The Birthday Flake

It was d’s birthday today. I’d planned to take her to breakfast in Cardiff. I’d booked us an escape room – one of those Chrystal Maze-style puzzle rooms – with our friends Kelly and Mark. I’d booked us a dim sum lunch at a Chinese place that neither of us had ever been to before, but about which d had heard good things. And I’d booked us a room in one of our favourite Cardiff hotels. Y’know, cos of the whole mini-mini-break vibe of it being a birthday.

Ohhhh the master plannery. Every guy probably thinks he’s been really devious, but d fed my delusions of big bad evil genius by claiming she had no idea about the escape room until Mark and Kelly suddenly joined us in my usual Starbucks, just two minutes away from the room.  Score one for ego.

The escape rooms were, as I say, just a couple of minutes away from Starbucks, but they were, thanks to a broken-down lift, up three flights of stairs.

‘Hi. Do you…have a booking?’ said the guy we met at the top of the stairs.

‘Yep,’ I said. ‘1.30. name of Tony.’

‘Errrrm…are you sure?’ he asked. ‘Which room are you booked into?’

‘The Heist,’ I told him. ‘Gonna get our Ocean’s Eleven on, be all criminal mastermindy. Here,’ I said thrusting out my phone for him to check the email they’d sent me confirming the booking.

‘Yyyyeah, that’s not us,’ he explained. ‘That’s totally the other escape rooms that are nothing to do with us. They’re up by Cardiff Castle.’

‘Fuck,’ I muttered. ‘Right…’

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that I had my laptop bag, d had her enormous shoulder bag, and we’d also just picked up a bag of birthday presents from Mark and Kelly, including a bone china cakestand. Also, the Januaryness, so we were in many, many layers, including scarves and hats.

I mentioned the three flights, right?

Down we went, hiking up the damned road.

Now here I absolve myself slightly – the guy at the first escape room had said the one we wanted was up by the castle, and by Burger King. Mark said he’d Googled it the night before, and he knew where it was. Sure enough, there it was – not exactly by the Castle or the Burger King, but it was definitely the right place: it even had ‘The Heist’ written on the door as one of the rooms you could play.

Fuck. More stairs. Three more flights. Seriously, escape room people, would it kill you to have some ground floor games, for wheelchair users more than fat fucks?

Anyway, we got up to the third floor again, and in the reception there were some hipster dudes with Edwardian beards, who seemed bound and determined to ignore us. But there were lockers for all our crap, so we didn’t have to take them into the room with us. We dutifully hung up coats, sweaters, hats, scarves, and jammed bags into lockers. Then we announced ourselves to them as having a 1.30 appointment. ‘The Heist,’ I said. ‘Name of Tony.’

‘We have nothing booked under that name,’ Edward VII flatly informed me. I shoved my phone forward to him. ‘It’s on the door,’ I begged. ‘This must be the right place.’

‘Nah, that’s our newest place,’ he explained. ‘Up by the Castle and Burger King.’

‘We are up by the Castle and Burger King,’ I muttered. ‘Seriously, a year ago, there wasn’t one of these places, now Cardiff has at least three escape room facilities on pretty much the same street?’

We sighed. We pulled bags out of lockers, grabbed hats and coat and scarves and sweaters off hooks, went down three flights and hiked up the street. Again. In the meantime, escape room three had called me to find out where the hell we were.

‘We’re minutes away,’ I told them. ‘Oh wait, here’s your door. We’ll be up in a minute.’

Three more flights.

‘Fuck it, it’s my birthday,’ said Donna, grabbing the new and working lift. In an effort to be a conscientious Disappearer, I took the stairs. Bad move. Once we got to the third floor reception, it turned out the actual room was up…another flight of stairs.’

I’d like to tell you we used up all our mental initiative just finding the place. Let’s just say, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, frankly, we’re all doomed. We had more help from our guide than was really fair, and extra time, and we still had quite some way to go to get out of room three of three. Me personally, I’d never have got out of Room One. I had one moment of success, but the rest was baffling to the point of what-the-hellishness. Basically, I held a flashlight – again, come the zombie apocalypse, go ahead and melt my fat ass down for candles.

Then there was lunch. Having schlepped through more of Cardiff than we’d ever intended, we were…at least notionally…closer to where Kelly and Mark had parked their car, than we were to the restaurant. We walked to the car, down a subway which Kelly was sure was the way. Mark insisted it wasn’t. He was right. We did later come to the subway Kelly’d thought it was, in fairness, and on we went. Mark drove us to the restaurant. There was nowhere to park, so we drove back to the train station, parked up and got a cab back to the restaurant.

‘You don’t need a cab to get there,’ argued the cabbie.

‘Trust me,’ said d, ‘by this stage in the day, we do.’ We did.

The restaurant had closed its main kitchen and was only serving sim sum.

There followed something of a dumplingfest. Meat dumplings, vegetable dumplings, rice rolls, an occasional char siu bun. I stopped earlier than I normally would, because, y’know, Disappearing and all that. d got to try a hot jelly for the first time, so that was… an experience. Then we walked back from the restaurant back to the station (so as to not risk the wrath of another cabbie!), then over to the mall to pick up some Krispy Kremes for Kelly, Mark and d. And finally, to our hotel. While d exchanged bottles of fizzy water for still and red wine for rose, I went out for one last walk – to grab a Starbucks and pick up some more water.

Result? Nearly 11,000 steps. So much for a relaxing birthday!

Disappearingwise? Sure, 11,000 steps is good enough for me, and it’s not like I’ve overindulged especially – yes, there were dumplings, but there was no breakfast, and the dumplings were all I ate today, so I’m happy enough with it.

Back to work tomorrow, and a day into which I will have to artificially force some exercise.

And while it’s not exactly been a relaxing or pampering day by any stretch of the imagination, hopefully, it’s been an unusual, funny, typically ‘Tony’ day for my girl.

I have a Plan for next year.

Already.

Be afraid. Be very afraid…

The Whispering Begins

I don't know whether this is an Everyfatfuck thing, or whether it's a specific Me thing, but there's a thing that starts to happen to me after just a little Disappearing.

I've mentioned that when I Disappear, I erect invisible Perspex walls between myself and all the things which, when I'm not Disappearing, I enjoy eating, but are bad for me. To be fair, things I enjoy eating and things that are bad for me are pretty much synonymous, so the Perspex walls are faiiirly comprehensive. You look around and thunk! You break your nose on a Perspex wall between yourself and chocolate, or you and pizza, or you and every cake in the world.

But what starts to happen is that while you're going about your day, if you happen to be in a place where temptation exists, the damn things start whispering to you. Whispering to get you to buy them, eat them, cram them into your face before anyone else knows, have a secret liaison with them that can become almost a culinary affair - only you nad them knowing that whatever you tell the world, you're cheating. You're doing what the things want you to do, to ensure your own failure, your own growing waistline. To ensure you don't achieve your goals.

Writing that down, as I'm sure I must have done before, is a good slap in the face. It makes me realise quite how fucked in the head I actually am. Quite how self-destructive. Quite how much at war, the element of me that believes I should be fat, and incapable of discipline, and self-destructive always tempting me to let it win. The action of Disappearing is a declaration of war on that part of myself.

Today being January 1st, we actually stayed in bed till after midday, and mulled gloriously around for a few hours. By the time 6.30 in the evening rolled around, I hadn't done a damn thing in terms of exercise all day, and had had one of the less wise but glorious breakfasts from d - home made waffles and incinerated American bacon (my favourite way). Today was probably the biggest incident so far of me having to force my ass out of the door, probably down to the late start in the day. Yesterday, I nearly made it to my 10,000 steps, deciding to walk from Merthyr down to Pentrebach to meet d and my mother for our New Year's Eve dinner. Today, I only managed half of that distance - some 4500 steps. That took my up to my roundabout from the first few days, and I stopped off at the gas station again on the way back - mostly, this time, to warm the hell up, as I seem to have wandered into Jotunheim, land of the Ice Giants, and have frozen at least one of my nipples off. If you find one, it's mine.

While I was there though, the whispering began. My eye fell on some of the most godawful looking, plastic-imprisoned muffins it's ever been my misfortune to see. And I wanted to slam them into my face, plastic and all. Chocolate bars stood up, early Disney style and turned into curvy dancers, waggling themselves at me. Chicken and mushroom slices unpeeled their pastry and beckoned me closer.

Every damn thing in the gas station begged me to eat it. And I could have. I wanted to.
Which is the point at which you have to either start singing (ideally, though not always, in your head), or get the hell out of Dodge and escape the shorus of whispering temptations.

I got out.

As it happens, d had been making pizza when I got home. All of which was glorious, and all of which I wanted to smash into my face. I ate three small pieces, and kept the rest for tomorrow.

Whispering madness averted. Today.

One day at a time and all that...

The Dangers of Hardass Love

Yesterday, I had an email from a friend.

As far as I know, this friend hadn't, at the time, clocked that I'd started Disappearing again. I've checked with her before using this, because I know what some of my friends are like, and they won't be happy about it.

Took me a little while to get right with it myself, because it seemed to come out of a clear blue sky - but I know it was meant well, and in a kind of hardass, personal trainer, no-bullshit, get better spirit, that this pal's particularly used to because we first encountered each other when I edited her manuscript (not to brag, but... Ah, hell, no, let's really not brag), so she's used to getting that from me about her work in a professional capacity, and we've become strong, good friends during that process, so it's part of the way we're allowed to talk to each other.

And while that's true, and we're cool, it stands as an example of the kind of thing people believe they can come out of a blue sky and tell you when you're fat...as if it's actually their business to point things out to you, so I figured I'd share it with you.


Here's the mail, before we go any further:

Title: You Mad Bastard!

 

Tony! What the hell! I've just seen your picture on Facebook and I'm so upset. What are you doing? People like me need you - and there you are looking like you might drop down dead TODAY.

Get back on that bloody diet man!

Do not eat a fucking thing unless you have not eaten for three hours!

Do not eat anything with sugar in for the next 24 hours.

If you feel like shit, then let me tell you, you look like it too! Here is a poke with a shitty stick! You're strong willed. You CAN do this. Move your arse, now!

I'm going to demand a report on the past 24 hours food and drink at 9.45 tomorrow, so fucking-well act like a man and get on with the bloody sensible eating and excercise plan, you big idiot!

XXX

So - there you go.
Now, since then, this pal has been so upset at what I look like in recent Facebook photos that she's been unable to sleep, because, in her own words, there's nothing she can do to save me but throw words at me, and she's also in fact been upset that 'people around you have let you get this way.' So, as I say, this wasn't badly meant, but it's an interesting example of a more general social trend: the idea that fat people need people to point out what they look like in order to 'motivate' them into doing the 'right' thing.

We really don't. I mean...really, really.

The thing is, as it happened, I'd started Disappearing again, and so was in a 'Let's deal with this shit' place when this arrived in my inbox. If I'd been feeling particuarly delicate, or perhaps more likely, if I'd woken up yesterday thinking 'As days go, I'm not looking so shabby, today's a good day,' there's no telling what it might have done to me.

Here's the thing: nobody 'lets us' get this way. We do this to ourself - whether driven by demons or drawn by cream cakes. And more often than not, only we can get ourselves out of the situations we're in. However well meant advice on what we look like and how we're likely to fall over and die may be, it's actually very rarely effective in terms of getting us to do anything positive. It's very difficult to actually shame us into doing something you think we should do, and more often than not, it hardens us into a 'Fuck you!' response, and a desire to run...or at least get a cab...to the nearest cake shop and buy EVERYTHING, because there's a degree of self-hate but also a degree of self-comfort and protection in eating foods that give us an immediate emotional buzz, like cakes and chocolate (or whatever we've associated as 'comfort food').

Now as it happens, my friend and I are cool, and I'm already in the Disappearing Zone. But generally, reacting with horror and forecasting death - nnnnnotsomuch the way to get your fat friend to do things that are good for them. Being a hardass is all well and good if your fat friend's a hardass too. But some aren't, and even some who seem to be in front of all the world are actually self-hating with a crispy sugary casing of hardassery they've had to master just to get through the day.

As I say, I know my friends, and I'm not posting this to start a chorus of angry responses - can the torch and pitchfork stuff. For me, from this friend, this was fine. Just in general, be sure you've judged your friend and their responses well before you go down the 'What the hell have you done to yourself?' route. We have to be pretty hardass to get through society being significantly outside its metrics of acceptability and attractiveness. Be VERY sure our hardassery's not just the candy shell we wear, and that you're not about to stake us through the heart before you deploy your own hardass love.

The Temptation Drawer

OK, shoot me - I weighed this morning, after quite a spree of physical activity last night (mostly involving a bookcase (it is an ex-bookcase. It has ceased to be), and all the contents that used to live on it. And as predicted, I was one bowel movement or one spurt of off-my-ass-getting away from good news - weighed in unofficially this morning at 18st 13. From where, I have to tell you (again, and again, and over a-freakin'-gain), the view looks a lot more rosy and optimistic.

Now here's a thing.
I have a drawer in my office (although don't tempt me, I'm looking for tonight's physcial exertion challenge). And in that drawer, as of this moment, there's a small bag of mini-eggs and a three-pack of Walnut Whips.

I realise of course by telling you this, I'm a) inciting you to come round whenever you need a chocolate hit, and b) inviting d to take them right the hell away from me in obedience to one of my more tyrannical moods.

But here's the thing. I bought them in Marks and Spencers at Cardiff train station on two separate "Fuck it, I need chocolate, NOW!" moments. And the likelihood is that at some point, I will still eat them.

But I haven't yet. I know they're there. Just behind me. And there's not, ultimately, a damn thing anyone can do to me if I decide to snarf the lot.

But I haven't, yet. I've wanted to. I wanted to, in fact, tonight, despite having been fed some gorgeous protein. But no. They're still there.

I don't know really what the point of this is - as I say, they started as a lack of willpower and a giving in to impulses. They've turned into something like the opposite of that though. As I say, I probably will eat them, one day probably soon. But it seems to be a thing in my brain at the moment that if I eat them, I lose the game I'm playing with them. They are the contents of my temptation drawer, and the game is very simple - them or me, who wins the battle of wits. I'm fully aware that one day it will probably be them. But that day is not today, buoyed up as I am by this morning's impromptu weighing and its good news. We'll see how I fare on a day of less pleasant news.

The Myth of Captain Healthy

While I'm thinking of it, the other reason not to weigh every goddamn day or chance you get is that, in case you missed this, scales are Nazi bastards, and they'll try and upset you and make you reach for your "Fuck it all, I'm leaving home!" treat of choice.

Last night, d and I were in Cardiff, and, as you do, and as is one of the great pleasures of liking any one or number of human beings more than the general mirthless, remorseless crowd of fuckwits, dickheads and douchebags that make up the human race, we had a meal together, sharing time, exchanging days and breaking bread. Breaking literal bread in my case, as we ended up in an Italian place that we've always walked by to get somewhere else, every time saying "Y'know, we really should try that place some day. Anyway..."

So last night, we said "Y'know, we really should try that place some day. Anyway...", walked on, discovered that the place we were heading for was about as attractive as a bullfrog on a blind date, and doubled back to finally cross the Italian off our List of Places To Eat At Before We Die.

It was...good. Not great, but good. Not fine dining, certainly, but fine if you found yourself in a particular part of Cardiff and seized with a sudden dangerously low blood-carb content. I had a brushcetta starter piled with tomatoes and raw onions - yeah, technically it was date night, but what you have to understnad is it was eleven year married date night. d had meatballs that were OK, but with which, should the need have arisen, you could at least have taken out the eyes of your first few attackers, come the zombie apocalypse. She added a side of garlic spinach, because, as I say, this was an eleven year married date night, dammit. For main, she went lasagne, and I went penne amatriciana - pasta, following bread, I know, sue me.

She went chocolate cake for dessert. I went smiling and a decaff latte.

All was good and groovy, except that in the aftermath of the meal, d wasn't well. Something had disagreed with her, and it wanted out any which way it could. I'm not sure a swaying bus ride home in the freezing cold especially helped either, but it was that or stand around for half an hour as her spine turned to one of Elsa's ice sculptures from Frozen. So we swayed.

Me - all I can tell you is that something must really have agreed with me, because 24 hours later, I still contain absolutely all of a bruschetta starter piled with tomatoes and raw onions, and a plateful of penne amatriciana.

Which is a real bastard if you're weighing every day, because then you wake up the morning after an official weigh-in, and weigh, and want to kill yourself when you see two weeks of pedalling run away yelling  "Fuck you, Disappearing Boy!" and throwing you V's and one-fingered salutes, giggling as it goes. I'm not getting on the scales tonight because something seems to be knitting itself a raft or a trap door in my colon and to have determined it wants a never-ending lock-in.

All I can do is continue as normal, get some dinner, get some biking done, try to get some sleep and move the hell along.

On the upside, I had my annual diabetic review today, after which you can kiss my ass and call me Captain Healthy. They bled me last week, and apparently, all is groovy. I have an HBA1C level of 54.

Impressed? Yeah, I didn't have a clue. "All good," said the nurse. Having just checked online, I can tell you the HBA1C is a measure of glycated haemoglobin - different from blood sugar in some...erm...crucial way, apparently. Now, the online stats say you should aim for an HBA1C of 48 or below, unless you've been advised otherwise - which to my nowledge, I haven't. So either my diabetic nurse knows more about my condition than she's ever bothered to let on, and I fall into the "below 59 is fine" category (which does appear to exist), or it was after 5PM when she saw me and she just couldn't give a shit any more. Pretty much like me in my current predicament.

Annnnnyhow. All good is what she told me, so all good is what I'm going with for now. The more I lose, the more the system is likely to come under better regulation, and the more optimal my HBA1C will be.

So, with d set to finish work just two hours from now, I need to get my clogged ass up and get some dinner and biking done. Catch you later, Disappearers all!

The Aristotelian Fuck-You

“Oh yeah, I did a thing,” I said.

Apologies – anyone who knows me understands that this kind of intentionally vague non-sequitur is pretty often how conversation goes with me.

“What did you do?” asked Ma. We were belting it round the local lake in the will-I, won’t-I drizzle that threatened to decide “Ah sod it!” at any second and drench us, probably causing the ducks a degree of smug satisfaction.

“I did an Arisotelian fuck-you.”

Ma led the way around the corner of the lake, chuckling at the Canada Geese, just because she could.

“Alright,” she said, as mildly as she ever says anything. She knows better than to give me the satisfaction of asking.

You see, the thing is, I’ve sort of got a feud going with Aristotle. I mean technically I win before we start, seeing as how he’s about as dead as a human being can be. And then on the other hand, technically, he wins, because being as dead as a human being can be hasn’t stopped him getting the better of me before now.

A long while ago, while Disappearing the first time, I read some Aristotle. Ethics, from memory. And old Aristotle reckons that goodness, or self-control, is not exhibited by someone who refrains from the pleasures that would otherwise consume them in passions like gluttony or lust. Abstinence, he says, is essentially the coward’s way out. Enjoyment in moderation, says Ari, is the mark of true self-control.

Now, there’s no real doubting the fact that the man had a point. The complete abstinence from pleasure makes you go… a bit weird. Hence my occasional bouts, the first time round, of ungovernable, swallowed-down fury at happy people eating things I couldn’t allow myself to eat. It’s the same principle, probably, that underpins people so repressed as to hate their own sexuality telling other people who they can and can’t legitimately love, or entirely celibate *cough, cough* men in robes and pointy hats lecturing people about love and sex. When the unhappy people turn out to be the very thing they declaim so hard against (Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, and a parade of others, kinda looking at you right now), or priests turn out to have been buggering their underage parishioners, it’s massively wrong and hypocritical and monstrous, but what it isn’t is mysterious – complete denial of pleasure doesn’t work – it tries its utmost to find pathways of expression, and when socially legitimate pathways are denied it, it’ll go down any dark side street of the soul it can find.

So fair play to Aristotle, he knew a thing or two about human nature. But the way I Disappear is in direct contradiction of his ideas – it’s positively ascetic, or as d more accurately calls it, ‘bastard stubborn’ – I lock myself in a sort of invisible Perspex box, and all the things I actually want to eat are on the other side of the box. Hence my occasional homicidal rages against the ‘Normal’ people who eat whatever the hell they like come Summertime, through no fault of their own and good genes. Denial of pleasure turns me strange too.

So an Aristotelian fuck-you is what I call the act of self-daring, of eating something that I shouldn’t eat, just to see if I can. And it is, for me, a ridiculously stupid thing to do. After a year of weight loss that saw me go from 20st 7 to 14st 7, it was an Aristotelian fuck-you moment that started me on the pathway back to 20 stone, when I joined d in a fish and chip supper one night – my Perspex box was broken, and all the demons in my head when it came to food were free to kick the living crap out of me.

“I had a scone,” I said.

While we were away, with the bakery at the bottom of our flat and slightly to the left (Sue’s Pantry, Saundersfoot – go there, you’ll die happy), I decided, one day, to have a scone.

A plain scone, mind you, buttered, and with fresh strawberries in it.

“Y’know what?” I said to d at the time. “Aristotle is not the boss of me.”

“No dear, he’s dead,” she said, having had such conversations several times before.

“Y’know something else?” I asked – all this, incidentally, in the line in a bakery – “Food is not the boss of me either. I’m the pigging boss of food.”

“Yes,” said d, actually turning to look at me. “That’s big. Glad you realise that, honey.”

And so, I bought a scone, and ate a scone, and thoroughly enjoyed a scone, and got the hell on with my day, and my week, and my Disappearing.

I hadn’t even thought to mention it till now, because it’s been so insignificant – whereas longer-term readers will know that in my previous Disappearing, I would have been wailing by now and beating one of my prodigious man-breasts and thinking I’d utterly failed, and probably ordering every shake on the Five Guys menu because after all, “woe is me and what’s the bloody point?!”

Notsomuch, this time round. Clearly the Disappearing continued during the holiday, and I’ve continued in my routine – walk, bike, eat sensibly, lose weight(?) – since I’ve come home. Maybe – just maybe, mind you – Aristotle and I are coming to some sort of understanding.

“Oh,” said Ma, still in her levellest of tones.

“That’s nice.”

Turns out she doesn’t think I have an addictive personality. She just thinks I think I should have one. I thought of all the times I’ve lied when she said that. All the times I’ve sneaked out for a sausage and chips, or a packet of chocolate biscuits, or stayed at home and made one of my ‘special trifles’ (for the recipe, see recent entries) in a bid to force-feed myself far beyond the point of actual pleasure, driven not even by wanting them so much as needing them, to feel complete, to feel right, to feel efficiently self-loathing.

Haven’t done that this time round, I should say. You probably know enough by now to know that I’d have told you if I had, by way of reveling in the judgment of it.

 Still, interesting that Ma thinks I’m driven more by what I think I should be that what I feel I am.

And so far, this Aristotelian fuck-you has gone well - no collapsing in a quivering heap of failure and self-loathing. To misquote Katy Perry - I ate a scone and I liked it (I feel a parody coming on...). And on we go – now, to the SudokuBike!