If you’ve picked up a gay publication anytime since January – including this esteemed publication – you’ve noticed a rash of ads telling you to get fit for Pride. Huh? What is Pride, the Olympics? Some sort of world war? Am I expected to grow a Pride Victory Garden as well?
I thought the whole point was that once a year we queers get to put up our feet and take the day off.
But now everybody from the liposuction clinics to the personal trainers (or as I like to call them, fitness hookers) to the herbal colon blast manufacturers are telling us to work, work, work for Pride.
Well, listen up. The only thing I’m fit for is tying, and being me is work enough.
Let’s be honest here. “Fitness” is code for sexy, and the message is if you don’t poop out, sweat off or suck away those delightful dollops of hard-earned softness you’re not going to get laid.
What a crock of shit. I am a fatty, fatty two by four from way back and I’m getting it all the time. And all my lardy friends are busy packing the groceries, too, if you know what I’m saying. Furthermore, we live in Canada, the second richest country in the world. If we can’t have equal rights, the least we can do is be well fed. Very well fed.
Marxists have been telling us for decades that the best index of popular obsessions and concerns is not a phone-in poll or a sociological survey but a quick glance through the newspaper advertisements. What retailers sell is a great guide to what the dominant culture frets over, yearns for and privileges. Clearly, based on the evidence, the most radical, defiant thing you can do this Pride, the one thing that will really buck the system, is get off the grid and onto the griddle. Gain as much weight as you can before the parade. Brothers and sisters: Wave your waffle
cones in the air like you just don’t care!
But how, you ask, how do I pork up for Pride when my fridge is full of baby carrots and mineral water, and my hands are tied to a Pilates rack? Nobody said it would be easy.
Luckily, you are in the hands of a world class weight yo-yoist. I once gained and lost and regained and lost the body mass of a principle dancer in three months (the ungrateful bastard kept the cat and took my CDs).
Here are my three easy steps to getting your Rainbow Ring, your Free To Love Handles and your Leather Ball Back Fat all ready for the big day.
Now realizing that I’m not a doctor, but I’ve been to lots.
There are no bad snacks, only bad snackers. People who waste quality snack foods such as cake, pudding and chips (or, better yet, chips with pudding dip) on mid-afternoon noshing, when there is still a slight chance of using up the calories, are just being decadent. Foods with high calorie counts are meant for late at night, preferably just before bed. And forget that old wives’ tale about never mixing sugar and salt. From an Ayurvedic perspective, which teaches us to balance all things in life, it is far more spiritually enlightened to alternate between, say, Oreos and Crispers than to simply stick to cookies and chocolate milk.
Sugar and salt even look the same – mother nature wants you to confuse the two. To paraphrase playwright Sonja Mills: If God didn’t want us to eat chips with dinner, She wouldn’t have made them out of salt.
Exercise hurts. Pain is bad. Therefore, exercise is bad. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? As simple as the time you learned not to touch the stove when it’s hot – but you’d be surprised how many people continue to burn their fingers.
And don’t talk to me about relaxing with yoga. Study sub-continental history and you’ll learn that yoga was invented by the oppressed people of India as a way to torture their British rulers. “Yes, sahib sir, I guarantee you that shoving your elbow into the sole of your foot will make you forget about Lady Dunwinkle’s unfortunate addiction to gin.”
Not only is there a sucker born every minute, but many of them come out of the womb with their ankles behind their ears, and not because they’re easy. Sit down. No, lay down. Do not stretch, unless you’re reaching for the peanut bowl. Indira Ghandi would be proud.
Throw away this newspaper. Then toss all the gay mags like The Advocate, Genre, Outlooks and that Damien Atkins fanzine you downloaded off the Internet. They are all full of lies. The skinny men and women in the pictures are not happy, unless your idea of happiness is a prison camp run by Dr Phil.
Happy people eat bread and take long naps. Have you ever seen an upset or anxious dog? It runs in circles, just like the neurotic models in this newspaper. Don’t be a dog. Be a hippo. Hippos spend their days in lovely, flower-dappled ponds, chewing grass, fucking and dozing and fucking some more.
And if you bother them, they capsize your canoe, stomp you into the mud and rip off your limbs. Now that’s a role model.
* RM Vaughan is just teasing you. Don’t throw away this newspaper; recycle it.
* Vaughan performs at Cheap Queers on Wed, Jun 25 at The Vatikan (1032 Queen St W); admission is $4.47.
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