Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Ugly to be Beautiful
Did anyone else have to do the Presidential Physical Fitness test in high school? All kinds of circus acts like hanging from bars and chasing after erasers and then being ranked against other kids your age. I always thanked God at this time of the year that I wasn't born with a Y chromosome, because the guys actually gave a damn about it, as if the President himself was going to descend on Penfield, NY, just to congratulate them on having an above average ability to do sit-ups. My hero was a girl who, referring to the Mile Run, said, "I guess it's time to walk the mile."
In any case, that statement of apathy and mild irritation kind of summed up my attitude toward exercise for many years. But after a year of being ravaged by the evils of Depo Provera® and the pleasures of Johny's lunch counter,* I have modified this position. I started running in September and just when I was beginning to get good at it and experience that "Runner's High", I became lame. Don't know how, but I did. Some of you may have seen me limping all over NYC during the holidays. So, just as I was about to refer to another fitness mantra that I learned from a high school comrade ("Why run to get high? Just do drugs."), Stéphane took me to the municipal pool down the street. Wow! Swimming rocks! I don’t hurt afterward and I am becoming huge like the Governor of California. (This makes Stéphane happy because if I am Arnold, he gets to be Maria Shriver and as he told me the other day, "I've always wanted to be a Kennedy!")
Walking home from the pool yesterday, stringy chlorinated hair slapped into a messy pony tail, oversized sweatshirt making me look like a giant meatloaf, white winter sun bringing out every imperfection on my ruddy face (complete with marks on my forehead from my swim cap), I got a glimpse of myself in a store front window and shuddered. Ew. I do these things to make me feel better but man, it ain't doing much for my looks. But then it hit me. Since life is really just a series of contradictions, this hour of heinousness has to be repaid by an hour of radiant beauty, right? So I think, it is this ugliness that, through the power of contrast, can make me look great at another time in the day or week. And so I embrace my homeliness, march smiling into the newsstand to get a magazine, and don't even take it personally when the man behind the counter, who would normally be a flirter, treats me with indifference.
*Johny's, where you can get the best chicken sandwiches in the world, is located on W. 25th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues on the downtown side of the street in Manhattan. Oh, and ladies, Johny is really cute.
In any case, that statement of apathy and mild irritation kind of summed up my attitude toward exercise for many years. But after a year of being ravaged by the evils of Depo Provera® and the pleasures of Johny's lunch counter,* I have modified this position. I started running in September and just when I was beginning to get good at it and experience that "Runner's High", I became lame. Don't know how, but I did. Some of you may have seen me limping all over NYC during the holidays. So, just as I was about to refer to another fitness mantra that I learned from a high school comrade ("Why run to get high? Just do drugs."), Stéphane took me to the municipal pool down the street. Wow! Swimming rocks! I don’t hurt afterward and I am becoming huge like the Governor of California. (This makes Stéphane happy because if I am Arnold, he gets to be Maria Shriver and as he told me the other day, "I've always wanted to be a Kennedy!")
Walking home from the pool yesterday, stringy chlorinated hair slapped into a messy pony tail, oversized sweatshirt making me look like a giant meatloaf, white winter sun bringing out every imperfection on my ruddy face (complete with marks on my forehead from my swim cap), I got a glimpse of myself in a store front window and shuddered. Ew. I do these things to make me feel better but man, it ain't doing much for my looks. But then it hit me. Since life is really just a series of contradictions, this hour of heinousness has to be repaid by an hour of radiant beauty, right? So I think, it is this ugliness that, through the power of contrast, can make me look great at another time in the day or week. And so I embrace my homeliness, march smiling into the newsstand to get a magazine, and don't even take it personally when the man behind the counter, who would normally be a flirter, treats me with indifference.
*Johny's, where you can get the best chicken sandwiches in the world, is located on W. 25th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues on the downtown side of the street in Manhattan. Oh, and ladies, Johny is really cute.
