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Diet and Exercise
I noticed that my cat was starting to get fat. Not sure why because he’s been getting the same amount of food as always so the only explanation is that he must have been sneaking the left-over pizza I’ve been leaving out on the stove every night. In that moment I realized that I’ve been eating pizza every night and beelined to the hallway mirror to check if I was getting fat too.
I was.
“From now on it’s vegetable smoothies and walks around Central Park until we both look like Brad Pitt,” I said to Garbage. “Well, vegetable smoothies for me and canned tuna for you,” I corrected myself realizing that cats don’t eat vegetables. Or maybe they do. I don’t know. I know that mine certainly doesn’t. In any case, one two click and we’ve got a case of wild albacore and a Ninja blender on the way from Amazon. Great. Next, I figured we’d get a head start on the exercise so I strapped Garbage into his harness and off we went to the park. (The thing barely fit.)
We hiked around the little trails above Loeb Boathouse, I took it slow because I could see that Garbage was having a hard time. His body was visibly weighing down on his tiny knees. He looked like a barrel on four shaky sticks. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to embarrass him. Instead, I pretended like I was the one struggling, giving off sighs here and there, asking him to slow down. I tried to keep his mind off the physical exertion with stories about mice and fish when, out of nowhere, a large mama-goose cut us off leading a string of babies across the path. We stopped. Garbage looked up at me. I shrugged my shoulders, “we gotta wait,” I said. And as soon as I did, the goose hissed violently like a manic cobra. I got a little scared, I’ll admit. “Step back,” I calmly whispered to Garbage. He moved behind my leg. Seeing him move, the goose started flapping her wings and hissing even more aggressively.
Now — just to clarify — when I said that I got a little scared, it wasn’t so much that I was afraid of the goose itself. I mean, you have to keep a leveled head in situations like that, have to think logically. And logically speaking, I’m over six feet tall. The goose is what? A foot maybe? I weigh… a lot, hence the whole diet and exercise thing. The goose weighs how much? Maybe 10, max 15 pounds? I say this to say that I’m pretty sure I could take a goose down if push came to shove. Let’s say she flew up at face-level and tried to peck my eyes out. I’d treat her with a double jab, cross, hook. And if she came after my legs, I’d simply swat her with a low kick. Done deal. It’s not complicated. But it is beside the point because I would never actually do anything like that. Not in my right mind at least. And that is where things start to crumble. Because how can I know if I’m in my right mind at any given moment? Everything I do or think makes sense to me because I’m the one doing or thinking it. So if the thought of boxing it out with a goose pops into my head, that means that somewhere in there this is a possibility waiting to materialize. And that is what I was scared of when I said I got a little scared. Because the only thing worse than beating up a goose is being SEEN beating up a goose. I mean, Imagine that? You’re walking around Central Park, minding your business, relaxing, when suddenly you see some cretin with a morbidly obese cat on a leash punching a goose. Front page New York Times next morning guaranteed.
Long story short, we turned around and walked in the other direction. Did another 30 minutes around the lake and went home. Exhausted.
Once we got the blender and the tuna we played no games, went hard with the diet without looking back at our old fat life. Within the first two months Garbage started looking like a Persian show cat and I was down to 180.
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Sustainable Consumption
I needed to get rid of my couch. I was moving. The thing was in good condition and with the furniture shortage going on at the time I figured someone will certainly take it off my hands. The only thing that was wrong with it were these filthy fuzz balls all over the seats and the back. Otherwise, primo.
I may have lied a little. MY idea was to chop the couch up with an axe and throw it out the balcony since it would be a lot of work to bring it out to the curb for the garbage men. MY WIFE’S idea was to sell it. So I ordered one of those battery powered fabric shavers to see if it could make my fuzz ball problem go away.
Two days later I’m in my living room patiently shaving the couch while watching Game of Thrones. It took some time, I’ll admit, because the shaver is small and the couch was big and I was also trying to pay attention to the show because you don’t want to miss anything being that GOT is so unpredictable. You look away from the screen for two seconds and suddenly the main character is dead.
Anyway, I shaved the thing top to bottom and left to right and once I finished I couldn’t believe what I saw. A brand-new couch. I called my cat to the living room and asked him to try and stay off the couch because I plan on selling it and now that it’s nice and shaved I don’t want to deal with cleaning cat hair off it.
Another two days go by and I got some guy coming to scoop up the couch. I grabbed one of those sticky roller things and, just as the doorbell rang, managed to finish rolling off all the cat hair. “Top of the morning to ya,” the guy says to me in a British accent.
“Good morning,” I respond. “You have someone with you to help carry the couch?” I asked, signaling that it won’t be me.
“My mate is in the car,” he says. “I’ll cast an eye at the couch and fetch him over if we strike a deal. If you don’t mind?”
Fishy, but ok. I stepped aside, “come right in.”
He starts inspecting the couch like it was some exotic animal, just short of sniffing the seats. Then starts negotiating, trying to sound all smart with his British accent, using words like “depreciation” and “time decay” but I’m not fooled. “Look chief,” I say, “the price is what the price is. I got fourteen other inquiries about this here couch,” I gave it a tap, “all willing to pay premium. Take it or leave it, guy.”
Here’s the thing, I spent six months in London during college and that cured me from thinking that people who talk with a British accent are smarter than me. There was this pretty girl in my Shakespeare course with the most profound Brit accent you could imagine — long story short — her and I decided to see the Merchant of Venice together at the Shakespeare Globe as part of a class assignment. We met up at the Mile End subway station on what might have been a Thursday afternoon and took the Central Line to St. Paul’s, then walked across Millennium Bridge.
“Is that a river or a lake?” the girl asks me, pointing to the body of water beneath us.
I stopped. Could she possibly be THAT stupid? I wished she had asked me what the name of the river was. I could easily justify that. She was from northern England, it was only her second week in London, never been before, wasn’t much into geography. But this… this was hard to get around. “Well, do you know the fundamental difference between a river and a lake?” I asked.
She squinted her eyes and stared at me with a finger pressed to her lips.
I offered a hint. “One is still, the other moves.”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I always forget which is which…”
“This one moves. It flows. See?” I pointed down.
“Um-hm, yea. So, it’s a… La…”
“R…”
“River!”
“Exactly,” I said. “River.” I guess not everybody has to be a limnologist. But let me tell you something. Had she insisted for long enough in that British accent that Thames was in fact a lake, there was a time in my life that I would have believed her.
In any case, you get my point — not falling for it. Not today.
“Take it or leave it, guy,” I say to the Englishman. “Let me fetch my mate,” he says, and in just a few quick minutes I was short a couch and long five hundred bucks. Yea, you heard that right. $500.
All that to say this. You don’t have to throw your old things out. You can sell them.
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The Long Road
I used to make $16.50 at this part-time internship I had at a small hedge-fund in Manhattan. I commuted three days a week from New Jersey with no prospect for permanent employment. Spent most of my time there working with the CEO, taking care of whatever he needed taken care of, sort of like a glorified gofer minus the glorified part. His name was Al Pacino, a not too tall Jewish-Italian guy in his early-sixties with a full head of hair. Not Al Pacino the actor if that’s what you’re thinking.
“Hi Al,” I walked into his office one Monday.
“I need you to take my suit to the tailor. It’s hanging on the door,” he pointed from behind his huge mahogany desk. “The place on 76th and second, remember?”
“Yea.”
“I need the waist tightened. Tell him it’s for Al, he knows.”
“Sure.”
I believe that the clinical term for Al Pacino’s personality type is narcissist.
“Al, what’s the most you made in a single year?” I asked him while trying to get the suit down, the hanger was stuck. I asked because I wanted to see how I measured up to a mediocre hedge fund manager.
He froze over his papers at the sound of my question, just sat there looking down, thinking, seemingly calculating something. “Twenty-eight,” he eventually said without looking up, then went back to doing whatever he was doing.
Al Pacino meant 28 MILLION when he said twenty-eight. That’s five hundred thirty-eight thousand four hundred sixty-one dollars and fifty-four cents per week.
“Christ!” I blurted out, almost fainting. “Must be nice.”
“I remember this one time,” Al Pacino looked up at me, “I was about your age — this was back in business school — we went out to a popular night club down in Brooklyn. You wouldn’t know it, it’s not there anymore. It happened by chance that there was an Arabian sheik there that night, some prince, I don’t know what he was. A young guy as well. Your age,” Al Pacino pointed his gold pen at me. “You know what he was doing? He was standing there with a pair of scissors in the middle of the dance floor giving out hundred-dollar bills to anyone who let him snip off their tie. And guys would actually line up for a turn. Can you believe that? There was a line!” Al Pacino slammed his hand on the hard desk. “I was disgusted. I would never let anyone degrade me like that. Ever! The damn prince noticed me staring from a distance, nonplussed, I wasn’t getting in line, so he waved his scissors at me to come get a snip and—”
“What did you do?” I interrupted, unable to contain my raging curiosity.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If you don’t interrupt me I’ll tell you what I did,” Al Pacino shook his head.
“Sorry Al.”
“I turned around and walked out,” he said. “That’s what I did. I stopped talking to all the guys I knew who let him cut their ties. I have no respect for people who don’t respect themselves. Crazy. How can you?”
“You can’t,” I agreed. Even though I wasn’t sure if by HOW CAN YOU?he meant howcan you respect people who don’t respect themselves or howcan you not respect yourself enough to let someone cut off your tie for a hundred dollars. But it didn’t matter because I don’t think you can do either. “I guess one could say that you ‘cut ties’ with some your friends…”
Al Pacino gave me a stone-faced look for a long four seconds. “The point of the story is,” he then said, “don’t try to rush things. No shortcuts. Don’t sell yourself to get to where you want to be. Take the long road with dignity and nobody will ever be able to say shit to you. And you’ll be able to sleep at night.”
“Noted,” I said. “Thanks Al.”
“I mean it,” he looked me right in the eye.
“I know, of course. I actually have this one story too where some guy at the bus terminal one night offered me seventeen dollars if I give him a—”
“Ok, good,” Al Pacino cut me off, no longer a part of the conversation. “Now, I need this suit taken care of.”
I went to drop the thing off but instead of taking the Q train from 57th and switching to the 6 at Lexington to swiftly get up the east side, I took the long road on foot through Central Park. Al Pacino’s words really hit home. I ruminated on what he said so much that it eventually made me hungry, so I stopped for lunch on my way back. Beef japchae.
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The Squatty Potty
I’ve been living with Staceyann and her husband Rick in New Jersey ever since I left my dorm at Columbia back in January. They don’t charge me rent as long as I chip in on the groceries and electrical bill, so it’s good deal. I met them at an AA meeting some years back.
Typical north Jersey trash. Staceyann’s in her mid-40s. Purple-black hair, tattoos on her arms, on her legs, on her chest, on her neck, smokes Newport 100s, molested by her junkie father’s buddies as a child. Rick about the same age, a little on the heavy side, long hair, likes to gamble, not too quick in the head because he spent more than half his life smoking PCP mixed with crack. Loves Bob Dylan.
I live in a little annexed room where the hot water heater is down in their basement. I’ve got a twin size bed with a mattress so worn out that every time I shift in my sleep the springs poke through and wake me up. I’m confined to the downstairs bathroom because one of their kids is—
I should also mention that Staceyann and Rick have three kids. All boys, somewhere between the ages of ten and sixteen. I find it impossible to accurately guess a child’s age and never once found myself anywhere near sufficiently interested when listening to people yap about their kids to even attempt to commit such useless information to memory. I never understood why people make such a fuss about their children. They inadvertently end up making you hate them by acting like they’re the best kids to ever walk the earth. Right. And when they grow up to be dimwitted imbeciles, out come the excuses. ADHD, Asperger’s, anxiety, depression, a chronically itchy sphincter. How about bad parenting? Ever try that one? You wheel your strollers around acting like you’ve got the queen of England in there, demanding that everyone get out of your way, growling at anyone who doesn’t move or make a big deal about your boring child — excuse me, don’t you see I have a baby here? Yes, I can see your mediocre baby and I’m deeply unimpressed. Now please, stop acting like you’ve achieved something extraordinary by plopping out a fetus. Congratulations. A standing ovation for doing exactly what human beings have consistently done since long before they knew how to start a fire. We only apologize for not applauding each time you remember to breathe. What I’m really trying to say here is that one of Staceyann and Rick’s kids isn’t fully there. I’m not exactly sure what’s wrong with him but let’s just say that if this was happening in ancient Sparta, he’d go flying off a cliff.
And so, as you can imagine things can get a bit messy in the bathroom and that’s why I use the one downstairs. No worries there, it lacks nothing. I mean, it did at one point lack a squatty potty and that’s the whole point of this story, but otherwise no complaints. Now, as a broke recent college grad who studied the most useless major on the planet, I wasn’t exactly in the position to buy myself one due to my obvious financial constraints.
Until one morning right around my birthday when Rick barged into the basement. “Wake up!” he started shaking me. What the hell? “Wake up, wake up, wake up,” he wouldn’t quit. “You wanna make two bills?” he says once my eyes open.
But I was in such an immensely deep sleep, the kind that makes your eyelids feel like a million pounds. The kind that if you manage to somehow open your eyes, your vision refuses to focus, you’re disoriented, your mind refuses to align—where am I? is all you can think—your entire body just refuses.
“No thanks,” I mumbled, then turned around and instantly began dreaming about a brown horse who’s lying in bed on his back under the covers reading the February edition of Seventeen Magazine. Hot chocolate steaming on the nightstand.
It’s not that I didn’t NEED the money… It’s that it was 7am on Sunday. Who the hell gets out of bed at 7am on Sunday!
“Five,” I heard Rick’s voice echoing inside the horse’s small but trendy bedroom. “You don’t wanna make five hundred dollars? It’ll take you thirty minutes for god’s sake.”
That calculates to one thousand dollars an hour, which in turn calculates to over two million dollars a year if working forty hours per week. The horse looked at me from under his spectacles, waiting.
“Yea,” I sat up.
“Here.” Rick handed me a flat black box about the size of a frozen dinner. “Take this and drive down to Dunkin’ Donuts in Clifton.”
“There’s like five Dunkin’ Donuts in Clifton,” I yawned.
“The one on Clifton Avenue.”
“The one across from the police station?”
“Exactly,” Rick confirmed. “A guy’ll meet you there. Black Range Rover. Just hop in, hand him the box, he’ll give you cash. Eighteen grand. Count it.”
“Now?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“He’ll be there in ten minutes. I can’t go myself, otherwise I would.”
I peaked in the box. “Okay.” I got up, got dressed, got in Rick’s beat up ’98 champagne Maxima, drove to Clifton, forgot to brush my teeth.
Everything went smooth. Back in 28 minutes.
“Here,” I handed Rick the cash. He peeled off five bills. “Pleasure doing business with you,” I said while putting the Washingtons in my pocket. Then went downstairs and back to sleep.
The next day I bought myself a squatty potty as a birthday gift. The thing is great. Nothing gets left behind if you know wat I mean. Nothing.
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