Can You Hear Me Now

I guess I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.

Benjamin Franklin

Gary stood naked before the mirror and grimaced. Although he had been denying it to himself for the last several years, there was no way to pretend any longer.

He had man boobs.

He tried sucking in his gut. He tried puffing out his chest and turning ever so slightly to the left or to the right, but there they were – saggy, hairy, man boobs.

Gary had become his father. Worse, Gary had become his grandfather that time he saw him shirtless up at the lake. The memory that haunted him all these years was now staring back at him from his bathroom mirror.

Why was he so stupid as to describe himself as fit and athletic on his match.com profile? What possessed him to post photographs that were at a minimum seven years old? That which seemed innocent and safe at the time was now looking like the bald-faced lie that it was.

At the time he justified it by saying he could look that way again with only a few sessions at the gym. Of course, those sessions never materialized and it would take more than a couple of miles on the treadmill to undo the damage of the last five years. That is assuming he could actually run with all the extra weight he was carrying.

Those last five years really were damaging. He suffered through a long and contentious divorce, the loss of his job of 10 years, and a forced relocation to his current job. The obstacles to a healthy diet and lifestyle were many and the results were painfully obvious in his bloated, out-of-shape carcass.

So, here he was an hour and a half away from his first date in eight years and there was no good way out of the hole he had dug himself into. He could call Carol and make up some lame excuse about why he had to cancel, but despite the seemly easy falsehoods of his match profile, Gary was a lousy liar. He also wasn’t the type to stand someone up. He was raised on the notion that no guilt is good guilt.

No, he was just going to have to suck it up (literally) and face the music no matter how somber that tune might be.

—–

Carol stood naked before the mirror and grimaced. Why on earth did she list herself as fit and toned when the body before her looked like the twin sister of the Pillsbury Doughboy?

Cornucopia it is and shall be forever known
this basket filled to excess
this river rising against its banks

Bit by bit until stretched and tight
the basket rips and the river crests
spilling across a dry, parched, and thirsty land
welcoming abundance