Ledger

The four-month “crystal” weight loss program…  It’s a concept not lost on most of lower-income Middle America.  The popular media presents them with an ideal body shape and style.  The combination of the two is a direct corollary.  If you are a certain weight and you wear the right things you will be happy.  Any relation like that is true according to, “them.”  The “them,” in this case, are the corporate fiends feeding off the pursuit of Middle America’s prescribed happiness.  It is this same happiness, those corporate fiends prescribe to Middle America every day.  See a circular pattern here?  I do.  Anyway, that’s not the point of this, it’s just another of the myriad causes of the end result and core of this narrative.

It was easy enough… Having reached the ripe age of twenty-five, I had very little activity in my life, I began to question (once again) my existence, I hated myself, I wanted to be beautiful and young, I “needed” to follow the current trends in fashion, I was what the teenagers said I was, I was experiencing a mid-life crisis.  I personally would prefer if they referred to it as an event, they can even designate the time period for me, it can be a mid-life event.  Really though, is it a crisis?  I think that rests with who’s interpreting the outcome and the drive.  So I wanted to get back to that point in my life where I was jamming to the clubs on Friday night, doing lines with friends Saturday night and eating a noon breakfast on Sunday.  How did we do that, the pace was unbearable.  College classes for some, forty-hour work weeks for others, either way it was non-stop partying when you could and for some, when you shouldn’t.

Let me see, how did we get to that point again…?  So I went out and had a couple martinis with my friends we reminisced about those earlier blunders.  It was innocent enough, then in mid sentence, I think it was something like this, “Yeah, remember doing lines off the back of a toilet upstairs at J.C. Dobbs and that woman was like balancing on the edge of the seat, one of those industrial u-shaped seats when all of a sudden it slipped and her knee went right in the shitter…”  “Hey, I have some meth in my freezer at home you wanna go do a bump?”  If your conversation ever goes down this path, believe me friend you should stand up and walk the fuck away.  Did I?  No, why do the prudent thing!  Why be the sensible person who knows his bounds and has lived long enough to not need this triviality.  It’s just like the damn Tupperware filled with Oreos in the cupboard, you’re the only one who can truly hear it calling your name.

Wait was that…  So, next thing I’m leaning over a glass coffee table with a rolled up twenty and a quickly melting line (if you can call it a line, it really has a tendency to turn to a runny, bird-shit looking glob at 89°F on a humid summer very-early morning).  “Should have smoked it,” my friend gags as he chokes back a vomiting sound.  Holy crap, what have I done.  Things are going way too fast right now maybe I’ll get up and walk around; can I clean your bathroom, organize your sock drawer, maybe we should talk about the socks that I have, I would really like to mention that I have a fine assortment of socks, even though your Asterix socks are pretty cool.  These are those trivialities that you warned yourself about right before you said, “That sounds like a great *hiccup* idea.”  Now you’re right smack in the middle of Yeah, I was hoping I could talk about me for a while and it’s ten minutes till that person is ready for that to happen.  Bad ideas are a dime a dozen for this jackass.

Was that really three months…  Now I’m looking in the mirror and eighty pounds are missing from the pimply specter looking back at me.  I never had this problem before, I always maintained never went “there”.  Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.  We should get our shit together and act like the adults most people try to pretend we are.  There’s got to be a more constructive way to have a mid-life event, maybe next time we can just adopt a new dog or cat or heaven’s sake don’t say it – get married and have kids?

Article Tools