Have you ever gotten someone a gift that you weren't sure they'd like? When you first saw it in the store, you thought it was the exact perfect gift for your friend. But as you stand there and see him opening the other gifts, all of which are exponentially better than yours and clearly make him happy, doubt starts creeping in. Your impenetrable bravado is crumbling as the seconds pass. But he's seen you, and seen the gift in your hands, so there's no backing out now.
You take a deep breath, gather all the courage you can, put on your best face, and hand the gift to your friend. He takes it with a huge grin, patting you on the shoulder and eagerly rips off the wrapping paper. All of a sudden, the grin is no longer natural. It's frozen in place for a second, the brow furrowed, before returning even bigger, bigger than any human grin has any right to be. He looks at you with that maniacal, unnatural grin, and in a voice a half octave higher than his usual voice, proclaims his love for the gift. Makes a big production of showing everyone, saying, "Hey, look at this great oven mitt Buddy got me."
He hated it. Because he is a good person, he will never tell you that. He will intransigently insist that he loves that damn oven mitt, uses it every day (even though you know the stove in his apartment has never been turned on.) He will tell you and everyone to stop, move on, he loves it. Except he didn't. You saw the face. Can't fake immediate reaction.
This is what sex is like for me.
As I've mentioned before, I look pretty damn good in clothes, and my friend Auden is helping me with my wardrobe and style. I do have a style, but 3 decades of draping myself in baggy, form concealing clothes have made it difficult to ascertain what that style exactly is. At any rate, I'll meet a guy, online or in person, and he'll think I'm kind of cute. We'll talk, get to know one another, and he'll think I'm really sweet. So sometimes we'll decide to retire to the boudoir. We'll be kissing, making out, getting more serious. I'll take off his shirt. All systems go. He'll take off my shirt.
The face.
It's happened with every man I've ever slept with, except one, but he's dead now. They look at the mess that is my midsection, a hanging, swaying paunch of residual fat and loose skin ravaged by stretch marks and cellulite. The only thing that could resemble it would be Droopy Dog's hanging jowls, if they were made of shorn scrotum instead of dog fur. They're usually (but not always) kind enough to hide the initial shock and horror, but you can still see that moment of assessment and appraisal, as though they're asking themselves if they can endure sex with me. Can they live with the grossness that would be sex with me?
I can't explain how much this hurts.
I can't blame these guys. The only reason I don't make the face every time I look in the mirror is that it isn't a surprise to me. I'm used to it. And I'm doing everything I can to improve the situation, but when you've had that gut all your life, there's only so much elasticity left in your skin, and only so much all the toning exercise and cocoa butter can do. And I certainly can't afford a tummy tuck, upwards of $9,000 in New York City, unless I monetize this page or start a 7th Tradition collection, and that would be just a bit tacky.
It's my albatross.
So I don't know. I keep chugging on because what are my options? Not chugging along? Relapse? Suicide? Neither of those are particularly appealing, for the either gratifying or needlessly irritating reason (not sure which yet) that I still have the tiniest nugget of hope that somehow this will get better. If there is one object lesson in my past 3 sober years, it's that when I have put in the work and acted honestly and forthrightly, things have always worked out for the best. So as much as I hurt right now, I have to hang on.
I don't really believe it right now, but there seem to be others who love me who do believe it. The saving grace of AA. I've been emotionally carried so many times that I can honestly say that the success in my life is not just my own. It's AA's. So I'm chugging.
No comments:
Post a Comment