To My Darling Wife,

What a New Years, Maria!  I know I apologized earlier while I was revisiting my alcoholic choices in the loo,  but I’m truly sorry I dropped that bottle of vodka as we were on our way to your sister’s house.  You were so excited, at least I’m assuming that’s what that foreign expression on your face meant, but what good is New Years without a drink or two in your system–especially when family is involved, right?  Don’t be upset about missing the gathering.  That’s the great thing about New Years, it happens every year, whether or not you’re alive to enjoy it.  Things go on, such is life.  I’m not saying that to discourage any hope you have regarding your sister’s treatments.

Now, on to more important matters.

I awoke with a start tonight as we were trying to sleep.  I was trying to clear my mind of all thoughts but was unable to do so since being medically diagnosed with my large cerebellum.  And you, with your heavy breaths that would convince anyone in the world to get over the awkwardness of a CPAP Mask–I’m sorry to digress, darling, but you don’t look like an elephant with that mask.  Would you rather be a dead elephant or an elephant that sleeps soundly?  And even if you did pass in your sleep with the mask on, I promise I would not participate in any making-fun-ofs when the coroner arrived.  I would not mention the floating pink pachyderm I drunkenly imagined only to find your cold body lying next to me in the morning still in that pink fleece sack of a nightgown you insist on wearing.  I believe I read somewhere that elephants are cold blooded due to their skin being so thick so that’s probably why I would be fine with a cold, dead elephant next to me in bed… Wait, that doesn’t completely prove my point, but well… I said it was a digression.

Anyway, my love, as you were blissfully comatose with your mixture of pretty blue pills, my mind was racing and I had to get up and pace a bit.  I thought to myself, we’ve just entered a new decade, it’s been a whole year since the episode of your “episode,” and 2009’s resolutions have remained untouched.  I’m not as rich as you would like me to be, and you haven’t attempted that diet you insisted on putting in air quotes. I thought I should make a new list, and since you never really seem to care much about things of worth other than e-cards these days, I made your resolution list as well.  It’s just easier, darling.

1. Join a Gym - It’s important to take care of ourselves, because we don’t want to die young and leave the other to have to pay off extraordinary credit card debt.  And if you need it to be, the phrase “joining a gym” can be a malleable definition.  It could mean fine-tuning an already well-oiled muscle machine, to which I’m referring to my own frame.  It could mean just exercising your tear ducts to control the awful amount of liquid that seeps out when too much boxed wine has entered your system.  Or, just finding the strength to remove your legs from beneath the bed covers.  Either way, it’s for the best.  I don’t want to be married to a fatty.  Again, I know it’s a digression, but you had slightly more big to your bones when we were courting, being a size 6 and all, and I thought secretly buying your dress two sizes smaller would inspire you to fit in it.  Now I claim “my bad” because, as we all know, instead you just looked like a glowing sausage wrapped in rice paper.  I do feel bad for keeping that secret during those three years of our engagement.  I thought your own self-deprecation would eventually evolve into motivation.  So, yes, back to joining a gym.  I’m sure you know of a YMCA or something with all those fruits you hang around with, right?  They look fit.  Most gays do.  Get on that.  Not the gays.  Don’t get on the gays.  They won’t like that.

2. Raise a small dog — Since I don’t like children, I’m sure you can get over those psychosomatic allergies of yours.  Here’s what I figure:  a small dog is easier to remember than that hopeless charity box coin purse you bring around.  It’s easier to run to Pet-Co than to mail pennies in an envelope to a child with a click in its unpronounceable name .  Besides, if I don’t spend my extra change on a sugary snack, I come home unbearably cranky.  Low blood sugar alone may jeopardize our marriage.  I can’t bear to think of such things.  And I mean really, what is 25 cents going to do for a family in need?  Will they buy their own sugary snacks to help them be less cranky about being starving or having a case of AIDS?  Ring up a Zebra Cake and take it home to the family to compliment their dusty bag of rice some hippy brought them?  They have Zebras in their front yard so why would I want to confuse them?  We’re getting a terrier dog puppy and we’re naming it Chumpo.  Or you can name it that clicky name after your charity case.  I don’t know why we’re still on this topic, darling.  These are resolutions to improve OUR lives, not others.

Well, it seems you’ve woken up, so I’ll have to complete my list another time.  God, why did I let you keep that nightgown from your sister’s closet?  You look like a pathetic mascot for a breast cancer walk.  People see you wearing that and they want to get cancer.

I love you darling, Happy New Year!

Yours,

Charles

P.S.  Would you mind taking the trash out in the morning?  My resolution is to get more beauty sleep.

I joined a new gym.

Having felt a little meat and potato-y since a hairdresser decided to frame my face with a cut rivaling Ramona Quimby’s, I joined the gym downstairs in my company’s building. I decided that I wanted to forgo the feeling of relief that you gain when a new better paying job provides a financial breath of freash air.  I believe that my natural state is one of flailing. This gym causes weight loss by removing the extra pounds from the wallet.  You no longer spend money on food because you have convinced yourself that the convenience of an expensive gym downstairs justifies the price and outweighs rational thought.

I’m used to going to a gym with Norms.  The Norms wear old T-shirts and Umbros, they sport a pooch of a belly that never quite leaves because they have to leave the gym to feed their dogs at home.  They grunt, they sweat, they understand that they’ll never be models, their frame is what it is, god bless us, everyone.  I’m used to this.

This new gym is for Superheroes.  Superheroes who work in sales and power up with Miller Lite.  Superheroes that have tight butts in tight butt pants and shoot from work to the gym in pneumatic tubes.  They spend three hours in classes that have puns in their titles. “Fant-ASS-tic Workout!” “Be More BUTT-iful!”  ”ASS! ASS! ASS! ASS!! ASS!!!”  After the classes, they emerge glowing (not sweating), maybe even twinkling like Twighlight Vampires, and hover towards the dressing room.  There, they proceed to pose and flex without shirts.  In the women’s locker room, a staff photographer captures their perfect frames as they do 20 push-ups with their perky breasts before continuing to vogue topless.  They drop their towels and mousse up their already magazine-tousled locks as the photographer captures their god-like figures, shamelessly displaying a half-boner beneath his jeans.  Now, I know I live under a rock, but I was quite surprised at how many naked people there are in the locker room.

Of course there are a few other Norms at the gym that can be seen doing leg lifts under a heavy blanket in a dark corner, or are straining to keep up with the über-race in the “Save America from Burning Buildings with Your ASS” class.  They’re there.  We’re there.  And you may even see us buying some tight workout pants some day because they’re like, totes supes cute.  In fact, we gain confidence walking amongst the Superheroes. We know that we are protected and we are not really threatened by this race of  Übers.  They go about their business, and we go about ours.  Them with their lightening tree legs, us with our excess packaging.  It’s focused and calm in the gym since there is no sexual tension or possibility of mating betwixt the two species.  You don’t see humans lusting after cheetahs.  The Norms and the Superheroes are two different breeds. In the bedroom they would cancel each other out and there would be some sort of, I don’t know, sparky explosion as their piston-like genitals attempted to climax in a vat of sex dough. Capes would get caught in ceiling fans and Norms would have heart-attacks, breathlessly attempting to rescue the spinning lover just out of reach above them.

So in the gym, we feel safe, at ease even.  The Superheroes are there as eye-candy, as inspiration, and as protection in case there is ever an Evil Villain lurking, waiting… plotting… Ready to attack at a moment’s notice–

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!”  scream the Norms, struggling to sit up with their medicine balls.

The Superheroes’ ears perk to the sound of the gym walls crashing, the building’s innards shoveled forward.  The smell of cedar overtakes the room as the sauna crumbles and is pushed into the main machine room.  A steely tank-like machine now sits breathing smoke and steam in the middle of the workout room blasting Ted Nugent ominously from a tinny boombox strapped to the roof. The Norms stare in horror as they see a now half-toweled Norm, startled at this repositioning, scramble to safety away from this geared creature.

The metal beast begins to move forward, and The Norms now look to the Superheroes gazing calmly at this impending danger.  Just then, the top of the tank opens and a leathery Norm dressed in an ill-fitting track suit emerges from the tank.  He delivers his manifesto.  A lot of evil plan blah-blah-blahs similar to the ones at the end of movies, grandiose statements and gesticulations, those snap-poppers you throw on the ground during the 4th of July… But still, it’s not something The Norms see every day, so it’s pretty scary.  Then, a giant laser death gun rises out of the tank and sheer panic erupts in the gym.  The leathery Norm unleashes his fury and workout equipment explodes with a push of a button.  Yoga mats rocket across the room, slicing and mauling any slow-moving victim in its path.  The Norms desperately cry to the Superheroes for help. Surely this is the time when Good and Super-Good unite against Evil!  The Norms begin to psych themselves out for this great battle.  They have taken enough step-aerobic classes to help throw at least one punch at the side of their muscled comrades!  They look around to sound the battle cry, but the Superheroes are no longer found.  Realizing they are now alone, the slack-jawed Norms are left to be es’ploded by lasers.

If you were to check the surveillance video you would see a flash of spandexed individuals bolt out of the gym as the Evil Norm struggled to deliver his lengthy evil plans in iambic pentameter.  In perfect form, they speed off in their Audis and laugh about it later on leather couches over a Miller Lite and an episode of “America’s Got Talent.”  Tomorrow’s just another day at the ‘ol office.