Body Then, Body Now, Dysmorphia WOW!

So, if you have read any of my blogs about my body image and the work I have done over the last 15 months (as I did in my blog from Thursday), you would have thought I spent most of my adult life as a behemoth....an escapee from the Mesozoic era. In my head, although I know my body has fluctuated in size and fitness, it has not, in reality, except for about a year from 2002-2003 been really out of whack, but also, in my head, I have always had love handles, I had never before had abs in any significant way, and even as a twink I was never quite fit enough and still saw a partially fat kid in the mirror.

I want to be really clear. I really believed the previous statement. I remember having pictures taken by my beloved friend Nicole Harris Zajkowski (aka Noodle) one summer, the first summer that I started working out intentionally, and I remember those pictures were beautiful, but I also remember looking in the mirror and thinking...damn...I still have back fat. I had a waist size of 28 and was nearly 6' tall (I am 5"11 and some change), but in my mind and in the mirror, I was slightly overweight (at 155 pounds....lord have mercy). I was so convinced of this fact, that, in fact, I gave away all of the pictures that Noodle took of me because, while I thought they were great, I didn't want to see my slightly grotesque body.

Oh yeah, there is some crazy shit that goes on in my brain.

Yesterday, my ex-boyfriend from 14 years back (and still loved friend) Lonnie Emmanuel Tapia (check out his design work, he's amazing), was going through boxes in his parents house in the beautiful Tesuque, NM (where I had the joy of visiting twice)...and he came across some things from when we were dating including a drawing he did of the two of us and a picture montage that he created of me....which I am sharing here now. When I looked at those pictures, I could remember how I once viewed them and viewing them now, I fervently wish that I could have seen myself as the beautiful kid I was. If I had, maybe I wouldn't have had to walk some of the roads I walked. I could have avoided rehab and maybe even not have contracted HIV.

PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE don't get me wrong. I am who I am and with the gifts I have because I DID walk that road, and I love who I am today.  But I would be a lying fool to say that it would have been an easier, gentler road if I could have found an easier path to loving that young man that I have now seen again after so many years. 

But the beautiful thing about getting a gift such as the one that Lonnie gave me yesterday is that I get this chance and moment to look at my younger self and apologize.

To my younger self: I am so sorry I didn't love you the way you deserved to be loved. I am so sorry that I couldn't see that you were a beautiful and gifted young man with so much love for so many people but not enough love for yourself. I am sorry that I couldn't give you what you needed at that time to learn to love yourself. I am sorry that I couldn't be brave enough for you to ask for help and to let folks that loved you know that you were hurting and wounded and needed a little bit of strength to get the help and support you needed. I failed you then, but I won't fail you ever again. I love you now, and I love me now, and I forgive us both.

Life will always give you a chance to see the truth....it's up to us to figure out how to really see it.

PS Thank you, Lonnie. You have always been such a gift to me in my life, and yesterday you gave me a blessing that I value so very much.


PPS Dear Younger Self....why couldn't you get your shit together....looking back at my pictures...you were real pretty....we could be living large off of a model's back account. Forget what I said. I'm mad at you again. (Just kidding).

The Other Side of the Mirror

I have written about life as I experienced it growing up in a number of entries in this blog. For those that missed them, a short recap: I grew up loved, but also surrounded by intense and nearly constant physical abuse for a decade or more, watched my Mom go through a series of extremely physically and emotionally abusive relationships, grew up in intense poverty (near but never homeless at times), on public assistance, experienced chemical addiction at home (and have struggled with it myself), and also the joy of being queer and brown in a largely white rural family in Minnesota. I am saying this for a very specific point.

So many times in my life, folks have said to me to my face in a variety of circumstances: "I doubt YOU know what it is like to go without," or "you don't seem to have had to struggle much in your life," or "what do you know about poverty/violence/fear/etc," and on and on ad nauseum. The first time this was said point blank was when a former roommate of mine moved out of our apartment and stole a number of pieces of furniture that had come with the apartment. She'd left no forwarding address, and so the landlord came after me, believing I'd taken the items, and railing against me and the work he was doing to support low income people (and the flipside...I...a privileged boy should know better).

That was the first time I can remember having to use my history, rather awkwardly, as a very embarrassing shield. Yet, at the same time, it is MY history. I do not take some sort of noble poverty pride in it but neither am I ashamed of it. But, I also, as I have gotten older, had not been prepared for the level of legitimacy that history gives me in certain circumstances, except when it is taken away by someone that perceives me as distinct from or unable to have come from that particular historical narrative.

Let me be clear, because I am educated, because when I am in professional mode I tend to use rather impeccable upper-Midwest English, and because God at some point decided the fat kid from high school that couldn't get a date to save his life should have some sort of reprieve, day to day folks (read largely white folks) perceive that education/good English/confidence/achievement is anathema to poverty/violence/homelessness/mental health issues/welfare babies etc....EXCEPT...EXCEPT for those rare "exceptions" to the rule that still seem to carry a hint of the ghetto with them into their achievement or success....but since I carry no whiff of West Broadway and Lyndale in North Minneapolis, I must have a different story and come from a different more benevolent place...in Minnesota...we call that place Edina.

I beat up kids from Edina for shits and giggles.

But here's a part of the story folks don't know. My Mom busted her ass to make sure we lived in neighborhoods with good schools. We often lived in the smallest apartment in the neighborhood, my brother and I shared a bed for a year in high school, or I had a two hour bus ride to school in the morning to get me to the school that afforded me the best options. I was surrounded in school by amazing teachers that, from the gate, in pre-school, saw something in me that they took pains to nurture. Even though I never thought of myself as anything extraordinary, my teachers pushed, pulled, and sometimes shoved me into roles and places that opened up my natural abilities and talents, and as a result I was surrounded by a community of caring adults that wanted and demanded that I succeed. Hell, the advisor to the Minneapolis Citywide Student Government, Pam Olson, on one day's notice, drove me from Minnesota to North Carolina when my Father was unable to do so in order to get me to college on time. THAT'S the type of love and support that I had to counterbalance the violence and poverty. And if there is one thing that I learned and learned young...take every fucking opportunity offered. If you don't like it...you can always walk away from it, but if someone opens a door for you, walk through and see what's on the other side.

Now, though, and I swear to God I am not complaining, I have been experiencing a whole new level of prejudgment, along the same lines as before...but this connected directly to my body.


I wrote a blog not too long ago about an instance where an older gentleman made a comment about my biceps being bigger than my brain. Since then, as I have gotten closer to having the body that I have always wanted, a new phenomena has occurred. Now I have had folks assuming that 1) I have always looked like this (they tend to give me side eye when I tell them that these abs weren't here at the end of December), and 2) that having always looked like this I am used to getting what I want, am self centered, have no concern for others, and expect that everything will revolve around me because I happen to look the way I do.

Now, on a couple of occasions, I have had the opportunity to fully explain my Sexy Positive Bodies project, roll out all the pictures from the last year, and show, clearly, that not only is this body new but it was intentional and connected to fighting my own body dysmorphism. In fact, I was hanging out with someone recently, and I mentioned that this body was new. I received a curious text message some hours later asking me to explain. I did. He was astounded and admitted that he had made a number of assumptions based solely on my physical appearance.

While I am not complaining, I think it is curious that I am not taken less seriously on first viewing by strangers because of my body than I would have otherwise. I have been called Chelsea Boy, Gym Rat, Gym Bunny, and all other sorts of exercise rodents. I can't argue with the rodents, but I do take exception at the Chelsea Boy thing....that is just wrong.

In the end, folks are hard wired to make assumptions based on their past experiences and what they perceive in an individual based on outward markers. This body may be gone six months from now. My history, from this moment backwards, is what it is, but I can be cognizant about the assumptions and first impression judgments I make of others, particularly as I have this new heightened awareness of the way my appearance creates/or inhibits others from seeing me.

Biceps and Brains

So, for any of you that have the burden of being one of my Facebook friends, you will know that since Easter, I have been busting my ass in the gym. Since that Holiest of Christian Days (right after the First Shopping Day of Christmas), I have spent somewhere around 15-20 hours a week at the gym.

I wrote a blog all about why. It's called Body Beautiful. Check it out.

But the bottom line is that around Easter, I decided to go right on ahead and get the body that I have always wanted...not because someone somewhere told me that I should have it, but because I have done my work around my body issues, acknowledged my body dysmorphia, and decided that the only person that could make me happy with my body is me.

For the first damn time when I look in the mirror, with the exception of my dragon claw toes, from my ass to my pecs, biceps to lats, I love what I see. I did the work, and fuck you in the back of your throat with a razor blade covered jackhammer if you think I am not about to enjoy every damn minute of it.

It's still a work in progress, but when I was walking down the street wearing an already too tight button down short sleeve rainbow striped shirt that I have to leave half way unbuttoned lest my titties burst out of the front like Lindsay Lohan busting out of rehab...it began to rain...and once that shirt was plastered to my body, I swear at least three homos ran head first into sign posts on 9th Ave.

I win!

Now, I have and will continue to fuck and get plowed by men that have less than the Chelsea boy ideal of a body. In fact, not to put my bidness to far out there, since achieving my current body state, I have. Why? BECAUSE I UNDERSTAND AND FIND SEXINESS GOES BENEATH THE SKIN (and sometimes gets pounded into select parts of my skin...with permission).

But what I have come across and will not tolerate are slack jawed bitter biznatches that gots something to say about the work I have done based on their own dissatisfaction or snarky crossed eye faggoty snarkiness. I do not play that. I have never played that. I shan't start now. Thank you.

The other day, I was taking a spinning class at the Upper West Side YMCA and an older gay gentleman in the class made a comment about my biceps being bigger than my brains. Now, in fact, I wasnt' really offended. I was caught off guard, mostly, since thoe comments have never been directed at me before. Since then, in jest(ish), other folks have also made commentary about the connection between my body and my intelligence (the broader your chest the dumber you MUST be) or made assumptions, even in jest, about my value around other folks' bodies.

Let me go right on ahead and say to the peoples of America that the work I have done and will continue to do on my body, body image, body dysmorphoia, body policing, body type valuation, and living in an HIV positive body will continue based on my thoughts, feelings and analysis. Your verbal poison, bitterness, jealousy or your need to lash out because you have been devalued, disregarded, or denigrated by fucked up human beings that DO place a particular value on OTHER people's bodies rather than focusing on their own physical journey...is not appropriate. Keep it to yourself, or you will be told about yourself. Publicly. Without mercy.

I restrained myself on the good gentleman at the YMCA, and, much to his credit, he, a few moments later, came to me and apologized for his comment. I didn't need his apology, though I accepted it, but it was awesome to watch his process as he realized that maybe he had made a jest that possibly had an impact that was more about him than about its target.

If only we could all be so self aware. Lord knows I am not always. And this particular new self awareness around what it means to live in a different body type is a very interesting experience to be having.

Though let's be real...the benefits way outweigh the moments of having to deal with other people's ugly.

Love yourself. Love the body you walk in. And if you don't love it, do the work you need to do to love it, whatever that means for you. Until then, leave everyone else the Hell alone.