Working Out Isn't Working Out

I blame my aunt Shawna. She has made me so paranoid about my health by posting a PSA on her Facebook that might as well had said, “Jacob Broderick, you are going to die from malignant melanoma. Sucks that you don’t have health insurance, doesn’t it?” Why do I feel so paranoid about getting malignant melanoma? Well, the PSA listed several things that increase your chances of developing the cancer: have more than fifty moles? Cancer! Been severely sunburned, ever? Cancer! Have you ever gone outside? Cancer!

I have fifty moles on my left leg, let alone my whole body; I usually lose count at about one hundred and forty. And living in California, and being pale, I get burned every time I step out into the sun. So if I calculate it out correctly, my chances of developing skin cancer are at about two hundred and forty percent.  So the only thing that will really battle my anxiety is working out. That or eating, but the latter I have done the past three months and have started to work my way back to being the fat sibling.

So I have started to regularly attend the gym to get my Zumba on three times a week. The problem is, there are so many people that attend the classes that they have to give out tickets to let you in. If you arrive thirty minutes early for the class, you are assured to have a ticket number higher than 60, which banishes you to the very far back of the classroom, or behind one of the gigantic mirrored pillars in the middle of the room. I can’t be pushed to the back of the class, because then how would people admire my dancing? And so I come to class nearly an hour early, which gets me somewhere between ticket 30 and 40.

The most embarrassing part is asking for a Zumba ticket, because the front attendants at the gym look at me like I am confused or something. Is he serious about a Zumba ticket? Maybe if I laugh, he’ll laugh and go away… they laugh, I repeat myself, and they give me a resounding, “Yeah! Work it out, big guy!”

So with my free hour of gym time I usually wander around the cardio room and try to look like I am working out. At first, I started using the elliptical. The problem here is that the elliptical doesn’t allow me to have a good stride with my run, and it makes me look like I am trotting along, gaily through the air. I feel as if I should hold a basket of posies while I am on the elliptical, like that would make me seem more in place.

After I swore off that machine, I decided to start using the stair climber, but yet again, my size has worked against me. This time, it would be my big clodhoppers that I call my feet; they don’t fit on the steps. Three quarters or a half a foot, I could do, but I am essentially using my toes to stay aloft on the machine, which brings me back, looking like a pansy, skipping up an infinite flight of stairs. And from this, I generate an infinite amount of stares that make me feel a little bit too self-conscious.  

I’ve found that my best option comes in the form of the rowing machine. Hardly anyone notices them because they are pushed to the very back of the gym, the outcasts of the machines. So I like to spend a little bit of time, rowing in place while listening to an audio book. But after constant rowing for ten minutes, my muscles start to scream, and I end up just pushing myself forward an back on the seat, accomplishing little to know physical activity.

The only other machine that I really use would be the stationary bike, which is conveniently placed right in front of the televisions. I usually end up in front of the ESPN television, which makes me look and feel more masculine, not that I am actually paying attention the game, but nobody has to know that.

From my biking perch, I start to make judgements about the people around me, mostly the people working with weights. Truly, I wish that I could lift weights, but because I am embarrassingly weak, I would never use a weight machine in front of another human being. Somehow, benching ten pounds is worse than not being able to bench at all. Because that is what gyms are about: extremes. Either you are so incredibly muscled that you can lift a car with ease, or you are a weak little fatty who works out, but will never really accomplish anything.

Even if I could lift more than ten pounds, I don’t really know how to use any of the machines. Sure, I could hop on and start pushing and pulling things until they move, but I am certain that every gym goer there would look at me and pass judgements, just like how I do to the people I watch.

I find myself staring over at the free weights, and start to wonder, I wonder if there is a sure fire way to look at somebody an know they are on steroids? I know that if I had to examine them naked, I could probably figure out who was a steroid user and who was just magnificently buff, but from a distance, I can only assume that most are juicers. The ones that I really target are the men with gigantic chests but tiny little legs. Because they look freakish and disproportionate, they must be using steroids.

I would probably use steroids if I actually had enough drive to actually lift weights. Mostly because I have never really had a great body. I mean, every once and a while, I get really skinny and you can see some ribs, but that usually only happens after I have the flu and haven’t kept any fluids down for a week. I would love to have some sort of definition in my shape, a bicep here, an oblique there, but by myself, I know I will never achieve that kind of figure.

I consider myself somewhat lucky. While being fat has left me with a hooded belly button and stretch marks, I was also blessed with skin that stretched where my manboobs once resided, which now give the illusion that I have the inkling of pecs. I know they aren’t real, but women hardly have real breasts anymore, why can’t I have pecs made from my own sagging skin? It sounds disgusting in theory, but in real life, you’d never really know-- unless, that is, somebody touches them or asks me to lift something heavy.

Instead of steroids, I could cut out all the hard work and heavy lifting, and go in for plastic surgery. My list of operations I would like to get is staggering: butt implants, botox injections, ear pinning, belly button augmentation, liposculpture, tummy tuck, pec implants, veneers, etc. And that is why I can’t ever go in for surgery; I would never come out. Which is frightening to think that if I get just one surgery, I could become addicted and pop out looking like Dolly Parton.

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I’m going to try to start blogging more regularly again. Not that it is my New Year’s resolution or anything, because I don’t make goals, or even have goals for that matter. I am just glad when I haven’t died throughout the day or that I haven’t had to deal with too many used condoms at work. Besides that, I am goalless, which isn’t much of a surprise.

It’s not that I am anti-goal, it’s just that I have learned that when I do have a goal, the universe decides that it will do everything in its power to smite my pathetic goal to the ground: Cooking a goose? Smoted. Having health insurance? Smoted. Finding correctly fitting pants? Smoted, and then laughed at for having highwaters (I know that smoted isn’t the proper conjugation, but I prefer smoted to smote, get off my back).

So instead, I take a more passive role, and let the universe decide where I will end up in life. Which at the moment, would be living alone in a cockroach infested apartment, while I work as a permanent temp, without cable or many friends, and I can be content with that, as long as the universe decides to move me along sometime soon.

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On the topic of my apartment, the bathroom has begun weeping nicotine from its walls. I used to think that I wasn’t using the ventilation long enough, after my morning shower, but my mother told me that yellow seepage is a sign that the past tenant was a smoker. To me, it just looks like my bathroom has syphilis. I was rather fine with this until the bathroom wept nicotine into my eyeball whilst sitting atop the toilet, which temporarily blinded me and made it so difficult to finish my business. There was a lot of groaning, and stomping, and I prayed that the next door neighbor wouldn’t come by to see if I was ok.

Last time she came by, I was cursing the god of bread and she wanted to make sure I was ok. I looked like an idiot for having a tantrum over mold, and then I looked like a bigger idiot when I called her, “Pepper,” because that is what I thought her husband called her. Now that I think of it, many husbands call their wives, “sweet cheeks,” but that doesn’t give me the right to address them as such.

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I have gotten back into the swing of Zumba after being fired from my gym and packing on twelve pounds. To my Asian coworkers, they are amazed that twelve pounds doesn’t show too much on me, but if I was five foot, like them, I am sure I would have to start breaking out my fat clothes again. And while I did like teaching Zumba for three months, the gym I taught at was skuzzy, and I say that in the nicest way possible. The gym owner was crude, looked like he had taken too many steroids at multiple times in his life, and made fun of my class on a regular basis. He wonders why more people didn’t show up.  I wouldn’t show up either if a pervy, juice head made fun of the class while watching from the door. And then I remember I did show up. For three months. Three times a week.

Whatever, I’m not bitter. I hope that that gym flourishes. I hope nothing but the best for the owner whose head is four sizes too small for his body. I hope nothing but the best for the whore of a receptionist, who thinks that undressing in the lobby will make patrons want to lose more weight. I hope nothing but the best for their patrons, who still aren’t losing weight thanks to the tutelage of the “nutritional specialist” who is a good forty pounds overweight.

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I’ve never really had a big craving for meat ever. This could be because my mother was a vegetarian for years, and I am poor and don’t buy meat because it is expensive. I take that back. I’m just cheap. I live off of off brand granola bars, cereal, and sandwiches, which is living rich in comparison to what I ate when I lived in Utah: canned refried beans, rice, and more refried beans. But as of late, I have craved the taste of flesh, and cannot stop thinking about it. This could be from my failed attempt to cook a goose, where I looked for months and then found out that I would have to shell out between ninety and one hundred and thirty dollars just for the bird. I am depressed and desperate enough for a forty dollar bird, sure, but I don’t think that I am anywhere near wallowing in a fatty depression, where I can spend that much money without really caring about the consequences.

This has made it so that I have started buying the cheapest meat I can buy, which is usually one hour from expiring, and the weirdest cut of meat that one could imagine. The most recent of my cooking endeavors happened after working out and I realized that if I did not have flesh of the beast, I would crumple up and die. So going to the store, the cheapest thing I could find was a package with two, “half breasts of chicken with rib and skin.” Along with the skin, was a few feathers, but it was kosher, and I felt like obeying the Law of Moses.

 Because I don’t really have a plethora of cooking tools, nor ingredients, I placed the meat atop a roasting rack formed of eyeballed potatoes, slathered it in as much oil and kosher salt as I could, and then threw on some cayenne pepper with an unenthusiastic, “bam.” With the amount of salt I added, it was as if I was about to pickle the chicken, which reminds me of pickled pig’s feet, which reminds me of preserved parasites in formaldehyde.  I threw the chicken in the oven and then wedged myself into my sardine can tub.

Cooking has a weird effect on feathers. They stand straight up and brown up a little bit so you really can’t ignore them. It actually looked like the chicken decided to shave right before it was slaughtered, and it had developed five o’ clock shadow by the time it made it out of the oven. I looked at the feathers, and then considered my options. I could either pull off the skin and not eat it, or I could stop caring and embrace the inner Native American of my soul. Pass the peace pipe and call me Squanto.