Day 28 - New Year’s Gut

New Year’s Gut 

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

She wanted to see him without his shirt on; he wasn’t convinced. He said he needed to lose twenty pounds; she said she didn’t care about that. Maybe it was true. Maybe she didn’t. He wasn’t sure that mattered. He still wanted to lose twenty pounds.

She wondered if a photograph was the problem, what they would do in real life.

A photograph was permanent. In real life you could turn the lights off.

But if he were really honest with himself, he knew he wasn’t fully honest with her. He had been twenty pounds lighter before and he still wasn’t comfortable with his body. He had been in the dark before and knew that what felt good wasn’t always what looked good. If she liked him, she liked him. Tight muscles or a flabby belly wouldn’t be the deal breaker one way or the other.

The truth was he had to be okay with himself. How to make that happen, he wasn’t sure. If she could help him, he didn’t believe it.

“Give me a month to get ready…” was not his line; he had stolen it from some song from some musical he had seen once. He tried to say it in a breezy casual way. Make a joke of it. Make her laugh. Make light of the problem and try to seem casual. But it probably sounded weak and insecure. At best it would take him months to lose the weight. At best. And he wasn’t the type to work out every day. So to claim that it would any time soon was just a lie he was telling her and himself.

What could he tell her? What could be done to ensure his comfort and her satisfaction? He wanted to impress her and instead he felt like a fool. There was no reset or reboot button he could press. He shouldn’t have acted unsure. He should have just been confident and done it.

He could still send her a picture. It was late but maybe not too late. It didn’t have to be a big deal. It was only a big deal if he made it into one.

It was too much. All too much.

He took a series of photos in various states of undress.

There was no good answer.

He would wake up and start doing sit-ups, he told himself. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we begin. Tomorrow we get it together.

He couldn’t quite hit send, but he couldn’t quite hit delete either. The photos would get a reprieve for now and live for at least another day. She may not know it yet, but change was coming soon. Hopefully she would wait long enough to find out.