Will it ever not be a horror to see the back of your own head?

As much as I’d like to be “above” resolutions, especially fitness resolutions, there is a large part of my lizard brain that finds the new year extremely satisfying for goal setting. Officially, my only resolutions were to be able to do 10 pullups in a row (I began January being able to do… one), and to move up a class in bouldering, from v3 to v4. Unofficially… ugh where to start.

John has been on a wild diet at his gym, an anti- diet, his wildest dreams diet. He went in to his nutritionist with goals to build muscle and lose weight, and to his shock she prescribed almost 2000 more calories than he was currently eating, a lot of it carbs (which he’d previously been avoiding religiously.) In the last 4 weeks he’s lost 11 lbs, while eating non-stop, and is so visibly jacked it’s giving me a complex.

The monstrosity of the gay male feedback loop. To want to look like what you want to fuck so that what you want to fuck wants to fuck you. That death spiral, that hall of mirrors. So what started as just 10 pullups has turned into keeping up with John. It’s so shallow and fueled entirely by insecurity. My concerns are not only to be attractive to him, but also, to me? and to others, not to be desired by them, but to not be perplexing. To not be observed, John and I together, and to have other muscle fags wonder what I’m bringing to the table. “Huh, what’s going on there?” Are they observing? Who knows? Probably. I already feel the eyes when our friends who also go to John’s incredibly posh, and very Hollywood gym come over, with their 27 abs, skate ramp trapezii, and pneumatic arm veins.

Also, death death death. To look down at my arms and see the gray hairs waltzing in. The crepey skin at my neck. To observe the age and decay of this body, while not yet being able to totally feel it, and to try to fool myself into pretending the inevitable can be avoided. Does this happen to you, too? Mid-traffic, on the way to the grocery store, you slip for a second and there before you is the white-hot yawning abyss of the fact that you will die, you will die, you will die, you are dying, right now, and everything will stop and everything will be lost and you won’t even know because you won’t even be and suddenly you are LITERALLY gasping for breath while you also try to make a left turn?

What fun. It’s stupid! But human. Oh well.

It’s also something to do. I love climbing and climbing is difficult with the weight I’m bringing to the wall, and the decorative arms I’ve brought along to lift it. So I’m back on the rower between climbing days, back on some cross-training in between those. Observing some restraint at meals. Trying (and failing!) not to be neurotic.

Anyway, I thought my arms looked good here.