Gut feeling

Here's the weirdest thing to happen to me during the pandemic, thus far.

I still have a landline, the same number I've had now for probably 25 years. I don't check it as often as I should, but it comes in handy for emergencies and international calls (Holly, I'll call you in about 9 hours!). I checked my messages tonight, and...there was one from a weight-loss prepackaged food clinic emporium, the one that rhymes with Denny Plague in this case. A local storefront I'd never been to; the manager greeted me by name, hoped to get to know me better.

I have struggled with my body and my body image as long as I can remember, since long before I had anything to worry about on that front. The first time I remember seeing myself in a photo and thinking "ugh, fat," I was six years old. So when the weight-loss industrial complex really kicked off in the 80s and 90s, I was in. I tried pretty much any of them you can name. Canisters of shake powder three times a day and "a sensible dinner." Public weigh-ins and video classes that advised me to park further away from my destination. A Xeroxed diet that purported to be from "the Heart Association," given to me by a beloved middle-school teacher, where you exclusively ate certain foods on specific days of the week. Day 4, I remember, was skim milk and bananas, nothing else. The incredibly expensive but at least medically sound Fat Club program at my old Fancy Gym. Couch to 5K. Richard Simmons had his own show for a while, and I watched that with my mother. Oh, I did Denny Plague. At least twice. All of 'em worked, until they didn't. Until I just couldn't look at another beef-soy-blend burger puck, reconstituting itself in a little plastic tray (just add water!). Until I lost a job, got a job, quit a job, went back to school, graduated. Until my dad died and screw it, comfort me with apples, ideally in a crisp. Put some ice cream on it, because this is a short ride. I can't tell you how much money I spent on DiEt PrOgRaMs over 30 years. Ten grand? Twenty?

The last time I was a Denny Plague regular must have been about the year 2000, because I can remember starting my first contract role at Microsoft, and trying to socialize during a team lunch...while microwaving a branded can of about six tortellini in an abundance of too-sweet tomato sauce. So, it's been two decades. In that time, I've learned to cook, gotten more active than I ever imagined being, and made peace with my body, with the awareness that if I am stronger and lighter, things hurt a lot less. I didn't know Denny Plague still existed, frankly. I certainly haven't said its name three times in a mirror, or in front of my iPhone or Mark Zuckerberg. I believe the location I went to, two decades ago, has been torn down.

But my name, and my phone number, and Polaroids of my 30-year-old ass--which was definitely smaller than my current ass, as a matter of fact--are still in a file somewhere in their corporate headquarters. And someone, in 2020 pandemic-wrought, economically shattered Seattle, is trying to get me back on the books.

The even greater irony? I have...lost weight, during two months of isolating at home. About six pounds. I'm so thoroughly conditioned by the whole industry, by a lifetime of being told it should be HARD, and PUNISHING, and YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF, CHUBBS, that I'm embarrassed or ashamed or self-conscious to admit it, somehow. I see a lot of online fretting about gaining weight, in this unprecedented, stressful, miserable time, and I am right there with you, folks, baking reams of banana bread and mainlining cookies and cobbling together weird casseroles out of the pantry. I can only assume that it's the elimination of my daily mocha habit that's affecting the scale...that and my lack of access to the Snack Shelf at the office. The fact that grocery shopping is now a strategic, twice-monthly event for which I must mask up and schedule an appointment in an app if the place is too full. The way my total inability to adhere to a routine has me eating maybe two meals a day because what month even is it, man, and if I never wash another dish it will be too soon. (The dishwasher is running now, as I type. And the sink is full of "overload," so there will be more dish washing in my immediate future.)

I don't know where I was going with this. Just a strange, strange voicemail FROM THE PAST, to listen to late on a Saturday night. The old ways are gone. The old ways are right where you left 'em. The old ways would like you to come in for a consult, see if they can help you out with a 4-ounce can of tortellini. They can offer curbside pickup, so you don't die of the 'rona while you're starving in place.