By June 2016, seven months after we have enthusiastically submitted our application forms and paid a hefty amount for gym membership we have finally decided to actually work-out. We were getting old, cholesteroly, and dyspneic at rest, so we knew there was no escaping this basic requirement for health called “moving”. Dan, Hatchett, and I hauled our unhealthy asses to that center for pain and punishment and even hired a personal trainer, Cumi, who would oversee our journey to temporary hotness, I mean health, we were totally there for health reasons.

Our excuses for not working out were long, varied, and totally weak– too much work, already tired at the end of the day, running causes rapid aging, too many hot people making us feel useless and insecure, people could be having disgusting sex in the gym showers, etc etc, but my favorite was that I was thoroughly convinced that I was terminally ill. I was so sure that I was harboring a nefarious colon cancer that has metastasized all over my body that working to be fit and hot would be quite pointless because I would soon be feeding through a tube. As i was kneeling in front of the toilet bowl dissecting my own bloody feces with a barbecue stick in my hand and a flashlight in my mouth I knew that instead of planking I would rather spend my remaining time as an ambulatory, relatively asymptomatic cancer patient having wild nights of fucking and debauchery. This terminal state would quickly be disproven by a gastroenterologist friend who happily inserted a scope up my ass.

“I want to be awake when you probe my anus!” I frantically told Hank. “I want to see the tumor that has unceremoniously uninvitedly uncouthly entered my life when all my life I have been a good son, a good doctor, a kind…”
“All right all right we won’t put you to sleep geez the drama.”

Having ruled out any sort of tumor I knew, to be perfectly dramatic, that I was gifted with a new lease, a second chance, a bright new day, blablabla no more excuses. As Coach Cumi was judging my body “You have soooo much fat here, you have absolutely no muscle mass here, you are disfigured like a complete troglodyte” (I imagined him saying, I think) I was just awashed with the fun thought that there’s no tumor up there, none! Coach Cumi, rightfully so, created an exercise program fit for an 80-year old grandmother with a Colles’ fracture. He did so because I told him that I am as fit as an 80-year old grandmother with a Colles’ fracture.

Coach Cumi has proven to be a patient trooper, except when he is preoccupied with grossly unrelated stuff. While I was sweating horrendously, thinking good thoughts to distract myself from the pain, and looking all sorts of stupid planking with my elbows perched on that giant pink ball and trying to make it to 1 minute Cumi asked, in all earnestness:

“Ano po ba ang mas importante, PUSO, or ISIP?”

In response I think I’ve mumbled

“Daiflkdjapgiuapdkfjakdklfsa?!?”

which is totally a combination of “this is not the time”, “fuck this shit”, and “introspection is the killer of the soul”.

With besties

Categories: Blogs