What would be another logical explanation?
Rapture, of course.
I swear, that’s always where my mind goes when someone’s completely missing from where they’re supposed to be.
There’s no cashier behind the counter at the bakery?
Rapture.
No one’s answering the phone at the hairdresser?
Rapture.
My package didn’t arrive from UPS when it was supposed to?
Rapture.
Okay, I need to admit something you may have already suspected. There’s a small glitch in my Matrix sometimes. While I pride myself on embracing reason, on making rational judgments, this is not my default mode.
My default mode trends towards paranoid delusion, with a side of religion-based bugfuckery. I have to work really hard to override some of my original programming so I don’t automatically leap to batshit, monkey-dick, banana-sandwich insane conclusions every moment of my life.
The problem, from what I’ve come to understand, is all about neural pathways. These neural pathways are how the nerve impulses travel – basically they’re what connects the whole brain together, kind of like an interstate system. When we’re young, these neural pathways are still forming. The paths get deeper and more defined the more the information travels down them, like a knee-jerk reaction. And mine was forming during a particularly stupid era of in my life, namely Sundays during seventh grade.
I can thank the fundamentalist Baptist church I was forced to attend for the default-to-assuming-everyone’s-being-Raptured-without-me neural pathway business. They ingrained the Rapture in me, but good. I’m talking All Rapture, All the Time.
[It’s germane to note that my Sunday school classroom was located at the top of a rickety, narrow wooden staircase in a room that always smelled of methane gas. With its singular door and complete lack of windows, to me, holding classes in this death trap was truly an act of faith.]
Every week, I’d hear about the inevitable Rapture. My teacher explained the Lord was going to come for the true believers, and they’d be spirited away to His home in the sky, leaving nothing behind but their shoes. The chosen would float up into the Heavens while all the sinners were left on earth to perish in a lake of fire.
I had a lot of questions about this, especially at first, having come from an unremarkable Methodist church in New Jersey.
First, why just leave the shoes? That part bothered me. Also, what if really good people didn’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, say, they were a different religion, or they lived in Africa and were unfamiliar with JC’s playlist full o’ miracles? But what if they were still nice to kids and dogs and other grown-ups, and did a lot of awesome things for the world? Why couldn’t they be Raptured, too? The Methodists taught me that Jesus wasn’t the type to exclude others from the party based on a technicality; he’d bring enough cupcakes for the whole class. In my opinion, he seemed like a cool dude, like he’d “get it.” Why did the Rapture have to be the last chopper out of Saigon?
My teacher would answer each question the same way, saying, “Because that’s how the Rapture works.”
Honestly, I suspected said teacher was full of shit, but I didn’t want to not believe, lest I be left on earth with all the rest of the suckers still walking around in their sinful shoes.
It was a dilemma.
When my class wasn’t actively discussing the specifics of the Rapture, we’d scour our scripture for clues that might give us the exact date for the Rapture so it wouldn’t catch us when we were in the shower. That would be embarrassing.
Once after a Bible-based, Rapture Easter egg hunt, my Sunday school teacher held up his brick-sized Texas Instruments calculator, explaining how the devil was most likely going to come to us through it.
[Holy shit, is this why I’m afraid of math?]
He punched out 6-6-6 on the digital display, the Mark of the Beast. The squared-off numerals had an evil red glow about them. Then my teacher nodded knowingly.
I clamped shut my smart lips, not daring ask if “Shell Oil” and “Boob” were also the Devil’s handiwork, as they could be spelled on the calculator, too.
Occasionally, my teacher would suggest we burn all the rock records that had backward masking on them, but these plans were nebulous at best. We never did have that big, Satanic bonfire. I guess if you’re going to be brainwashed by a zealot, it’s better if he has a bit of a lazy streak.
Before I was finally able to talk my way out of having to attend Sunday school, I learned we’re all eventually, “Going to have microchips implanted under our skin so we can be controlled by the Trilateral Commission. Mind you, they’re orchestrated by the Masons.”
Our teacher pulled out a dollar bill so he could show us the Mason’s symbol on one, you know, as proof. He explained how all these men of power met under this gigantic mountain in Colorado. I recall being bothered, less because this happened, and more because my teacher insisted there were no women of power.
Looking back, I suspect the church’s gas leak was more problematic than any of us realized.
[I should also mention that in addition to teaching Sunday school, this guy taught at my middle school. I was exposed to his philosophy six days a week. While sometimes I exaggerate for comedic effect, unfortunately, this isn’t one of those times.]
What’s even more messed up is that I sometimes attended services with my Pentecostal friend, where everyone spoke in tongues, literally convulsing when filled by the Holy Spirit. Worshippers weren’t allowed to trim their hair, wear pants, or watch television, either. By comparison? My Baptists seemed as insipid and vanilla as the Methodists we’d left behind in New Jersey, like so many pair of abandoned shoes
The point is that my head was filled with some bizarre shit during formative times, so some of my neural pathways shortcut to dead ends. Occasionally, these misfires cause me to take an illogical leap.
[Put a pin in this; it’s about to become important.]
Anyway, I doubt Fletch has been Raptured. There’s no way he’s getting Raptured before me. I’m the better person. I’m the bringer of coffee, the maker of treats. The rescuer of pets. If karma were a game, I’d have the higher cumulative score. Regardless, something has clearly happened to him and I must figure it out. Whatever it is, I’ll just roll with it.
That’s when I spot him through the kitchen window, out there sniffing around the fir tree.
Okay, this is not what I expected, not at all, but I knew something odd was afoot. I knew it! He circles the tree, eyeing it up and down, tiptoeing around it on little cat feet, probably because he doesn’t want to alert the city he’s going to whack down a tree without the proper permit. Scofflaw! I can tell by the tilt of his head he’s doing geometry right now, just trying to figure out a way to fell this thing.
Again, he’s not in a state I ever expected to find him, but at this point, it’s as good an explanation as any. Plus, Hamlet didn’t say, “There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” just ‘cause it made him sound deep. He meant sometimes phenomena occur that can’t be explained by what’s taught in books. Stuff can happen outside of the norm. Weird stuff. Inexplicable stuff. Stranger Things stuff.
I leave Libby indoors, grabbing the Starbucks cup, the contents long since gone tepid. I head out the sliding glass door, passing through the fence and into the driveway. I walk to the end where the tree looms, casting a spindly shadow, its few remaining needles brown and dry.
He watches me as I approach.
“I have no idea how this happened to you, but we’re just going to accept it,” I say. Frankly, I think it’s awfully cool on my part.
Christian, even.
He looks at me dead-on, but says nothing. I catch him glance at the tree out of the corner of his eye.
“All this and you still can’t can stop thinking about cutting this thing down yourself? Yes, you’re good at home improvement stuff, and, sure, you
did an outstanding job replacing the water heater, even though it took longer than expected. I lived without hot water while you figured it out, I lived with the pirate baths. Did I complain? No. But this is different. And you can’t say it’s not, literally.”
His gaze is intense, his left eye ever so slightly more squinty than the right. This is the look he always gives me when he’s thinking.
Am I getting through to him?
I press on. “Number one, holding onto a winch supporting a downed tree is like carrying a million grocery bags at the same time. Number two, considering how much trouble I have getting you to bring in one grocery bag, I can’t imagine you with one million of them concurrently. Number three, you can’t do a goddamned thing without thumbs. So, please, just come inside.”
I start walking towards the house but all his feet stay planted.
“Really? You’re just gonna stand here? And, what? Let the coyotes get you?”
Okay, I am not playing his cat and mouse games.
“Let’s go.”
Nope. He doesn’t say it aloud; his look conveys this for him.
“Then guess what, you’re coming in, like it or not,” I say, bending down to scoop him up.
Behind me, I hear Fletch say, “Do not bring another animal into this house, we are full-up. No room at the inn.”
I drop the black cat I’ve just grabbed. He scuttles up the fir tree. I’m completely flummoxed. “Wait, what? Where did you come from?” I ask.
He holds up a machete. “I was cutting brush in the woods out front. So, hey... why are you standing here arguing with a cat?”
“Because I thought he was you!” I shout. “I thought you’d somehow been, I don’t know, turned into a cat.”
He mulls this over for a moment, studying my expression to see if I’m joking. I’m not. “Why would I have been turned into a cat?”
“Because that’s how the Rapture works!”
He nods and holds the machete closer. In a mild tone, he says, “Sure, yeah, in no way does that sound crazy.”
I try to explain, “You were missing. I was starting to panic because it was so weird to not have you here and I looked everywhere.”
“You didn’t look in the front yard.”
I exhale hard and my breath comes out in a white plume. “Fine, I looked everywhere but the woods in the front yard, where you’ve never been once, never, ever. Then I saw the cat out the kitchen window. I noticed that he has your posture, he did that squinty left eye like you do and he was glowering the fir tree you hate. I figured something super-fucky and Stranger Things and post-apocalyptically inexplicable had happened and that you had turned into a cat. Then I thought, ‘I should get my husband inside before a coyote eats him.’ I was trying to be considerate.”
“The fact that you weren’t trying to pet-hoard actually disturbs me more.”
I cross my arms over my chest, still holding the cup, saying nothing in response.
He continues. “You honestly thought I turned into a cat. You couldn’t find me and your first thought was that I turned into a cat.” Then he full-out starts laughing at me, I’m talking big guffaws, with fat, wet tears rolling down his face.
“The more you laugh, the more insulted I am. It made sense in my head. I should have just left you, but, no. I’m considerate. I do nice things for you all the time, including saving you from coyotes.”
“Saving me because I was a cat. Because it’s the only logical explanation.” He blots at his damp cheeks with his sleeve. That’s when he notices the Starbucks cup in my hand. “Hey, is that coffee for me?”
I glance down, tightening my grip.
“No.”
FLETCH’S LAST WORD:
No one ever died from two days of taking sponge baths.
Net savings on DIY water heater = $1,200.
I’m not gonna justify the rest of this nonsense.
Twelve
No Cause For Alarm
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
- Albert Einstein
“I’m officially going to kick a lung out of someone. I don’t know who, and I don’t know when. But it’s going to happen.”
Fresh from another scale-based failure, I am pissed. Trainer Brett pales a bit, takes a step back from me, slightly nervous. I don’t blame him. I’d be afraid of me now, too. “Should we work on throwing things?”
“That might be for the best,” I tell him. He hands me a fifteen-pound neoprene bag filled with sand and I start with slams. The sound of the sack hitting the floor reverberates throughout the whole gym. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
That does feel a bit better.
I’ve been gaining weight, ever so slowly, yet ever so steadily. Not huge amounts, just a pound here, then a pound there. This is not like previous times in my life when I’ve been all, “I’m beefing up and I have no idea why!” when I knew goddamned well it was because I was eating my feelings.
Also, pie.
Then I’d run to a place like Jenny Craig, take no ownership whatsoever, and be disappointed when I didn’t have a magical transformation after complying for a day or two.
I first assume I’m seeing a difference in the scale because of muscle, but muscle isn’t squishy. Muscle doesn’t dimple. Muscle doesn’t collect in the no-man’s land between the bra straps and the arm crease. [Back fat is the WORST.] Muscle doesn’t make buttoning my skinniest shorts an exercise in futility.
That’s some bullshit right there, because I’m at the gym all the time. I recognize everyone who comes anytime between nine and noon on the weekday. I even know the jerk who talked about how fat people should put tape over their mouths during my first run at Lose to Win two years ago. This past year? In January, when the people who’d made resolutions were hogging up all the good machines for the first two weeks of 2017? He and I exchanged a glance and we rolled our eyes together, like, “Can you believe this shit?”
[Hey, look at that! I finally got picked first in gym class and now I’m co-captain... of Team Asshole.]
So, putting on so much as a pound without having changed any of my habits for the worse? No. Hell, no.
Fortunately, I am the data queen. After the first few pounds creep on, I commence logging into MyFitnessPal. Instead of rounding down, like the calories don’t count if I don’t commit them to spreadsheet, I round up, overestimating them. I pay attention to my macros. I balance my carbs and proteins and fats. I tweak my percentages. I exclude my caloric burn from my daily counts, too, to see if that makes a difference. I buy a food scale and measure everything.
[I previously learned my eyeballs are notorious liars. They’d be, like, “Nah, bro, that brick sized slab o’ Manchego is an ounce, max!”]
After years of bad habits, I’ve messed up my metabolism, so I lose super-slowly. I accept this. When I participated in Lose to Win in 2016, one year post-Achilles, I worked out twenty-plus hours a week and limited my calories to sixteen hundred per day. I felt like all I did for six weeks was wash gym clothes and complain about sore glutes.
[I kept asking Fletch to walk on my butt, dig in with his feet. He would not. I’m still salty about it.]
My total loss was somewhere around twelve pounds. Sure, I’d have liked to have lost more, but I gave it my very best effort.
Those twelve pounds have since returned.
Fuckers.
When Trainer Brett goes on vacation, I work with Trainer Aaron, a perfect human physical specimen. He body-builds on the side, but not in the veiny/gross/mutant weight class, just the super-buff one. He’s someone you’d look at and say, “I bet he could carry a safe up nine flights of stairs!” and not “Can’t guess how many steroids are coursing through his bloodstream right now, so Imma back away slowly.”
During our session, Aaron asks me about my diet. I tell him what I eat in a typical day. He says he’d like to see me rely more on real food, and less on Quest bars. Instead of grabbing a protein bar for breakfast,
he suggests I try egg white omelets, packed full of vegetables. I do it his way.
When I still don’t see the scale performing heading in the right direction, I buy a heart rate monitor. No, not a Fitbit, either. Fitbits are bullshit. Fitbits exist for the sole purpose of selling Fitbits. Fitbits are the participation prizes of health monitoring. I’ve had a Fitbit, as well as a Jawbone. I’m pretty sure they both counted my M & M hand-to-mouth action as steps. “You got in ten thousand steps today!” my devices would cry in congratulations. Sure did! Ten thousand delicious steps. My new monitor is the no-nonsense kind that straps around the chest and measures actual heart performance; it’s supposed to be the most accurate.
I find the harder I try, and the more data I record, the fewer results I have. Fasting? Nothing. Cutting calories? Nada. More weights? More pain. Also, more gain.
I’m mad at myself for being mad at myself for getting heavier, even though it’s not that much. While I absolutely believe you/I/we are worthy at any size, I'm happier being healthier. I full-on cabbage-patched that day in my doctor’s office when he said I was through with high blood pressure pills. Because I did that. Myself. Through discipline and effort. Then I may or may not have pulled off my shirt, flexed, and told him to, “Check out the gun show.”
[He can’t tell you, either. Hippocratic oath and all.]
I’m bugged because higher numbers on the scale equate to less healthy, at least in my head. Plus, I like all the fringe benefits that come with getting smaller. I like wearing sleeveless shirts for the first time since 1994. I like not having to pack a seatbelt extender when I fly. I like not telling a tremendous lie on my driver's license. I like buying workout tanks with pithy sayings on them, such as ‘Oh, my quad, Becky, look at her squat.’
Stories I'd Tell in Bars Page 16