So this lady in my seniors/exercise/weight loss and cardiac rehab class says to me during warm-up:
“Why, you’re just sooo graceful.”
To which I reply:
“Madam, sarcasm does not become you.”
Which was true because she was all puff ugly race walking at two miles per hour on a creaky old treadmill. After all, I’m pushing 70, and at 5 ft. 9 in. tip out on most beef-o-meters at a fat 280. This is not a prescription for longevity for a cardiac case but hey, what the hell, I get massive hungry and I already and long ago should have been seriously dead.
So what’s the point?
Book Review: Stephen King’s “11/22/63”
O.K., so this lady won’t let it alone and continues, “You just ought to take up ballet.” She purrs loudly, pounding her old whitebread droopy butt down on her tread that much harder.
“Not likely,” I says, “on account of I can’t buy the uniform.”
“Tutu?” she supplies.
“Yeah,” I says, “that’s the one.”
“Well,” she says, ever bright, ever helpful, “I can sew.”
And I go on gracefully as hell warming up. We’re on the dangle-your-butt-in-the-air exercises now, our trainer has a sense of whimsy, so I point the aperture of my own gas cannon right at her.
“Yessir,” she says, “I can sew.”
I can tell this sewing thing is her one talent of great pride.
So I rolls over into thrust-your- crotch-forward movements and thrust a little crotch her way because the whole ballet thing is getting to be too much and I am, of course, like my instructor constantly tells me to do, trying to communicate with my body and get in touch with the flow of my Chi it and breathe in and out and love the universe and think and enjoy. So I just in and out pump the air in front of my crotch like some demented teenager with an erection. Which is sad because then I remember times past when all hydraulics worked … Ah those were the good times. Now it seems I’ve stepped beyond even Viagra, unless of course I’m willing to go through serious medicine changes and most probably open heart surgery. Which seems a ludicrous price to pay for a few conjugal visits with some select old ladies. Face it, the lust-o-meter’s stuck at 50. Old ladies need not apply. Young ladies, however, if they happen to be about, and willing, are a whole other matter. One might bend to serious medicine changes for a crack at that. And even open heart surgery ain’t out of the question if the lady is a showgirl from Las Vegas, who just happens to love me. But all that’s long ago and probably in a foreign land.
“Material,” I says, “we’ll have to go to the tent and awning store to get that. I’m a fat person.”
“You said it, not me,” she chirps. I hate chirps. “But I was thinking it.”
Smug. Just smug.
“And what’s the odds they’ve got a few hundred yards of pink crinoline?” I ask.
“You never can tell,” she opines.
One opines if one is smug.
“Pink?” she quickly asks.
“Blue, maybe,” I say and recoup. “I look good in blue.”
The woman is relentless.
Now I continue: “You know, we got a 54 in. waist here and a 55 in. ‘B’ cup top, you know.”
“Oh,” she says just about falling off her tread, “So now we’re bragging.”
And by now, another woman whose also not communing with her body and who has also become bored with hip poking chimes in and adds: “Yes, so now we’re bragging we are.”
Look, one bad chime is worth two chirps, isn’t it?
“O.K., ‘A’ cup,” I says.
Damn nitpickers. Like how many tutus have they sized up for fat people?” And bra sizes? Hey, I haven’t a clue any more. Everything I’ve unwrapped lately falls down to the navel. Those old meat balloons don’t soar; they plunge like pool balls in tube socks and crash down on old stretch mark bellies. And then they hang there, these long thin sacks with hard bulbous dangly cue ball ends.
Ouch! Makes you shudder.
I still remember pert. Pert is good. I still remember nipples. Nipples are good. And I really remember pert hard upthrusted nipples. Droop is bad. Swinging droopy is badder. Swing droop dropping down on scarred bellies kills even Viagra. You just can’t hide everything.
Some images burn forever.
So I continue: “Can you sew it,” I ask, “given we get a few hundred yards of crinoline?”
Now we’re doing a popular breathing exercise entitled cat-coughing-up-his-fur-ball. And most of the class, minus treaders, are wheezing and sucking in air and barking and honking out and taking this noisy opportunity to expel flatus.
“Of course,” she says, and she goes on airily walking, even elevating her treadmill bed up to .5 inches of incline just to flip me a horrendous symbolic bird.
So I expel my fur ball and go on to the stationary bike and pedal up a response.
“Now,” I ask, “with these tutus, do I wear a cup like in Karate or something?”
And little miss 40-minute miler says, “No, that’s where you stuff the towel.”
“I thought so,” I said, “those ballet boys can’t all be hung like Man-o-War. I mean you go to the ballet and these Nancy boys all jump around with crotches so big you think they put their TV Dinner tray inside. I mean a person could eat an entire leg of lamb off the shelf of some of them. And it doesn’t compute, really. These guys are not macho bull fighters but are little dudes dancing around all flitty and jumpy and posing and spinning and waving and whooshing. Criminy, you could eat a New York pizza off the crotch of some of them. It’s bizarre.”
