No Penetration, Please!

In my self-published novel, Looking for Nirvana (which can be found at http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/looking-for-nirvana/8258814), one of the characters is an eating-disordered, high-fashion model named Dextra Hardy.  Her roommate comments that Dextra’s motto should be, “No penetration please, I’m only skin deep” because Dextra’s world begins and ends with how she looks.  What matters to her is not the quality of her character, her intelligence, or lack thereof, or anything else for that matter.  If she looks good, she is good.  If she looks fabulous, well, even better.

Years ago, when the The Andy Warhol Diaries were published, I suspected that I was one of the few people in America who actually read each entry.  Selfish, narcissistic, greedy in extremis, duplicitous, insecure, offensive, secretive, a hoarder, excessive and just generally repulsive, Andy had been the subject I had once chosen for a high school speech class monologue on Modern America.  No one, including the teacher, had ever heard of him back then.  I had discovered an obscure article about Warhol long before he became famous or infamous, and I decided, why not?  He was different.  I was different, so I figured Andy and I had something in common.  Actually not, but it did have shock value and garnered me a good grade.

What drew me to Warhol was that I thought, well, he’s an aberration.  No one could truly be that self-absorbed.  No one could be so desperate for attention and fame that he would essentially mock art while aspiring to be an artist.  Would he?  It was crazy, a kind of anti-Existential despair covered over by bright colors, silk screens and layer-upon-layer of pop culture that dissolved into a sort of nothingness that became somethingness.  It was crap that sold like crazy once the people who have more money than brains decided that a Campbell’s Soup Can was iconography of a contemporary sort.  Or a million Marilyn Monroe’s, or whomever.

Andy, in his many wigs, using his own urine for color in his paintings – yes, that is so yesterday, folks – his Factory, his endlessly boring films where people do nothing and say less – well, he was so far ahead of his time.  So much so that few people believed him when he prophesized, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”  Even he referred to himself as deeply superficial.

Andy was so shallow he had great depth.  Which is why he became the inspiration for the creation of my Dextra Hardy character.  I took the superficiality of an Andy Warhol, who was only skin deep, combined it with the fashion industry, which only covers the skin and so isn’t even skin deep, added a dash of quirky character traits, and voila — Dextra Hardy, my perfect comic foil for the religious, sheltered, dutiful main character, Gloria Zadig.

Why pick on the fashion industry?  It’s simple, really.  So much of American life has become about the utterly superficial, the external, the outside, the aspirational, the celebrity culture, the thinness of, the designer worn at the Oscars of, the several thousand dollar handbag of, the jewelry of, it’s like the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire all over again.  While the wealthy are indulging, the middle class is declining, and soon no one but the very rich will be able to afford the luxury brands to which we are encouraged to aspire.  Why would anyone care what a skinny celebrity wears?  Yet, people do.  But, why? 

That is what I asked myself when I created Dextra.  Pick any age, any culture, any century, and women will always want to be fashionable.  If everyone is wearing corsets, well, you’re going to stuff yourself into a corset even though you can barely breathe.  If no one in polite society wears a dress above the knee, so be it, until the fashion changes.  If celebrities are thin, then women are supposed to go on diets and starve themselves down to a Size 0, or 00, or 000.  In pursuit of brilliant self-presentation, they’re wasting away to nothing.  All the while pumping up their breasts with silicon or saline or whatever seems safest at the moment. 

Having lost my mother to breast cancer when I was only 10 years old, I aspire to keep my breasts, not augment them!  Having been fat, I aspire to lose the weight and keep it off.  As the French say, and who could imagine they are right about anything, but anyway, as the French say, “At a certain age, a woman has to choose between her face and her fanny.”  Too thin is aging.  Pleasantly plump is actually quite nice.

Back to the genesis of all of this.  When I first discovered Warhol, I truly felt he was a brilliant subversive who was so selfish, so self-absorbed that he could only be an aberration.  Once his 15 minutes had passed, his painting, his lifestyle, his greed for all material things, his need to be seen, to be famous would all go away and become dated.  Yet, it hasn’t.  His art increases in value and desirability.  His story is told and retold.  Why, exactly, is that?

The telltale signs of a civilization in decline are easy to spot if one studies history.  Do young people actually study history anymore?  They seem to be growing ever more ignorant in an ever-increasingly complex world.  They are so busy texting, phoning, messaging and meshing with their peers that they rarely take time out to think, to contemplate, to weigh important issues.  They are literally bored when they sit still for five minutes without some sort of technology in hand.  This explains the phenomenal success of Twitter and Facebook.  How easy it is to envision Andy Warhol Tweeting on a daily basis, or updating an outrageously popular Facebook page.  He would have loved it.  It is a world that can revolve around “you” 24/7, which is what he wanted.  See me, pay me, but do not know me, could summarize the Warholian philosophy.

And, it is exactly that, the see me, pay me, but do not know me that led us down the path to perdition.  What is reality TV except an expose or an exposing of the superficial, the untalented, the self-promoting, the narcissistic to an ever-bored public that is convinced that “those people” are somehow more successful, more self-indulgent, more important than the rest of us?  The sad fact of all of these reality shows is that the people who aspire to be on them are the least interesting among us, which means that they have become an ever-revolving door for the fame whores who constantly check themselves out with Google searches, tips to the media, calls to the paparazzi, or Tweets to their fans. 

Why are these nobodies in the public eye?  Because they have the media savvy and deeply-rooted narcissism to get themselves there.  A talent for self-promotion for having no talent will do wonders in this day and age.  Andy Warhol understood that and went about it in an artful manner.  At least he had an artful manner. 

In today’s world, the fastest route to fame is making a sex tape.  In other words, a source of shame and humiliation is now the key to instant celebrity.  What kind of culture, or lack thereof, would think that displaying one’s naked parts while partaking in various and sundry sex acts would lead to any sort of positive attention, let alone wealth and fame?  Yet, that is how it is.  Nothing is done off stage anymore, absolutely nothing.  Everything is for public display, and everyone is for sale.

 When I created Dextra, a friend of mine told me that she was far too exaggerated to be credible.  Sadly, Dextra is modest by comparison with the endlessly air-headed, so called celebrities of today’s world.  She has, at times, a mere hint of content, of something lurking behind her pristine looks and rail-thin frame.  For a few small seconds, here and there, Dextra actually realizes there are other people in the world besides herself, but then quickly climbs back upon her self-created pedestal.  This is fiction.  There is room for subtext.

In my favorite Warhol diary entry, Andy is in church, on his knees, praying for money.  A bag lady walks into the church and asks him for some spare change.  He is furious and offended and brushes her off.  How could someone who is actually in need, who is probably hungry and homeless have the temerity to ask him for money?  Warhol had great wealth, yet it was never enough.  He had fame and notoriety, and yet, it was never enough.  As another character in my novel says, “There is nothing, there is only excess.”  Andy would have agreed.

If I Grew an Eye in The Middle of My Forehead

As a former fat person, I have a thing about weight.  Alas, doctors also have a thing about weight, but for the opposite reason.  Let me explain, in brief, why this is a daily focus of mine.  At the age of 20, I carried 230 pounds on my 5’3” frame.  Diets had failed me.  In fact, diets had only made me fatter.  So, if diets didn’t work, what did?  I created my own plan, lost the weight and have kept it off for decades.  As a private weight loss coach, I help compulsive eaters change their habits, refocus their thinking about food, exercise regularly and lose the weight once and for all.

 

Because I am a former fatty, I feel the need to defend my fellow Americans against the medical profession.  First and foremost, doctors know exactly nothing about weight loss.  Do not let them lecture you, hand you diet printouts, demean you or insult your intelligence.  If they were so smart about weight, they’d all be thin, right?  Of course, here we omit the cardiologists whose waists are so taut you wonder how they have time to operate between crunches at the gym and obsessively running par courses before work.  These people are obsessed about the growing national waistline, and given their work and the fat-clogged arteries they see daily, I am not about to argue with them.  I won’t say they’re wrong about obesity being a medical issue, but you can’t blame everything in life on being overweight.

 

As a nation, I have watched my fellow Americans grow larger and larger and larger.  When I see what people eat, frankly, I am not surprised.  Blame enormous portion sizes.  Blame agro-business.  Blame fast food.  Blame a sedentary lifestyle.  Blame food subsidies where the price of a fast food meal is cheaper than a cauliflower or a pound of apples.  Read a book on what they feed cattle or the conditions under which chickens are raised, and you will stop eating these foods forever.  It’s truly stomach churning.  You wouldn’t go to your local sewage treatment plant to dine out.  Well, sewage is about the level of animal feed these days.  Garbage in, garbage out.  But, that is the subject of another blog.  Just think of it this way, if animals are given feed that is supposed to make them grow bigger, fatter, faster, what is that going to do to you when you eat said animal?  Got it?

 

So, how do doctors deal with this growing epidemic of obesity?  Let me explain.  A few months ago, I offered to go to a doctor’s appointment with a much beloved friend who has had 2 bouts of life-threatening MRSA.  MRSA is Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.  This bacteria can show up anywhere on the skin, especially a cut in the skin, and it can also live inside moist areas of the body.  My friend’s MRSA first appeared under her eyebrow after she’d been to a spa to have her brows plucked.  The red spot looked like a big clogged pore or a boil.  It looked painful and uncomfortable, but hardly serious.  Unfortunately, MRSA bacteria can get into the blood stream through a tiny cut, a plucked eyebrow pore, or any moist area of the body.  If it invades the body, it can cause a life-threatening staph infection, pneumonia and death.

 

Although my friend was successfully treated by both oral and IV-antibiotics, the problem with MRSA is that it is a wily bacteria that has become more and more resistant to treatment.  As a result, when the MRSA recurred less than 6 months later, my friend was referred to an infectious disease specialist.  I did not want her to go alone,  even though just the thought of walking into an Infectious Disease Clinic made my skin crawl.  Who knew what these people had, and if someone brushed up against me, was I was going to have it, too?  Was the waiting room there like London during the Plague?  However, not wanting to let my fears get the best of me, I offered to come along not only for moral support, but to take notes on the doctor’s opinion.  As we all know, it’s very easy, when stressed, to get overwhelmed and not really hear what is being said.  Besides, it is always advisable to bring a trusted friend or family member to doctor’s appointments whenever possible.  That person is there to be your “second pair of ears” and to ask questions that might not occur to you at the time.

 

The doctor, who was bone-thin, arrived on time and seemed delightfully anxious to share the lecture he clearly gives at conferences world-wide.  He was well-prepared and well-rehearsed.  And, frankly, he was very informative.  By the end of his talk, not only had I learned a great deal about MRSA, but I was terrified to touch anything ever again.  This talk was enough to turn the worst slob into a person with clinically-diagnosable OCD.  I wanted to grab a surgical mask and bottle of disinfectant and start spraying everywhere.  But, since the doctor had kindly pointed out that “MRSA is everywhere—in the gym, in the supermarket, on doors, elevator buttons, moist areas of all fellow humans, well, just everywhere,” I was barely able to steady my hand to take notes.  After all, I was holding a pen.  That pen could be harboring MRSA.  Then what?  “Go to your yoga breathing,” I told myself when I realized I was holding my breath because I was having an anxiety attack.  So much for being a strong support system.

 

At any rate, everything was going fine.  The doctor was informative, full of useful, practical advice for his patient, willing to answer questions, etc.  However, then, he committed the cardinal sin.  He noted my friend was overweight.  What has MRSA, which we’ve now to our horror realized is everywhere, got to do with a person’s weight?  Well, my friend knows exactly what she weighs to the pound.  Yes, to the pound because before the nurse weighed her, she told the nurse her weight, and it was right on the money.  She is slightly overweight, not fat, not obese, not in my former category by any stretch of the imagination.  This is a woman who has MRSA.  This is a young woman with a husband and 3 children, a woman who could have died, twice, due to a deadly staph infection, and he’s talking about her weight?  As far as I’m concerned, we’re here to get life-saving information, not discuss body size or BMI’s.  So, now, I’m ticked.  My friend is ticked.  We’re both angry at the doctor.  He was doing just fine until he got onto my friend’s weight.

 

Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, which is rare for me.  I felt that the doctor did a great job as far as the MRSA was concerned, so why raise the subject of his patient’s weight?  Given my previous experience with doctors and their need to pick on me because of my weight, I was instantly irritated, but remained silent.  I did, however, wonder how my friend felt about this clinical coda to her office visit.

 

Once we were out of earshot of the doctor, I found out.  My friend was even more steamed about the specialist’s comments about her weight than I was.  I explained to her that whenever a doctor lectured me about my weight, I had a rejoinder.  It was called, “If I had an eye in the middle of my forehead, ….”  Here’s the story behind that:

 

When I was fat, doctors blamed everything on my weight.  If I had hives, it was due to my weight.  If I had an earache, I was fat, so what could I expect?  If I got bronchitis, it was too much pressure on my lungs because my fat cells were choking off my breathing capacity.  No matter what the malady, it was always the path of least resistance to cite the dreaded number on the scale.  Sometimes, I’d imagine myself being brought to the hospital after an accident and instead of worrying about clean underwear, nope, I’d be expecting the weight lecture instead of the Last Rites.  “If you hadn’t of been fat, etc….Repent, All Ye Fat Sinners!”

 

Anyway, the ironic point about the eye in the middle of my forehead lecture is that its genesis did not occur until after I’d lost the weight.  I had lost 100 pounds, was a perfect Size 10, and frankly, I thought I was fabulous.  What’s not to like?   I knew how far I’d come in the looks department.  I was nothing but proud of my continuing hard work and effort on a daily basis.  My figure was “not a genetic gift” by any means.

 

Well, I hurt my back shoveling icy snow after two recent blizzards in Chicago.  The sprain was so bad I passed out from back spasms.  At that point, my family doctor recommended a specialist.

 

When I went to this highly-recommended orthopedist, I did not realize that his time was clearly more valuable than mine.  I was shown into a small exam room, told to strip down to my underwear and wait.  The nurse handed me a sheet.  Fortunately, I had a book, so I stood and read for awhile.  Standing was preferable to sitting because it put less stress on my lower back.  I draped the sheet around me like a strapless dress, but it was dragging on the floor, and I nearly tripped over it.  So, I rearranged the sheet like a toga.  That was better, but still not comfortable.  Since the air conditioning was going full blast, I finally covered my head with the sheet like some sort of Halloween ghost.  Playing with the sheet was passing time, but my back was getting worse and worse.  I have learned, since, that my best strategy is to simply lie down on the exam table.  Why not?  I’m going to have to lie down on it at some point anyway, right?

 

Well, 2 hours later, I am in horrible pain and fit to be tied.  By that point, I am really in a bad mood.  The orthopedist strolls in with his nurse.  If he had said, “Sorry to have kept you waiting, but I was at the hospital,” all would have been forgiven.  If I had had any inkling that he was taking care of a sick patient, I would have understood.  Instead, he looked as though he’d taken a long lunch.

 

The doctor asked about my symptoms, looked at my X-ray and explained the narrow spacing at my L-5  S-1 discs.  This, he informed me, was bound to become herniated at some time in the future.  But, in the interim, he wanted me to take up running.  Running?  I mean, this was Chicago.  With a bad lower back, with a disc space that could herniate at any time, I was supposed to go out and pound my lower back on hard pavement?  Was he crazy, or what?

 

So, I explained that I walked nearly daily, did yoga for flexibility and also danced each evening.  I got enough exercise, and I was careful that when I was dancing, I wasn’t leaping about and pounding my spine.  I went on to state that running, on hard pavement, could not possibly be good for my back.

 

Then, he committed the fatal error.  He looked me up and down and said, “You’re fat.  You need to lose weight.”  He proudly proclaimed he was a runner and a marathoner at that, “Well, if you take up running, you’ll lose that fat!  The fat is what is putting pressure on your lower back, and the pain isn’t going to go away unless you stop being fat.”  He then had the temerity to reach over and pinch some loose skin around my waist.  Now, that loose skin was there precisely because I had lost a lot of weight, not because I was fat.

 

At that point, I was so exhausted, in so much pain, I exploded.  “FAT!”  I literally screamed at the top of my lungs, the word reverberating around the tiny exam room.  “FAT!”  I roared, moved closer to the nattily-dressed doctor and nearly pressed myself into his suit jacket.  “You’re calling me, me fat?” I asked incredulously.

 

The nurse stepped back.  She was literally standing near the door ready to flee.  I had cornered the good doctor, so he could not escape unless he knocked me over.  I glared at him.  “I’ll tell you about being fat, doctor.  I’ll tell you,” I bellowed.

 

“I used to be fat.  Yes, really fat.  I weighed 230 pounds when I was 20 years old.  If I’d seen you then, well, yes, I would have been fat.  But, I’m not fat now, am I?  I’m a Size 10.  I weigh 132 pounds.  I’m perfectly fine, doctor.  Just fine.”

 

“You know,” I dropped my voice to a normal range as I moved in for the kill, “It always amazes me how doctors who don’t know how to help me blame everything on my weight.  I swear that if I grew an eye in the middle of my forehead some moron, just like you,” the nurse put her hand over her mouth to stifle a snarky giggle, “yes, some moron, just like you, would surely tell me, ‘If you hadn’t been fat when you were younger, you would not have that eye in the middle of your forehead.’” 

 

The nurse started to laugh so hard she had to leave the room.  The doctor just stood there.  He opened his mouth, but then closed it again.  “I am not fat.  I am not a runner.  All I have gotten out of this office visit is more back pain from waiting two hours, insults and useless so-called professional advice.  I’ll be forced to pay your bill, but a note will be attached to it so if the insurance ever evaluates you, they will know you had a patient who was not pleased.”

 

Then, I moved away so that he could make a hasty retreat from the exam room while I dumped the sheet and got back into my clothes.  As I left, I noticed all the nurses smiling at me in silent approval.

 

The sad reality is that America is getting fatter.  The sadder reality is that the medical profession frankly knows nothing about how to help people lose weight.  I wish that the so-called experts would actually listen to people such as myself.  We are rare.  Few people who are morbidly obese ever lose the weight and keep it off. 

 

At this juncture, there is no magic pill or magic formula that helps people lose weight.  Moreover, as hard as it is to lose the weight, it’s far harder to keep it off.  That is the key to my program—keeping the weight off once you’ve gotten to a realistic and healthy weight.  So, for those of you who are struggling with your weight, I wish you good luck.  Be honest with yourselves about your choices, what you are eating and how much.  Learn to handle your emotions without food as a way of soothing yourselves.  Get creative about cooking, and do try to cook at home.  But first, get moving.  Take a short walk.  Eventually, if you want to take up running, I wish you well.  You can do this.  Yes, obesity can lead to diabetes, heart disease, certain types of cancer, joint problems and other serious health issues.  However, lecturing people on their weight only depresses them and causes them to eat more to comfort themselves.  Handing them diets is a recipe for further weight gain.

 

I have written a book titled Weight Loss for Life that gives people a step-by-step program to end compulsive eating.  Why isn’t it published?  Because I do not have a “hard credential.”  In other words, I am not a doctor or a nutritionist.  Therefore, I cannot know what I’m talking about.  Well, over many decades I have gone from a Size 2X down to a Size 4.  I dropped from 230 pounds to 110 pounds.  What more proof do you need to have that I actually understand how to help others do exactly what I have done?  Look, if losing weight were easy, everyone would be thin.  It is not easy.  However, it is possible to lose the weight and keep it off for a lifetime.  I am living proof of that, and I wish my fellow overweight Americans well.

Majorly Fit: Where Losers Go to Die-Literally

I have been a member of various gyms for years.  With the exception of the Y, they are generally known as health clubs.  Frankly, this strikes me as an oxymoron.  What is healthy about these places?  All I read about is how one can all too easily acquire MRSA, other staph infections, pseudomonas, urinary tract infections and worse from whirlpools plus all manner of fungi from athlete’s foot and jock itch to other more esoteric varieties that lurk in gyms everywhere.

As to it being clubby, I don’t think so.  No one is really clubby at Majorly Fit, known to its members as MF’s.  People want to show up, exercise and leave.  Is there socializing?  Well, yes, there is.  I’m a swimmer, and by necessity, swimmers must socialize in that we are sharing a physical space.  Some are good at sharing.  Some never learned this lesson as in the guy who insists, “You’re in my lane.”  If you don’t move, he tries to bully you by kicking water in your face.  He’d kick sand in your face, but this is not the beach.

So, anyway, one day, I’m at MF’s.  It’s late on a Friday afternoon, and I’m thinking that people who have real lives are getting ready to go out on dates, go out with their friends, or just hang out somewhere, anywhere.  I don’t have a life and don’t feel particularly motivated to have one.  Wait, let me correct that.  I have a brilliant internal life where I am the heroine of each story, but real life is another subject entirely. 

OK, I get into the pool, and I’m swimming my laps as usual.  My ear plugs, the highest decibel I could find in the CVS, are barely blocking MF’s own bad music.  They play a continuous loop of the top ten most annoying songs on the face of the earth.  And, just recently, to add an additional insult, they’ve started playing videos on brilliantly clear flat screen TV’s, so that when you’re doing your crunches, each time you bob upward, well, if your eyes are open, you’ll be greeted by the video of some white person -- no offense meant, none taken, I’m sure -- who has no sense of rhythm, either angsting over some lost love, throwing things around, or pounding out guitar chords in a 3rd-grade kind of air guitar bravado.  Given the state of current TV music videos, Michael Jackson truly is dead, and he didn’t die at MF’s, as we all know.  RIP, Jacko.

Well, I’m in the pool.  And, I have often wondered, why, why have music in a pool area?  Isn’t water supposed to be about tranquility, calm, inner peace?  If I had a rifle, I’d shoot out the speaker that hovers above the pool.  I sometimes fantasize about this when the music gets beyond bad into ear-shatteringly obnoxious.

If someone is seeking tranquility, they should not swim at MF’s.  If the pool is open and not being shut down by the health inspector for a violation that occurred 3 months ago, then I’ve been swimming in this slop nearly daily.  Even if it’s  so cold it’s almost freezing and people are buying neoprene jackets to survive the temps, as long as it’s open, I’m swimming.  I have to swim, so there I am like a captive, thin-skinned, baby whale at Sea World.

I get into the pool which is in the same large, enclosed, glassed-in space, kind of like a very cheap aquarium for humans, that includes both a sauna and a whirlpool.  A man enters the pool area, a man I’ve seen many times before.  Why do I know who he is even though I’m horribly near-sighted and swim sans glasses?  I know because he has skinny arms and legs, but a massive, white belly that looks as though he had bad fertility treatments and is about to pop multiples.  This is the beer belly record for MF’s.  How can I be sure?  I’m sure because I have kept an unofficial tally of the beer bellies of MF’s for years.  These are the sorts of things I do when I’m bored.  Plus, I think that men should start being charged extra on their health insurance by simply measuring their girth.  A man like that is a heart attack risk, a stroke risk, just a risk.  Besides, it’s so unattractive, not that I’m a great beauty here, but really.  We don’t want to see your enormous belly, guys.  It’s not cute.  It’s not teddy-bear-cuddly.  It’s offensive.

So, he gets into the whirlpool just as he always does.  I can’t stand it when people get into the whirlpool where I know they either have high blood pressure, are on statins for heart disease, or they have a massive healed incision indicating heart surgery of some unsavory sort.  I mean, are these people stupid?  Why am I asking this question?  And, no, they don’t dip in and out, which I could accept.  They get into the whirlpool and stay there.  Some of them ought to pay MF’s rent for the time they spend in there nearly boiling their skin off.

This guy always freaks me out.  It’s the belly fat.  It’s the momentum of the omentum, if you want to get technical.  He gets in there when I get into the pool.  I get out of the pool 35 minutes later, and he’s still in the whirlpool.  Now, I used to be one of those “do-gooders” who would have stopped and oh, so politely pointed out that the sign, in both English and Spanish, says that no one should be in there who has heart disease, is on blood pressure meds, etc.  But, now, I figure, hey, like they’re always telling me, “it’s a democracy.  Mind your own business.  Why do you care?”  Or, my fave — “f-you, bitch.”  I’ve heard them all, which is why I’ve given up trying to rescue people.  Well, no, that wouldn’t be accurate, but that’s another blog.

So, I take my long shower as usual because every single time MF’s saves money by lowering the pool temperature, the swimmers take much longer showers thereby saving them exactly nothing. 

I get dressed and go out to the main gym where I need to stretch before doing weights.  I know, most people shower at the end, but I need to loosen up my joints first, so I swim, shower, stretch, do weights and stretch again.  Works for me.

MF’s has a very nice physical therapy table that was donated, years ago, by a man who wanted to help his paraplegic wife.  She is long-gone, but the table remains.  As I approach the table, I stare through the glass into the pool area, and what do I see?  A male trainer is bent over Mr. Belly Fat, and he’s giving him CPR.  I mean, he’s doing mouth-to-mouth, which, honestly, I’m relieved to read you don’t really need to do because I have this thing about teeth and mouths in general, but that’s another blog, too.  Basically, I’m shocked.  I’m transfixed.  Here is the man I’ve been complaining, to anyone who would listen, “One day, that man, I swear, he’s going to have a heart attack and die in that whirlpool.  He stays in there way too long.  And, with that belly, I mean, all that deep fat is going to start heating up and squeeze his poor heart to death.”

When I get sententious, people tune me out.  I don’t blame them, but really, wasn’t this just a catastrophe waiting to happen?  Believe me, I don’t enjoy being right when someone’s life is at stake.  I’m thinking how long can that trainer, who is in ridiculously great physical shape, but how long can he keep doing CPR?  A long time, in case you’re wondering. 

By this point, an ER nurse has shown up to exercise, but seeing the situation in the pool area, goes directly to the victim.  I can see the guy’s feet are turning purple, and I’m thinking, the poor man is dead.  Dead.  He died at Majorly Fit.  He had a heart attack, it was probably only a few seconds of severe pain, and then, plunk, face down in the whirlpool when they dragged him out and laid him down on the cold, hard tile decking where he should have been pronounced dead.  But, no one dies at MF’s.  Why?  Because it’s a health club.  Isn’t that where we started?

Eventually, the firemen come.  Then, the ambulance shows up.  They shock the guy.  They inject the guy.  They shock the guy again.  I mean, he’s turning purple.  He is dead.  However, remember, no one dies at MF’s.  Then, they put him on the stretcher, wheel him out the front door, and it’s business as usual.  And, no, in case you’re wondering, they never drained the whirlpool after the incident.  It’s kind of like a memorial pond now.

The problem is that no one knows who the guy is.  So, they announce that every male member should report to the locker room and stand in front of his locker.  After a search, they discover the man’s locker.  Someone recalls his first name, which we’ll omit here.  When they break his lock, they find out that he’s been sneaking into MF’s by using someone else’s card.  Yes, borrowing a friend’s card so he can come in, walk around the track a few times and then slowly kill himself in the whirlpool.  Some say what goes around, comes around, or karma is a bitch, but really, just because he used his friend’s card doesn’t mean he deserves to make the ultimate sacrifice, does it?

So, the guy is a loser, and now he’s dead.  But, no, as I said at the beginning, no one dies at Majorly Fit.  The following Monday, the young woman at the front desk tells me, yes, she actually looks me right in the eye, and she tells me the man was taken to the hospital where he recovered.  Mirabile dictu!  Yes, he recovered, and now, he’s in a rehab hospital.

Really?  Where I come from, dead is dead.  I’m from NYC, so this is a lesson one learns early in life.  But, this is not NYC.  OK, really?  By this point, I’m incredulous because the poor guy was turning purple.  They never got a pulse even after all of the heroic CPR, shocking, injecting.  But, the people at MF’s can really tell a story in a convincing way, and for a few dumb seconds, I’m wondering if my eyes deceived me.  I mean, by the time I got into the main gym area last Friday, I was wearing my glasses.  I was staring straight into the pool area, and I saw what I saw.  Now, I, the eye witness to the death of the loser at Majorly Fit am starting to doubt myself.  Could I have been deceived?

Within the next few days, rumors are swirling.  Most of the members are “sorry they missed it.”  What?  They are that jaded, that bored that they’d rather “change up their workout” by having someone die right before their very eyes rather than just try the elliptical machines or pay for a package with a personal trainer?

Well, then I spot the ER nurse in the locker room.  So, I approach her and tell her I was here when the man died in the whirlpool.  I say, “He was dead, wasn’t he?”  See looks at me as though I’m a moron.  “Of course he was dead,” she says as she changes into her sports bra.

I tell her what they’re saying at the desk.  She rolls here eyes. “He’s dead.  It’s a good way to die.  I’ve seen a lot worse.”  I nod my head, but my eyes betray my confusion.  “They never got a pulse.  He was dead,” she pronounces.  “Would you rather die in a diaper in a nursing home, or die in the whirlpool at Majorly Fit?”

“Majorly Fit,” I say, but frankly this is the very sort of philosophical question I haven’t asked myself lately.  Well, honestly, that isn’t true. But, that’s another OMT for another blog.= 

However, this particular issue is settled.  The guy is dead; God rest his soul.  But, at the desk, everyone is being assured that the guy is recovering nicely.  Majorly Fit, where losers go to die—literally.  Next?