Dear Rachel Dratch,
I don’t know if I remember when it all started, but I am pretty sure my problems began somewhere around the time that I was a bodybuilder. I have finally taken it upon myself to do something so I have made an appointment with a real, Western medicine doctor. I have tried to fix things through acupuncture. Looking back on that decision, it’s kind of weird to think that I thought it made more sense to go to an acupuncturist than to a regular old doctor. Something about going to this guy made more sense, felt more safe or something. He was just putting needles all over my body, that’s cool! A real doctor would poke and pry and would make me have to literally spell out that I was a sexually active adult who sometimes indulges in too many sweets like Coke Icees or mellow pumpkins.
It doesn’t seem like it’s the Icees or pumpkins that were the ones to drive me to finally go see the doctor. My guts have been a mess for a while now. I don’t remember a time prior to 2004 or so when I wasn’t hold up in the bathroom for a few hours each morning. I remember being late to my Greek civilization class that I slept through every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday because I would get half way to class and realize I was going to die. Then I’d roll up a few minutes after class started, sit in the middle of the room and pass the fuck out. I had the gall to approach my professor about why I got a B on my first paper—I spent a lot of time on it and I was proud. I loved Egypt, come on! She said my sources were too old and newer things had better information. I couldn’t believe my ears. I mean, how much has changed about ancient Egypt since 1945 that my use of actual relics and hieroglyphics to tell Egypt’s origin story rendered my paper a B? Answer me that! She probably caught me sleeping during her class and was trying to prove a point. I guess.
Around the time I transferred up to UNC, I think that was when my belly really started to shiver and shake. Now that I think about it, I had always had a kind of nervous excretory system. It made me a wreck to have to get up out of bed, put on some clothes and shoes, and mosey down the hall to use the shared bathroom I used with the other twelve dudes on my hall. It was embarrassing! So much so that I would get so wound up that I couldn’t sleep and would have nervous pees all night. No wonder I slept in that lady’s class—I had been up all night, crawling the walls, and crawling to the bathroom for a dribble. This made me so anxious that I sought out professional help for the first time. Again, not a real like body doctor but a mind doctor.
The first time I saw a psychologist or something was when my parents decided it would be better if they ended their marriage. I talked to this lady about it for an hour or so. All I can remember is that she offered me a Coke, which I liked, and she had really nice chairs. I knew my mom had been seeing this woman for a little bit and now I could see why. I loved that she asked all sorts of questions about me, how I was feeling, what I was feeling, and how I saw things. I was probably more of a ham than my sister when I was younger, so all this attention from a complete stranger was a little addictive. In fact, it wasn’t until even recently I that I have finally weaned myself off of seeing a psychologist. Their job is to ask you questions and help you feel better about feeling insane. It’s nice.
The lady I saw about my nervous pees was nice, I guess. She was a little fruitloopy and made me feel weird. Thinking about all the different therapists I’ve seen before graduate school, they must have all known I wasn’t really dealing with a crazy bladder and the gotta-go-gotta-go-gotta-go-right-nows and that I was a just a gay dude who didn’t know it yet. But she never let on and would ask me about my caffeine habits and what time I would go to bed. I thought I was the most bizarre person because I went to sleep between two and three each morning. This is what college kids do; they stay up really late doing dumb shit like watching all six seasons of Sex and the City in the middle of the night, or illegally downloading Chicago because I was too ashamed to see it in the theater so I watched it at around one a.m. with my headphones in. I was a complete night owl, but what college student wasn’t? I didn’t think much about that part so I told myself I was crazy and I would worry about not being able to go to sleep or not falling asleep at a normal hour. She didn’t much give me a hard time about it, but her questions and my answers were not necessarily helping me out. A crazy snow storm came one day and drove me to finally seek some actual medical attention.
We don’t get much snow here in the South, but this day was a really heavy snow. And it was the day I diagnosed myself as having diabetes and needed to get some insulin and some anti-anxiety meds. I had my story completely prepared, “Doctor. I get up multiple times through the night to pee and I get very thirsty at night. I know I have diabetes and it scares me. What do you prescribe?” Here is his response.
“You probably don’t have diabetes but I will run the necessary blood tests to see if there is some kind of deficiency or malnourishment coming from your extreme Chick-fil-a diet and all those evenings of eating your dinners alone in your room. I’m not sure what’s causing you to urinate so often, so we’re going to run some tests. I am going to need you to pee in this jug for the next 24 hours. Every time you need to go, I need you to pee in this jug. That means you must take it everywhere. And it must always be cool so I’m going to need you to keep it in a cooler. I’m going to need you to take this jug so that every time you pee you pee into it and carry it with you in cooler and take it everywhere with you for the next 24 hours. Then we will see.”
That was devastating. Everyone else I knew could easily get some kind of medication from doctors for all kinds of ailments. I once actually hurt my back doing some kind of heavy-ass squat at the gym and they did give me some muscle relaxers that would knock me out. Other than that, no doctor would ever give me anything. Instead, I get the pleasure of carrying a jug of piss around for 24 hours. I took this in stride and took the jug home with me. In a fit of rebellion, I decided to not let anything stop me from doing my regular thing. I braved the snow enough to make it home to my mom’s house for the weekend. If this jug has to go everywhere with me, then I may as well show it a good time.
I brought that pee jug everywhere including the gym, the mall and Outback Steakhouse. My cooler was navy blue so it complimented everything I wore and I liked getting the weird stares from people when they saw that I wasn’t carrying a bag but a cooler when I was scarfing down my Blooming Onion. Every single time I went to the bathroom those 24 hours I used that jug. It was all very anti-climatic when I took that jug of piss back to the doctor only to find out that I didn’t have any Diabetes and that my jug came back clear of anything. That was so insane to carry that cooler of a jug of piss, and for what? I got no peace of mind. I did however stop seeing my therapist. I blew her off, she was doing me no good.
All around this time I thought I wanted to get muscle big. I started out just working out with a friend. He got huge and I wanted in on the action. During my senior year of high school I lost probably 20 or so pounds when I gave up soda and dessert for Lent. And I also may have only eaten peanut butter sandwiches and water for lunch, and worked out for at least two hours every other day. I had lost some weight and I wanted to get some muscle mass. My friend got kind of hot and I wanted to be hot, too. He was doing protein shakes and a couple other weird things that the beefhead at GNC recommended, and without much thought, I had my own cups and blenders ready.
My sophomore year wasn’t too insane. I was lifting more weight than ever, and drinking three or so protein shakes a day. My post-workout meal consisted of a 12-pack of nuggets and a chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-a. I didn’t know this at the time, but your body can only handle so much protein before it starts to spit it back out. I was getting bigger, yes. But my body was starting to react against me. Most of my meals became protein fests. I would go get my to-go box from the cafeteria, fill it with chicken and a little bit of rice, and head back to my on-campus apartment where I would down all the chicken while I watched Friends reruns. This is also when I became a Friends superfan. I didn’t have my actual friends when I was in college, so I would always come back to the one friend I could depend on: television.
The protein parties would always be paired with some sort of television watching. If it wasn’t a Friends rerun, it was probably Sex and the City. I got on that train way late in the game—I started watching it by watching the last episode. I had no idea what happened or why any of this was important so I had to start all over again from the beginning. So many nights it was just me, Carrie, and some chicken nuggets.
I didn’t necessarily get the ripped, cut-up muscles I was looking for but I certainly did get bigger. I’ve never been a size large, even during my fat days, but I was convinced that I needed to wear a large to accommodate the forthcoming muscle. I looked husky, but not in the husky-section kind of way; more like a guy who had some heft, some meat on him. I knew I was only wanted to get bigger. When I transferred schools for my junior year, I decided I wanted to get bigger. My muscle friend was at the new school and I of course wanted to live with him. He decided he wanted to join the bodybuilding club, and I was right behind him.
To be in this club, I clearly needed to gain more muscle. My body went into overdrive when I added twelve pills of various purposes, two weight gainer shakes, and more protein shakes to everything else I was doing. I was eating way more food and even drinking milk, just to make sure I got more protein! I was spending hundreds of dollars each month in hot pursuit of a hot body and all I got was three or four hours on the toilet each morning.
All the money I was spending was literally going down the drain! But I didn’t care. What ended up being the final straw was this stuff that guaranteed to get more blood pumping through my veins when I worked out which would help me lift more weight. It was fizzy and full of caffeine. At this point in life, I was not a coffee drinker so I was not used to the effects of much more than a couple cans of Coca-Cola. This shit had me bouncing off the walls. My legs would be heaving during class; it was all I could do to try and keep calm before I could get to the gym. And I didn’t understand why I couldn’t sleep! I bet the stuff was a legal version of speed. I was insane. Oh, and I was super angry!
The bodybuilding club was something else. As a homosexual, I would say this is probably the gayest thing I’ve ever been involved with. We were required to workout as a “team” or whatever at least three times a week. And we didn’t even work out at the regular, nice gym. We worked out in the old-ass, stinky gym where everything is left over from the 1970s. I convinced myself that it was cool because it was all “throw back” or something. It was just old. In addition to the workouts, we were supposed to have our pictures taken once every two months or something. We would then meet as a group and discuss our bodies in front of each other and others told us what they thought. I’ve always had a negative self-image, so this was a little stupid of me to be involved with. It was like all my fears come to life: a bunch of dudes sitting around in a room telling me that my body looked like shit. I didn’t get the worst of it—there was one guy who commented on the perkiness of another’s chest. That was weird. I was told I had great calves, which I knew! They were and are a source of pride for me. I figured if everything else wasn’t going to get super huge, I could at least have massive/beautiful calves. When the president of the bodybuilding club told me I needed to do more cardio, I almost snapped his posing strap! You don’t know my life buddy, and that is the wrong thing to say! I’ve never had an eating disorder, but that is not to say that I haven’t considered it. I once tried to go all day on just a Jamba Juice, but that only lasted through lunch.
I didn’t have many friends to begin with, and all of the added testosterone made me even less pleasant to be around. And I was shitting my brains out each morning. I was really unhappy! Oh, and my body was not at all what I wanted it to be—I was a nugget when I wanted to be a spring chicken.
The next semester, I quit it all cold turkey. No more. I decided the body I wanted was skinny. It involved way less insane eating and no gross shakes or pills. I also thought it would help get my body back in order, that quitting all the bad things would give me a semblance of a life I hadn’t known—one without huge bags of Chick-fil-a and mornings of peace and quiet. I was done with the bodybuilding club and their mess. They never really made me feel real bad about myself, but they weren’t helping things. And it was just so weird to be working out in the basement-y gym with all that old equipment that screamed Silence of the Lambs and my skin was well moisturized, thank you!
That spring I kind of spiraled downward. I didn’t bathe much and my hair was insanely huge. After all those pills and shakes, and uppers, it only made sense, I guess, that I needed to come down. But my body has never really been the same. In fact, I think my stomach has only become more sensitive. I guess it all started when I decided I wanted to get huge, but I don’t really know.
My appointment with the real doctor came and went. He was insane. It was the first time I had been to the doctor in four years for things that were not psoriasis or scabies related. He asked me about farting and crapping, and then told me I was probably pretty normal. So you mean to say that all of the chicken, shakes, and pills really didn’t do much other than make me an angry, husky, dirty mess? He drew some blood to test things out, but I haven’t heard anything yet.
My body will probably never recover. Or maybe this is just how I am. I tried to get the doctor to connect my shits to my use of Accutane. He Google’d it and told me I had nothing to worry about. Maybe as an American, I sometimes buy into the culture of fear. But my fear doesn’t involve terrorists or bombs. I’m scared of fat deposits and pooping. It could be worse.
Jon
