But there are some delusions that need to be shattered. After all, I’m a fucking professional. — Losing weight will not help you fight type 2 diabetes, Marge. If you’re prediabetic, you have to do what the doctor says with your diet.
— I know, but . . . Her mouth turns down.
— You have Vincent, I bring up her beloved pug, — and you wouldn’t feed him chocolate, would you?
— No, of course not.
— Why?
— Because it would kill him!
— Yes, but you’d feed it to yourself. What do you think it’s doing to you?
Her face looks blankly at me. Why can they not see? Why do I waste my time with bitches that think a good threesome has to involve Ben and Jerry?
— You aren’t going to prevent diabetes by exercising three times a week, I tell her. — Speak to Tony about this, and I’m thinking of her chunky husband. — You know that he’s overweight. He has to be constantly cajoling you into cooking and eating the wrong things.
— We’re Italians . . .
— You got to sack that mentality. You can’t be a slave to an outmoded cultural heritage. I’ve got Irish roots, but you don’t see me stuffing myself with beef stew, soda bread, and Guinness. We’re Americans, goddamnit!
Marge stares back at me, hurt stinging her eyes.
— Those sorts of dynamics have a lot to do with whether or not people change. It’s what I always say: if you want to change you have to decide to do it for you.
I get the usual bleating crap about being a wife and a mother. The age-old weakness, and one which I despise: a total dependency on a husband, while raising kids as the next generation of porkers, killing them as you constantly declaim your love for them.
Another major problem with trying to help Marge change was that I disliked her as soon as I set eyes on her. It wasn’t that wobbling meat packed into black spray-can Lycra, nor was it the ridiculous makeup. No, that Yankees cap, ludicrously perched on her head, was what sealed the deal. Yeah, I’m a transplant, and I’ve now spent over half my life here, but it’s in my Boston DNA to despise them. Particularly a bitch who has probably never set foot in the South Bronx. Thankfully, I’m way too much of a pro to show her my real feelings.
So I put her through an hour of kettlebells, concentrating on those fat-burning quads. How she hates the sight of those bells! But she’s doing sets of step-ups, lunges, squats, leg presses, and forty-yard sprints, to keep that cardio up. I’m watching her like a vulture scans the highway for roadkill, all the time punching in her Lifemap TM numbers. When we wrap up, she’s oozing like an alcoholic snail as she staggers toward the shower.
Then the revolving door of fat spins again and I now have another slab of blubber to try and sculpt back into human form. That Lena Sorenson chick waddles in. She’s managed to find a pair of shapeless gray yoga pants that are too big even for her. In some ways it’s a blessing; usually the problem with yoga pants is women wearing them too tight and jacked up, so you can practically see their pussy. For some reason women like Marge, with her Lycra, think squeezing themselves into a smaller size actually makes them that size. But Sorenson’s garments still send out warning signs: yoga pants have also become the “go to” exercise attire for women who’re uncomfortable with their bodies and, worse, not serious about exercising. The pants suck serious enough ass, but Retardville residency is advertised by her old, pinching Eurythmics tee, exhibiting her muffin bloat to its most nauseating effect.
More to the point, it’s 10:07. Lateness fucking noted, loser bitch. Sorenson’s wearing that bewildered cow-in-the-slaughterhouse expression. The fearful gaze falling over the exercise machines, like they were there to physically tear the corpulent flesh from her bones. And that’s exactly what they are there to do. I greet her with a thin smile. You get to be an expert on how long a fat broad’s gonna last. No way this little dipshit will stick it more than a couple of weeks.
As I get out the tape and lead her to the scale, Lena Sorenson, 5’2", 203 lbs, jabbers on nervously. — I’ve really been feeling for a while that I need to start training . . . Look, I hope you don’t mind that I allowed the TV people to use the footage from my phone. I didn’t think. I should have cleared it with you first.
Mind? She’s made me a fucking star! — It has been rather intrusive, I tell her, not wanting to cede any power by showing gratitude. — The paparazzi were outside my door.
— I’m so sorry—
— Well, these things happen, let’s not dwell on it, I smile. — Are you ready?
— As I’ll ever be, Sorenson lamely replies.
I take her through a light session of kettlebells and stretches, which she does reasonably well, keeping decent posture on the squats. As she finishes, I’m letting her rap on with the loser talk. — . . . but you know what they say about life happening while you’re making other plans . . .
Sorenson is evidently the type of chick who can talk and talk while saying nothing, and I still can’t quite figure her out. Possibly stopped trying after marriage and a kid. Woke up from an extended Prozac daze doing diapers, and a husband who won’t touch her, who’s away on business and golf, to find herself a misshapen behemoth. How did that happen? Why am I fat? You learn to respect cliché and stereotype in my business; they rarely give you a bum steer. But there’s no ring on that chubby finger. Enough speculation: I’ll find out what makes her tick soon enough. First, there is fat to be melted, and it’s time to check out the sort of juice this bitch has in the bullpen.
I’m not a great treadmill fan, I prefer to use high-intensity free-weight routines to build muscle, core strength, while raising the cardio and keeping the fat burning. But the treadmill is useful to boot up the cardiovascular system and give a couch whale some stamina. She climbs on and I start her on 3 mph, a gentle roll. She’s still blabbing, now wanting to talk about the incident, but sorry, Ms. Sorenson, if you got the gas to gab, you got the gas to go! I move it up to the point where the hoe shuts the fuck up and sweats. It’s a heavier session than I normally intro anybody of her size and weight with, but somehow I really don’t care whether or not she comes back, which I seldom feel with clients. It is my living, after all.
Marge and one of Lester’s clients emerge from the shower, heading to the juice bar. I catch Marge shooting a satisfied smile over at my new girl. Somebody almost as lardy as her—at least in the young, white, and rich demographic—is a rarity in Miami Beach. Yet there’s the seed of an impression that Sorenson is perhaps different. Yes, that soupy air of depression hangs over her, and there’s something of the self-pitying victim about her that annoys the fuck out of me. But I sense that she really wants to get better; a defiant glint in her eye shines through the creeping dread.
After Sorenson leaves, with some reluctance, looking at me as if there’s some dramatic disclosure to come, other than “Same time Friday,” I burn four hundred cal on the treadmill, then drive home. No snooping press mofos, so it’s all good.
I fix myself a lunch of steamed broccoli and spinach, with a peanut-butter-and-banana protein shake (460 cal). My phone vibrates in the pocket of my shorts, the caller ID telling me it’s my dad. — Hey! My baby girl! What a chip off the old block!
— Eh, thanks.
— My heart was in my goddamn mouth when I heard. I said to myself: what in hell’s name was she thinking of, tackling an armed guy who was firing off rounds? Then I thought, she’s a Brennan: it’s the way she’s made. That was how it had to go down.
I love my dad, even though he sent me here to live with Mom when I wanted to stay in Boston. Of course, loving somebody doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge that they can be a real asshole. He’s written a series of five police-procedural detective novels, all featuring Matt Flynn, a BPD dick turned PI. Each one has sold more than the previous, and the current has just made the New York Times bestseller list. He now does a bullshit feature on “Flynn’s Boston” for the Globe. As an ex-gym-teacher, he’s very driven. I don’t know why h
e worries excessively about his police credentials, or lack of. You only have to take a lardass cop to lunch to nail the procedural shit, the rest is a testimony to his writerly powers of imagination.
Dad’s dust jackets claim he was a Boston homicide detective for eight years. They’ll be laughing at that one in a few Mick bars in Southie. He served with the BPD, in uniform, for only three years before he was kicked out for “racist behavior,” following an incident at a warehouse in Dorchester. Some achievement that: Josef Mengele couldn’t get ejected from Boston’s finest for that shit. The real reason was that he took a dive to protect a higher-ranking officer. Dad used the payoff dough well: he wrote a crime novel, which wasn’t too bad. Since that debut, he’s blossomed as the suburbanites’ choice; they can sleep easy knowing that his Boston tec protagonist, Matt Flynn, is out there protecting them, tying everything up in neat resolution. Yes, he’s metaphorically grown into that airbrushed jacket photo of him, looking like a chunkier, nightclub-bouncer version of Doctor Drew. I suspect Botox, but he fervently denies this.
— Thanks, Dad. It’s scary, looking back, but I just reacted.
— You sure did that! I’m so glad I encouraged you with all that kickboxing and tae kwon do. You saved two men’s lives, and probably your own.
I know Dad makes a living through crime hyperbole, but the truth in that statement makes me shudder. While I wasn’t the target, there’s no telling how an asshole with a gun might react once he’s spilled blood.
— I’m glad too.
— And I’ll tell ya someting else, I’m gonna make you rich, princess! I got contacts in Hollywood now. Been speaking to agents and producers about Matt Flynn screen and TV adaptations.
What to say to that? — Well, um, okay . . . but you might be too late. A TV company has already been in touch about a pilot. In fact I’m just heading to a meeting in a little while. I’ve got a local talent agency working for me.
— That’s my girl. The Brennan get-up-and-go! But watch out for those guys, kiddo. Keep some native Southie cunning back in the locker room. You know what this wiseass Hollywood agent said to me the other day?
— No . . .
— He said, “I see Matt Flynn as being a down-the-line project for the Damons, Afflecks, or Wahlbergs. Like a nest egg for those guys when the gym-rat stuff gets too much like hard work and the middle-aged spread hits and they can finally do that grizzled, lived-in shit.”
— Right. I get that.
— No, think it through, honey, and this is what I said to him: those guys are fuckin actors. By the time they’re ready to play hard-bitten, fifty-five-year-old BPD homocide detectives, they’ll be seventy, and I’ll be in an urn on somebody’s mantelpiece!
— Dad, this is taking on a morbid turn, like so many of your conversations.
— Well, the clock’s ticking. Give me a grandkid, honey; just do the nine months for your old pop. One that can make me proud. Hell, I’ll pay for the kid to attend the best schools. You’ll never see him. It.
Oh my God, I thought I’d get through a phone call without that old theme recurring. — You know what? Have you ever asked yourself why I become more dykish every time you address me directly? Like, since I was about six years old?
— Jesus, honey, don’t do this to your old pop. Anyway, lesbians do the motherhood thing, it’s all the rage, he contends. Dad knows I’m bi. He doesn’t like it, but at least he acknowledges it. Mom almost physically chokes when I mention it. She would send me for extreme ECT if she could. — Why should a woman be denied motherhood on the grounds of sexual orientation?
I’m about to retort that I could find a hundred men to impregnate me, but, disturbingly, the only face that pops into my head is Miles’s. — It’s on the grounds of choice, of not wanting my body wrecked. Of things like liking sleep, hard breasts, tigh—
— Don’t say “tight vaginal walls” for chrissakes. Remember I’m your goddamn father! I don’t have the gift of abstraction when it comes to you!
— Sorry, Pop.
— Think it through, pickle. Ticktock. Ticktock. That’s the way it is. The human condition, he wheezes, then sings in pain, — the cocksucking, evil, motherfucking, God-awful human condition . . .
I let a brief silence hang, which he fills. — I gotta go now. But I’m in Miami next month hitting the Sunbelt part of the tour. Let’s hook up for some food, a good porterhouse for me, and a nice big helping of rabbit food for you. In the meantime, I’m gonna send you the website details for this insemination project. Think about it.
— Jesus . . . Dad . . . as you say, you are my father!
— That’s parental prerogative, honey, as you’ll hopefully soon know when you succumb to the force. Gotta go, angel. Love you!
— Love you, I tell him, with I think, reverberating in my head as the line goes dead. That man is beyond real.
My cal count is low today so I fix myself some tofu and couscous (around 450 cal), then do a routine of hand weights. After working up a decent sweat, I take a shower, before settling down in front of the TV. I try not to let it get to me, but it sucks not having cable, if only for the sports channels. The network news channels bug me, even if there’s nothing on me or the twins. It’s just that missing kid, Carla Riaz. She looks so small, frail, and angelic in that picture. I hope she’s okay. There are some evil motherfuckers out there.
I drive up to North Miami Beach. The TV studios are situated in a three-story concrete building. As I go through automatic doors, I instantly sweat under the blast of cold air conditioning as my body recalibrates. I’m feeling gross as a doorman escorts me to a sterile reception area. Valerie is waiting, her own forehead reassuringly beading. We get a black coffee and exchange bland pleasantries. Soon the producer appears, a late-thirties blonde, with the inevitable Botoxed android half-smile, thinly plucked brows, and pass clipped to her tan jacket, which she sports with matching slacks. Hooped earrings hang at her caked face like satellites over a desert planet, and a dangling necklace droops into a pushed-up rack of silicone. She intros herself as Waleena Hinkle. As she leads us through security doors, I catch her sneak a fearful glance at the young receptionist, the fresher meat who will soon replace her in the corporate sandwich. We follow Waleena, along with the string of inanities spilling from her mouth, down a corridor and into a boardroom.
We sit for a spell, with more talk about the weather. It’s just getting unbearable, when Thelma ceases her power play and deigns to join us. I know through Lieb’s time-management books that if somebody is late for a meeting they are either 1) an incompetent asshole (62 percent), or 2) trying to make some power statement (31 percent), and seldom, if ever, 3) fighting fires at some emergency (7 percent), as Thelma pathetically tries to make out now. B-fucking-S: I’ve got her number.
After some small talk about the flash flood I’ve had from press, camera crews, and photographers (thankfully done now, surely), Waleena springs into some sort of animation, flagging up a presentational display on video, explaining to me the concept of the show (I still haven’t opened the email attachments). It seems that they’ve moved on from the simple makeover premise. — We feel that your profile and Miami as a location allow us to be more adventurous, Waleena gushes. — The show is now tentatively entitled Shape Up or Ship Out. It will take place on a boat, a cruise liner, which sails from Miami around the Caribbean for the duration of one series. But this luxurious boat will also have two gyms and be a floating torture chamber. As we go around the islands, we ditch various failures at differing ports—Nassau, Kingston, Port of Spain, etc. — all the way back to Miami. — It’s essentially The Biggest Loser at sea, Waleena explains, — hopefully with a hint of The Love Boat thrown in. We’ll have a plank-walking ceremony at the end of each show, the plank also being a scale that tips the fattest contestant into a secured area of the sea.
I burst out into loud laughter, unable to contain myself. From their expressionless faces, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s the Botox masks or if they
genuinely consider my glee inappropriate. I decide to test the water further. — It would be great if we could have some sharks in the secured area of sea, chomping away at all that blubber.
More silence as the masks seem to freeze a few more degrees. — We did want to introduce a punitive element, Waleena nods, — and we will have several menacing nautical and pirate themes running throughout the show.
Thelma chips in, — The one we’re particularly excited about is “booty call.” She twists her collagen-stuffed lips to Waleena, who carries on. — Yes, this is where we open a series of treasure chests we have mounted on the wall, all of them displaying the near-naked ass of each contestant scheduled for elimination. A guest panel have to guess, first the owner of the ass, then the weight lost that week by the individual on the basis of the size of their butt.
— Get the fuck outta here, I declare.
— You don’t like it? Waleena whiplashes to Thelma, then back to me.
— Shit, no! I love it! They need to be confronted with how gross their asses look, and I glance around the table, lowering my voice gravely. — But I do hope you realize that I wasn’t being serious about the sharks, and I wait for a reaction.
— Of course . . . Valerie says.
— We knew that, Thelma agrees.
— Only because it would be totally fucking cruel to subject animals to the toxins in those junk-fed bodies!
They look at each other, and Valerie smiles, while Thelma laughs, a low wheezing mechanical sound. — That’s funny! You’re terrible, Lucy!
We spend the rest of the afternoon looking at homemade videos from a previous similarly themed show last year, which never got off the ground. — We couldn’t find a suitably charismatic, local fitness instructor to present, Thelma informs me in a smug purr. There are literally thousands of fat losers who have sent clips in, begging to be contestants on the show. Few, if any, demonstrate real signs of aspiring to change themselves.
Then I’m telling Valerie, Thelma, and Waleena about the two clubs I work out of, and I mention Jon Pallota, the owner of Bodysculpt. I explain that Jon was swimming up in Delray Beach and lost a large portion of his genitals after being attacked by a poisoned barracuda, stunned and lurking in the shallow waters. They tried to save what they could when they detached the fish, but his cock had to be more than half amputated and one testicle was lost.