Читать книгу I, Superhero!! : - Mike McMullen - Страница 8

If I’m going to tackle this superhero thing, I need a plan. I prefer winging it, but in my experience, “I’ll wing it” usually turns into “Aw, screw it,” in about a minute flat.

I once heard a motivational speaker say that if you want to be more productive, you should take time every morning to write down exactly what you have to get accomplished that day, in order of importance, and then go through the list doing the things you wrote down.

When I was a kid, we had a phrase we used when our friends gave us this kind of advice. You may or may not have heard this phrase. It’s “No crap, Sherlock,” and that’s exactly what went through my mind when the rich, successful old dude said that. Then I thought, Well, he is rich and successful…

Okay, so make a list. I struggle briefly with whether to put “make a list” on my list, but then I decide that would be a little too self-referential and Charlie Kaufmanish and just start.

Growing up going to three services a week at a Baptist church (Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening) and hearing three sermons a week, I’ve learned a few things about lists. Well, two things:

1. The lists have to contain exactly three points, or items.

2. These three items must begin with the same letter.

Okay, so what three things do I need? First, I seriously need to get in shape, unless I want to cause spandex futures to skyrocket when I start making my uniform/outfit/costume. Diet. Check.

Second, I also need an alter ego, obviously. Don’t want all my superpowered archnemeses knocking on my door while I’m away supherheroing it up with the Justice Brigade or Hero Herd or whoever and the Wife and the Boy are home alone. New name. Check.

Finally, I need some advice. There are obviously many people who’ve been doing this for a long time before I ever thought of it. I’ve already met Geist, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to visit some more of those people and see what “the life” is like before I jump in with both feet. Mentor. Check.

Okay, Name, Diet, and Mentor don’t start with the same letter, but the Baptist in me feels compelled to alliterate. So if I’m ever going to patent and sell the Threefold Path to Superheroism, I’m really going to need the whole same-first-letter thing as a marketing tool.

Nutrition, Name, and Nurturing? Sounds vaguely New Agey. “Nurturing” doesn’t really reflect my desire to kick as much ass as I hope to someday kick.

Meals, Moniker, and Mentoring? “Mentoring” makes me think of big-brother programs for underprivileged schoolkids, which in turn makes the “Meals” part remind me of Meals on Wheels. Both good programs, but not what I’m shooting for here.

Abs, Alias, and Advice? Sounds like a radio show where people call in and Jennifer Garner gives them workout tips. I realize this is a stretch, but that’s just how my mind works.

Glutes, Guise, and Guidance? Oooh. Not bad. At least, not as bad as the others. I better just run with it or I’ll be up all night with a thesaurus trying to find the perfect triumvirate of synonyms.

Okay, so the first step on the Threefold Path to Superherodom is Glutes: getting into shape. As you may have gathered from previous chapters, this isn’t going to be my forte. I’ve been in shape for a total of four nonconsecutive months in my entire life: June through August 1988, and May 2001. I had it all: that six-pack, those thighs like the animated Disney version of Tarzan, and those cool little lines in my shoulders whenever I moved them, which was constantly, because, hey, I wanted to show off those cool little lines in my shoulders.

Before that window of time, and ever since, I’ve been utterly incapable of and unwilling to stick to any kind of diet or exercise plan. For example, some months ago, in a particularly violent fit of “let’s get healthy,” my wife and I purchased a workout DVD called, for the purposes of not being sued by its producer, March off Your Ass: Xpress!

Don’t blame me, that’s more or less what they named it.

Said DVD has, since purchase, acted primarily as an inanimate reminder of my failure to follow through with anything, glaring at and mocking me from the far corner of the bottom shelf of the living room media case.

Secondarily, it has served as a coaster.

But tomorrow, however…lo!…tomorrow shall be different. Tomorrow, I shall exercise.

First Day of the Rest of My Superhero Life

The day starts out with the initially inoffensive but exponentially less so as it becomes more insistent alarm on my phone that goes off at 6:15 a.m. I immediately hop out of bed at 6:24.

Okay. So far, so good.

The air conditioning is out, and it’s the middle of a particularly nasty summer, so it’s hot.

It’s humid in my bedroom.

It’s muggy in my bedroom.

It’s swampy in my bedroom.

I make my way down the hall, stopping to check the thermostat. It reads 78. Lying piece of—. It’s 105, at least. The humidity is hovering somewhere within spitting distance of 98 percent, and the barometer is falling. In this, I’m going to March Off My Ass.

Xpress!

Rounding the corner, I pass the kitchen and hear the sweet siren’s song of Frosted Mini-Wheats calling me (generic, actually, called Tiny Iced Grain Pillows or something), but I don’t stop. I don’t even pause. I’m on a mission. Would Batman stop for a deliciously saccharine yet surprisingly fiber-rich breakfast cereal on his way to the Batlivingroom? I dare say he wouldn’t, and neither will I. When I reach the living room, it’s dark and hot. I turn on the light. Now it’s bright and hot. Damn.

I take the DVD from its becobwebbed spot on the shelf, and host Susan Marchoffyourassington eyes me from the disc label as if I’m an unexpected guest, which I suppose I am. I shove her smug face into the machine. That’ll shut her up, I think.

Then the video starts.

Far from shutting up, she babbles on and on, nonstop. It’s horrible. This little woman with her fat, riding-pants thighs, news anchor haircut, and her banter about how fun it is to be walking in place in the comfort of your living room when most people are still sound asleep—this little woman, she kills me.

Speaking of which, as I pretend to walk, I start feeling my chest pound. It’s been so long, I can’t tell if this is a healthy “Hey, you’re finally using me! Yeah!” pound or a “Hey, what’s going on out there? Keep this up and we’ll see how far you fake walk without me!” pound. I put my hand to my carotid artery and check. Yep, it’s official. I’m dying. My heart is having none of this sudden change of routine. I’m going to die, and the last person I will see before Jesus is Susan and her lumpy thighs. Great.

But wait, says my brain, what if this isn’t a heart attack? What if this is just, you know, what happens when you do something other than sit, lie, or, when no one’s watching, Electric Slide? I decide that if this is going to kill me, the damage is probably already done and I might as well keep going. I continue pumping my size elevens and swinging my arms like a pathetic ape walking. Minutes later, I’m still alive. Fifteen minutes in, not only have I yet to die, but it’s starting to feel a little…good? Hmm. That was the last thing I would have expected. I start to sweat, what with the mercurial temperature in the house and all. So I whip off my T-shirt in midpretend stride. I look down and wonder if the view from the front is as bad as the view from the top. Good gravy, if I had met the present version of me in junior high, I would have kicked my butt. My body looks like a balloon full of half set concrete. It sloshes around, but very slowly. It takes its time. Even my fat is lazy. Maybe the walk will whip it into shape.

This gives me an idea. I need to look into having fat liposuctioned and then using the suckings to form a sidekick. All I’d need is the fat, a few sausage casings, and some sort of incredibly advanced artificial intelligence. Maybe aliens or hyperintelligent monkeys would have something I could use for this.

Wow…Okay…the exercise is making me delusional. It must be from all the blood rushing to my gut. I look at the clock, and there are only a few minutes of pseudowalking left to do. I Batman up and stick it out, skipping the stretching at the end of the tape. Stretching can come later. Cereal comes now. I turn off the TV. ( good-bye, thunderthighs!) and make a beeline for the kitchen and some generic sugar-coated smallish wheat packets. That’s when I see it.

There—this is hard—there’s a bag on the kitchen counter. There’s a bag, and it’s empty. My heart starts to pound again. The sweat starts to flow. I pick the bag up, hoping against hope, but my first impression is right: they’re gone. They’re all gone.

I promise myself I won’t cry, and then I lovingly place the bag in the trash can, draping it with a dirty paper towel. I consider saluting, then realize I don’t know the bag’s military status, so I just shut the trash can lid as quietly as I can and walk away in respectful silence.

Batman probably eats Wheaties anyway, I tell myself, and that makes it a little better. I retreat to the bedroom, trying to decide if I want to shower or get more sleep and just blame the smell on the guy in the next cubicle all day.

I see my beautiful wife lying in the bed in the dark room, and suddenly, like the bolt of lightning from the heavens when Billy Batson yells “Shazam!” it hits me: at some point, I’m going to have to tell her about this whole superhero thing, and it isn’t gonna be pretty. The mind boggles, in fact, when considering the many ways it could go wrong. Wife doesn’t handle “different” very well, and this is about as different as it gets.

I sit on the edge of the bed and watch her sleep for a bit, knowing this is about as pleasant as the conversation’s going to be for a while. Eventually, I click on a lamp on the nightstand. Wife registers nothing.

“So,” I say, after clearing my throat as conspicuously as possible.

Wife lays there like lump.

“So,” I say, slightly louder.

“Hmms uh na,” Wife answers.

I gently shake her leg. She stirs, cracking open one eye.

“So,” I say again.

“What?”

“I was just saying ‘So.’”

There’s a brief but extremely awkward silence as Wife attempts to comprehend what she’s woken to.

“Were we having a conversation?” she asks.

“No, I just couldn’t decide how to start.”

Wife’s attention is suddenly focused like a laser beam.

“Start what?” she asks, eyes narrowing.

“Telling you about it.”

Now she’s awake, with a hint of panic in her bloodshot eyes.

“About what?”

“My new book.”

Relief and annoyance briefly duel for control of her facial muscles.

“What?”

“The new book I’m working on.”

“Oh,” Wife says, flopping back onto the mattress. “Why don’t you finish the other five you’ve started before you start on something else?”

“This one’s different. It’s nonfiction.”

“How does that make it different?”

“I don’t have to make everything up, so it should be easier. I just have to do stuff and then write about it. A monkey could do that. A monkey who can type, anyway.”

Wife sits back up.

“What, precisely, are you going to do?” she asks, and from her tone, I know she wants details on a subatomic, nanosecond-by-nanosecond level.

“Just some stuff. Just thought you should know. See ya!”

“Waitwaitwaitwaitwait. The last time you did ‘just some stuff,’ you made a little tube that shot big fireballs from your hand.” ^*

“They weren’t that big.”

“They were fireballs. From the palm of your hand.”

“Cool, huh?”

Sigh. “What are you going to do?”

“Do you know there are people who put on costumes and fight crime?”

“Yeah. They’re called cops. Are you going to be a cop now?”

“No, not a cop. And those are uniforms, not costumes.”

“Same difference.”

“Actually, if only one person is wearing it, it’s a costume. If a hundred people are wearing it, it’s a uniform,” I say, explaining helpfully.

Wife picks up her phone from the nightstand and checks the time.

“Just tell me what you’re going to do. Other than be late for work.”

“I’m gonna be a superhero.”

The room falls silent. Perhaps Wife is so overcome with pride and happiness she can’t speak, I think. I’ve done what every married person dreams of—rendered my spouse speechless.

As the silence enters its second full minute, I start to wonder if she even heard me in the first place.

“I’m gonna be a…”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“So whatcha think?”

“Are you serious?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Like, with a cape and stuff?”

“Well, capes aren’t really that practical. I’d have a costume and a mask, though.”

“And you’d go out in public dressed like that.”

“I’d have to, yeah.”

“You’re killing me.”

“What?”

“That is so embarrassing.”

In the pitch-black room, I actually see her reddening.

“For me, maybe, not for you. I’m the one that’s going to be going out in public dressed up like a goon.”

“Then why do it?”

“For my art, baby.”

“I’m going to assume you said ‘fart’ and continue as if I’d received a satisfactory answer. On another note, aren’t you a little…you know…for spandex?”

“Fat?”

Wife shrugs her shoulders in a very “You said it, not me, but I’m not disagreeing” sort of way.

“I’d lose weight first, of course. Get into shape.”

“Like you’ve been saying you’re going to do since I met you?”

“Yeah, like that, but I’d do it this time.”

“You’re going to lose weight, get in shape, buy a costume—”

“Make a costume.”

“You don’t sew, but fine, make a costume, fight crime, aaaand—”

“Write a book about it!”

“Write a book about it.”

“Sure.”

“What about those five other books you haven’t finished? I mentioned them a few minutes ago?”

“Yeah, but this is diff—”

“And the model ship?”

“Yeah, but—”

“And the drawings, and the paintings, and the woodworking projects, and the sculpting?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“You don’t finish things. You’re not a finisher.”

“You just say that because I haven’t finished anything yet.”

“You’re right. Because that’s how we determine those things. If you don’t write, you’re not a writer, if you don’t swim, you’re not a swimmer, and if you don’t finish things, you’re not a finisher. Based on your previous history, why should I believe you’re going to follow through on this?”

“Because I’m excited about it.”

“You were excited about the other stuff too. At first. Then you get bored.”

“But this is different.”

“You keep saying that. How?”

“Um. I’m really excited about it.”

Wife looks at me with either resignation or despair. The two look a lot alike, especially at 7:30 A.M., and in this case it doesn’t really matter which it is—six of one, half a dozen of the other.

“Okay. Whatever. You’re late for work, Commander Quitter.”

I decide to take this as a victory, kiss her before she can think of anything else to say, shower, and get out of the house before she realizes what she’d tacitly approved.

It’s early evening, a few months after my initial workout/ heart-to-heart with the Wife and shortly before my visit with Geist. She and I are driving home from a wedding. Biscuit and Wife’s little sister, Cupcake-in-law, were asleep in the backseat of the Amazingmobile.

“That wasn’t so bad,” I say, “for a wedding. Good cake.”

“Yeah,” Wife says. “I didn’t care for the icing, but it was good.”

“Yeah.”

I stare out the side window as I drive, carefully considering how best to bring up what’s sure to be a controversial request.

“So,” I say, “I’ve been thinking about the book.”

“Which book?”

“What do you mean which book?”

“Well, you’re always reading two or three at once.”

“The one I’m writing.”

“Oh yeah, that one. What about it?”

“I need your help with one of the chapters. I need to write about how you initially reacted when I told you about my plan to become a superhero, so we need to sit down and have that conversation.”

“We had that conversation months ago.”

“Yeah, but I can’t remember it. We need to have it again.”

“That’d be lying. Just write about how I reacted then.”

“I don’t remember how that went down, other than you thought it was weird.”

“You remember me hanging my head in mortification and disbelief that you were going to go out in public dressed like a dork?”

“That sounds like you, yeah, but I can’t remember any of the specifics. We need to do it again.”

“But it’s a nonfiction book. If we make it up, that would be fiction.”

“The only untrue part would be when we had the conversation. The fact that we had it would be true.”

Wife gives me a look that, after years of marriage, I don’t need superpowers to recognize.

“What, do you have a moral compunction against helping me?”

“No, I just—”

“It’s not like we’re going to get caught. People do it all the time,” I say like a kid in gym in junior high offering someone her first joint. I just need to throw in “All your friends are doing it” and “It’ll make you feel good” to have all my bases covered.

“You mean like the Oprah guy?” she says.

“Are you comparing me to James Frey?”

“If the lie fits—”

“This is totally different. He lied about important stuff. I’m talking a minor chronological fib here. Besides, it’s not like they could fact-check it and find out that’s not how it happened.”

“Yeah, if anyone suspected anything, I’d have to rat you out.”

“You’d rat me out?”

“No, I mean, I say, I’d have to rat you out for anyone to be suspicious.”

“Oh. You’re saying there’s no reason for anyone to get suspicious unless you ratted me out.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Okay, it sounded like…never mind. So you’ll help?”

“You can’t just remember the old conversation?”

“Why do you have to make everything so hard?”

“I’m your wife.”

“Oh yeah.” Damn her female logic.

There’s a pregnant pause as I consider how best to win Wife over to my way of thinking. As usual, Wife thinks of a solution while I was still sorting out the variables.

“This should be it,” she says.

“What?”

“You should make this the conversation. Everything we just said. That’d be funny.”

“It would be even funnier if I wrote a whole section on the made-up part and then tagged this on afterward, revealing the first section a lie. Kindofa lie.”

“Chronological fib.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, that’d be funny. Do that.”

“I knew there was a reason I married you.”

“Besides my good looks, sense of humor, and intelligence?”

“And big boobs. Don’t forget your big boobs.”

“I love you too, baby.”

Okay, exercise done. Good. Thank God. Won’t have to do that for another twenty-three and a half hours. Next: diet. I’d previously sat down with my team of diet and nutrition experts^* and worked out a rigorous meal plan consisting of:

Breakfast

1 Graham cracker with a tablespoon of peanut butter

1 protein shake (1 scoop protein powder, 1 banana, 1 cup ice, 1 cup lactose-free milk)

1 orange

Midmorning snack

1 apple

Lunch

Holy crap, what do you care? Why am I telling you all this? Long story short, if I stick to it, this should give me a total of about 1,550 calories a day. Sure, that may seem a bit low for an adult male, even a dieting adult male, but I’m sure I’ll be fine. Just looking at the list, it looks like an insane amount of food to take in every day, so I’m not too worried as I’m heading into my first day of eating healthy.

By the way, you’ll notice a conspicuous lack of sugar in the diet. That’s not just because I’m trying to lose weight. I have hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, for you nonmedical personnel out there. My parents discovered this quite by accident when I went into a coma as an infant. It really wasn’t as big a deal as it sounds. In fact, they also accidently discovered I was allergic to being stung by bees, eating wheat, and hitting my head really hard on bricks.

Diet Log, Day 1

9:00 A.M.

I’ve been at work for an hour and a half and just had my apple. For me, eating fruit is a lot like exercising: I resist as much as I can on the front end, but when I’m done with it, I feel a lot better. The best part is, no sugar cravings yet. This could be easier than I thought.

NOON

I’m finishing up my chicken and broccoli when I realize I haven’t opened my jug of water yet. I guess I should get started on that if I plan on finishing the entire thing before I go home. I figure that if I stop drinking by five, I should stop peeing just in time for bed. I’ve had a few stray thoughts about sugar, but nothing bad. I’m supremely confident in my ability to pull this off.

4:00 P.M.

Holy crap, I need something sweet. Daddy need a fix—bad. I run to the shared filing cabinet/secret candy depository in the office and see that there are eight Hershey’s Kisses left. I snatch four, take them back to my desk, and attack each one in a manner much akin to a paranoid squirrel eating his last acorn, my eyes darting to and fro lest someone discover my shame.

Oh God. Oh God. That feels so good. Seriously. I melt down into my chair and briefly become one with the universe. I’m a little, chocolate-fueled Buddha; my third eye is open and all the good and the light of the cosmos are flooding into it en route to my stomach, the seat of my soul. I’m without need, without desire. Nirvana is mine, all you non-Hershey’s Kiss-eating bitches.

4:10 P.M.

You bastard! You utter bastard! You were good the entire day, and now you’ve gone and blown it all! Way to go, loser!

Ugh.

I feel like crap. I scurry to the cabinet and take the last four chocolates, popping them like—well, like a sugar addict popping Hershey’s Kisses. There’s not a whole lot to compare it to.

There, that’s better. Not as good as the first ones, but they level me out a bit. Damn. This is no good. How am I going to get through this? Maybe I should’ve had an orange instead.

HA!

Good point, inner voice. An orange wouldn’t have done it, unless it was one of those chocolate oranges that break open into little wedges like the real thing. Mmmm, chocolate orange. Okay, focus. You screwed the poochola today, but you can start again tomorrow.

No, that’s not the right attitude. If I start again tomorrow, that means I can pig out tonight. I’ll start again right now. Maybe I need some more water. I look over at my jug and see I’ve only drunk (drank?) about one third of it, and I already feel bloated. Man. Rough start.

Diet Log, Day 2

8:00 A.M.

Sooo hungry. So very hungry.

NOON

Bag of M&M’s in trench coat keeps exposing himself, chanting “Eat me, eat me.” Two green candies hang suggestively between his legs. He sickens me, but I want to be his friend. Am confused by this.

5:00 P.M.

Spent last half hour with Hershey bar to wrist, sawing and sawing. Never broke skin. Now too tired even to lift it to mouth. Staring at chocolate, weeping gently.

Diet Log, Day 3

[I tried to transcribe my notes for day 3, but it was mostly a lot of illegible scrawlings, curse words, and doodles of me gunning down various health celebrities and breakfast cereal mascots.]

Needless to say, I’m a lot better now. Wait, maybe I do actually need to say that. All right, “I’m a lot better now.” I’m sticking to the diet, exercising (almost) daily, and I’ve lost ten pounds in just a few weeks. It took a while to get started—weight loss at thirty-four isn’t quite the cakewalk it was at twenty-four—but since I figured out the Secret, it got a lot easier. No, not that Rhonda Byrne “wish your reality into being” nonsense: the real secret is that it’s not so much about what you eat or what workout plan you choose, it’s about your motivation to stick to whichever diet you choose. I call mine the Three-Step (See? Always with the three steps) Motivational Plan for Keeping My Motivation to Lose Weight and Keep Walking in Place to Get in Shape and Become a Superhero.

Step 1: Post pictures of Biscuit wherever I usually snack (on the fridge, at my desk, on the toilet, in the crawlspace under the house, etc.).

Step 2: Remember that whenever I’m tempted to snack or eat something unhealthy, Biscuit’s high school graduation will be in seventeen years.

Step 3: Decide whether I want to be there.

After that, the rest is a cakewalk—a low-fat, sugar-free cakewalk, but a cakewalk nonetheless.