, dogs. We have two short days to live life without boundaries. Think of it like a weekend in a giant field full of defenseless bunnies and fire hydrants and unlimited access to the cat’s litterbox. Yum! So you can see why this is important to me. Here’s my point: for the next 48 hours, let’s not bother Daddy with our usual complaints. If you get hungry, here are two large pizzas. If you need to go to the bathroom, here are two large pizza boxes. And let’s see ... well, that’s pretty much all you do. OK, do we have an understanding?”
I looked at the dogs. They looked back at me. One passed gas, the other curled into a circle and began licking himself. I knew then that we were all on the same page.
Admittedly, I had a few concerns about being able to achieve Manlightenment after such a long hiatus. What if I was too mature? What if my tastes had changed? Maybe I’d been stuck in a different reality for too long, the reality of man living in a grown up world, working a grown up job, married to a grown up wife, slave to a seemingly endless list of hard-to-remember rules.
“Don’t burp the alphabet at the dinner table.”
“Don’t answer the door in your underpants.”
“Take the trash out.”
“Don’t burp the pledge of allegiance at the dinner table.”
“How many days have you been wearing those underpants?”
“I told you to take the trash out.”
“If you teach our children to burp at the dinner table, I’ll kill you.”
“Is that smell coming from you?”
“You forgot to take the trash out!”
These kind of rules, obviously, are enough to break any man’s spirit. But had they broken mine? Was I too far gone? Or was I still capable of recapturing my manhood? I pondered these questions long and hard as I stood in the kitchen, in my tighty whiteys and a cowboy hat, dunking hot dogs into the peanut butter jar and sipping Red Bull through a Twizzler.
It occurred to me that five years ago this would have been a perfectly normal scene in my life, give or take the tighty whiteys. But the fact is, I am no longer a 23-year-old bachelor, and it’s exactly this kind of behavior that I, by which I mean my wife, will not tolerate.
Over the next few hours, I learned a lot of important things about myself, including the following:
1. While I can fit eight dimes up my right nostril, I can only fit seven up my left;
2. I don’t need my hands to operate the TV remote, or to eat grapes;
3. I don’t look good in bikini briefs;
4. My head is nearly a half-pound over the average weight;
5. You can totally get razor burn on places other than your face;
6. I cannot eat baked beans while doing a headstand.
I also learned that chocolate sauce is delicious over chili and potato chips, but not very good at all on a kielbasa. I know, I was as shocked as you about the kielbasa.
That night I dreamt that my internal organs were going on strike. They were all parading around my living room, waving little picket signs that said things like, “Just say no to chili dogs after midnight!” and “Digest this: we demand better working conditions!”
In the morning, I woke up to what I could only assume was an angry mountain cat trying to claw its way out of my stomach. I spent the next 24 hours sprawled out on the couch, whimpering softly as thousands of tiny little Irishmen slipped on miniature kilts and performed an endless round of Riverdance in my belly. And then, just as I was about to succumb to the delirium of my pain, my wife came walking through the door.
“Oh, what’s wrong, baby?” she cooed. “I’ll make you some soup and tea, and you’ll feel better in no time!”
I looked at the dogs. They looked back at me. One rolled over so my wife could scratch his belly, the other lay her head on my wife’s knee and went to sleep. I knew then that we were all on the same page.
"If someone wants to theoretically call me a punk granddaddy, that's OK," Bad Religion bassist Jay Bentley chuckles. "Punk granddaddy? Fine. That old fart? Fine. Superfreak? Bring it on!"
On the eve of their 25th anniversary, Bad Religion are certainly the pater familias of the punk household. But old and feeble they are not. In fact, the political punkers have just released what might be the most vibrant and brutally poignant batch of songs of their career. The Empire Strikes First, packed with blistering anthems and furious, two-minute diatribes, is a poisonous dart aimed straight at the heart of the American beast. Bentley refers to it unequivocally as the best of Bad Religion's career.
"Obviously the current administration has given us nothing but fodder for our cannon," Bentley says. "And [frontman Greg Graffin] got his PhD last summer and his thesis that he turned in was on religion and its effects on mankind. So, between those two things, we just came out with a plethora of material to choose from lyrically, and it just kind of all fell together."
The Empire Strikes First is explicit in its purpose, even for a band like Bad Religion from which technicolor commentary on power, corruption and war is expected. "These times demand it," Bentley insists. "I want to make no mistake that people know exactly what I'm talking about. We were pretty blatant about saying things like, 'The empire strikes first,' which is fairly self-explanatory. Except I do get the question every now and then, 'Who is the empire?' I get a good giggle out of that.
"To be honest with you, on a record like this, you're kind of sticking your neck out," he adds. "You could be the punk rock Dixie Chicks and have everybody up your ass hating you and not buying your record because you are a terrorist."
But what if people bulldoze copies of The Empire Strikes First into a big pile and set them on fire like they did with Dixie Chicks albums? "Fine. Fucking bulldoze 'em over. I'll make more," he laughs. The album is the band's second since the return of guitarist and songwriter Brett Gurewitz, who took a several-year hiatus to run the band's record label, Epitaph, home to punk mainstays like Rancid and the Offspring. His second coming helped to reestablish Bad Religion as a viable band just when things were starting to slip for the veteran rockers. Lots of people are calling it a comeback; Bentley is not one of them.
"A comeback I associate with a band that disappears for 15 years and then decides to get back together and put out an album and go on tour because they're out of money," he says. "You could say this is a return to form, in the sense of a band growing and shaping itself and always trying to figure out where it is and what it's doing. I would think of it more in that sense than anything else. "Having Brett come back and write again in his capacity is always a bonus for us. I just think that technically this is the best band we've ever been," Bentley gushes. "It's been a long road, and now it just feels like we're back to doing things for fun again." Most punk bands have the shelf-life of a milk carton. That being said, here is Bad Religion, 24 years later, as vital as ever. What's their secret? They're stubborn.
"For us, it probably leans more towards tenacity. We just wouldn't go away," Bentley laughs. "People wanted us to go away and we just wouldn't stop. It's true, right? If you just never go away, people eventually give in. Like, 'Oh, fine!'"
Bad Religion will head out on the road this summer to headline the Warped Tour as part of the 10-year anniversary celebration. The tour makes tangible the impact Bad Religion has had on the punk community; they're widely recognized as the most important band still active in the scene today. And there they'll be, playing papa to a hundred other bands that they've influenced to one degree or another. That's enough to make your head swell up if you're not careful. "I realize how fortunate I am as an individual to be allowed to do what I do, and that people actually pay attention to it. That's the mind-boggling part, is that anyone actually listens. But thinking that you're somehow or another special, responsible, unique, important - those things, I don't see the time for that right now," Bentley attests. "Maybe when I'm like 100, I can say to people that I used to be in Bad Religion, and then ask them if they want fries with that."
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I want to do most of the time.
The term “cell phone,” as you may know, is derived from the Latin word “cellophonicus,” which experts loosely translate as “Hello? Can you hear me? Sorry, I’m driving through a tunnel!”
A few weeks ago I was standing in line at the grocery store when a woman came walking up behind me. She looked me right in the eyes and shouted, “Hi, baby. How are you?”
“Um,” I hesitated, “I’m not sure I know you. Have we met?”
“What are you wearing tonight?” she yelled.
“I’ll probably put on some sweatpants ... Are you sure we know each other?”
“Ha ha ha ha! Potatoes!”
“I’m sorry, but ...”
“Potatoes!”
Then I noticed the little wire running from her ear down to her hip, where a cell phone was clipped to her belt.
Thoroughly embarrassed, I spun around to the cashier. “Can you believe her?” I hissed. “That’s so rude!”
The cashier rolled her eyes, reached up to her head, and popped out her earpiece. “I’m sorry, I was on the phone. What were you saying?”
Cell phones are the new Spandex – they’re OK for your personal use around the house, but there are some ugly details of your life that the rest of us just don’t need to know about. Yet in restaurants, malls, office spaces, and theaters across the country, cell phone users insist on yelling, laughing, and blabbing the details of their morbidly boring private lives at top volume into their phones, completely unaware that they have become the giant pink flamingoes stuck in the front lawn of our society.
I have a few friends who are absolute cell phone junkies. Most of their lives are spent prancing around in desperate search of salvation in the form of cell phone reception. Should their antennae fail them for more than a few seconds, they drop to the floor and start flopping around like bug-eyed fish in the bottom of a boat. To lose reception, perchance to miss a call. To miss a call, perchance to have to wait five whole minutes for crucial information, such as how their friend just won $20 for snorting a gummy worm up his nose.
These are people who, given a choice between losing their cell phones or being eaten by a bear, would choose being eaten by the bear because maybe, just maybe, they’d still have good reception inside the bear.
If a cell phone and a baby fell into a river, they’d save the cell phone, because you can’t send text messages with a baby.
If a cell phone could fall in love, they’d marry it. They might anyway.
I was driving a friend to a concert the other week when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him hunched over his phone, slowly stroking its side like a puppy. The soft, blue glow of the screen reflected in his eyes, which were dilated like saucers. His tongue was lolling out of his mouth, and strands of drool stretched across his teeth like spider webs.
He coughed a few times, and then started whispering to himself. “My precious,” he hissed. “We loves you, my precious.”
“Dude, snap out of it!” I yelled, smacking him across the face.
“Gollum!” he coughed, jumping out the door and running into a cave, where he would spend the next 2,000 years worshipping his precious cell phone in the shadow.
These are the kind of people who make calls not because they have something to say, but because they still have 20 free weekend minutes to use. Rather than restrict their cell phone to emergencies (like getting eaten by a bear), my friends walk around with their itchy little trigger-fingers quivering on the speed dial button at all times, because you never know when you’ll come up with a real zinger.
“Thank you for calling Fly Magazine, this is Jeff.”
“Hey, Jeff – what do you call it when Plain people take classes in higher mathematics?”
“ ... What?”
“Trigonamish! Get it? Trigonomics and Amish? Trigonamish?”
“You’re an idiot.”
I personally have a cell phone plan that allows no more than 60 minutes of calling time a month. I refuse to pay my cell phone company $20 more a month just so my friends can call me every time they pick a booger that looks like Regis Philbin. And, given that bear attacks are not frequent in my part of the city, one would think that 60 minutes would be adequate for me.
Sadly, this is not the case, since my friends persist in calling my cell phone every five minutes, no matter how many times I threaten to list their names (Jeremy) and phone numbers (293-9772) in my columns. So instead, I end up paying my cell phone company $120 more a month for going 10 minutes over my limit.
I’ll be in the kitchen slaving away as usual – baking cookies for orphans – when I’m rudely interrupted by my cell phone ringing from the next room.
I throw down my oven mitts and go running into the living room.
“Hello?”
“I ... aff ... ot ilk ... ose!” says the caller.
“Hold on, I don’t have any reception!” I yell into the phone, running up the stairs to the balcony.
“OK, try again!” I pant, doubled over. “Hello? Are you there?”
“I ju ... ard ... out ... ose!” the caller replies.
“Hold on!” I gasp, galloping out into the doody minefield I call my backyard.
“Are you there? Hello? Hello?” I yell.
“Hi, Jeff,” says one of my friends.
“Hey. I’m in the middle of baking cookies for orphans. What do you need?”
“I was just laughing so hard that I shot milk out my nose!” he says.
“That’s crazy. So, what are you calling about?”
“Um ... I was just calling to tell you how I was just laughing so hard that I shot milk out of my nose.”
“You idiot.”
The bottom line is, these cell phone violators have got to be stopped. And it just so happens that I have the perfect solution, a plan that is sure to vanquish our dependency on cell phones once and for all. It’s so simple! All we have to do is ... oh, hold on, I have a call ...
That’s a great question. The answer is quite simple: paperclips. I contol them. Every last one of them. The power can be intoxicating.
You see, among my job duties each month is a task of immeasurable importance, without which the entire business would surely crumble. Some call it data entry; I prefer to call it Computer Input Science.
The workflow in our office is such that, in the process of Computer Input Science, all of the paperclips end up at my desk. Naturally, I hide them where nobody can find them.
Consequently, my coworkers spend the beginning of each work cycle frantically tearing up the office in a desperate search for a way to bind their papers together. Eventually, one of them bursts into my office, a loose paper in each hand, shaking like a junkie with bloodshot eyes and little beads of perspiration on his upper lip.
“Hey Jeff, is there any chance that I could get a paperclip?” he says, clearing his throat nervously and staring down at his shoes.
“Hey who?” I say menacingly, arching my eyebrow and leering at him from the corner of my eye.
“Oh Captain, My Captain, Lord of the Office and Supreme Ruler of Supplies,” he recites, his voice breaking. Dark stains begin to form in the armpits of his dress shirt.
“That’s better,” I say, reaching under my desk and picking up my Siamese cat, which purs demurely as I begin to stroke it with one gloved hand. “What was it you wanted from the Captain?”
“A paperclip, sir. Please. If you can spare one,” he murmurs, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
I lean back in my leather chair to ponder his request. With slow, deliberate motions I lift the lid of my humidor and withdraw a Cuban cigar. Are they illegal? Yes, but you have to understand, once you achieve this level of power, laws become more like suggestions. Returning my steely gaze to my coworker, I insert the cigar into my cutter and deftly lop off the end. He winces and lets out a small whimper.
“No, I don’t think so,” I say, flicking open my diamond-encrusted Zippo lighter and propping my feet up on my solid oak desk. “I don’t think I have any paperclips to spare.”
“Please! I’m begging you!” blurts my coworker, running a sweaty palm through his hair. “Just a few paperclips to get me through my day. You know I’m good for it!”
“Do I? Do I know that?” I say, rising from my chair. “Last month I lent five paperclips to Eric. Five paperclips! And did he ever pay me back? Did he?”
“No,” he mutters.
“No who?”
“No, Captain, My Captain.”
“That’s right, he didn’t!” I bellow. “And do you know what happens when people don’t pay me back? I get upset. And what happens when I get upset? Certain people have unfortunate accidents. I’d hate for you to have an unfortunate accident!”
To drive home the point, I unlock the bottom drawer of my desk, draw out a dark object and toss it at my coworker’s feet. It takes a moment, but he soon recognizes the carnage as the remnants of Eric’s missing stapler. The base has been savagely dented, the black enamel coating has been sadistically scratched off, the staples hang grotesquely like loose teeth. No mercy has been shown to this stapler. My coworker barely makes it to a trash can before forfeiting his breakfast.
“You monster!” he cries between retches.
I throw my head back and release a sinister laugh. “It’s just business, my boy,” I shrug. “Perhaps you and I can come to an agreement.”
“Name your price,” my coworker hisses, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“I’m feeling generous today,” I say, dropping a pinch of food into the tank of tropical fish that rests between the mini bar and the plasma-screen TV. “The paperclips will only cost you 10 percent of your paycheck, plus you have to wear a bra on the outside of your clothes for the rest of the month.”
“Is that it?” the coworker winces.
“What can I say? I’m in a good mood,” I reply.
“Looks like I’ve got an appointment with my wife’s lingerie drawer,” he sighs.
“That’s my boy,” I say, dropping three paperclips into his outstretched palm.
“It’s funny – I never realized how truly gracious you are with your power,” my coworker exclaims. One by one, the rest of the office staffers gather behind him, nodding their heads in agreement.
“Week after week, you carry this entire company on your back without a single complaint!” shouts another coworker.
“Well, yes, it’s not easy,” I say humbly.
“You do more work than 20 of us added together!” offers another.
“I guess I can’t argue with that,” I say.
“On behalf of all of us,” says another, “I’d like to apologize for failing to recognize your invaluable contributions to our team. You just can’t be topped when it comes to data entry.”
“It’s called Computer Input Science!” I shriek, swatting the paperclips from their hands and chasing them all from the room.
I guess some of us were just meant to suffer in quiet dignity, secure in the knowledge that, whether our coworkers realize it or not, we are the ones who are really in control. We don’t need praise, we don’t need accolades. We just need the paperclips.
A few weeks ago, I decided that I was tired of looking like I was carrying around Danny DeVito under my shirt. I was going to lose some weight, and I was going to do it before one more person accused me of shoplifting a cantaloupe.
The question was, How?
I’ve already failed miserably on the annoyingly popular Atkins diet. I did manage to lose a total of eight pounds on the diet, but somehow ended up looking even fatter than when I started. While the scale said yes, my jeans with the 30-inch waist said, “Back off, tubby!” Wait, no, that was my wife. Anyway, I concluded that all eight pounds must have come from my self-esteem. Three months of being silently judged by food service employees will do that to you.
“No bun on your burger?” the confused McDonald’s employees would gasp.
“That’s right,” I’d say.
“No bun at all?”
“Nope.”
“Just the burger, without the bun?”
“Yep ...”
“Supersize the fries and milkshake?”
“Of course.”
“Apple pie?”
“Two, please.”
Of course, as soon as I quit the diet, every restaurant on the planet added Atkins-approved items to its menu. That’s like spending three months in jail, only to discover upon your release that it’s since become completely legal to shave your neighbor’s cat. For example.
It’s possible that the fault is mine that the diet didn’t work. I’ve never been very good at things like “avoiding sweets” or “easing up on the carbs” or “not eating cake for breakfast.” I’m just a man, after all. A man with child-bearing hips.
Dieting just wasn’t doing the trick. I knew that in order to lose weight I would have to do something I’d been meaning to do my entire life. Iron my shirt? No, that’s not it. Stop my hairline from receding? No, but thanks for noticing.
I had to exercise. This wasn’t going to be pretty.
Late at night, after my wife was sound asleep, I raided her closet. Headband? Check. Sweatpants? Check. Dignity? Nowhere to be seen. I was ready to go!
Down the stairs I crept like a spandex bandit and quietly popped my wife’s yoga tape into our VCR. On the screen appeared a perky, unitard-clad woman smiling from cheek to cheek as she slowly started folding herself in half and stuffing herself into her own purse.
“Namaste!” she exclaimed, pretending to just then notice there was a camera in the room. “Welcome to the new you!”
The new me! Yes, today was a new beginning! The world was going to see a brand new Jeff, a slim Jeff, a Jeff who could no longer use his own belly as a TV tray. I plopped myself down on my wife’s yoga mat and waited for the magic to happen.
“OK, we’ll start with some simple warm-up exercises,” the instructor said. “With your legs stretched out before you, bend over and touch your toes.”
So far, so good. I mean, I could only reach my knees, but I could already feel what professionals call “the burn.” I figured I had probably already lost a pound or two. Exercising is fun!
“Now,” said the instructor, “lift your body off the mat with your tongue and do 10 push-ups. Lower yourself back down, do a split, and rotate your head 360 degrees to the left, like this. Good. Now clap your hands in salutation to the sun and remove any excess wax from your ears with your pinky toes.”
That’s when things started going downhill. As it turns out, not only do I have the upper-body strength of a Twix bar, but my sense of balance falls somewhere between that of a drunk toddler and a one-legged cat on a treadmill.
Approximately 30 painful minutes of yoga later, I lay paralyzed on the floor, panting and drooling like a teenage boy at the Super Bowl halftime show. Fortunately, my dogs were there in my time of need to provide a number of helpful services, like trying to perch on my forehead and bury their noses in my most private of places.
The pain I felt where my “abs” were supposed to be was comparable only to, say, shoving a jalapeño pepper up your nose. But I wasn’t discouraged. I could hardly wait to drag myself to a mirror and inspect my new, chiseled physique. My wife would hardly recognize me in the morning. “Don’t be scared, honey,” I’d have to say, “It’s me, your husband.”
“Jeff?” she’d gasp in wide-eyed wonder. “But you look so ... so ...”
“I know,” I’d say with an alluring smile, flexing my enormous quadriceps and then reaching out to steady my swooning bride.
Once I was able to feel my legs again, I brushed the various cats and dogs off of my lap and rushed to the bathroom mirror to admire the fruits of my labor. Imagine my disappointment when all I saw staring back at me was my old body, only redder and puffier after being subjected it to a half-hour of positions that I’m pretty sure are outlawed in several states.
Clearly, exercise was not for me. Like Anna Nicole Smith and literacy, some pairings just aren’t meant to be. For 30 long minutes, I gave my all to exercise, and exercise gave nothing in return. I knew I could never be happy in a one-sided relationship like that.
But at least the night wasn’t going to be a total bust. If I stayed awake for just a few more hours, I could be first in line for fresh Krispy Kremes!
