Self Improvement

This is another story based all too firmly in real life; there is much fictional about it, but there are uncomfortably real parts. Well, you write what you know, and I know something about this subject.

It also came out a bit longer than I had anticipated. I try to corral my characters, as a rule; these refused, and the story kept writing itself until it reached the length you see here.

I opened the closet and pulled out the pants. I had not worn them in years, perhaps as long as a decade. So why bother? a little voice demanded.

Because maybe it's time, I snapped mentally.

I looked at the pants for a moment longer, and then said aloud, "Let's do it." I slipped the burnished brass button through the buttonhole, and slowly unzipped the fly. I stepped into the legs, and tentatively pulled them up, pulling the ends of the waistband together.

The fit was not right.

My heart soared.

The pants were at least six inches too big in the waist. My hard work and perseverance had paid off. For the first time in my life, I had seen a project through to completion.

Eighteen months ago I had promised myself I would lose at least one hundred fifty lbs. From the fit of the pants, I knew I had lost at least that much. Perhaps more, and maybe even a lot more.

If I had been dedicated to my plan before, I knew I'd be obsessed from then on.

++++++

(Eighteen months earlier...)

The snap on my pants was the last straw.

I was huffing, puffing, wheezing from the exertion of bringing six bags of groceries from the trunk of the car into the house. Shit, from the garage into the house. Walking the length of the grocery store, even leaning on a cart, had wasted me. I sat in my leather easy chair to catch my breath.

No one wakes up one morning, looks down at a huge belly, and thinks, "Oh, no." I knew I was a fat slob. I had felt myself deteriorating for years. I was accustomed to the level of exhaustion from such simple tasks; but I was certainly not ready to feel a sudden release from the confines of my straining pants, followed a split-second later by the sound of the metal snap striking the wall.

I sat there, pants open at the top, loose tufts of polyester showing where the snap had once been sewn securely in place, and I wept. I was overcome by sorrow (not to say self-pity) at my plight.

It wasn't bad enough I was unemployed, or that my wife was also a fat slob too, or that her weight-related problems had led to a cessation of all sexual activity five years earlier. It wasn't even enough that the medications her doctor had her on had killed even the spark of libido.

What hurt the worst was that I had done it all to myself. I had squandered my talent, my potential and my body in the pursuit of instant gratification. I had always settled for less than I should, taken the easy way out of every situation.

And there I sat, mid-thirties, with not the duke of an idea what to do next.

That's when I realized I did know what to do next, what I should have done years earlier. I got the phone book and located the nearest health club.

++++++

My first day at the gym was a fiasco. The trainer assigned to work with me, a young fellow who had clearly never done much besides exercise, was a tad smug, at least to my way of thinking, as he tried to do a body-mass index on me, and failed. I was just too big for accurate readings.

The weight stations were difficult, too, because I wasn't flexible enough to do much.

In the end, he stressed the values of the treadmill, as it was about all I was going to be able to do. It took everything I had to crank out three minutes without collapsing.

But something in the way I felt afterward... I knew the treadmill was my silver bullet.

So, did I call that first day a fiasco? Maybe not.

I began going every day. I'd stay for three hours at a time, trudging out three and five and seven minute increments at increasingly higher speeds, drowning my sorrows in the sweet nectar of water, sweating it out, allowing it to rid my body of the crap I'd allowed to be deposited there.

Before three months had passed, I was walking for thirty minutes at a time at around two and a half miles per hour, and after a respite doing it again, sometimes four times in a single morning.

I had sprung for an iPod; I loaded it with the music of my youth, arranged it all into fifteen and twenty and thirty minute increments, enough to keep me boppin' to the beat. I was feeling great, and the best part is that people in the gym started to notice me, talk to me, compare notes on progress. I was developing a social circle, something I'd not had in years.

Eventually even my wife, who was pretty much oblivious to everything except work, food and Trading Spaces, began to notice. She wasn't turned on or anything, but she saw my efforts.

A couple of months turned into six, and six months into a year, and a year into eighteen months. I was smaller, no question, but I was wearing nothing but sweats and loose shirts, even around the house. I was scared to get on the scales, afraid to find out I had lost only a paltry amount; but no, the difference in my body was far too pronounced. I had to have lost at least close to my target figure.

Then I realized there were some old clothes, stuck back in the closet, unworn for many years. I knew about what I weighed when I was in them...

And so I approached the closet. There was a pair of pants I had last worn eight years earlier. They were fourteen inches in the waist smaller than the pants I had sundered the day I decided to do something positive.

And how sweet it was.

I hopped on the scales, unafraid. I waited for the digital numbers to stop their flickering, deciding what to say to this burden. ("One at a time, please!")

I looked at the final number; it was one hundred sixty-eight pounds below my high-water mark. I'd beaten my goal. I'd sealed the deal, and I'd earned a celebration.

++++++

I turned into a workout machine after that. For a celebration, I got deeply into weight training, not with the intent of looking like Ah-nult (as if), but to shape up a little better, sculpt and mold and transform loose skin into something a little tighter, better defined.

Truth to tell, I didn't really like most of the weight-training crowd. To make a pop-culture reference: if you've seen Steve Martin's 'Roxanne', you will remember Rick Rossovich as Chris, the pretty face without intellect who won Roxanne's affection. That's how most of them struck me.

So I steered clear. I spent time assisting, informally, other folks who were in my previous condition, to varying degrees. (I noted, with some shame, I never really met anyone who was as far gone as I had been.)

In any event, the gym management noted my progress, and my work helping others. One afternoon, as I was headed out the door, freshly showered, smelling not the least like a man who had just dropped five lbs of water weight, Mike, the floor boss, approached me.

"Yo, Jeff, gotta minute?" he asked.

I looked around. "Me? Sure," I replied.

He indicated the way back to his office; he ushered me in, motioned for me to sit, and he sat behind his desk.

He got right to the point. "Need a job?"

I did a double take. "Well, yeah, I guess," was all I could muster.

"Look, we've been watching you work out around here, what's it been, two years? Something like that?" I nodded; he continued, "You've made progress like the poster kid for weight loss. I mean, if you could do what you've done, and don't punch me out, here, anybody could do it."

I had to admit: he was right. I was off-the-charts sorry when I started. I nodded.

"So, look, we can take you on as an employee, put you through some training, send you to a few classes, and then you work here helping others who were closer to your past, and make 'em like your present." He was speaking directly, looking me in the eye; there was no guile, no better-than-you, no insult, just a straight-ahead, common-sense business proposition.

I thought about it for a half-second; then I said, "You're on."

His face split into a grin; he reached across the table and took my hand, which he shook, and the deal was done.

++++++

The next seven weeks were a blur. My wife was impressed at my weight loss, and my career resurrection; my co-workers at the gym were complimentary of the station I'd attained.

And so it was, one sunny day in October, I began my new life as a glorified spotter. I had certifications to earn before I could do much more, but I could manage aerobics classes, help individuals with training regimens set out by others, that sort of thing.

I soon gained a throng (well, maybe that's too strong a word) of middle-aged and retired men and women, who seemed to see me as one of theirs. I was closer to sixty-five than to twenty-one, and most of the folks with whom I worked were in their fifties and sixties. To them, I was the young whippersnapper with the hair and the music. They were devoted to me; I reciprocated.

The autumn, and especially the winter, was my time of real growth. I gained the confidence of everyone in the gym; I helped my crowd take off those Thanksgiving and Christmas pounds. Those hardy souls, the ones who came in after the New Year to make resolutions they only half intended to keep, were taken under my wing, and those of my crowd; and we worked them suckers into healthy new bodies.

And so the months slipped by; my weight stabilized, and even increased, because muscle weighs more than fat. By late spring, my BMI was just under 21. My doctor had long since gone from bitching to backslapping.

++++++

One day, I was in a shared office, communal, really, when Mike came to the doorway and tapped a couple of times. I looked up, and there, beside him, stood a woman who appeared to be about thirty, looking heavy and unhappy, ready to start over, much as I had done.

Mike made the introductions -- her name was Emma -- and ducked out. Emma sat in the guest chair beside the desk, and we made a little small talk about her goals.

Before we got too far, I pulled out a Polaroid of me, taken the day I had first walked in the doors of the gym. When she realized it was me, she breathed, "How long...?"

"About eighteen months," I answered.

Her eyes were enormous. "You did all this in eighteen months?"

"Well, most of it. What you see today," I looked down and waved my hand generally in the direction of my torso, "is the result of about three years, all told. A year ago, a little more, maybe, I had achieved the weight loss, and then it took another year to tone up some."

She was silent for a moment; then, "Could I lose weight that fast?"

I opened my hands, as if to say, "Weeeeeelllllll..."

"Let me explain," she said, and proceeded to give me her life's story. I was in no special hurry; her business was important to the gym, as Mike said, but he'd always then point out the customer's health was more important than a bottom line.

She was nineteen, she said; she looked older, but as I studied her features, I supposed she was telling the truth. She'd always been overweight, she told me, and her doctors had blamed it on hormone imbalances. She'd developed early, she blushingly admitted, and stayed fat; her pediatrician had simply scolded her (and her mother) for feeding her too much junk, something she resolutely held she had not done.

High school was misery, of course, and finally she had turned eighteen, at which time her parents' physician had become hers as well. He'd diagnosed her as having some runaway estrogen thing, self-corrective with the end of puberty, beyond her ability to explain, and beyond mine to do more than simply accept and follow along.

The good news was, she hadn't gained any weight in over three years; the bad news, college was just too damned hard, because the facilities were not meant for students with middle-aged obesity troubles.

"So," she concluded, "my folks said they'd let me quit school for a year, and work on losing the weight, and they'd pay my expenses. I checked with the dean of students, and she said I was in good standing, and I could come back next fall."

I did some mental arithmetic. "We have fifteen months, and the clock is ticking. Am I right?"

She nodded, looking hopeful.

I focused on her face and thought. "Clearance from your doctor?"

She reached into her purse and pulled out a note, from a Dr Feldmann. It was a general statement of her youth, health, and ability to withstand exercise.

I pondered again. "Okay, let's sign you up."

Her eyes grew large again. "I'll have to come back tomorrow, with my Dad. He's paying, and all..."

"Emma," I said sharply -- it got her attention -- "I'm taking you on as a project. It will be my goal, no, our goal, to put you in a college classroom in fifteen months. I have to tell you, it will take hard work, and I need to know you're serious."

Her eyes filled; she blinked back the tears, and said, "I understand."

I softened considerably. "So bring your father with you tomorrow. Bring both of your parents, I'd like to meet them; but before you leave here, you're going to get on a treadmill. Got it?" I was compassionate, but firm.

She looked terrified, but she nodded. I grinned, and said, "Follow me, kiddo."

She walked with me into the relative emptiness of the mid-afternoon gym. I took her to my personal favorite station, instructed her in the basics of treadmilling, and started her on her odyssey.

When I had to pull her off, panting and near cardiac arrest (not really) after only forty-five seconds, I flashed on my own first day.

Oh, yeah, this one was going to be a challenge.

++++++

The next day, Emma showed up at noon, right when I was coming on duty. She was accompanied by her father, a tall man to whom she bore a striking resemblance, in a Laurel-and-Hardy kind of way. I didn't mention that part.

We sat in the previous day's communal office, and I told her father all the same things I had told Emma. I showed him my picture; he was duly impressed.

After some fat-chewing (bad analogy, I know), he agreed I was probably the one to rescue his only child from her own body. I showed him where she had flamed out the day before; she, having slipped off into the ladies' locker room and back out, resplendent in loose-fitting sweat clothing, hopped up onto the treadmill, explaining to Daddy all the right things to do (she was a quick study, I had to give her that), and proceeded to walk for three minutes before showing signs of distress.

Daddy was sold. He signed the paperwork, paying for a year in advance. Before he left, he focused on me, giving me a stern look; then he shifted his gaze to Emma, and said, "Earn this." He walked out without another word.

So there we were, Yoda and Luke, ready to master the world.

She looked at me, and said, "Back to the treadmill, huh?"

I nodded assent; I waved in the direction of her station, and we returned to the scene of her previous experience.

As I had, years earlier, she walked for a couple of minutes at a time, stopping to rest in a chair I had provided; a few minutes of heavy breathing, a few minutes normal, and then back on the machine, and repeat.

We worked for about an hour. She was clearly worn down from the activity, and I decided she'd had enough for the day. She retreated to the showers, returning looking far fresher.

We made our way back to my office, where I allowed her to sit. We still had some talking to do.

"Now, your father has put a lot of money into the next year, you understand," I said.

She nodded. "I won't let him down."

"So," I continued, "what about your full-time job?"

Her face clouded a bit, a frown overtaking her disposition. "Full-time job?" she echoed.

"Yes," I said. "You have a full-time job."

She looked at my quizzically; I said, "THIS is your full-time job, Emma. THIS is your day. You can't come here for an hour a day and achieve anything. You MUST consider this your job." I didn't yell, I didn't berate; and somehow, it got through.

"I'll be here tomorrow morning at nine," she said.

"Then so will I," I replied. We shared a chuckle

After a moment, I said, "So, is your dad gonna pick you up?"

Her face froze. "I guess we hadn't thought that far ahead," she said, softly.

"How far away do you live?" I asked.

"About a mile that way," she pointed; then, "No, that..." change of direction, "that way... Oh, poop."

I laughed. "Tell me where you live, and I'll get you there in one piece."

She shared the laugh.

A bit later, I dropped her off in front of her apartment building, a sizable block of studio apartments. She struggled out of my car, and said, "Thanks for the lift."

"How will you get to the gym tomorrow?" I asked.

"I have a car. Today was bad planning," she said; she tapped on the top of the car, turned, and hurried away.

++++++

The next few months were so much like my own. Emma arrived early every day, worked out with diligence, and left later than she strictly should have. She poured heart and soul into self-improvement.

It worked. Within a month, her progress, though light, was notable; within three months, she was clearly on track. Before Thanksgiving, she was well on her way. I gave her dispensation to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with the family, enjoying all the normal foodstuffs, with the admonitions to take it easy, remember portion control, and to eat slowly.

After the Thanksgiving break, she returned, more energized than ever; it seemed she'd been complimented by numerous relatives and friends on the progress of her shedding. She was metamorphosing, I saw, into a charming young woman, pretty beneath the pudge, lovely through the lipids, an emerging being, struggling like a butterfly from a chrysalis.

++++++

It was on Valentine's Day that everything moved into high gear.

She was in the gym every day for at least four hours, sweating and hydrating and sweating some more, pounding out calorie-ravaging hours on the treadmill and the bike. She'd break for a banana, you know, for the potassium, and then attack the Nautilus machines.

She was also becoming a babe.

It was on that February day she handed me an envelope. I hadn't gotten a Valentine's card in many years. This one was simple, but deeply moving. In it, she thanked me for the hard work I'd made her do, and for the effort I'd put into reshaping her. I was truly moved.

After work that day, around six-thirty, she invited me to a nearby deli. I had no plans; the wifey was working late most evenings, and picking up again when she got home, such was the nature of her work.

I accepted. Just a bite together, right? Mentor and pupil, Mozart and Beethoven, Obi-Wan and Luke?

We got our food and sat at a window table. The crowd was light, the day being what it was. We ate in companionable silence.

"So," she said, after several minutes of small talk, "no plans for time with the missus this evening?" She grinned, a tad wickedly.

I studied her face. "No," I said after a beat, looking at my plate as I gathered a stray onion ring; as I chewed on it, I continued, "we haven't had plans for a long time."

She became quiet, thoughtful, as if scolding herself for having strayed over a line. "I'm really sorry," she said after a moment, sounding as though she meant it.

I chuckled lightly; that brought a slight smile, and I continued, "She's bigger than she was when I started this whole, this, what, adventure?" A silence descended; then, "I mean, she lost interest in me as anything other than a half-assed housekeeper, shit, ages ago."

Emma's eyes brimmed momentarily; then, "So why stay with her?"

I pondered that. "Well," I said at length, "she makes more money than I do, by a long shot. She's very good at what she does, and she does it day after day."