Last
Saturday I came home from the gym and took my shirt off. I left my gym shorts
and my cross trainers on and walked around my room topless. I felt incredibly
masculine. I walked into the bathroom and stared at myself in front of the
full-body mirror, my sagging man boobs and capacious tummy produced waves and
ripples with every move that I made like the most amazing piece of Jell-O in
the whole world. But I don’t care, I’m on an endorphin high; I still felt like
I look like Adonis on a good hair day and I felt the urge to lift something. Maybe
I could lift the refrigerator or the sofa. I could lift our dog whitey; maybe
even lift both our dog and my brother
Ryan for some sort of repeat performance.

Who am I
kidding? I’m a fat son of a bitch. And I have boobs, how messed up is that?

I’ve
observed this sort of thing happen before to people I know, and although I
never thought that it could happen to me, I am now resigned to the fact that
it’s a phase that all men go through. There simply comes a point in life when a
man will, for the first time, come to terms that maybe, just maybe, he’s not a
strikingly handsome demigod. This is especially true to people like me who
haven’t ‘tested the waters’ as far as physically flirting with the opposite sex
is concerned for quite awhile.

Prior
to Saturday’s visit to the gym, I was in bitter denial. My perception of how I
look at myself in the mirror has been severely distorted by a defense mechanism
struggling to compensate for my obscenely low self esteem. To me, whenever I
look in the mirror, I see a chiseled stallion capable of sexually pleasuring
women for hours on end. I mean never mind the fact that I’ve spent more than a
decade and a half consuming hundreds if not thousands of bottled or canned
fermented malt/carbonated beverages, cutting a deal with Jesus to make chocolate
syrup flow from the faucet instead of tap water in exchange for my soul (if
you’re reading this I want my soul back, please), gobbling up several trillion
assorted candies, insects, coins and everything else small enough to fit in my
mouth.

Yes,
ladies and gentlemen, prior to Saturday, I had this remarkable ability to gaze
longingly into the mirror and see an untiring sex machine instead of the
multi-layered belly of a man that I have become; I know it’s something that I
do on a psychological level but it makes me feel abso-fucking-lutely good.

Now
that I’ve gotten rid of the thick veil of lies that I pulled over my own eyes for
years, I realized that there is no use lamenting over the sorry physical state
I have managed to get myself into. ‘No
use crying over spilled milk’ the motto written beside the photograph of my
then below 160lb self in my high school yearbook went. I can’t believe I was
that smart back in high school too. I mean while everybody else put ‘Time is gold’, ‘honesty is the best policy’ or ‘cleanliness
is next to godliness’ as their mottos, I managed to put six English words as mine. Beat that.
Assholes.

I
decided to channel all my efforts into something more productive than feeling
sorry for myself; and what better way to do that than to arbitrarily blame all
this fat clogging my arteries on a single person.

Since Abraham Lincoln
decided to proclaim himself as the liberator of slaves, the paragon of
horrendous facial hair and the benchmark-setter for atrocious tuxedos
and trousers, The United States of America’s already diverse culture further
diversified. Today we see African-Americans excelling in various fields
such as sports, business and politics…well maybe not in politics but
there’s Collin Powell and I think he’s black or if not maybe Mexican or
Nordsk.

This cultural
diversification is further exemplified by the evolution in music we
have witnessed during the past century, to which I’m not gonna comment
further because my musical preference doesn’t go beyond distorted
guitar riffs and loose bass-lines. You might be asking yourself right
now what the hell a guy who has an IQ of a dinner plate doing writing
an article about Hip hop. The answer is simple: That’s because I’m
clinically obese and I could get away with doing pretty much
anything. 

Anyway, on with my
article. so I’m not going to pretend I know anything about what
I’m writing. All I know is that black people invented the wheel, basketball,
the elevator and yes…Hip hop. The term alone makes me shudder
in terrified anticipation of music more atrocious than a banshee’s wail.
But contrary to popular belief, Hip hop is more than music. It’s actually
a sub-culture which includes attitude, fashion, designer drugs, alcohol,
guns, cars, money, jewelry, hourly trips to prison, domestic violence,
gang wars, flashing signs, and basically everything that would catch the
ire of any decent, law-abiding citizen.