by Dave Hill
I was driving back to my parents’ house during one of my visits to Cleveland a few years ago when I turned to my mother and said, “Mind if we stop at the grocery store on the way home? I wanna pick up some ice cream.”
“You don’t look like you need ice cream,” she replied, staring at the road ahead.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. It just seems like you might not need ice cream. That’s all.”
At the time I figured my mom was just being a jerk for some reason, maybe even for the fun of it, so I really didn’t give her words much thought beyond that. Shortly after the ice-cream incident, however, I began paying closer attention to the comments section of some videos I had posted on YouTube.
“Who is this fucking fatass?” one read.
“This guy is a fat fucking douchenozzle,” read another. “LOL!”
“Shut up, you stupid fat shit,” read a third. “Also, are you an asshole? Because you seem like you might totally be a major asshole. Oh, and one more thing: suck it.”
There wasn’t much I could do about the YouTube commenters’ opinions about my being an asshole aside from maybe showing up at their homes and doing something inexplicably nice for them, like mowing their lawn or presenting them with a Bundt cake, two things I both have no time for and also refuse to do. Still, I realized that when it comes to the truth, there is almost no one you should trust more than your own mother and a handful of totally anonymous Internet commenters, so I decided it was time to examine the situation a bit more closely.
I headed into the bathroom, stripped myself as bare as I could talk myself into, let the fluorescent light have its way with me for a moment, and then took a good hard look at myself in the mirror. As it turned out, my mother and all those Internet people were right. I seemed to have settled into what I like to think of as a “festive build,” the kind that comes not necessarily from eating fast food every single meal of the day or anything, but just from simply saying yes to life and also just about any food or drink that is set in front of you any time ever and never really getting around to working it off.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d weighed myself, but stepping on the scale and seeing the little arrow race past 190 seemed like uncharted territory and significantly more than when I’d last done it. I remember my grandfather telling me when I was a kid that he weighed a rock-solid 190 pounds when he was in the Army. But as I stood in front of the mirror, my pale and freckled flab bathed in harsh light, the phrase “military build” didn’t come to mind. To be fair, “fat fucking douchenozzle” didn’t come to mind, either, but if I had to go with one of the two, I guess that would have been it.
Despite confirming both my mother’s and the YouTube commenters’ suggestion that I had officially become plus-size, the real wake-up call came when I put on one of my suits and found that it was much more formfitting than I remembered. As I stood there in what had somehow become a tiny little suit with buttons threatening to shoot across the room like bullets, blinding any and all in their path, it occurred to me that a lot of my other clothes seemed to be shrinking lately, too. I crunched the numbers and realized I simply couldn’t afford to update my wardrobe to accommodate my good-times-all-the-time lifestyle. It would be much cheaper to just lose a few pounds.
Despite the harsh realization that it was time to lose some weight, I also knew that quitting beer, ice cream, cookies, and other things I like to keep on the nightstand was out of the question. I’m not a goddamn crazy person. And some days I feel like that stuff is all I really have in life, so I decided I would instead just try to eat healthy when the sun was out, sort of a vampire diet, I suppose, only, instead of human blood, any food I happened upon after dark was fair game. It seemed like a solid plan.
“This is going to be right up there with the Atkins Diet once word gets around,” I thought proudly.
With my new, really strict diet in place, I began to address what I was told the other key ingredient to weight loss was—exercise, something I had done my best to avoid since the late ’80s. Since I knew I couldn’t count on myself to be disciplined enough on my own, I went all out and joined a gym. Not only would it make me commit to actually showing up somewhere and working out a couple of times a week, but it would also give other people the chance to see a man without limits in fucking action. It seemed selfish to keep that sort of thing to myself, and I couldn’t wait to inspire everyone around me with my awesome commitment to fitness. To gear up for things, I bought some of those athletic pants that make that swishy sound when you walk around in them. I wasn’t messing around. I looked pretty cool in them, too.
“Enjoy your workout,” the lady at the front desk told me at the gym after I checked in for the first time.
“No, you enjoy my workout,” I felt like telling her.
This shit was going to be epic. No muscle group would be left unattended. I figured I’d probably get asked to do my own instructional fitness video before long.
“Hi, I’m Dave Hill, and if you want to look as incredible in really tight pants as I do, then let’s get to work!” I imagined myself saying to the camera as a half dozen superfoxes in skimpy spandex stood behind me, bracing themselves for the killer yet sexy workout ahead.
As it turned out, however, the only thing I could really get myself to do with any frequency was use the elliptical machine. It’s a little on the dainty side as far as gym equipment goes, but it does promise a full-body workout right there on the machine and, perhaps more important, I once read that Jennifer Aniston uses it.
I made the elliptical machine my bitch a couple of times a week like clockwork for several months and largely credit it for helping me achieve the just slightly less doughy look I was totally going for. It’s a highly effective tool and if you don’t believe me you can ask Jennifer Aniston, a major Hollywood star who knows what it’s like to look great all the time, just like this guy.1 The only thing I don’t like about it is at the end when it gives you a “workout summary.” Instead of giving me a bunch of numbers I don’t understand, I wish it would instead make me feel good about myself by telling me how bangable I am or something. Or maybe it could just be straight with me for a change. Just once when the workout summary comes up, I’d like to see it say, “Look, Dave, clearly you had a lot to drink last night. But don’t worry, no one is judging you. There’s only so many hours of the day you can sit around in your underwear before you start to feel like having eight or ten drinks and then maybe eating a pint of ice cream and staying up until 2:00 A.M. looking at pictures of largely unattainable women on the Internet. In fact, if you factor in all of that stuff, the fact that you even showed up here today is pretty impressive. Now go hit the showers, you gorgeous and totally unpathetic man!” The technology to make that sort of thing possible is probably decades away, but I can still dream.
As fond as I was of the elliptical machine, however, it wasn’t long before I started to find going to the gym to be more annoying than going to the post office, then going to the DMV, and then having to go back to the post office because you forgot to mail a couple of things the first time. For starters, as best I can tell gyms are legally required to play the Black Eyed Peas at all times, which, despite the fact that I am sometimes genuinely looking to get a party of some sort started, is more than I can bear. Also, there’s too many damn rules at the gym: no cell phones, no cameras in the showers, no incorporating glitter into my workout.
“If they’re going to be dicks like that, why even show up?” I thought.
Lucky for me, I found a solution to my gym problem a couple of years ago when my friend Walter asked me to play guitar on a two-week tour of Europe with his band. Since I am even more incredible at playing the guitar than I am at the elliptical machine, I said yes. And while two weeks isn’t a particularly long time to be on the road rocking people in America, in Europe it can be a lot to handle, mostly because of the catering. As opposed to America, where you’re lucky if you get a six-pac
k and an already opened bag of pretzels, European clubs usually have a bounty of food worthy of ten Thanksgivings laid out for you as soon as you show up for sound check, and then a whole other spread of food, so big you’d think you were crashing a Russian wedding, served later for dinner. As if all that’s not enough, the dressing room is usually stocked with enough alcohol to satisfy Andre the Giant on a week-long bender. It’s as if they are actually happy to have the bands come play at their club or something. Seriously, it’s kind of weird.
After just a few days of eating, drinking, and rocking Europe into what I was pretty sure was total oblivion, I realized my bandmates would probably find my lifeless body one morning during the tour if I didn’t do something to counter the effects of all those cheese plates, mini chocolate bars, and other stuff us rockers tend to ingest in massive doses because we think we’re going to live forever. But with my gym having no branches in the area, I figured I was screwed (albeit screwed in that way that’s kind of a relief because you know you have an excuse to not work out at all). Then one day while in St. Gallen, Switzerland, Walter, a much thinner and handsomer man than I will ever be, even with the help of the medical community, got an idea.
“Hey, Dave,” he said. “You want to go for a run with me after sound check?”
Generally speaking, I had tried to avoid running most of my life unless I was being chased by Nazis or something, which—to be fair—has yet to happen. I’ve always found running to be hard, boring, and just really sucky in general—three things I am generally opposed to in life. Still, nothing sucks entirely when you’re doing it in Switzerland, one of the few places I’ve ever been that turned out to be just as adorable and idyllic as it looks on postcards and those little packets of hot chocolate mix. There are little gingerbread-looking houses everywhere, goats running around, little flower patches I can barely keep myself from diving right into—it pretty much has everything.
Since I had a pair of running shoes with me (mostly just for the look) and I’m incapable of turning down either physical challenges or shots of whiskey despite my utter disdain for both, I decided to meet Walter in front of the club for what I was told was going to be a “light jog.”
We began our “light jog” by making our way first through the cobblestone streets of St. Gallen and then up into the hills that surround the town. I was ready to stop after the first few hundred yards, but whatever pride I have wouldn’t let me, so I kept running alongside Walter while doing my best to not look like I might die at any second. By the time we had run about a mile, however, I was ready to drop. But I realized I could never find my way back to the club on my own, so I had no choice but to just keep running with Walter despite the fact that I was certain I’d be riding in the back of a Swiss ambulance if all of this went on much longer. Still, I figured if anything really bad happened, Walter would have to take care of it—I was quite simply too good at guitar for him to let me die in the hills of Switzerland.
Much to my and his surprise, I managed to complete what ended up being about an hour-long run. And by the time we got back to the club, I felt like a champion, a really pathetic, beaten down champion who was about to lose control of all his bodily functions, but a champion nonetheless. If one of those low-budget movies where they use a raggedy old dummy to simulate throwing a human body off the top of a building happened to be filming in the area, I probably would have been kidnapped.
“Thanks, Walter,” I told him. “This was really great.”
At least the run had me sweating profusely for the next several hours, so I was still completely drenched by the time we hit the stage, which made even my guitar solos on the very first song look extra cool.
Against my better judgment, I went running with Walter again the next day and then the next couple of days after that through cities like Vienna, Munich, Berlin, and some of the other ones they have over there in Europe. At each new city I knew I had to keep running with Walter if I ever wanted to make it back in time to play the show. So my survival instinct kicked in and I would run through whatever pain, tears, and occasional blood loss came my way. I think you’re probably supposed to build up a bit more slowly than I did, but I decided to just run each day as far as Walter felt like dragging me. I have no idea how far we went each day, but I do know it usually lasted about an hour. And when we were done—despite still being worried that someone might try to throw me off the top of a building—I felt pretty great. Sometimes it was just because I was so relieved to simply not be running anymore, but I felt great nonetheless.
This is me in the hills of St. Gallen, Switzerland, going for a run for the very first time in my adult life. This is early in the run, before the tears.
Thanks to all that running I was doing, I felt better equipped to become the one-man Oktoberfest I had originally set out to be on the tour. I ate and drank as much as I wanted each night. And while all that eating and drinking definitely made it harder to go running, I knew I’d feel great once the run was over, so I just powered through. Plus, if I didn’t go running, I wouldn’t be able to fit into any of my stage outfits, so I had no choice by then.
When the tour was finally over, I was pretty destroyed. I could sleep off all that alcohol and maybe even some of the bratwurst, but after going from never running at all to running an hour each day for two weeks straight I could barely walk. I decided I had to take a break for a couple of weeks or my legs might have snapped in two. Eventually, however, I was ready to rise like a Phoenix and take to the streets again.
Having regained use of my legs, I went to one of those fancy running stores where they videotape you running and tell you how you need to spend a couple of hundred dollars in their store if you ever expect to be able to run properly.
“Yeah, you’re gonna need some prrrretty special shoes if you hope to keep this up,” the guy at the running store told me.
Since I already had the swishy pants, I figured I might as well throw down on some decent running shoes, maybe even magical ones, and bought a really fancy pair that made me look like I was even better at running than I actually was.
Since I bought my super professional, space-age running shoes, I have gone running several times each week. Without Walter there to convince me that I might die or at least get beaten up by a roving street gang if I even stopped for a breather every once in a while, it was a little hard at first, especially since I live in New York City and tend not to get lost very often, even when I’m several blocks from my home. But eventually I just decided that every time someone on the street yelled for some reason or a car horn went off in the vicinity, that it was people cheering me on, and that was enough to keep me going as I high-fived anyone who would let me.
As it turns out, running is even better than the elliptical machine as far as making me feel great afterward and helping me get rid of that doughy flab even faster. A nice run seems to release a level of endorphins (the science behind “runner’s high” I’m told). And making my way through the streets of wherever I happen to be at the moment provides much better stimulus than watching some exercise machine’s LED display mock my every move until I finally give it the finger and head for the door. It’s also a good time to do some thinking about, I dunno, whatever you want really.2
Aside from all the stuff I just mentioned though, I have to admit that I absolutely hate everything else about running. I hate the outfits (cool swishy pants aside), I hate the amount of time it eats up out of my day, and, most of all, I hate the actual act of running, the part where you have to put one foot in front of the other over and over and over again.
A very close second, however, is other runners. Unfortunately they are impossible to avoid. Even during a rainstorm or a blizzard or even the middle of the night, there always seems to be at least one other bastard out there who’s got the same idea as I do. I see them from afar, panting and padding their way down the street, easily recognizable by their ridiculous attire (none of them dress as cool as I do). They usually go with some combination
of criminally short shorts, an absurdly tight spandex garment, and a hat that makes them look like they’ve accepted a dare. They usually spot me from about fifty yards away as we come toward each other. At about fifty feet, they start to try to make eye contact and then, when they’re finally right upon me, they give me the look, the one that says, “Hey, look at us! We’re both running! You and me! We have something in common! We’re part of the same club! We’re runners! Yeah! Let’s keep on running! It’s what guys like us do!”
And to that I just think, “Calm the fuck down, sunshine! It’s great that you’re running and all, but let’s get something straight—you are not my buddy, mister! I hate running and, the more I think about it, I hate you. I am completely miserable right now, and I’m not looking to bond with you over the fact that we’re both hurdling down the street, barely hanging on for life. I’m just trying to get this over with, not revel in the experience with some bastard in quasi-athletic hot pants.”
Trying to bond with someone over running, to me, is like trying to bond with someone in a truck stop restroom. Imagine I’m making a mad dash for the toilet, about to lose control of all of my bodily functions, and—just as I’m about to sequester myself inside the nearest stall—I stop and try to make some sort of brotherly connection with another guy who’s about to redecorate the place with the contents of his intestines if he doesn’t keep it together.