Romance:From Fat To Fatale(6)
The forms were much less intimidating than the old doc's but Ricky Goldilocks still had to check my blood pressure. So he was suddenly confronted by the challenge of having to lay his perfectly manicured and polished fingertips upon my sausage arm and attach the pressure cuff. I caught him holding his breath - as if that would make the ordeal pass more quickly - and asked him if he knew any other uses for the cuff. From the blush that tinged his cheeks, my wild guess seemed to be right on the money.
Wondering how well they scrubbed the apparatus between conventional and un-conventional applications, I watched Ricky squeeze the bulb to check my blood pressure. His eyes got wider as the figures kept climbing. I thought this might be a good moment to ask if there was a prize for the highest score and he said - sure: first prize - a massive coronary and not too many people willing to risk mouth to mouth resuscitation. Second prize: you survive the coronary and spend the rest of your life in a hospital cot wearing a diaper and taking your food through a straw. Great! Just my luck to get a Shirley Temple look-a-like with acid wit and razor-edge repartee. He removed the cuff, shaking his head. I'm serious, he said. You've got blood pressure off the scale. When was the last time you had a proper physical?
I shook my head with my best little girl lost expression and pretended I couldn't remember. He drew in his breath as he packed away the pressure cuff, moved an imaginary hair out of his eyes and said he was really sorry but the gym couldn't accept me as a member. No, ma'am. The insurance didn't cover people with my weight and health issues. If I dropped off a walking machine and injured myself - or maybe even the building's foundations - I'd just sue the gym for every buck I could squeeze out of them. It was brutally fast - I was fired even before I was hired. Frankly, Ricky boy looked relieved. He was only obeying orders, following company policy and avoiding all future possibilities of having to exchange pleasantries with me across the wide expanse of the reception counter.
OK. So I didn't get much of an assessment apart from Ricky's withering, silent appraisal of my complete lack of dress sense. That's OK.
Really. I will survive. It seemed that the good Lord didn't want me to suffer the thousand indignities of being hidden in a dimly-lit corner of the health club and running the risk of a full-blown coronary whilst wearing those tightly-stretched, bargain basement gym pants. But maybe when I'd lost a few pounds and got the blood pressure somewhere below total nuclear meltdown levels, my prospects for survival would improve dramatically. And it was definitely time to get out of those ass-biting, crotch-creeping gym pants and breathe the sweet air of freedom. I just hoped the Chinese slave-labour-stitching would hold out at least till I got home. Eating supper with your dimpled, full moon ass hanging out the back of your ripped gym pants was
just so......now what word would Ricky Rick use? Ah, yes.
Of course. Inelegant!
The next step in the saga - and please bear in mind that not a word or hint of my intentions could ever be shared with my cholesterol-enhanced family - was to make an appointment with the nutritionist. This was going to be fraught with potential difficulties. Any change in the daily troughing routine would immediately sound alarm bells in Mama Bulgari's kitchen. She would instantly switch into Holy Inquisition mode, soup ladle waving ominously above her head, threatening to smite the unrighteous and all purveyors of untruths. It could be pretty daunting. Actually, it was pretty damn scary! You could almost hear the heavy-hinged gates of Purgatory opening up behind you, feel the heat of the pits of damnation singeing the blistering skin of your bared behind. If the Government ever found out about her interrogation techniques, Mama Bulgari could clear out and convert the guys in Guantanamo Bay in a couple of days. So I had to tread carefully.
Here I am, talking about food and nutritionists and the problems of being overweight and I was just wondering how your weight was shaping up.
I mean, on a scale of one to ten, where would you rank your body?
One would be the body of a stick insect with more bones than meat and the ideal silhouette to advertise pipe cleaners. Ten would be closer to my situation and the inspiration for airship design from a bygone age. So where are you? Are you happy with your current weight? Do you think you're too thin or maybe, like me, a little too much of the opposite? It's weird but too thin can be just as harmful as too fat. Did you know that? Yep. It's true. And no charge for the free educational insights.
Most of us wait until there's a health scare before we take any action to deal with our weight issues. OK. With me it was a mild case of vanity and a glut of negative reactions from the guys on campus. I guess I was hoping for a kindlier reaction from the young and virile gentlemen of the community. Fat chance. OK. So now you've made me open a whole new can of worms, haven't you? You just want to talk about guys, don't you? Boy oh boy. Guys. Yes, indeed. There, my dear friend, we surely do have a story or three. Do you want to hear how it all started? Well of course you do. All the sordid little details and a cherry on top for decoration? Anything to fulfill your wishes and keep you all happy smiles and purring along the way.
Chapter 5:
The Cocktail of Romance
My first real boyfriend had been in high school and he'd been really skinny and painfully shy. We both attended the school science club - or the nerd bank, as the jocks called it - and I figured we only got together because he was too scared to ask any of the regular-sized gals out for a date. Maybe the buck teeth and spectacles made him a little less alluring to the other gals. Who knows? So I made the running. A coke on the way home from school. An early Saturday evening movie, holding hands with sweaty palms during the scary parts. Slow walks back to the house, talking about the other losers in class, imagining our futures as daring astronauts or pioneering NASA physicists.