[Hell's Bells and Angel Hair.]
A lonely life, this. 4:07 AM does not caress my baby-oil-scented skin quite like it used to; old flames eventually do burn out when untended, uncared for, left to linger, smolder, alone with a throat sore from bonfire smoke. Thus the entire hour of 4 AM has a sharp chip on her cold shoulder and I am left bewildered with lukewarm watered-down tea and the disturbing suspicion that my thighs have expanded overnight, yes, they have, I spy with my little eye one thigh two thigh an inch here an inch there, pinch it, see it, yes, the fat, that was not there before like that, the panic is a stuffy closet smelling of mothballs and I pass out in a claustrophobic frenzy wake up with dust on my eyeballs and a hangover from plotting too much, thinking too hard, knowing in my groggy state (a swing state) only this: Adderall caffeine nicotine and pure adrenaline must, as always, save me from this cellulite hell.
And more alarming still than the visible growth the Jell-O that jiggles outside its designated mold is the earliness and the ease with which it crept. December is when I gain my seven or eight pounds of winter flab; it is not quite November and already I am well-padded like an over-enthusiastic football player on third string destined to warm the bench all season nursing a bottle of warm, unneeded Gatorade the uncanny electric blue of a neon sign.
I am perplexed as to how the fat stuck fast to my ass over six weeks in advance while I've been canvassing said ass off. How can this be? I have steadily maintained a weight eight pounds lower than my average dead-end 140. I have walked for over three consecutive hours five to six days a week - at work alone - all this time, and the fat somehow wasn't burned off? Maybe it's the booze.
Simply dipping into the crazy pool has turned my mind from its cryptic muddled mess of disconnected wires into a data sheet lined with rows and columns charting calorie intake versus calories burned as I attempt to make sense of this premature failure. And what twists my stomach tightest is the realization that come next Wednesday I will more than likely have to seek exercise of my own prerogative, meaning that I will more than likely sit like a fat raisin on a stick of celery, stuck there with the sticky peanut butter that tastes too much like the salt collecting, crusting over in the corners of eyes weathering the storm, the torrent of brackish water that floods down unsuspecting cheeks. Stuck there, wishing I could believe in somebody else's perception of me.
Falling asleep as I type despite the massive amounts of revision and response-writing ahead. Two hours or so to complete it, and then to the printer I must go, and to Hard Times, perhaps, for an early morning fast-breaker. Or perhaps the fast shall go undisturbed, unbroken, a fast like glass too ornate and too thick to be shattered by the bloody-knuckled fist of hunger. Polaroid of Nick turned out nice keeps catching my eye, one eye, the one still awake while the left eye shuts down for the evening, a proper droid like C3PO, sensible to take advantage of shelter from sand creatures.
And more alarming still than the visible growth the Jell-O that jiggles outside its designated mold is the earliness and the ease with which it crept. December is when I gain my seven or eight pounds of winter flab; it is not quite November and already I am well-padded like an over-enthusiastic football player on third string destined to warm the bench all season nursing a bottle of warm, unneeded Gatorade the uncanny electric blue of a neon sign.
I am perplexed as to how the fat stuck fast to my ass over six weeks in advance while I've been canvassing said ass off. How can this be? I have steadily maintained a weight eight pounds lower than my average dead-end 140. I have walked for over three consecutive hours five to six days a week - at work alone - all this time, and the fat somehow wasn't burned off? Maybe it's the booze.
Simply dipping into the crazy pool has turned my mind from its cryptic muddled mess of disconnected wires into a data sheet lined with rows and columns charting calorie intake versus calories burned as I attempt to make sense of this premature failure. And what twists my stomach tightest is the realization that come next Wednesday I will more than likely have to seek exercise of my own prerogative, meaning that I will more than likely sit like a fat raisin on a stick of celery, stuck there with the sticky peanut butter that tastes too much like the salt collecting, crusting over in the corners of eyes weathering the storm, the torrent of brackish water that floods down unsuspecting cheeks. Stuck there, wishing I could believe in somebody else's perception of me.
Falling asleep as I type despite the massive amounts of revision and response-writing ahead. Two hours or so to complete it, and then to the printer I must go, and to Hard Times, perhaps, for an early morning fast-breaker. Or perhaps the fast shall go undisturbed, unbroken, a fast like glass too ornate and too thick to be shattered by the bloody-knuckled fist of hunger. Polaroid of Nick turned out nice keeps catching my eye, one eye, the one still awake while the left eye shuts down for the evening, a proper droid like C3PO, sensible to take advantage of shelter from sand creatures.