A CASE OF THE BICEP BLUES?

I just finished reading an enjoyable memoir, Lust & Wonder, by acclaimed author Augusten Burroughs (perhaps best known for Running with Scissors). It’s well worth reading, with great humor and insight into gay relationships. The middle section, in particular, represents an author who is really clicking.

Strangely, two sentences on page 82 nearly made me throw the book against a wall and then shut if for good. Burroughs has a crush on a man and gets up the nerve to ask the guy if he’s seeing anybody. Burroughs writes:

I was wearing a tight T-shirt and jeans. I’d been to the gym

that morning, so my arms were large.

I still want to scream as I type that. I’m guessing Burroughs was about thirty-five at the time and yet that chunk of writing comes off as being the thinking of an emotionally stunted eighteen year old.

Initially, I check myself. Is this jealously? God knows, I’ve never had large arms. A morning gym workout has never made a lick of difference. Same with ten mornings in a row. (Yes, I’ve tried.) And the only thing tight shirts show off is a belly overhang. I could never write that passage, unless it appeared in a work-in-progress novel about, yes, an emotionally stunted eighteen year old.

There is the expression, If you’ve got it, flaunt it, but that always makes me think of women with boob jobs wearing low-cut dresses and open-buttoned blouses. My eyes get pulled in by some gravitational force and I all-too-obviously look away, fretting that I’ve been caught luridly ogling. I’ve got my defense at the ready—“I’m gay!”—but I’ve never had to go there. (Yep. They probably know. I worry way too much.)

I’ve reread the passage several times, and I don’t think Burroughs means to be funny or sad here. It’s just stated as fact. I looked muscular in my tight shirt. I wonder if his editor challenged Burroughs—not on the size of his arms, but on wisdom of including this throwaway comment. It comes off as incredibly shallow. Here, I suppose I’m grateful that I’ve lived a boring life because I could never be a memoirist. I’m fine with being self-deprecating, but I can’t do shallow. I suppose I have my fair share of shallow thoughts but I can’t recall any. Thankfully, they vaporize with due speed. As they should.

I was wearing a tight T-shirt and jeans. I’d been to the gym

that morning, so my arms were large.

There it is again. I can’t shake it. I realize I’ve been bothered by this thinking for so long. I see similar thought bubbles over guys’ heads every single time I go to the gym. If anything, it’s more rampant than ever. They don’t just peek in the mirror anymore. Now it’s full stare and linger as they check themselves out. How much bigger did my arms get after that set? What about my quads?

Even if I stay away from the gym, it’s all over Twitter. Guys post their daily shirtless shots from the gym locker room and their egos are reinforced by hundreds of “Likes”. And then there’s the weightlifting videos. Last week, a buff guy approached a schmo (like me) to get him to record his push-up stuntwork on his phone. It was an intense thirty-second routine but I wondered why it really needed to be preserved in video form. Maybe he’d post it to a dating site. Maybe he’d save it until he was eighty, something to show the grandkids. Or maybe he’d just watch it himself. Over and over. As I worked out this weekend, a guy had his girlfriend videoing him and I was inconveniently in the background. I had to glare pointedly so she’d change the angle, the best shot compromised due to “in the way” guy.

I try to see the big-arm point of view. Maybe greater confidence comes with bulging biceps. It’s true that last summer I had a date with a big-bicepped guy and he showed up in a flaunt-worthy tank top. It’s also true that I was terribly distracted, the whole conversation muddled as I kept telling myself to stay at eye level.

Perhaps I even strive to do the same thing when I show up in a green shirt, hoping it helps to highlight the green in my eyes. No muscles to speak of but, hey, I’ve got eyes.

Hell, maybe despite all the great prose in Burroughs’ Lust & Wonder, the one line I wish I could write is, “I’d been to the gym that morning, so my arms were large.” God, I hope not. If I ever get to go to an Augusten Burroughs author talk and/or book signing, I sure hope I don’t immediately look to see whether he just might have gone to the gym that morning. But then he put it out there, didn’t he?

SELFIE-STEEM

Our ‘90s selves would be appalled by our post-millennial selves.

Or at least mine would.

Seriously? You take pictures of yourself and post then on the Internet? Why the hell would you do that? And what do you mean everyone’s doing it? Don’t f*^k with me. What has gotten into you?

‘90s me is rightly shocked and horrified. I used to be so skilled at ducking out whenever anyone someone started to fiddle with a telephoto lens attachment or set up the tripod. (Back then, there was sufficient warning to make my getaway.) I’d lock myself in the bathroom and say something about an eggplant allergy to the person banging on the door. Yep, that kept them at bay. Click away! By the time I re-emerged, they’d have used up their roll of film and we could go back to casually debating whether Madonna was becoming irrelevant—Who invited the straight guy?—or discussing which “Friends” character was the funniest. (Please. It was always Phoebe.)

Never wanted any photographic evidence of my physical existence. Big nose. Hair always overdue for a cut. Bulging eyes. Stick figure arms. A gut that screamed for a massive diet to lose ten pounds. (It was always ten pounds and it was always an extreme diet.) Excessively wrinkly elbows that should always be concealed by long sleeves. Retro WHAM! t-shirt…What was I thinking?!

‘90s me would never have imagined that I’d post goofy selfies on Facebook. People “Like” this sort of thing? Mercy likings, no doubt. Surely they were forced to dim their screens. There’s no way those elbows improved.

And ‘90s me would have me committed—okay, re-committed—for having the gall to post a shirtless selfie. Not just once. What are you trying to do? Incite politicians to make selfies illegal? When did you become an activist about world issues? Shirtless?! An extreme activist. It’s mind boggling.

Truth is, I’m not so far evolved from ‘90s me. I can still pick apart my physical state. And yet, the selfies are not so horrid. My body seems to have finally bulked up a tad. The gut doesn’t look as large. (I’ve downsized to the eternal quest to lose five pounds. Dieting is a way of being.) Still, that dang phone camera is never far away. Every time I’m in a hotel room, I snap a shirtless selfie.

Why? It’s hard to chalk it up to vanity when I am only mildly less repulsed by my looks. It’s part of an evidentiary expedition. Frankly, I don’t believe all the other shirtless selfies. They don’t look half bad. Everyone can get one good photo, maybe two. Trick mirrors, no doubt. I have to keep testing things. I need to return to sanity and that solid sense of unworthiness. I snap. I’m not appalled. Sometimes I’m almost satisfied…but for the five pounds and those freaky elbows.

Posting shirtless selfies?! Not as an activist statement? Not as an act of terrorism? (Okay, to be accurate, ‘90s me wouldn’t have mentioned terrorism. It wasn’t such a buzzword then. We were too concerned about the fact that Backstreet Boys may have actually nailed a couple good tunes. Boy band credibility threatened to upset the entire social order.)

Sorry, ‘90s me, I can’t really explain it. At least, not in a satisfying way. I post selfies. And, yes, even, shirtless selfies. Surely, there are selfie self-help groups, but I live in too remote an area. (Yeah, ‘90s me would shake his head at that, too. You moved where?!)

I’m selfie-aware enough to sense that I am seeking superficial validation. I’m stuck there. Not because I want to dwell on that. Believe me, I’d love to get past obsessing over physical imperfections. (At 50, I know they are cropping up with greater speed! At my most recent appointment with my skin cancer doctor, I kept pointing out questionable blemishes. “Age spots” was her declaration for each and every one. I should be glad be glad she didn’t say “melanoma” and I was, albeit taken aback nonetheless. Age spots are the new acne.) Like everyone else, I post selfies to fictionalize my life. Look at all the fun I’m having. Look at how great I look. (Never mind that I had to delete another ninety-nine less appealing, more true-to-life shots.) I need people to throw some “Likes” and some “Favorites” my way. Self-esteem has evolved to selfie-steem.

I’d love someone to know me more intimately, to see the humor, the kindness and perhaps the intelligence…when it comes to subjects other than posting selfies. Still, for now, surface “Likes” are all I can garner.

This is chronic adolescence. Low-level validation means far more than it should. But that’s the window. That’s the first impression. Disappointment in that domain means there is no second look.

Note to selfie: I’ll be glad when you’re gone. And as for you, ‘90s me, I’d love for you to stay in the archives as well. (Can’t believe you put a Backstreet Boys earworm in my head.)

Maybe the next time I book on hotels.com, I’ll request a room with no mirrors. That will be the new trend. It’s only a matter of months before more of us enter selfie-recovery.