“Look at all of you with your pretty little assholes: bopping around the city, crapping in random toilets, squandering an unprecedented joy that every human being from now to extinction will eulogize in a public restroom! Do you comprehend your asshole’s potential?! Of course you don’t! Well I do. But I can’t use mine because it’s broken. She was a ballroom beauty I tell ya, bedecked in full-length sequined ballroom gowns and matching tiaras. She was a queen! So go on now! Gadzooks, you make me sick!”
Wow. Well. So who wants cake, huh? Nothing like a big hunk of cake to polish off a whiskey-induced tirade. Oh, that’s right, I can’t eat cake because it makes me constipated. Fine. I’ll just pour myself another delicious spoonful of fish oil … yeah … fish oil … yay.
Three weeks ago, a colorectal surgeon exorcised an ulcer that had possessed the fleshy welcome mat of my rectum. Convalescence has been no cakewalk (oh cake), albeit not without recourse: I’ve realized a little comic disdain for humanity can really jazz up your recovery (exhibit A: prior tirade) and ensure that Mount Vesuvius doesn’t blow her top off.
But now, the time has come for another renaissance of Self. My oracular orifice has expelled enough bluster to awaken the sleep of the gods; my jokes and metaphors still toe the banks of raunchy story and frilly allegory; but, as my inner family prepares for my transformation feast, some fabulously unexpected yet very much appreciated guests have decided to crash the party.
“Stella!” they bark, “Rise and become a legend, you shit!”
Why’re they here? It’s why everyone is: We must change or die; change or be miserable; change or stuff ourselves with sweet stuff until we roll into the gutter like a moldy jawbreaker. To live is to change. Resist change and you resist life itself.
Many people, myself included, fool themselves into thinking they’re healthy by nibbling on a bit of zucchini, and then justify indulgences as if they earned them or need them to mitigate pain. Well, that shit ain’t flyin’ anymore. It’s the reason why the aforementioned party crashers rolled in calling my Sailormoon-style transformation a sham.
I’m just gonna say what’s been on everyone’s minds for the past four paragraphs or so: “Whoa, back up it, girl. What’s all this flapdoodle and tommyrot?” Ha! Wale, sore asses like mine don’t get much sympathy, but I also can’t be miserable. So, to accommodate these forces and quell a circuitous paranoia about never having butt sex again, I’ve decided to try something novel — taking care of myself.
All that entails is that I see my chiropractor three times a week, take warm baths, read more, cry more, make crass jokes, smoke less, eat better and don my warrior spirit at the gym — all to a glorious backdrop of high-tempo Japanese music.
You’re all rational people, I take it. I know this is an HIV column, but HIV is the least of my concerns right now. In fact, I’m not really concerned about anything. Life is grand! And shit is majorly fucked up. But who cares? Do you? For Christ’s sakes, don’t. Tell me a good joke or pretend to flirt with me. Even better, disguise yourself as a bush, sneak around Rittenhouse Square and make fart noises as people pass.
The sixth Chiropractic Principle states, “There is no healing process that does not require time.” Pretty intuitive, and pretty easy to forget. Rightfully so, since time totally blows, like, when you have to wait for the SEPTA trolley or, like, when you have to wait for the SEPTA trolley or, like, when you have to wait for the SEPTA trolley. Yup. Sometimes, you need a whole lotta time and a whole lotta broken ass to get your life together.
We’re all in this together, folks. Now get out there and talk about it.
“Millenial Poz” has received two national awards and appears in PGN monthly. Aaron can be reached at [email protected].