It was the summer of super-low jeans, and I, freshly turned 27, had just found the first item of clothing I simply couldn’t wear. Oh, sure, there’d been those tube-tops so popular last year, but this was different. That one hadn’t been a big deal – I’d never liked living dangerously anyway, and had had no desire to bop about in a top that might just as well become a bottom without warning. But this… this midriff-madness, I actually liked! Everywhere I went, girls from the Britney Spears generation to the Chanel haute couture fashionistas were baring it all below the waist. It was cute, it was sexy, it was now. I loved the trend. Problem was, I couldn’t participate in it. I wasn’t fashion-able. I couldn’t be stylish this year, simply by fault of body type.
Yes, that’s right. I had a pot belly.
It wasn’t from beer. It wasn’t from fried chicken, or pizza, or tiramisu (though of course those hadn’t helped). I was just born this way; with, as my mother would say, lots of ‘womb to rent’. I had never laid claim to any sort of natural two-dimensionality in that region – even as a child, little me had had a bulge, and in my future, I saw the growing extension of that little fruit burgeoning: first a pear, then a cantaloupe, last, and most horrifyingly, a proud, swelling-sweet honeydew. I was headed for a fruit-cocktail of despair, if I didn’t do something soon! I’d tried sit-ups, I’d tried crunches, I’d even tried “Yoga for Abs” (that one was great for my state of inner peace, but didn’t make a dent in the pot). Some people say the look is cute – for instance, that gratifying scene in Pulp Fiction where Maria de Medeiros tells Bruce Willis how she loves her ‘pot’. Not that you could see that practically imperceptible bulge she claimed to have. Mine, on the other hand, was infuriatingly obvious, despite my being fairly in-shape otherwise. No falls-below-the-waist garment could conceal this pouting pooch of mine, I knew.
Now, it was by no means monstrous, my friends – just monstrously out of style. The soft, womanly swell that defined my lower abdomen didn’t fit in with the flat, sterile-surface ideal of the times. At first I tried to comfort myself: “It’s a look for younger women; women who don’t mind being called ‘girls’. I can go without those super-low jeans.” But of course that just made me feel old as well as fat and flabby. I wanted those jeans, damn it, and I wanted to look good in them!
The summer of slim stretched out depressingly before me. Every woman who walked by with her belly bared, I hated – especially those whose navels proudly sported cute little rings to accentuate the annoying perfection of that spot. (Guess I should have known it was only a matter of time after that fad began before the hemlines of shirts rose and pants fell to give guys a peek at these ultra-fashionable piercings.) I had abdomen-envy; the big-belly blues. At night I dreamed of all that Starbucks’ Java Chip ice-cream I’d denied myself, and by day I fantasized about swaggering around in belt-baring, hip-hugging splendor, just like all those wasp-waisted waifs and sylph-like subway gazelles that greeted my morning commute.
By August, I had reached jelly-belly bottom, and it obsessed me, night and day.
When I saw the Levi’s commercial, I thought I’d really gone round the bend. The first time, watching it silent and distant on a bar TV one night, I simply thought it was kind of boring, all these ladies strutting around with their admittedly much-more-gorgeous-than-mine stomachs bared to the breeze. I was envious, but that was nothing new. But then I saw the thirty-second spot again, alone in the discomfort of my own home.
I heard the soundtrack first – the sound of Diana Ross’s famous disco hit “I’m Comin’ Out,” being covered by some current cutie. And then I noticed the subtle special effects they’d added to the commercial, and began to curse the drugs I hadn’t experimented with in college. There, hovering hypnotically about the lower abdomens of the passing girls, were dozens of navels, contracting and expanding, like little mouths or sphincters. And then I realized, they were singing.
Diabolical.
You couldn’t have found a more effective weapon to torment me with if you tried. Instantly, I knew I wanted those jeans – but more, that I wanted those bellies. I wanted to be one of those girl-women whose stomachs were possessed by the singing spirit of the disco queen. I had to look like that, or die trying! Suddenly, liposuction almost seemed like a viable option, though the last time I’d watched a plastic surgery segment on E! Entertainment Television, I’d practically blacked out from the sheer grossness of it all. I was at my wits’ end, utterly out of ideas, and unable to stand my lumpy, bumpy self one second more.
And it was then, my friends, during that frenzy of belly-envy, that I fell victim to the infomercial.
The Ab-Zapper.
Strap it around your waist, the tanned, smiling spokesman/inventor assured me, slick it up good with conducting jelly, and it would simply Taser the offensive area until the muscles seized up on their own. Do it enough, he said, smiling as he demonstrated it on a grimacing Barbie-doll of a woman clad in a miniscule two-piece leotard, and it was the equivalent of 600 sit-ups – accomplished in only ten minutes! And best of all, you could do it while you were watching TV, folding laundry, or just puttering around the house.
Oh, my God. The perfect solution had just fallen into my over-ample lap! Not only did it work you out without any effort or commitment on your part, it gave you a punitive shock at the same time! It directed all your self-hatred, your loathing of pudge, into a tiny microcurrent you could apply with a belt and some gel, directly to the culprit.
Watch out, belly. Here I come.
I had already gotten the jeans (for motivation), though they’d remained in the closet of shame all summer. Now I got them out and tried them on. Of course, they looked ridiculous. Even cautiously creeping about the house, sneaking up on the full-length mirror, alarms went off when The Belly showed its rolling-round face above the low-slung fly. No way I could pull this off. I needed divine intervention! “Help me, Ab-Zapper,” I pled. “I need you now, as I’ve never needed an infomercial product before!”
Yes folks, I bought the Ab-Zapper. All $109.99 of it, with everything you see here. I ordered it on e-bay (about which obsession, more at another time), and waited. And waited, as the summer drew to a close. Soon it would be too late, I fretted, too cold to expose such sensitive flesh to the elements. I needed that belly-blitzer!
I waited for that damn thing the way a kid waits for his magic decoder ring that he saved up all those box-tops for, rolling belly-first down to the mail slot each day with the forlorn hope of the truly delusional. And then one day it came.
The box was smaller than I’d expected. How could such a little device work the miracles I’d seen on television? How could it convert my sludge to a shapely six-pack – and all in three short weeks? (And why had it cost $14.99 to ship when the priority mail parcel clearly read $5.04 on it? my more sensible self wondered.) Refusing to despair, I ripped the box open.
Wires, timers, and gears of all sorts confronted me in a jumble like the detritus from the Unibomber’s tool shed, dozens of spare belts included because I had acted now! I had to run out to the store for the not-so-included conducting jelly, however, (without which, I was warned in veiled lawyer-speak, the so-called ‘pleasant buzz’ of the apparatus might more resemble a rather nasty shock). The only thing they had at the drugstore that would work was ‘feminine’ lubricant. Ignoring the absurdity of applying the goo all over myself in order to achieve a more attractive appearance, I returned home and poured over the instruction manual that had come with the Ab-Zapper. And then I tried it.
Interesting. It rather resembled an electric raspberry being blown with great deliberation against my tingling tummy. Painful, I noted with semi-scientific detachment, but not unbearable, unless I tried to peel the belt away from my KYed flesh, in which case my un-lubricated fingers would receive a jarring zap of current. I could leave the Ab-Zapper on until it had done its mocking job, it seemed, or I could zap myself silly trying to get it off. But hey, it was working! Under its mini lightning bolts of fury, my underdeveloped muscles were working overtime, jumping and leaping beneath the flesh like supermodels grappling over the last extra-strength Dexatrim tablet in the package.
Zzzzz. Pause. Zzzzz. Pause. Zzzzz… At this rate, I would be ripped in a matter of days!
What happened next was inevitable, I suppose.
As I watched my flab jiggle and pulse in the mirror’s reflection, it occurred to me that my belly was not the only area of my body that could use a little work. Another belt would double the results I could achieve in these ten tiny minutes, I reasoned. And a third, a fourth… well, the possibilities were endless. Wasn’t that the beginnings of cellulite starting to cottage cheese-up the backs of my thighs? Couldn’t my boobs use a lift? And hell, weren’t these microcurrent thingies supposed to work great on frown-lines and crow’s feet?
Pretty soon I was wrapped up in Ab-Zappers like the victim of some insane, merciless Halloween toilet-papering, and I had taken all my knowledge of VCR-programming, A-Team re-runs, and McGyver gizmos, and applied them to creating the ultimate, all-over, instant workout. Wires crisscrossed my body, red-and-black leads all attached to the central command device that Monsieur Bodybuilder had explained was really very easy to use. Was I, the manual asked, ready to experience the pinnacle of perfection my body could achieve? I was.
I pressed start.
I had only a fleeting second to wonder if perhaps I’d gone the teensiest bit overboard before my entire body convulsed, each muscle-group and sinew clenching in the effort to achieve fabulous, full-on fitness. Fits, was more like it. Bye-bye, belly, I thought in the last second before the world went dark and consciousness retreated back to that place before low-waisted jeans and Pilates and Milla Jovovich…
* * *
The next morning, I rolled over groggily, trailing wires sticky with personal lubricant behind me as I struggled to stand. I faced the mirror with trepidation, and gave myself a timid once-over. Well, friends, as you may have guessed, I had not achieved the belly-beautiful bod I’d hoped for, overnight. Nor had I, like Mel Gibson, received the ability, through the shock, of hearing the thoughts of the opposite sex (thank god, since I didn’t want to go around all day hearing “beeeeer,” and “boooobs” as I passed men on the street). But something had changed in the hours I’d been unconscious. Something wonderful. I saw how ludicrous I looked in that outlandish get-up, and for the first time all summer, I really laughed. A deep-down, honest-to-goodness belly-laugh.
And then, friends, I got cleaned up, put on those damned jeans I’d dreaded all summer, and went out for breakfast.
As I strolled down the street, pot and all, I sang softly to myself. “I’m Comin’ Out…”
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