exhibit d

I have a rather unhealthy preoccupation with my weight. Am I fat? No, I'm not. I guess, truthfully, I never really have been a big fatty. This does not prevent me from complaining about personal bloating on occasion. I pushed my physical size to what I thought were unhealthy dimensions (although to the average human eye, the most you might think was that I had "filled out" - that's slang for "man, you really must have spent a lot of time eating Durkee Potato Sticks and drinking Guinness while you were in college because, while you don't look like you're really fat, you do seem kind of thick in the face and upper body and I almost didn't recognize you through the obvious ravages of take-out dinner and social drinking. See you at the reunion!") recently and this news disturbed me significantly. The bloating in question also coincided with some other personal unhappiness. In the last couple of weeks, though, I have developed and refined a strict program of fewer doughnuts and reduced self-loathing to emerge the beautiful Adonis I was always meant to be. I wish I weren't so completely prone to the bullshit beauty mirror in which we are all being crudely reflected each day of our media-frenzied life, but I am. I have bouts of shallowness which I am trying (feebly) to combat. Does that make me gay?

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all these words © 1999 todd levin.