CALL ME BY MY NEW NAME: AGING GAYLY

Name changes happen. Facebook is now Meta. Datsun became Nissan. The TV sitcom, “Valerie,” was retitled “The Hogan Family” after Valerie Harper (RIP) left the show. Sir Elton John was born Reginald Dwight. Arnold George Dorsey performed as Gerry Dorsey before switching to—why, oh why—Engelbert Humperdinck. Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson) transformed into   (aka, The Love Symbol) before settling on The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Sean John Combs has been Puffy, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Sean Jean, Brother Love and Sean Love Combs. 

 

I seem to be on the Puff Daddy-P. Diddy-Diddy track. 

 

It’s with some trepidation that I’ve renamed my blog. Way back in 2008, when blogging may have still been a thing, “Rural Gay” fit perfectly since I lived a ferry ride away from civilization. As a single homosexual in his forties, the title was bound to attract a little online attention, if only from initial curiosity. Why the hell would he make that kind of move?

 

Yep. Why, indeed. Seven years after starting the blog—and a decade after that cockeyed relocation experiment—I settled anew in Vancouver. Rural Gay no more! 

 

For some reason, I figured I needed to keep that designation in the blog title, probably since it was the core of the web address. I gave the blog name a clunky tweak: Rural Gay Gone Urban. Always hated it. What did the wretched title say about my writing abilities? Still, I stuck with it, deciding my time was better spent writing posts as a pleasant diversion from drafting essays for occasional publication in the great beyond while continuing to hone novel-length manuscripts.

 

Another seven years have passed. I’m still blogging, even if that’s not much of a thing anymore. I’m an old dog and I haven’t developed an appetite for new tricks like podcasting and TikTok dillydallying. Old dogs can use words like dillydallying.

 

I don’t like to think of myself as old even though I’m almost at the point of admitting that the whiskers from three days’ growth on my chin are gray, not blond. (I should look into softer lighting in the bathroom.) I’m startled when I’m reminded that Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” is forty-five years old. I curse whenever I think of mentioning VCRs, answering machines or Charles Nelson Reilly in a conversation with my niece. (Charles Nelson Reilly? WTF?!) It’s always hard to transition after a blank stare. 

 

Allow me to transition here to the new name for the blog. Like it or not, from my vantage point there are more young ’uns than old coots. We’re all aging, of course, but I’m more aware of it now. Remember how the time to reach sixteen or twenty-one seemed to move at a snail’s pace? Such an excruciating wait to drive a car or drink without a comically bad fake ID. Years and whole decades whiz by now. Staring into the bathroom mirror is now about checking for wrinkles, not zits. Oh, how I had so much hope for the powers of Clearasil; not so for my L’Oréal Revitalift eye cream. That thing about getting wiser isn’t always a good thing.

 

So, yes. I. Am. Aging.

 

I feel like I’m thirty-six in mind, body and spirit but, judging from how often I’m called “sir” these days, nobody else is buying it. I did get carded at the beer garden at the Washington State Fair last month, but I withheld the urge to woot. Standard procedure. She didn’t even bother squinting to search for where the birthdate is on a British Columbia driver’s licence. 

 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise when I say I’m not exactly aging gracefully. Nope. I’m kicking and screaming. Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” keeps popping up on my YouTube stream. Same for Candi Staton’s “Young Hearts Run Free,” a disco-era gem. Dammit, my song choices don’t help my case.

Okay, so enough about the “Aging” part of my NEW, IMPROVED blog title. On to “Gayly.” I had to keep some reference to “gay.” The blog has always been about being a gay man and that will continue to be the case. While I’m okay with “queer,” there was a time the term felt too abrasive—a derisive term that gays took back as their own. There are other descriptors under the LGBTQIA2+ umbrella that seem to suit me, but they weren’t around when I did the hard work of coming out. I love that there are more specific terms people can consider when figuring out their identity. I am committed to accepting and supporting anyone based on how they choose to define themselves with regard to gender and sexuality. In turn, I expect to be respected for sticking with “gay,” at least for now. 

 

Old dog, remember. Throw me a bone or, better yet, just drop it in front of me.

 

As a stickler for the grammar and spelling, I’m accustomed to using “gaily” when writing, assuming I would use the word at all. Still, Merriam-Webster recognizes “gayly” as a variant used “less commonly.” I like that. After all, I’ve spent my whole life navigating less common tracts.

 

As a twenty-something, in a pre-GPS world, there were many times I sat in a car with gay friends and someone called out directions by saying, “Go straight.” The remark was always corrected. “Impossible. Go gayly forward.” Yuk yuk. Yes, these were the same people who chuckled over random references to balls, nuts and the number 69. Don’t be fooled by arty, gay pretensions. We’re as simple as other men…although I’m pleased to say I no longer laugh over farts and fart jokes. Some things just get old when one gets, ahem, old.

 

So there it is. A new blog title, keeping “gay” and chucking the rest. What do you think of “Aging Gayly”? This is likely a superficial change. I plan to continue to post on similar topics as before: gay culture, my relationship, queer literature and entertainment, and mental health issues, including eating disorders. I hope you’ll stick around, check the blog from time to time, leave a comment on occasion, here or on Twitter. (Retweets and other forms of sharing are always welcome!) I don’t want millennials to shy away from clicking to the blog, but I suppose it’s time for me to accept the gray whiskers while continuing to strive to sustain a healthy, active lifestyle. Thanks, as always, for reading!

     

DOES "BROS" MATTER?

Better late than never, they say. But is it? I went to see “Bros” a week after its critical box office debut.[1] The two tickets I purchased will do nothing to alter its designation as a flop. This post isn’t to critique the movie but to consider the importance of its release. Straight audiences didn’t show up, but I get the sense a lot of LGBTQ folks gave it a pass, too.

 

My quick two cents on the movie: It’s worth seeing. I laughed more than I do during most movies. It wasn’t so much major plot points that got me chuckling—rom-coms follow a formula—but there were plenty of amusing observations about gay men and pop culture that peppered the script. Billy Eichner’s Bobby talks in rapid rants—reminded me of Woody Allen, in a good way (if I’m allowed to extend a nod to Woody anymore). I’m sure I’ll appreciate the commentary even more on a second viewing once the movie goes to streaming. That’s right, I’d watch it again. Something for Vancouver’s upcoming monthslong rainy season. I saw a lot of my own frustrations about gay culture and dating in the movie. Thumbs up. On the Meg Ryan rom-com scale, not in “When Harry Met Sally” territory, but on par with “You’ve Got Mail.”

 

Prior to its release, “Bros” was billed in the media as a big deal: first wide release of a gay film by a major movie studio. It played on more than three thousand screens in North America. Much of the publicity focused on the fact that virtually all roles, straight or queer, were played by LGBTQ actors. By golly, this was the Gayest Thing Ever in Hollywood! (I’m still hoping for a big screen premiere of “Bert Loves Ernie.”)

 

If a gay film appears in theaters and nobody shows up, did it even happen?

 

It grossed five million during its opening weekend, September 30-October 2. Not horrendous but not a winner considering the film’s reported twenty-two-million-dollar budget. By comparison, the top movie that weekend was another debut, the psychological horror film, “Smile,” which earned close to twenty-three million. There will be more weeks in theaters and more revenue streams, but it’s unlikely “Bros” will turn a profit. (As of today, it’s earned $10.8 million.)  

 

Does the mediocre box office matter to anyone besides theater owners, Universal Pictures and the producers and stars of “Bros”?  I would argue it does. Rightly or wrongly, “Bros” has been held up as a Big Gay Movie and it will serve as a barometer for financing future queer films that dare to play beyond the indie leagues. 

 

The takeaway that it tanked doesn’t bode well. “Bros” is no breakthrough for gays the way “Crazy Rich Asians” was purported to be for Asian actors and works. I suspect that the immediate response of most LGBTQ people is a shrug. There is plenty of queer content on streaming channels and by accessing queer film festivals online. Productions with smaller budgets will continue. I don’t really need to see an epic car chase or CGI-created elephant stampedes in gay stories I watch. Perhaps that apocalyptic sci-fi thriller with gays making an exodus to Uranus—is that still the gays’ favorite planet?—will never see the light of day. I don’t think that sex scene in spacesuits would have done anything for me anyway.

 

Maybe “Bros” was an ill-advised experiment. Maybe the headline-making pre-release hype—an attempt to increase interest, aka ticket sales—hurts us in the end. Maybe it puts LGBTQ people in their place. We can marry, we can get bakers to make fancy rainbow cakes (with reduced-fat icing, thank you), we can aspire to be the CEO of Apple or run for president. We just can’t expect straight people to come out to see us as the focal point of a love story on the big screen. Let us remain sidekicks who own avant-garde galleries, don gorgeous garments and drop snappy one-liners. Pals not paramours. 

 

The movie’s lackluster box office does not mean a thumbs down to all gay stories, although I fear that’s how many studios will construe it. It’s the wrong genre. We stand a better chance as a Marvel hero or a cinematic doctor/lawyer/detective/villain…really, anything but a love interest. Rom-coms are never what straight men crave. Presumably, they get dragged along by their girlfriends on date night, hoping it may pay dividends—sex or a Sunday football viewing marathon. I’m not sure straight women are even up for a gay rom-com, but I’m certain they know better than to think they can drag along their husband or boyfriend. I read lots of comments about “Bros” on Twitter from guys purporting to be straight. Despite LGBTQ advances, a dude can stay entrenched with his standard line: Two guys kissing? Hell, no! 

 

The fact Judd Apatow was a producer of the movie didn’t help. In fact, it may have even hurt in terms of expanding viewership. Apatow is known for infusing raunch into comedies that might otherwise get classified as rom-coms. It meant more ticket sales for flicks like “Knocked Up” and “Trainwreck.” In “Bros,” that means talk of a throuple and glimpses of what’s supposed to be a four-way gay sex scene. 

 

Cue straight dude: Ewwwwww! Double hell no! Triple! Quadruple…and whatever comes after that. I think the majority of straight guys have come around to thinking, “You can be gay. That’s cool. Just don’t talk to me about the gay sex stuff.” Adding visuals only makes them squirmy. I would imagine that, if any were actually in the theater seats, they’d have sprinted down the aisle for an emergency popcorn situation. More butter, STAT! 

 

Would straight women choose “Bros” as a girls’ night out flick? Again, doubtful. Gay men have spent their lives having to see themselves in female rom-com characters portrayed by Kate Hudson and Julia Roberts, but women have never had to make the gender and sexual orientation adjustments. They can wait around for the next man-woman rom-com to hit the theater, turn on the Hallmark Channel or catch another viewing of “The Proposal” somewhere online.

 

There was never an urgency in the LGBTQ community to see “Bros” during the opening weekend or ever. This was not a matter of life or death as was AIDS activism. This was not about civil rights as was marriage equality. Even in terms of the arts, the stakes weren’t so critical, as in the case of censorship of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos or the banning of books like George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, Lesléa Newman and Diana Souza’s Heather Has Two Mommies or David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing. “Bros” has given the greenlight without any significant blowback. I did a quick Google search and didn’t even find anything about picketers out front of a single theater that showed the movie. To be sure, that’s an indication of progress, but it can also make people blasé about any Big Gay Movie (that doesn’t include a bathtub scene with a rubber duckie).

 

Still, the relative failure of “Bros” will cause major studios will be even more hesitant about gay fare. The conclusion goes beyond the notion that Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane aren’t leading men at the box office. All gay actors in gay roles are a risk. (Can’t we just go back to casting Tom Hanks and Jake Gyllenhaal?) There is trickle-down harm for all sorts of gay creatives. Basically, the perceived apathy over “Bros,” as jumped on by the media, may lead investors to question banking other gay works in the arts. We are reduced to being a niche market. Profits are minimal. Producing works focused on Tom Cruise and Sonic the Hedgehog are safer bets. That’s right, our stories take a back seat to a blue animated hedgehog. 

 

Had “Bros” blossomed, I would have mentioned it in queries for my gay novel that I’m trying to get published. When seeking an agent or publisher to take a chance on a manuscript, it’s common practice to pitch “comps,” listing titles the work is comparable to. It helps them see there may be a market for the book, that it will turn a profit. They’re trying to make a living, after all. Flops don’t put steak dinners on the table or even generic-brand peanut butter sandwiches. Yes, I had high hopes for “Bros.” Its success might have given me a greater shot at success, along with other developers of gay comedy.

 

People want gay stories! 

 

There’s a market for humorous tales about older gay men trying to navigate the dating scene! 

 

But is there?

 

“Bros” got decent reviews but that didn’t help to build an audience. You can be sure I will dare not speak its name in my query letters. If I were to say my novel is similar to “Bros,” there isn’t a single agent or publisher that would get excited. Ooh! Let me get this book published and then I’ll figure out how to apply for food stamps.

 

Nope. Not mentioning “Bros.” Also not mentioning “Uncoupled” which starred Neil Patrick Harris and aired on Netflix this fall. (Its eight-episode run was set up for a second season, but Netflix hasn’t rushed any announcement in that regard. Speculation is that’s not going to happen. Older gay men looking for love? Not a draw. Even when “older” means forty-something and the men are in great shape. Too much reality. Leave that for RuPaul and gay men giving makeovers. We are niche at best.

 

Go see “Bros” anyway. It’s not going to be a sleeper hit, but I’d venture to guess it’s more entertaining than the blue hedgehog movie which grossed $403.8 million globally. Money is not an indicator of quality in a work but, alas, it has a major impact on what entertainment is available over the next several years. If you yearn to see another larger-scale work about gay relationships, it will probably be a while. Maybe “Sonic the Hedgehog” will be the new comp to use in persuading a studio to take a chance on Bert and Ernie. Please tell me you’d at least show up for that one.

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

---

[1] I failed to see it during its opening weekend since I was on a road trip in Canada’s Rocky Mountain region, kayaking on Lake Louise, hiking Glacier National Park and spending internet-free evenings in a cabin, listening to wolves howl at the moon. I didn’t think to reschedule. My bad.

THE PASSING OF DAVID

First off, I should note that the titular David is not dead. Sorry if that’s the whole reason you clicked the link to this post. If you feel duped, let me make it up to you by offering further reading on actually dead Davids: an early heartthrob from my childhood, David Cassidy, and a lyricist who helped pen the soundtrack of my youth, Hal David. As a bonus, I’ve dug up a Google Image of Michelangelo’s statue of David. Sure beats a traditional olive branch, don’t you think?

 

Okay, let me get to the living David who is actually the subject of this post. I met him in February 2020. He was the hookup who wasn’t. It’s not that I showed up at his place, he glanced at me up and down and then slammed the door, bolting the chain and sliding a heavy piece of furniture across the floor while saying through the soon-to-be blockaded door, “Go away! Consider yourself blocked.” Plausible, sure, but that’s not how our hookup came to NOT be. David had the sense to suggest we meet in public at a café somewhere between my place and his. Technically, it was closer to his place, but things were ambiguous enough that I had to spend an hour making the bed, dusting and shoving “keepsakes” I should have thrown away years ago in the hall closet. 

 

The story of David and me made the pages of The New York Times. Again, not a murder story. He’s alive, I swear. One of my most satisfying writing feats was getting the newspaper to publish my Modern Love essay. You can read it here if you haven’t already reached your monthly limit of free articles (Is it one article or is it down to zero?), but I’ll condense things for you. We met, we chatted, we got kicked out when the place closed and then we said goodbye on the sidewalk. No hookup. Instead, he made reservations at a trendy Thai spot the next weekend. 

 

The failed hookup turned into default dating. I’d already planned to leave Vancouver in two months and no guy was going to keep me in the place where my social life had long been stagnant. David would be a pleasant distraction between packing boxes and turfing so many of those keepsakes. 

 

Most of my dating experiences that last more than a single meeting involve red flag spotting. There was the guy still shared a bed with his ex. And the one who was getting a divorce from his wife and had never dated men. There was also a guy who mentioned having nasal reconstruction surgery to repair damages from a past addiction to cocaine. All true scenarios. They say the cream rises to the top but, in my dating history, it’s been scum that comes to the surface. 

 

David’s red flags weren’t as alarming. There were no flagrant fouls but there were obvious signs we weren’t a match. I saw them and shrugged. This wasn’t long-term. We were just hanging out.

 

Then the world shut down. My move was off. David and I continued on. He became my COVID bubble. The Modern Love article ended with hope, our bubble intact. I wrote it several months before it was published. By then, we’d broken up. Our differences hadn’t set off alarms, but they were such that I knew I would never fall in love. Five months was a good run.

 

We’d be friends.

 

That’s what people say. Occasionally, it comes to be. 

 

The first couple of times we met, post breakup, we went for a walk or played tennis. It was friendly-ish. The chitchat was stilted, but it always was. One of David’s quirks was that the first ten minutes of conversation was a monologue of everything he’d been doing, every meal he’d eaten, every friend he’d seen. In the past, I’d tried interrupting with a question or by injecting an anecdote related to what he was saying, but he’d bat away my commentary and proceed undeterred with his spiel. It had to come out all at once. I often wondered if he’d even notice if I put on earbuds or stepped away for a minute…or seven. It wasn’t that he cared solely about himself. He'd always get around to asking about me and truly listening. I’d accepted the quirk, but then I’d grown tired of it. I wanted back-and-forth banter, not soliloquy exchanges.

 

In the friend zone, David would try to stretch our time, suggesting dinner. I sensed dinner would muddle his understanding of The New Us. Indeed, he kissed me on the lips the first time I dropped him off after tennis. Another time, while walking, he talked about getting back together. Maybe we couldn’t be friends. Maybe a stab at friendship caused deeper wounds than just walking away.

 

For his birthday, I bought him a coffee. Anything more might have been misread. For mine, I passed on a suggested pizza night. “I’m not big on my birthday,” I said. It was the absolute truth.

 

A chronic wrist injury flared up in David’s right hand so tennis was no longer an option. Our times whittled down to walks. COVID surges had a way of putting more time in between each outing as David was especially fretful about any possible exposure. I found I wasn’t putting any effort into making contact. Eventually, there was nothing more than an occasional Facebook message from him, so rare that I was afraid to click on them. I presumed someone had hijacked his account. When I did click, the message would be a random GIF. “Did you send this?” I asked the first time it happened. Indeed, he had. His explanation didn’t do much in terms of explaining anything. Why would he send it? What did it say about how little he knew of me?

 

I let the next GIF go. I spent a minute trying to think of a reply, but nothing came to mind. A thumbs up or a smiley face felt like too much, like a forced laugh upon hearing an old knock-knock joke, the one about bananas and a late-on-the-scene orange. Wouldn’t a meh emoji be insulting?

 

It’s been at least a year, maybe eighteen months. I’ve moved on. So has he. There’s no animosity, at least on my part. (Maybe he really wanted a smiley emoji.) In some ways, it boggles my mind. I dated David five months. We supported each other in the strangest of times. As with so many things from those COVID days, that relationship is behind us, nothing to revisit.  

 

A friendship was not to be. We were too different to be partners. The friendship felt forced. Sometimes you just have to allow one another to move on. Circumstances change, connections fade. While we now live in a world that makes it easy to keep tabs on almost anyone, sometimes the need isn’t there.  

 

  

A SHIFTING STAR

Thanks, Zac.

 

Every so often, a celebrity gets real. Jamie Lee Curtis poses without makeup and editorial touchups. Selena Gomez shows her “real stomach” on TikTok. Anna Kendrick discusses an abusive relationship. Sometimes these buzzy interviews and articles don’t even coincide with a new movie or album that needs promotion. 

 

Mr. Efron made news last week after CNN lifted a few quotes from a Men’s Health interview. The brief CNN piecenoted that the actor was “currently bulking up for an unnamed role.” If this was supposed to be part of a publicity tour, the producers and his agent must have bruised noggins from repeated head banging. Are readers primed to run out and see Zac Efron in Unnamed Role in an as yet untitled movie/play/TV show/antacid commercial? Even if I were a Zac fan (I’m not, I swear), I wouldn’t have a clue what to input on my phone calendar. Perhaps Mr. Efron had nothing better to do between bulking up tasks than to sit down or Zoom in for a chat with some very persistent reporter. 

 

Efron contends that his ultra-muscled body seen in a “Baywatch” movie from 2017 is unattainable. Technically, it was attainable, at least by Efron, likely with assistance from a full-time personal trainer and perhaps a personal chef. Plus, getting into shape for his role as a studly lifeguard was his job. It was his primary means of preparation. To do so, he got paid more than most of us will earn in a decade or two. Still, he said, "There's just too little water in the skin. Like, it's fake; it looks CGI'd."

 

It didn’t seem that Efron was gloating and doing some version of Superior Dance à la The Church Lady from SNL. The message was that his coveted body came at too great a cost. Efron noted that he ate the same food three times a day. He took diuretics in addition to fitness training and noted that his regimen led to sleep difficulties, depression and other problems that lasted for six months after he let up from his silver screen-primed bod. Technically attainable but ludicrous to strive for. Efron seemed to give the quest a thumbs down. 

 

Cover boy Efron in 2012.

Something told me, as a responsible blogger who nonetheless gets paid nothing for his thoughts, I should go to the original source. I hesitated. Men’s Health is unhealthy for me. The incarnation of the magazine I knew always sported a buff, hypermasculine male model on the cover along with promoted articles about Ten Exercises to Lose the Flab and “easy,” “quick” ways to get washboard abs.  (They’ve apparently changed the cover format in recent years, opting for a celebrity shot of Michael B. Jordan, Kumail Nanjiani or Mark Wahlberg in hopes their fans and oglers will scoop up drugstore copies.) Back in the day, I probably bought an issue a time or two. 

 

Easy abs? I’m in!

 

More often, I’d browse through a copy left behind at the laundromat or sitting on a table at the hair salon as my highlights were setting. (So far from being hypermasculine!) I never subscribed. I really wasn’t the target reader for “5 Ways to Hone Your Triceps While Using a Chainsaw.” But then, was anyone? I suspect guys with chainsaws wouldn’t touch a magazine with a himbo on the cover. Subscribers were probably desperate teen guys in Chess Club while newsstand copies got scooped up by gay men and straight women seeking a little titillation during the flight from Denver to Omaha.

 

I earnestly read/viewed a few of the articles. The thought of getting Popeye biceps from a ten-minute daily routine enticed me. Same with the pitch for defined pecs and deltoids that dazzle. Men’s Health did for me what all those diet books did for women. It appealed to my insecurities. It pestered, beckoned and lured. 

 

Psst. Hey you, flawed person. Sucks, right? 

 

I’ve got a fix for you. Buy me. You gotta invest if you want results. 

 

Might as well have bought snake oil, chucked a couple quarters in the wishing well and rubbed the belly of a Buddha statue. I wasn’t going to get shirtless selfie-worthy abs no matter how many minutes or days I spent doing the five exercises the model demonstrated in the magazine spread. (That’s not how he got them either.) All Men’s Health did for me was reinforce that my body was substandard, that it would always need more work, that I was some outlier who couldn’t achieve results from following a clear routine that was practically GUARANTEED to transform a typical dude. 

 

In offering false hope, the magazine contributed to my eating disorder behaviors—less food, more exercise. No doubt, it has exacerbated other men’s body dysmorphia, too. What you’ve got is never good enough. The body could always use more hulk and bulk, more honing and toning. 

 

Thankfully, I was able to pull the full article online without having to browse the rest of the issue. Efron’s message isn’t as enlightened as CNN led me to believe. He’s still a slave to strict exercise and food intake practices. Even the CNN article hinted at this by including this comment after Efron knocked what he viewed as extreme practices:  "I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3 percent body fat." Gosh, three percent body fat. Now that’s attainable!

 

Efron is still a slave to his past image. His pre-production preparation for his unspecified upcoming project consists of “bulking up.” He’s not sitting home and embracing a muffin-top midriff while watching “Real Housewives” marathons as he chows down on packages of Little Debbie’s Mini Donuts and spoon-feeds himself pints of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. (Surely, the word “chunky” would scare him off.) He continues to make a living from being buff, most likely continuing to have a personal trainer and answering to a pesky agent and producers who demand to see his daily food and exercise journals. Efron is a commodity to them. 

 

A portion of the interview was conducted at a steakhouse and the writer mentions that Efron split a filet mignon, a “seafood tower” and a “Japanese A5 Wagyu steak.” Sorry, a meal of donuts and ice cream seems more conventional.

 

Efron is not going to ever be a role model for guys battling body dysmorphia.  

 

People online tried to shame Efron 
a couple of years ago for his
supposed "dad bod," seen on 
the right. Utterly ridiculous.

But it’s still something that he admits that his movie-perfect body is both unrealistic and comes with damaging consequences. Maybe that is enough to give a few guys obsessing over their bodies a tiny jolt. Maybe they’ll cut themselves some slack. Have a croissant, take a day off from the gym or at least cut a few sets. Go for dinner with a friend and order something off the menu that sounds tasty even if it isn’t high in protein. Maybe even split an appetizer—fully loaded nachos. 

 

I’m too entrenched with my own unhealthy, extremes ways of exercising, eating and thinking about my body, but there’s hope for vulnerable twenty-somethings who feel inferior from seeing actors like Efron in movies like “Baywatch” and from seeing the stream of shirtless selfies posted by gym rats on Twitter. 

 

Stop sucking in your stomach for photos. Live a little. Let go a little. Just breathe. Just be. 

A COVID POSTMORTEM

I have never been so excited
to see a room full of trash!

It’s over. My days of COVID are behind me. Hello, normal routines. I’ve missed you.

 

There was almost a skip in my step as I walked to the elevator to take my recycling and rubbish to the garbage room in my building. I always delay making that trip, the heft unnecessarily bigger that it should be, but this time all that accumulation simply had to be. It was about being responsible. If there’s a rat or two lurking and feasting behind the food compost container, I’ve spared you from COVID. You’re welcome.

 

After unloading my discards, I detoured to the building’s gym. It’s a small space though well-equipped. You have to sign up. One person per hour. Not sure if that was always the case or if it’s a COVID measure residents decided to keep. Sharing is so overrated. I’m skipping today for good measure, sticking to the cycling routine that’s helped keep my sanity these past ten days. My biceps will feel the burn tomorrow. So happy to return to the familiar nuisance of excessive workout perspiration instead of fever sweats and muscle aches in lieu of headaches.

 

One of the tasks I accomplished during 
my quarantine was organizing my ice
cream? Who even has that as a task?!

I’ve been itching to grocery shop. I tried to tell myself that masking up and buying orange juice was justified in the name of self-care and recovery, but then I kept picturing the super friendly clerk who only works Sundays and, even if she wouldn’t be at the till, I still carry some of that “We appreciate you!” sentiment for service employees from the early days of global lockdown. Later today, I’ll grab a basket and buy fresh produce while restocking my ice cream supply. (My freezer was never in danger of running out of Ben & Jerry’s. I know how to Be Prepared in case of emergency even if I dropped out of Boy Scouts before I got a single badge.) I might buy orange juice and the ingredients to make the cornbread I’ve been craving these past ten days, but suddenly I don’t have the appetite for either. 

 

While I was bummed COVID finally tagged me, I’m glad I outran it for the first two and a half years. This latest strain, while apparently easier to get, is milder—suitable even for wusses like me. My first positive test came just before I went to bed one night last week. It made for a bad sleep, in part due to coughs and sniffles, but more embarrassingly on account of the kind of irrational worries that love to come out and play at three in the morning. 

 

If I have to go to hospital, will I catch something worse. Meningitis? Flesh-eating disease? A missing leg from them amputating the wrong limb from the wrong patient? 

 

Will I freak out if I’m hooked up to an IV? Answer: Obviously. Will they respond by removing my vocal cords? Likely. Healthcare workers have been through enough.

 

What will it be like if I’m put on a ventilator? What if they perform a tracheotomy?!

 

I’m not making any of that up. I should remind you, it was three in the morning. (I shouldn’t share that I can be just as panicked at ten in the morning after a tasty latte and a solid rest.) Once a tracheotomy entered my mind, all sleep was off.

 

In truth, there was never a moment when I came close to calling an ambulance, walking over to the hospital or even calling my doctor’s office. For most people, COVID ain’t what it used to be, thank goodness. The media was moved on, even if I occasionally stumble on reports listing the number of people in intensive care and still too many deaths. Friends didn’t check in after initially responding to my Facebook post with obligatory sad face emojis. My mother only checked in twice, via text. I might have played this song if I’d thrown myself a pity party, but I didn’t think of it. It might have been a nice break from strangely obsessive thoughts about cornbread.

 

Thank you, WestJet.

When you show up late for COVID, everyone’s response is Been There, Done That. And I’m glad about that. I was inconvenienced and I missed out on big, end-of-summer plans. I had to cancel my trip to Ottawa. No family cottage visit again this year. (I’d gone every summer, without fail, my whole life. Haven’t been now since pre-COVID, 2019.) No chance to see my aunt, uncle, cousins and their children who’ve grown so much in my absence. I had to suddenly change my RSVP to one cousin’s wedding. All this had financial implications as well. I’m out hundreds of dollars. WestJet and Hotels.com were good about refunding or crediting otherwise nonrefundable bookings under the circumstances, but I’m still battling a car rental company and Air Canada epically failed in terms of customer service. “People lie about their mothers dying,” the agent said. Um, how does that relate to me?  It seems the company’s default stance is to presume their customers are liars. Nice. You can guess what airline I won’t be flying in the future. Still, my health is most important.

 

My COVID ended with a fizzle. Like a balloon that neither bursts nor gets swept up by the sky but just deflates into a smaller deformed blob and gets tossed in the wastebasket. I’m glad there was no final wheelchair tour of a hospital wing with dedicated nurses and orderlies cheering me on as they mumbled to one another, “So glad that big baby’s gone. Didn’t you just want to unplug his ventilator?” I didn’t even have to part with any precious items in my sticker collection to seal a thank you card to an attending physician. And, yay, I still have my senses intact to smell my scratch ‘n’ sniff ones. (Why do I love the root beer stickers so much and yet never buy the drink?) Instead of any fanfare, I just stuck a Q-tip up my nose for the umpteenth time, set the timer on my phone and read an essay about Ann Patchett’s love of knitting. Not persuasive. I have an intense fear of needles so there’s no way I’d pursue some craft for which that’s basic terminology. Don’t care if they’re not those needles. I’m 100% needle-averse, just as I am to all stings…with or without The Police. 

 

I am a delicate soul.

 

When the timer went off, I knew the result even before I looked. Negative. At last. Thanks, universe, for knowing how little this delicate soul can take. This is good karma for those soda bottles I picked up on the path in Whistler in July, right? Think I’ll keep that up. 

 

I’m celebrating. Might even head to A&W to get me a root beer, frosted mug and all, being as I can dine in again. Ice cream to follow, naturally. Life is good.

IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH. OKAY, MAYBE JUST IN HEALTH.

Are there people who truly rock when they’re sick? Do their friends say things like, “Gosh, Fran, you’re funnier and brighter and more delightful than ever. You should get shingles more often!” Let me be clear. I’m never going to be the life of the party while I’m hooked up to an IV, taking a break between hurls into the toilet or nursing an owie from a hangnail I shouldn’t have pulled. I’m like most of us (except for, maybe, extreme hangnail sensitivity). I hate getting sick and, frankly, I suck at it.

 

I remember getting the flu during my first year in law school and my friend, Adrienne, banging on my apartment door, awakening me to check up on me. (Apparently, Adrienne didn’t ascribe to the belief that sleep is part of the healing process.) Naturally, I did not answer. I most likely had vomit remnants on my shirt, perhaps in my hair, and most definitely on and around the toilet. I was in no mood or condition to invite her in for tea and the latest stories about our most notorious ass-kissing classmates. (They were Republicans of a different era.) 

 

To my horror, she let herself in. My surfer dude roomie never locked the damn door. I was lying in a lump on the living room carpet. It was a change of scenery from the past thirty hours moaning and puking in my bedroom. (I get the flu so rarely that each vomiting episode comes as a complete surprise. More? How can there be more? That’s not a kidney, is it?) The sheet that I’d wrapped myself in suddenly enveloped my entire body as if it were an invisibility cloak with a fundamental defect. I was certain she could see me. My frightful state must have been apparent because she was gone in seconds. It’s possible I yelled something nasty. To repeat: I don’t rock it as a sick person. 

 

It's fortunate that I rarely fall ill. Adrienne and every other person who has seen me when I’m sick would tell you I’m a complete wuss. I’m well aware of this. I will never be the guy who wants a little bell by my bedside to ring someone every time I want more veggie broth, some Vicks VapoRub or an extra squeeze of lemon in my ginger tea which, incidentally, could use a little heating up. I will want you to go away as much as I want the sickness to go away. Misery does not always love company.

 

But it’s different when I’m dating. Sorry, Marry Poppins, but a boyfriend is way better than a spoonful of sugar. I don’t have to tone done my level of wuss-ness. My boyfriend should come to expect it. He should find something endearing about it in an absolutely-no-photos sort of way. 

 

I don’t have much to say about John, the first guy I fell in love with. I was devastated when he dumped me—it didn’t help that he wanted to pursue things with a friend of mine and may or may not have already booked that flight to Detroit to meet the parents. (What?!) We weren’t much of a match, but you have to start somewhere, I suppose. Still, one of my fondest memories involved him driving through crawling traffic from Silver Lake to Pacific Palisades in Greater L.A. to see how I was doing when I came down with the flu while studying for the bar exam. 

 

“You came!” Yes, I was thrilled to see him and perhaps a slight fever could explain why I didn’t take cover in a bedsheet as I had with Adrienne. Maybe this was the moment when my soon-to-be ex-friend, Rick, started to look more appealing. John witnessed and/or heard a couple of epic hurls, one spew landing mostly in the soup pot I’d placed on the floor by my bed just in case. He cleaned the pot and the toilet bowl—most likely the surrounding area, too. Add in the obvious risk of him getting sick because of me and I couldn’t shake the one clear thought that emerged from my fogginess, my nausea, my misery: This is love! 

 

Haven't watched in years, I swear.

Yep, forget about the extravagance of some surprise helicopter ride to Catalina Island, the classic simplicity of a dozen red roses or being the second (of three) people to get an overnight Fantasy Suite invitation at a beachside resort in Bali—Why can’t I shake the clichés of “The Bachelor(ette)”? Cleaning up someone else’s vomit without being paid to do so is the ultimate romantic gesture. 

 

Got the shot! But one nudge and
it wouldn't have mattered.

At present, I have COVID. I got it from my boyfriend’s best friend. I keep telling myself not to read anything into that. If he really resented me, he could have “accidentally” slipped and pushed me off St. Mark’s Summit a month ago as I leaned forward at the edge to take a picture of a cluster of black pine cones that appeared as though they’d been sprinkled with sugar. But then it was crowded with other hikers. So many witnesses.

 

Evan and I had spent an extra-long weekend together again, with me showing up at his place in Seattle early Thursday evening and heading back home to Vancouver Tuesday morning. I’d awakened that last morning with a bit of a cough, one that sounded and felt different from my standard cough that always triggers Evan to ask, only half-jokingly, “Do you have COVID?!” He didn’t ask this time. He just pulled his home test kits out of the medicine cabinet and we did that sexy dance of shoving Q-tips up our nasal cavities. I’d done these tests at least a dozen times, as part of requisite travel protocols and from when Evan got COVID from my mother. Not once had I worried about my own results. Even when Evan, my mother and my father all ended up getting COVID from a suddenly too memorable meet-the-parents lunch after their cruise disembarked in Seattle, I’d had full confidence I’d test negative every single time I checked. COVID couldn’t touch me. This was the first time my conviction wavered. Fifteen minutes passed in slow motion. Evan: negative. Me: negative.

 

It was a harder goodbye as I loaded my car. We wouldn’t be seeing each other for a couple of weeks. I was flying from Vancouver to Ottawa the next day to be at the family cottage for the first time in three years, a chance to see my parents again, my aunt, uncle and cousins—one of whom was getting married—and to see how much the youngest ones in the family had grown…walking, talking, reading…the oldest one mastering the art of tuning out every perpetually annoying adult to text SOS messages to friends. Evan was flying to New Mexico two days later to see friends and family. We’re still in the early stages of our relationship so it still feels odd balancing a feeling of looking forward to seeing familiar places and faces while dreading our own time apart. I should replace dreading—such a twenty-something’s overly dramatic word choice—with a healthier, more evolved description such as being inconvenienced. It would have made this paragraph more concise, to boot. Alas, this is me—wordy and not all that evolved.

 

Evan was present when I did test positive. I was holding him in my hand, his voice and image showing up on my phone screen as we FaceTimed. I’d taken too long getting back to him Tuesday evening after I said I was going to take another COVID test. My energy level had dropped significantly during the day, I had a headache and my other symptoms seemed to be spiking. I tried to will positive thoughts about testing negative. I wondered how Evan would respond after he realized what a hypochondriac I was. Who feigns fever sweats? 

 

I delayed the test because one particular sign was especially hard to dismiss: I’d skipped exercising. I have an eating disorder. Exercise, doctors have told me, is my way of purging all the food I tell myself I shouldn’t have eaten on any given day. I have biked, jogged, swam, hiked or gone to the gym six days a week without fail for more than two and a half years. There are never acceptable excuses. Something was definitely up. So, yeah, Evan got on FaceTime and we waited for the timer to go off for me to check the test. I may have said, “Oh, shit,” but there was so much woven into that expression which I use so rarely. No cottage, no visit, no wedding, no gym time, no grocery shopping, no writing in cafés…and all of it without Evan. 

 

Yeah, yeah, we’d still have FaceTime. It was the responsible thing, even if he seemed to have COVID immunity for now since he’d gone through his own recent bout. It was practical since this is another reality of long-distance relationships. It was not sitting well at all.

 

I went decades with an automatic internal messaging system sounding the same embarrassing, wimpy, illogical alarm whenever I got sick: I WANT MY MOMMY! Rationally, I know there is no curative power that comes with either a bowl of chicken noodle soup or regular doses of “You poor thing!” Still, Sick Me secretly likes a little coddling when I’m unwell. As Adrienne learned all those years ago, friends can’t fill that ticket. Let the baton pass from mother to boyfriend. Dammit all, both of them are off enjoying their travels, each duly texting at least once a day: “How are you feeling? What are your symptoms?” The only difference is that my mother’s come with punctuation and emojis and Evan’s include selfies with him in yet another western outfit perfect for his time in New Mexico, his smile both a comfort and a menace.  

    

It’s Day 7 since that first positive test. I pulled out the last kit from box I got for free at the pharmacy and went through the routine yet again. “I’m fine,” I told myself. Symptoms? Not much more than pesky sniffles.

 

Positive again. 

 

All this positivity is 
stirring up negativity!

An hour later, I was sacked out on the couch, covered in a blankie, feeling exhausted while knowing a nap was utterly impossible as it’s been this whole week. (It has to do with my dang antidepressant meds.)

 

“I’m sick.”

 

I could’ve texted Evan but why? He’s hiking today. I’ll be treated to some great pics. Let this latest round of Woe Is Me pass. I may be missing out on one of those perks that’s supposed to come with having a boyfriend, but I’m positive Evan is one extremely lucky guy right now.