I was at my favorite pub the other night when I ran into Alex, a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in years. I gave her a hug, ordered a beer and sat down at a table with her to catch up on things. She looked amazing. Not that she was fat or anything before, but she definitely lost a ton weight while we were apart. She looked like a different person. I didn't hesitate to tell her how awesome she looked or to ask her what she did to shed those pounds.
"Hun, you look...you look...awesome. I mean, really! It's not that I ever thought you were a chunker or anything, but...no, fuck you. Stop making me give you compliments! If the rest of these people here me, they'll all expect me to be nice to them too."
"Oh Mikey, I don't think anyone is in danger of falsely thinking you're a nice person."
"Good call, but seriously - how did you do this?"
I was in the middle of suffering through an imprisoning New England winter on top of being five days into quitting the cancer sticks. My spare tire was inflating rapidly, regardless of how many miles I was clacking out on the treadmill. I needed some pointers.
"So, what did you do?"
"Well, the first thing I did was go vegan. That helped a lot."
"That's dumb. Meat is awesome and I only plan on having gray skin when I'm on a mortician's slab. What else did you do?"
"Well, there's this thing I do called the 'Master Cleanse'. No solid food is ingested for 10 days. Instead, you consume a mixture of lemon juice, maple syrup, water and cayenne pepper."
"Add vodka and I've probably made that drink at an after party before."
"I wouldn't doubt it. Since this is considered a cleanse, the second half includes guzzling a sea salt solution as a top-down enema and something called 'laxative tea'."
"They make tea that makes you poop?! So basically, you eat nothing for 10 days but force yourself to shit like a Pembroke Welsh Corgi after an ice cream smorgasbord in order to rid your digestive system of...what?"
"Toxins and congestion that are supposedly the root cause of a laundry list of maladies. When the 10 days are up, you can either break the fast slowly by reintroducing your body to fruit juice first, followed by soups, fruits and nuts, or you can continue on for longer."
"Wait, isn't this that shit that Beyonce did a while back?"
"Yeah. She lost like 15 pounds or something. It was on the news, I think."
"So how much weight did you lose doing this?"
"A little less than 15 pounds. It's not as much for weight loss as it is for cleansing yourself from the inside out, but you do lose weight."
"15 pounds in 10 days?! Fuck."
We talked about all sorts of stuff before I left, but the back burners of my brain were still fired up over that Lemonade Diet. Could it work? It probably does, but it would probably be the worst 10 days of my life. You like food too much. Besides, you just quit smoking. How are you going to quit eating right now? "So you're living in Portland now? That's awesome. I love Portland." Shit, I didn't even think about my ulcers. Nothing but lemon juice and cayenne pepper for a week and a half? Yeah, that won't have me barfing blood at all. My boxers would look like Curt Shilling's socks. "How's your boyfriend these days? When's the wedding? Oh I'm just pulling your chain." You know what does make sense? The part about pooping a bunch. I can't see myself not eating for 10 days, but I can see the value of eating really well and forcing your intestines to rid themselves of Orcs and dragons. Think about it; if I skipped the Mexican lemonade, ate really, really healthfully and did the natural laxative tea stuff, it would probably help me 'evacuate Thetans' and maintain my weight until my metabolism corrects itself. Fuck maintaining my weight, this could actually help me shed a few pounds in the process. I think I'm going to try this. "Hey Alex, what's the name of that ca-ca tea that you drink so you can pee out of your butt?"
The following day, I found myself wandering through the aisles of the Portsmouth Health Food Store on a mission for two weeks worth of organic vittles and a box of Smooth Move herbal laxative tea to attempt my own makeshift version of the Master Cleanse. I had never been in the Portsmouth Health Food Store before. In fact, I had never been in a health food store before that day. I noticed that I was getting bad looks because I didn't bring my own burlap potato sack to carry groceries home with. I also noticed that people don't move out of your way in a health food store, even if you ask politely. They just stand there, blocking the lanes with some kind of sprawling yoga position while they read the back of every single food item on the fucking shelves. This is fine and dandy if you have nothing to do with your day besides float through life like a granola bar meandering down a babbling river of ignorance, but daddy doesn't have Nature's Valley tattooed across his chest and he's itching to get home. A few well-placed shoulder checks coupled with my ability to make almost anything look like an accident and I was unloading my items at the register, steeping in the panicked embarrassment that only comes from buying laxatives from a silently judging cashier girl.
I threw a pot of water on the stove and began to read online testimonials from other people that used shitty shit tea as soon as I got home. One woman mentioned that you shouldn't plan on going anywhere an hour after drinking a cup. Another mentioned one to two hours before lift off. None of my roommates were home, which guaranteed me all the throne time I could ever need. I cracked the box, pulled out a tea bag and poured myself a cup of sweet release.
After two hours, I noticed that I still hadn't spackled shit all over my bedroom walls. Thinking that I might need an extra poop boost because I have the tolerance of a well fed lumberjack, I decided to make myself another cup. An hour later - nothing. I picked up the back of the box and read. Organic Smooth Move will generally produce bowel movements in 6 to 12 hours. SIX TO TWELVE HOURS?! What the fuck were those two blog-tarded women talking about?!? I would have shit naturally within 6 to 12 hours anyway. Christ, I could have been drinking Elmer's glue and I still would've taken a dump after that amount of time. All of a sudden I was jealous of those trust fund hippies in the health food store; studying those boxes, knowing what the fuck they were buying. I finished my second disappointing cup and left to meet some friends at the bar. A few hours later, I came home and had yet another cup of tea before I went to bed, effectively taking three times the recommended amount of senna leaf stimulant laxative in a 24 hour period. That health food store snake oil was going to make me crap if it killed me.
Fortunately, it didn't kill me. It just robbed me of my innocence.
Luckily, I wouldn't have to drink another cup of tea because I spent the next five days suffering from uncontrollable, explosive diarrhea. I confined myself to my room where I would pass the time by rocking back and forth in the fetal position until I had to run to the bathroom again. I would eat the solid food from the health food store, but nothing resembling solid poop was coming out of me. The toilet water looked like chicken broth. I was wiping so much that I actually started spotting the toilet paper with blood. The first time that happened, I couldn't help but laugh at the situation. I should have been cast to play young Hassan in The Kite Runner. I WILL NOT GIVE UP THIS KITE!!! IT BELONGS TO AMIR AGHA!!! I literally sat on the throne anywhere between fifteen and thirty times a day. By the afternoon of day four, I began icing my asshole down with a tray of cubes from the freezer. I couldn't go to the gym. I couldn't go to the supermarket. I couldn't go to Blockbuster. I couldn't leave my apartment because there was a very real chance I would end up shitting myself in public. I debated going to the emergency room, but a quick scan of my last e-room bill made me decide that I couldn't afford it. I was walking like I spent a week riding a horse with no saddle. I couldn't string two hours of sleep together without being shaken awake to offer what little water was left in my body as sacrifice to the plumbing gods. By the fifth day I was a dehydrated husk of a human being; broken both physically and emotionally in ways that would have made Josef Mengele skittish. My eyes showed no joy. I was defeated.
The night of day five rolled around and I was starting to feel much better. I was in the bathroom washing up after one of the last bouts of soul expulsion I would have to suffer through when I noticed a dusty scale on the floor. I wonder. I dragged it out, calibrated it and stepped on. Sure enough, I ended up losing eight pounds in five days. I knew that most of that had to have been water weight and I would gain it back when I fully regained my continence, but it was enough for me to realize the effectiveness of the Master Cleanse if done properly. It was also enough for me to realize I wasn't nearly vain enough to endure that Inquisition for five more days, especially sans food and plus an Olde English bottle's worth of salt water steadily fucking my colon to shreds. I didn't understand why anyone would use that as a means to lose weight when you could just work out. Did working out really sound that terrible to some people? I actually enjoyed exercise. Why would anyone do this to themselves on purpose?
I thought about all of the Hollywood types I met out in L.A. that would do anything to stay skinny. Diet pills, meth, coke, laxatives...anything; just as long as it didn't call for any kind of physical exertion. I thought I could cheat the system, albeit on a smaller scale. I thought about every one of those wannabe debutante girls I met and spoke with and hung out with and fucked, and how they probably spent their days shitting their brains out before getting in the car to meet me for drinks. A whole different kind of nausea washed over me; the kind that harsh self realization brings. I didn't have a destructive sense of vanity, but I was essentially wringing out my intestines in the efforts of losing a few pounds. I didn't share the mentality of Lindsay Lohan or Nicole Ritchie, but our physical actions were similar. I have something in common with those whores? Those terrible whores?! Put me in a frilly pink tunic and oversized sunglasses. I'm ready for my OK! magazine photo shoot. There wasn't enough soap in the world to clean the look of perfect disgust off of my face.
I went into my kitchen, pulled out the box of Organic Smooth Move laxative tea, opened it, poured water all over the bags as to destroy them and tossed the whole thing in the trash. The last thing I need is homeless person poop covering my stairs.
Posted by KungFu Mike at 6:06 AM