The past few days have been unbelievably hot. The computer says its been in the 90-94 range for the past three days, and the air is soggy and miserable.
Just before this heatwave began, our living room air conditioner started to emit a dangerous-smelling chemical odor. It filled our small living room for days - with open windows and fans blowing, the smell just sat, heavy and expectant, in the air. We have yet to lay the AC to rest at the local dump, so it's been laying uselessly on the front porch.
To escape the heat, we went swimming yesterday at the lake. We got a season pass for $200 (which is highway robbery, by the way. It's free after 6pm, which I wish we'd known before handing over the debit card), so I'm trying to make sure we make the most of it by going whenever we can.
We expected it to be packed, but it wasn't. Usually there are a lot of out-of-towners, rich people who come here (of all places) to vacation for a few weeks with their endless stream of children and grandparents. People who are rich enough to go on such a vacation surely have the option to go somewhere better than New England, right? And even within New England there are much nicer places to go than my lake, which charges $8 a head for non-residents and has questionable things floating in the water. I guess even being rich doesn't mean you aren't cheap, though.
I call it "my lake" because it feels like my lake, my community's lake. As a baby, my mom took me to the residential swimming hole on the other side of the lake, where all you have to do is tell them you live there (we didn't). From there, you're free to squish your toes into the lake's muck until you reach the buoys, which bob at waist-level. I'd swim until I turned blue and she had to come drag me in and wrap me in a towel.
Then, when I was eleven or so, I graduated to this side of the lake, with the grove. Summer camp was at the grove every day during school hours, and we'd swim in the lake before coming back and devouring our crustless bologna sandwiches and little bags of chips. I swam with girls I felt confident to be around, because they were chubby like me. We'd swim out to the big slimy rock by the third set of buoys and tease each other over the shows we watched, outfits we wore, and pimply boys we wanted to kiss. We'd cradle each other in our arms and play "the Color Game", dunking each other when we guessed incorrectly. We'd make silly hairdos with our long wet hair and plug our noses and do handstands underwater. I don't remember what my sister was up to. I'm sure if I asked I would be told what a jerk I was.
I had my birthday party at the grove a couple years ago, too - my grove, where I mastered tetherball as a kid. My method of flirtation with the boys I went to camp with was to dominate them at a game of tetherball and walk away, grinning over my shoulder at them.
My husband flashed our pass to get in and then we stripped. The sun felt hot on my chest and shoulders. It felt like my brain was being microwaved. We waded into the water with our Crocs on and dove in early to cool off faster.
When we got out, we sat at one of the blue metal picnic tables to dry off - I sat with my towel on my head to keep cool. Sitting there, I felt the sun burning into my back, neck, and shoulders - probably three of my least favorite body parts on me. When I got top surgery last year, I thought most of my body image issues would go away. And yeah, my chest and stomach no longer really bother me. I don't mind having a big gut, or scars from surgery, at all.
Instead, it's the pinched, boob-like saddles I wear on each side of me, the handles that used to be attached to my breasts but now point East and West instead of curving softly into my sides, like my husband's do. It's the flabby, saggy bags on my back, and especially the large, round hump that stands up between my shoulders at the base of my neck. I carry somewhere around 80% of my weight in my back.
If you're wondering what I look like, I look exactly like below, but wider, with back rolls:
If you looked like this, would you feel confident and happy and sexy? I can't even lay flat on my back.
As a kid, I think the same summer I went to camp, actually - my father took me to see a "holistic chiropractor", who did very little chiropractics and a lot of huffing and puffing, flute music, and telling me to breathe when he told me to. I remember my face sticking to the crinkly paper covering on the headrest, straining to hear a fart or a whisper from one of the other patients in the circle, sometimes dozing off to the ethereal yoga noises being played over the speakers. I remember he had gray hair and a soul patch, and spoke with a lot of seriousness about focusing your "energy" to where his fingers touched you (often right at the very top of the asscrack). Last I heard he quit the Holistic Chiropractor business, left his wife and son, married another woman, and is writing books on how to be the perfect stepdad.
The other day, my husband hung a Google camera up in our dining room so we could observe our guinea pigs when we're away or out-of-state. It hangs just in the corner, where it captures not only the pigs, but our comings and goings as well.
When we got home from the lake, I looked at the events on the camera's log - looking down at my bright red shoulders, my little toothpick legs and wobbling back, my forward head and sunburnt bulbous hump. Like some sort of Quasimodo or ugly henchman in a movie.
I hate it. I've always had it, too. When I was a kid, the girl who made fun of me the most (to my face at least) called me Igor. She'd see me coming and whisper: "Yeeeees, maaasterr."
I wish my parents had done some sort of surgery. Or forced me into a back brace. Or SOMETHING. Walking around just living my life feels so disgusting, like I'm inflicting something terrible and inconvenient upon the world.
Please don't look at me.