In a shocking pair of shorts

It is a work in progress

There are things I am probably not yet ready to acknowledge about the way my walking as exercise might have changed aspects of my fitness, my girth and my weight. Brian, for instance would protest until the cows come home that I have lost weight and I am looking trim, I would retort with a vehemence that he is only being biased.

I cannot say he has been that much help in an objective manner because only days ago, he acknowledged that my concerns about my weight that he regularly dismissed as inconsequential before I embarked on my walking regime was quite valid. I was looking like I needed to do something, but he was not going to leave me feeling that I must do something until I started to do something about it on my own, for which I have received enthusiastic partner encouragement.

He is perfect beauty

Now, Brian would most likely ask that I slow down, tone it down a little, get some rest, or something along those lines. Obviously, I do not want to harm myself with excessive workouts that I have considered I might need some deep tissue massage.

Conversely, and definitely, not inversely, I do find Brian quite attractive as he also expresses concerns about filling out places that I think are amazingly perfect as if crafted by a sculptor of incomparable talent. There is no excess, he is man-perfect or all-man, as I would tell him, trim and better than Michelangelo’s David, if I added sexy to the description, I have not even begun to give credit to the form and beauty of art that he is.

Maybe there is some bias in my appreciation, I am attracted to trim and slender men, yet, it appears, we both are caught in degrees of body dysmorphia about how we would like to change some things. In all honesty, the work has mostly been on my part to rise from a sedentary lifestyle to one of moderate to intense activity acquiring a level of fitness, especially for my age. Brian is nature’s perfect form, the model for musculature that you will teach your biology and anatomy on.

There are signs, I admit

Getting up this morning, after a long lie-in, I needed to grab something to wear and as I reached out, it was a pair of shorts that I would have strained to get round my waist just over a month ago. They would be called hot pants as to be illicit or even termed indecent dressing in conservative places. They slipped on and fitted with effortless ease, I think we are getting somewhere.

It reminds me of that nursery rhyme as we prepare for the opportunity to meet up soon within our domesticated set up in Cape Town. I, the personification of Jack and he like the wife or vice versa, which is no reference to roles we play for we are both men in a same-sex relationship without any of that heteronormative stereotyping.

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
His wife could eat no lean.
But, together both,
They licked the platter clean.

That is the story, he is trying to put it on, I am working hard to put it off, however, we have to agree, we love good food. Then despite the occasional subjective view of how I look, I am grateful that Brian is the greatest and best supporter of my quest to fitness.

I am beginning to look quite good for my age from my perspective even if others have arrived at that conclusion long before me. There is still more working out and walking about to do, to get to the body I am happy to stand in front of the mirror and smile at.

Yes, size does matter

Smartening the ladies up

I remember one Sunday morning as I started channel hopping I happened to pause on the business channel which had offered air-time to the business of God.

The preacher at that point was skirting (an atrocious pun, pardon me) an interesting point of the difference between spinsters (an ancient word) and those ladies who had hitched their prince and then allowed the comfort zone of marriage and motherhood to replace the adjective sexy with frumpy.

He exhorted them to make a beeline to Victoria's Secret, where glamorous lingerie might just be the kindling to a relationship that was getting less interesting than ordinary.

Practical tips for change

Such practical living exhortations would do a few people a lot of good though I would not have known what to do when I approached an extended queue at a Marks and Spencer till a few years ago. The supervisor asked a free cashier to open another till where I found myself asking if I could have one with under-wire.

Well, the cashier had a name tag and title, the title read Bra Advisor; I could think of a few people I had seen who could have found her advice very useful, from the need for augmentation to the one of keeping them hidden.

Selling the unmentionable

Descending further into the satisfaction of self, a lady had a business plan many years ago, but was fobbed off with the statement that women are not interested in sex; I would not know, but the sales of vibrators had grown to 3 million a year in 2006.

When she tried to open a store in the very Catholic Dublin she got a bullet in the post, but that store is one of the top three performing stores in her business empire.

No, she was not at some seedy location, she was addressing the Institute of Directors yesterday as the head of the Ann Summers chain - Jacqueline Gold.

Finally, she had the answers to the three questions men always ask but never voice out - in her words - "Yes, I do wear our underwear. No, I do not test every product and yes, size does matter." I must have lived a sheltered life; I would not know for the life of me what the questions were and what she is talking about.

Ann Summers was my nanny.