I’ve hardly
had the energy lately, of the physical variety, to carry myself across town to
the library and back. I’ve gained a pile of weight this year, even though I
stopped smoking for 6 months and became a vegetarian. I knew I had to start exercising
but I never quite got round to it. A few stretches is all I did. Then I could
touch my toes, now I doubt it. After maintaining a level of decency over recent
years regarding my physique, I’ve now come to terms with the stark reality that
I’m out of shape. It’s one thing looking out of shape, but feeling out of shape is even worse.
There was one
time when my physique was important. At times I lived and slept in the gym. My
motto was Eat like a Dickhead, Train like a Wolf. I’m 6’3, so had a tall
angular frame to fill out. I enjoyed the challenge of being a hard-gainer. I
remember one bus journey to the gym when I sat on the backseat with my hood up
superbly focused on the task at hand. It was full of squabbling schoolkids who
normally made me nervous. I couldn’t see them this time. I was blocking the
world out. I was poor, cooking all my meals myself, eating out of Tupperware,
not quite sleeping on the floor, yet utterly single-minded and tenacious to get
the job done. I adored bodybuilding videos, new and old alike, they transported
me around in time. I even went to a show one time, hooked up with a couple of
girls, met Mr. Olympia, and had some sh*ts n giggles.
Its okay, I
tell myself, look at my age for crying out aloud, I’m over the hill, I’m all
washed through, I’m a has-been, but I’m in daddy mode big time. Is my main goal
to be a full-time athlete? It was, you know, before the virus hit us. I was
training twice a day, in the gym at 6am. Cardio, swimming, iron, you name it. No
Zumba, no yoga, no intensity classes…but still a major portion of the day
killed off. I used to love running ‘downhill’ on the treadmill, at a fairly
fast rate I kid you not, to the drony rhythms of German trance music.
Instead of
wide-awake nightmares and visual disturbances, I’d have genuinely pleasant
scenarios in my head. I’d be with my ex-girlfriend sometimes, she’d be
jogtrotting leisurely on the adjacent machine. No smokes or beers, or drugs or
porn, just pizza and juice, or percolated coffee, back at her place, then off to the kingsize bed, to read a Harlan book on laundered sheets. Happier times, but
everything’s different now.
I might have
said this before but we would leave each other little sublime notes around the
house. P.S. Always Love xx, and
sentiments like that. The trick was to have it found as long as possible after
you left it somewhere. If she found my message in five minutes because I left
it in the breadbin then that was a dramatic fail. Somewhere like under the
toaster was better. She got the best one ever. She wrote a message on the label
in my bobble hat. It took me 6 years to find it! I have great faith in the one
still behind her washing machine though!
We split up
because of the Mental Health Act. It spliced us apart when I first recognised
early bird symptoms. I got hospitalised, she lost her house, she and her son
moved into my flat, I was organising food vouchers from the ward for her, it
was all really tough. When I got out we were all rather squashed up like
sardines with the bed in the living room so I booted them out so I could self-indulge
in cheap counterfeit pornographic material on my billy goat. Laughable, isn’t it, making
half a family homeless, just so I could return to my stimulating vomit, but
that was its pull over me.
I recall
shaving my genital hair before sticking the slap n tickle on. Someone in the
pub told me that it aids sexual pleasure. Another said it adds an inch to the
length. I heard a perplexed voice from outside the window at the time, “Andrew,
what the dickens are you doing?” It’s awkward and far from easy, no matter what
implements you are using, and I had a waterproof multigroomer trimmer kit.
Joke. I had a Bic razor. Dead embarrassing. It’s the worse thing you can do
when you feel like you are being watched.
I once nearly self-indulged myself on a railway line. I was running away from home but still
really horny with images swirling around in my head. Stranger Things, eh?
I might buy a
weight lifting magazine to keep me in the game. To ‘stay in the game’ of
something, you don’t actually have to participate in the activity of it, you
just have to sniff around it long enough to fall in passion with the waft of its
nostalgia. This includes a maintenance of general interest around the sport or
hobby, which may come from simply looking at a website about it from time to
time, watching a documentary about it, or reading a piece of literature about
it. Your previous devotion may well up in a spate of recent newly-founded
rekindled appreciation. When you’ve forgotten all about something, and you go
back and revisit it, the results are often utmost pleasing.
Just been
regularly amused with the specific knowledge about a craft or habit you were
once involved in keeps your nose in the current affairs around the pastime.
Knowing a little something about something is a foothold of conversation, banter,
debate, and smack-talking, rather than knowing nothing at all.
I call this
staying in the game. Or keeping your nose in. Or whatever. I might have to
implement this philosophy with my lacking exercise regime. I used to write
novels, for example. Now I fear I am unable, so I do this. Little tiny blogs
each week. It means that I haven’t totally sacrificed the art of autofiction. You
don’t have to run 10k, you can hobble around the block. It’s a nice technique
to cultivate enthusiasm in something bigger than what you do.
Try and get
re-involved in something you’ve been away from for a while. Times are always
moving on but you might like it. Guru advice there.
