Sticky Beak
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The Skinny
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...life in small Northern towns, working for assholes, boys who refuse to become men, synthetic personalities, anorexic models and their link to emotional scarring, bad marijuana trips, crazies on BC Transit, beer, piece of shit cars, living out of a suitcase paycheck to paycheck, unrequited love, Seinfeld, minimum-wage jobs, broken New Year�s resolutions, and over-limit Visa accounts.
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Taming the Buddha Why is it that as soon as you start spending the night with someone, they want to start showering together? This I just don�t get. I have enough problems dealing with seeing myself naked every morning, much less having to deal with someone else being there to witness the horrific crimes I�ve committed against my body. Is nothing sacred? I believe anything that goes on in the bathroom beyond brushing teeth, is a personal moment not to be shared with anyone. Why would anyone want to stand in a tub to watch me exfoliate and shave? Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle. Nasty. Besides, I have been coerced into participating in this activity once or twice, and it�s pointless � one of you is always cold! Only one person gets to stand under the water while the other person shivers and turns three shades of blue. Not only is this physically uncomfortable, but mentally traumatizing as well and detracts from any physical attraction you may have felt for your partner before stepping onto the ceramic tile. I personally feel that the human body is a disgusting, horrifying thing best kept hidden under several layers of clothing and that nudity is a necessary evil, not something that should be utilized as a pastime or form of entertainment. Not in my books anyway. Yeah, maybe I am a bit on the excessively modest side, but I think it�s preferable to those people who should be modest and aren�t. I�m terrified that I�m going to turn into one of those people who don�t realize they�re offending society as a whole by squeezing themselves into this tank top or that pair of shorts... you know the people of whom I speak. I think the trick is to be graceful about your weight � either way. I hate super-thin people who wear second-skin clothing... it�s like a personal attack on anyone who�s less than enthralled with their body (I�m talking about women, of course). I do not see the need, regardless of how thin you are, to wear Daisy Duke shorts and a too-tight, barely there crop top. What�s the point? If you�re that excited about your body, why not just walk around nude with a sign out of one of those old hair ads around your neck that reads "don't hate me because I'm beautiful"? Don�t get me wrong, I don�t have a problem with self-confidence... it just has to be tasteful. Ever since I was about 8 years old, I�ve been incredibly conscious of my weight. I�d say self-conscious, except that I�m not the only one who�s been monitoring it these past twenty-odd years. When my little sister started talking enough to call people by name, she unwittingly coined the nickname that would haunt and torment me for the remainder of my life... Hoggy. Now, I can understand Ho-wy, or Hoy, as these are among other versions of my name that children have come up with, but to this day, I don�t understand where those damned G�s came from. My older sister � who had committed her pre-adolescent existence to ensuring that my own was one of pure hell � picked up on this slur immediately, and was all over it like a fat kid on a Smartie - so to speak. To compliment my new title, Melanie threw in a few oinks and squeals for effect, and over time expanded her variety to encompass the entire swine family of nicknames; Porker, Bacon-Butt, Piggy. She didn�t limit her imagination to non-kosher meats, however. No, no. She ran with this wealth of new material and opportunity that my junior sister had presented her with; Lard-ass has always been one of my favorite spin-offs. At any rate, my new nickname was rather catchy, and soon the span of my entire family, immediate and extended, had followed Rachel and Melanie�s lead, thinking it "cute". Meanwhile, Holly became more and more conscious of both the scale and her tummy. Was it growing? Was she the fattest of all the cousins? Is this what other eight year olds are thinking? Lycra. Lycra is another evil byproduct of the industrial revolution and advanced science. Who invented this product anyway? Someone with a very bad sense of humor? Of course, my fear and loathing of lycra stems from its purpose � to expose as much of the human body as possible without actually being nude. What ever happened to those bloomer swimsuits that women used to have to wear in the 20�s? Where has our modesty gone? Most people don�t understand my fear of lycra and loathing of the human form. They usually laugh and shake their heads, make some slanderous comment about my mental state and shrug it off. Lycra and public speaking � my two biggest fears. Oh wait... I forgot about bears. Ok. Bears, Lycra, public speaking � in that order. When my girlfriend Sarah and I treated ourselves to a trip to Asia in 1997 as a graduation gift, I was weighing in at the heaviest I�d ever been. Seven months of lethargy, boredom, and training for the Beer Olympics with Ken and Clint had left me with a winter coat of unprecedented thickness � even for me. In our sporadic pre-trip phone and email conversations, Sarah and I had agreed that we were both determined to pick up some kind of parasite that would rid us of a few extra pounds. Hell, everyone gets sick when they travel � we were just counting on it. Turns out though, that I have an iron gut. Not only that, but it�s damn hot in Asia too, and ice cream is far too abundant. Having discovered five weeks into the trip that we weren�t going to be losing the twenty pounds each we�d predicted, I turned my focus to getting a killer tan; "maybe if I come back black, they won't notice I haven�t lost any weight...". Good thinking. So, there we are, waddling along on our merry path when we meet Hoa, my former employer Sam Lam's cousin, in Vietnam. Incredible guy � took us out, lent us his chauffeur for the day, showed us the sights, bought us meal upon meal � all without fully understanding who we were or what we "wanted". The last encounter we had with Hoa, we were sitting in a little caf� somewhere in the depths of Saigon. I had done as much damage as I could to my dinner, and saw that Sarah was eyeing it up, so passed the remains over for her to polish off. This is when Hoa�s little mistress started giggling. She says something to Hoa, and he starts laughing too. Curious, Sar and I ask what the comedy�s all about. Between spurts of giggles, Hoa enlightens us with a translation; "She say - so funny � because, even though Sallah eat much more than Ha-lee, Ha-lee - much bigger than Sallah." Shock. Panic. Horror. Both our jaws drop. I nearly die, while Sarah gasps a long, high-pitched "ooooooohhhhhhh no, no, no, no". Suddenly, the familial relationship between Hoa and my friends at China Moon becomes painfully obvious. Amazing how an obsession with one lone white girl�s weight can span an entire planet. I�ve just spent a half-hour of good, quality time with myself in front of the mirror. Squatting there, in a pair of shorts and my bra, I looked myself good and long in the eye and spouted one of my strongest, most stern lectures to date. "There is absolutely no need for you to look like this. This is grotesque." Grabbing a hold of the buddha and giving it a good tug, "Grotesque." This is one of the many techniques I used a few years ago while living in Oregon to lose weight, and it seemed to help. If I�m forced to sit there and look at the damage that last night�s pints and chicken wings incur on my body, I�m less inclined to partake the next time. I�ve read in some women�s health magazines that one method of self-therapy for binge victims is to eat in front of the mirror. I�m kind of doing the same thing, only adapting it to suit me a bit. |