I Know Exactly How Tom Brady Feels

Hi Internet! Sorry I’ve been ignoring you but I’ve been wallowing in a sea of self-pity and boredom and rabidly applying for jobs. And also acting like a complete teenager by having the following dialogue with myself daily:

Me: Woe is me, I am so bored laying on the couch watching reruns of Will and Grace.

Rational Me: You could get off the couch and do something.

Me: There’s nothing to do.

Rational Me: What about that elaborate page-long list you made when you still had a job? Ya know? The one with fun things like pickle-making, dress-sewing, learning-a-Beatles-song-on-the-piano, etc.?

Me: Why bother? Life is so bleak. Woe is me.

[Fade to black]

I used to get like this when I was bored at work too. I would spend all morning staring at a wall but when someone finally dropped a two-minute task on my desk, I would procrastinate an hour while giving it the stink-eye before I would actually get it done. This is in contrast to the days when I actually was busy, because then the two-minute task would be swept up in my frenzy and completed while I simultaneously did five other things. So the moral of this story is that I’m more likely to accomplish something if I’m already overwhelmed. But now that I am my own boss, I have no whelms. I am whelmless and as such I may not brush my teeth until noon.

Now that you know I am too lazy to voluntarily cross the room to pick up a coloring book for my own amusement, it should not come as a surprise that I haven’t left the apartment by myself in a week. I’ve been out with Beau multiple times but am seemingly incapable of mustering the willpower to leave of my own accord. That is until yesterday when the catalyst of T’s birthday party this weekend provided enough force to launch me onto a Boston-bound train to shop for a dress.

I found almost exactly what I was looking for:


There was only one problem: the tummy region. Despite my best sucking in efforts, it remained… slightly poochy. Luckily, technology has remedied this problem! I hurried off to the underthings department with the dress and belt in tow and found what Bridget Jones referred to as those “scary stomach-holding-in pants very popular with grannies the world over.”

I remained skeptical of corseting undergarments as the laws of physics suggest my body fat might just spill over into other regions creating even weirder bulges. With this doubt in mind, I hustled off to the dressing room. I put on the other portions of the outfit and then looked challengingly at the medieval torture device hanging on the wall. I had selected the largest size possible assuming it would be physically impossible for me to fit into what would be considered my normal size (On a side note, why do they make them in a size small? If you can fit in a pair of small Spanx then there’s absolutely no reason you should be wearing them).

I pulled them off the hanger figuring I would try them on in the same fashion as a new swim suit: quickly and with my existing underwear still in place to block passage of cooties. The garment was safely up my left thigh when it became apparent that there were about three square inches of space left for the rest of me. This wasn’t a complete shock as I already understood the point of this device was to constrict my existing flesh. I was less concerned by the bondage of wearing it than the logistics of actually getting into it. It was like trying to climb into a tin can.

In a burst of energy and unprecedented acrobatics, I attempted to thread my right leg through the remaining hole. To do so, I lifted my foot as close to my belly button as I could and quickly jammed the pointy end into the garment. This movement is not included in my usual range of motions because I don’t do yoga. A searing Charley horse ripped through my left side. I fell sidewise into the wall, howling in pain as the rustles and coughs from adjoining dressing rooms went silent. I stayed with my forehead pressed against the mirror until my left leg stopped twitching enough to put weight on it at which point I realized I was now firmly jammed into the scary stomach-holding-in-pants. I made the best of it and squirmed around until they were in the correction location. Though they did, as promised, make my stomach smaller and my ass higher, I realized I would be drinking at the party and would therefore need to reenact the scene in a small bathroom stall every time I needed to pee. Exasperated, I ditched the entire scheme and left the store. Hobbling.

Half an hour later, I was still in a good deal of pain which was no longer ripping through my entire left side. It was now localized. In my left ass cheek. I pulled an ass muscle trying on a pair of these. My vanity now has the ability to wound not my just my pride but also inflict actual physical damage.

Now, approximately 20 hours after the incident, I’m still limping which provides me an awesome excuse not to leave the couch for another week.