I'm Not Gonna Lie Page 15

  TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, I’M NOT SURE I’D BE ABLE TO CLIMB ONTO A CAMEL EVEN IF THE CAMEL WAS SITTING ON THE GROUND.

  To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’d be able to climb onto a camel even if the camel was sitting on the ground. I think I’d need a hoist. Or I’d have to wear a harness and have some kind of pulley lift me up, move me over, and drop me down onto the camel in between the camel’s humps, assuming I fit. And then once we got going and I was up and riding, what if the camel didn’t listen when I said, “Jit, jit, jit,” and the fool wouldn’t sit down? What if he got pissed and went ballistic and reared up and threw me and got dander all over me and I got an allergic reaction and I started sneezing uncontrollably and my back went out?

  You know what?

  I’m not riding on a camel.

  What’s next on the list?

  “Spend twenty-four hours alone in the jungle.”

  Yes. Absolutely.

  This would be an interesting challenge, because I’m from the city. I’m normally not a fan of wildlife or big game or rashes. I’m not a fan of smaller game, either. I’ve never held a frog or a lizard and I never want to. Those things creep me out. And ever since I heard that rumor about Richard Gere years ago, I won’t get anywhere near a gerbil or any kind of furry little rodent. There are also a lot of snakes in the jungle, and I hate snakes. They scare the crap out of me. I also don’t like strange-looking plants, even if they’re full of beautiful flowers. I’m sure the one flower I touched would either be filled with poison or be the one plant in the world that had teeth.

  Maybe instead of staying overnight in the jungle, I’d consider spending a night in MacArthur Park in L.A. Actually, that’s more dangerous than the jungle. I’d get killed in that park. No lie. I don’t know what’s going on in there, but I know it’s bad. For one thing, you never see anybody walking in L.A. So if something terrible happened to me in the park and I tried to run out for help, I know that there would be nobody around. It’s unbelievable. How is it possible that in a city with a population of more than three million you never see any people? Where the hell are they? And all the cars have tinted windows, so you still don’t see anybody. The only people you see are walking their dogs. Those people are really dangerous. You can’t approach them, because they all carry Mace or some shit, especially near MacArthur Park. So, no, I’m not spending twenty-four hours in the park, because I don’t want some crazy person to spray me in the face with something that I’d be allergic to and then I’d start sneezing uncontrollably and throw my back out.

  Actually, wait a minute; I did see one person walking on the street.

  My neighbor.

  He walks all the time.

  He’s an older guy, my age, maybe even sixty.

  He’s in pretty good shape. You can tell because he walks with shorts, no shirt.

  But he’s old-school.

  He reads a book while he walks.

  Not an audiobook. He doesn’t have a headset. He holds an actual book. A book book. With a cover and a binding and pages and everything.

  The guy’s a dinosaur.

  He walks and reads. Pretty fast pace, too. Head down, eyes focused on the page, never looking up, walking and reading, reading and walking.

  This guy is gonna get killed.

  Cars whiz by him. He doesn’t notice.

  Someday a guy driving a car is gonna see this guy walking and reading, and the driver is gonna say, “What is that guy doing? What is that in his hand? What is that?” And he’s gonna lose control of the car and jump the curb and run him over.

  Death by reading.

  I guess it’s not a bad way to go.

  Next.

  “Set foot on each of the seven continents.”

  Okay, this I can do.

  Let’s see.

  I live in North America, so that’s one.

  I’ve been to Europe.

  Two.

  Then there’s South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica.

  You know what?

  I don’t have time.

  I’m too old.

  By the time I set foot in the other five, I’ll be seventy-five, easy. I can’t plan for something that far off. This one shouldn’t be for people over fifty. This is a goal for somebody in his twenties. It’s like a lifetime achievement goal.

  Actually, I can cross off Antarctica, because growing up in L.A., I’ve already been there.

  I grew up in a tract house with no air-conditioning and no heater. The summers were never the problem, because the days were warm and bearable. We would have what everyone called a dry heat, but with a breeze, and at night the temperature dropped. I slept with the windows open to allow the cool air in. There were only a couple of weeks a year, usually in September, when the temperature rose and the heat hit you so hard that you couldn’t move and your clothes stuck to you.

  Winter, though, was brutal.

  Maybe it was how our house was built, but once winter came and the temperature at night fell into the forties, the walls seemed to lock the cool air in tight with no escape. Our tract house became an igloo. Some nights it got so cold that I’d get into bed and run in place. I’d pull the blankets up to my chin and kick like I was treading water, trying to warm up the one spot that I confined myself to. Sometimes I could see my breath in my bedroom. I’d go, “Huh,” and blow out air on purpose so I could watch a cloud form from my breath. I thought, “Damn, this is crazy. I’m in my bedroom, lying in bed—in Los Angeles—and I can see my breath as if I was outside in North Buttrash, Alaska.”

  Once I got the bed nice and warm in my one spot, I’d lie there without moving, like a corpse. Because if I accidentally rolled over in the middle of the night and hit a part of the bed that I hadn’t warmed up, it felt like I’d rolled over onto a freezer door. I’m telling you, this room was cold.

  So, as far as I’m concerned, yes, I’ve already experienced Antarctica, every night during every winter I lived in that house.

  I should’ve put a flag in the middle of my room, like an explorer sticking a flag in the middle of an ice cap.

  Okay, let’s see what else these people wanted to do after fifty.

  “Cross the country on a bicycle.”

  Oh, this is a must. Positively.

  One hitch.

  Not sure I can make it across the whole country. In fact, my ass couldn’t take fifteen minutes on a bike seat. I know, because I bought some workout equipment and it sits in my house pretty much unused. I did buy a stationary bike. I tried to ride that thing. I set it up in front of the TV. I know you’re not supposed to do that. Some guy at the gym I used to belong to, a trainer, I guess, told me that watching TV while you exercise distracts you from focusing on the exercise you’re doing. Your mind and your body should be concentrating on the same thing at the same time. The hell with that. If I don’t watch TV, I’m not doing exercise. I want to be distracted. To me, that’s the point.

  And once you get out on the road, you’re taking your life in your hands. I don’t want to be pedaling my ass off on my bike and all of a sudden I get blindsided by some kid driving a car texting his girlfriend asking her, “Hey, where you wanna eat and what are you wearing?”

  It’s bad enough that after you turn fifty, your body starts to fall apart all on its own. I don’t think you should give it any help. You don’t need to stress it out.

  I seriously don’t want to tempt fate. I don’t ski, I don’t run, and I don’t ride a bike outdoors, because these activities are just too dangerous. I know a guy in his fifties who ran all the time. Great shape. One night he decided to go for a run. He stretched, because he didn’t want to pull anything. Then he set his watch and began running. He hit the street, picked up speed, turned a corner, stepped in a hole, flew up in the air, landed on his head, crushed his skull, broke his cheekbone, snapped his collarbone
, and tore up his knee. Somehow the dude lived, even though he went in, like, seven different directions at once. Forget it. Do your workout indoors.

  Next.

  “Run a marathon.”

  Bingo. I actually have some experience with this.

  I took up running right after I turned fifty.

  Well, briefly.

  In fact, I ran a 5K race with my buddy RJ.

  RJ had been married for about a year, and like all newlywed husbands, he’d ballooned up. Put on a good forty pounds. I’m not sure why newlyweds always gain weight, but they all do. I did. It’s automatic: You get married and a year later you’re forty pounds heavier. And it’s not just men. Women, too. It could be that you’re giving off a different vibe, a married person’s vibe, an unconscious signal to the world that announces, “Hey, everybody, I’m out of action.”

  As soon as you make that unconscious announcement, you give yourself permission to let go. You no longer feel pressure that you have to keep in perfect shape or stay trim. You’re done. Off the market. You have scored. No more sad and lonely nights. No more singles scenes. Say good-bye to barhopping, clubbing, and, best of all, your friends’ horrible fix-ups. You’re married now, and you’re content (that’s the key word: content) to chill out at home, watch some TV, and . . . eat.

  I remember when my ex-wife and I had that first conversation about staying in. It was in the fall of 1993. The world was a different place then. We were speaking to each other.

  “You know what?” my newly beloved said. “Let’s not go out. Let’s have dinner together here, just the two of us. Let’s have steak. You run the barbecue.”

  “Sounds great,” I lied.

  “We’ll have a nice quiet dinner and then snuggle and watch Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place,” my wife said.

  “I love that idea,” I lied again.

  Back then, before I was fifty, I lied all the time. It was much easier. Way less hassle. Why tell her that the last thing I wanted to do was watch Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place? I didn’t want to waste an evening doing something meaningless. I wanted to do something productive, like polish my golf tees.

  And why admit that I didn’t know the first thing about barbecuing? What would’ve been the point?

  I had to start from scratch. We didn’t own any cookbooks, and I had never seen a cooking show. Nobody had. This was 1993, at least ten years before the Food Network started. Nobody could imagine that chefs showing you how to cook would become hot TV shows. I never would’ve thought that somebody could actually be a “celebrity chef.” That would have been an oxymoron, like “reality TV actor” or “moderate Republican.”

  I racked my brain for a clue on how to barbecue. We didn’t do much grilling or barbecuing in my neighborhood, but I remembered a dish I used to love at Gladstones on the beach that they cooked over an open fire.

  “Steaks aren’t enough,” I said to my wife. “We need a side dish. I know what I’m gonna do. Be right back.”

  I ran out to the market and got us some shrimp. I came home, fired up the grill, put on a couple of thick steaks, and then dumped the shrimp into a pouch I made out of aluminum foil, just like I’d seen at Gladstones. I seasoned the shrimp with salt, pepper, and a dash of chili flakes, dropped in an entire stick of butter, nudged the steaks over to make room, put the aluminum pouch on the grill, and turned up the heat.

  Zzzzp.

  Oh, man, those shrimp sizzled.

  My mouth watered as I stood over the grill and poked the steak and shrimp with my metal spatula and tongs. I thought, “Wow, I have a talent for barbecuing. It’s a gift.”

  “Smells great,” my wife said.

  “I know,” I said. “But one side dish isn’t enough.”

  I grabbed a fresh loaf of sourdough bread, sliced up the whole thing, buttered every slice, and lightly grilled each one.

  As we settled in to watch Beverly Hills 90210, I plated our dinners—steak, shrimp grilled in butter, grilled buttered bread, and several beers.

  Delicious.

  We ate this way pretty much every night.

  When I weighed myself at the end of that first year of marriage, I was shocked that I’d gained forty pounds.

  I thought I’d gained at least sixty. I felt relieved, for about two seconds. Then I felt fat. Bloated. Enormous. And disgusted that I’d let myself balloon up like this.

  I stood on the scale staring as my weight settled into that plus-forty column. I got off the scale and stepped back on to be sure. Yes. Still plus forty.

  My wife came up behind me and looked over my shoulder. “We have to lose weight,” she said.

  “We?”

  “Well, you.”

  I don’t know why, but after a year of marriage, I wanted a little less “we” and a little more “me.”

  Actually, I wanted less of “me,” too. I wanted to get back into shape.

  Of course, I saw this coming. I knew I was gaining weight because my pants didn’t fit.

  For me, not being able to fit into my favorite jeans was a huge wake-up call. That and stepping onto the scale and then looking into the mirror and seeing this fat Mexican guy. All the proof I needed. I’d gained a ton of weight and I knew it.

  I’m amazed that some dudes can’t see themselves and how much weight they’ve gained. It should be obvious. If you look in the mirror and see your stomach bulging out of your shirt, the flab flopping over your pants, hanging out there, jiggling like a giant tub of Jell-O, doesn’t it set off, like, a million warning bells? It has to register. You have to say to yourself, “Whoa, I am putting on weight. Look at that. I’m borderline fat.”

  You can’t deny it. It’s right in front of you. Literally.

  Listen, I worry about my weight every day, especially since I turned fifty. I take any weight gain seriously.

  In fact, I have my own way of gauging my weight before I even look in the mirror or step on the scale.

  I call it the Belly Button Test.

  I take this test the moment I wake up.

  First, I take the setup to the test. All I do is lie on my side and rub my stomach. If my stomach feels bigger than I remember from the night before, I panic. Most of the time, I’m okay. I rub my gut and I say, “All right, that feels good. I’m okay.”

  Now, if you can’t get over onto your side, go ahead and panic. You already failed the test, because, seriously, you’re already way too fat to even take the too-fat test.

  But, okay, let’s say I’m not too freaked out about my stomach. Then I do the Belly Button Test.

  Here’s what I do.

  Very simple.

  I push my belly button in and see how deep it goes.

  That’s my barometer. It works all the time.

  It’s the same idea as those boats that have a stick in the back (called a Power-Pole or a spike) that’s used to determine the depth of the water. As the boat approaches the dock, you can see the most recent waterline on the stick. If the stick’s soaked all the way to the top, you know that the boat’s been safe, that it hasn’t gotten too close to shore. You do not want your boat to go all the way in. The stick is your warning. If the boat stick has no waterline, that means you’ve literally hit bottom. You do not want to hit bottom. That’s trouble. That means your boat is about to crash.

  My belly button is my stick.

  Only I do it in reverse.

  How far I push it in tells me how fat I am.

  If I push in my belly button and my hand keeps going, disappearing into my flesh all the way up to my wrist, that’s a warning sign. That signifies that I’ve put on way too much weight. That indicates that I’m a whale.

  The Belly Button Test is very scientific.

  Because it’s real.

  You have to keep it real when it comes to your weight, because you will lie to yourself. You
r mind will play tricks on you.

  I always lied to myself when I shopped for pants. I shopped for pants a lot, because I had to. I would go up and down constantly. I went in and out of more weight classes than Oprah.

  When you fluctuate like that, it’s not just the physical act of gaining weight that gets to you. It’s the psychological part of it that really does you in. It’s amazing how deeply my weight is tied to my emotions. When I lost weight, I’d be thrilled. But if I got on the scale and I’d gained?

  I felt devastated, depressed, worthless, and like I had all this hard work ahead of me. It was demoralizing.

  So, the easiest way to deal with it was to lie.

  Especially when I would shop for pants.

  Before I even hit the men’s department, I was prepared. I carried a number in my head, a number I would say when the salesperson asked, “Would you like to try on some pants? Shall I get you a fitting room?”

  “Please.”

  “And what is your size?”

  “Thirty-four.”

  I said this with a straight face.

  “Thirty-four?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about the other leg?”

  That’s what I expected him to say.

  But all he did was put his hand on his waist and tilt his head and stare me down.

  I stared right back. I didn’t flinch.

  Finally I caved.

  “You know what? I just remembered. I left my sunglasses in the car. I’ll be right back.”