Correct or not, I credit my regular readers with enoughintelligence to know by now that I'm not right in the head, butonce again, folks, it appears to be time for another therapy-by-writingsession. I apologize for using you, but frankly this is aboutme, so just keep reading. All my life I've battled with my weight,and when I look back I can see a direct correlation between thetimes during which I was successful and productive and thekind of physical shape I was in at the time. Any time I won atournament, I was running and not drinking too much, at leastby Irish standards. The same applied when I had a big project, likea book, or my children's Englishhomework. But as in Newton'slaw, each success was balancedby an equal and opposite failure.For me, "success" was always followedby a period of "excess." Iwould get lazy, eat and drink toomuch, quit exercising, and then,only when financial circumstancesforced me, I'd get out my runningshoes, lose the blubber, andwin enough money to start thewhole cycle again.
The only fun part about losingweight is putting it backon again. Just like anyone whogets addicted to anything, I wasmaking the critical mistake ofconfusing fun with happiness.Now that I'm four years sober Iknow the difference, but I'm anaddict, so I also know it will always be something. For most ofthe last four years it has been about a half-gallon of ice creama day, along with an insane cycling habit.
Shortly after becoming an American citizen, I noticed thatonce again, at 5' 10" and 240 lbs., I was a fat sack of crap, andwas struck perhaps by my first uniquely American thought."Wait a minute, Tubby," my lard-assed subconscious said tomy aching back via my swollen front as I was trying to pry mybulbous love-handles out of She Who Must Be Obeyed's car."This is America, and you're an American. Here, you're guaranteedlife, liberty, and the pursuit of skinniness. Dude! Whynot buy yourself thin?"
The following week, I woke up in the hospital with six tinywounds in my abdomen stapled shut, 75 percent lessstomach, and a screaming dose of the squididdliesthat would last a week. Through overconfidence anda series of mental mistakes, this cost me exactly sevenpairs of underpants, five of them in one day. No matter,I was on my way back to 170 lbs., and for the first time in mylife, I knew I could stay there. The gastric-sleeve procedure isnormally a one-night in-and-out experience, but normal is notwhat I am. Most of you will know that in order to escape a hospitalafter surgery, one has to be able to both pass gas (never been aproblem) and urine. But with a prostate gland the size of a lifepreserver, details were sketchy on the piddling part.
So I had to be catheterized, and sweet Mother of Lee Trevinoon a velvet-quilted skateboard, what an ordeal! A regular softcatheter wouldn't go through the tiny caliber with which I'vebeen squirting Morse code intothe toilet for years, so a harder,flexible-tipped wee jobby calleda Foley catheter had to be hammeredinto my southern plumbing,and suddenly Little Davedeveloped an astonishing abilityto duck and dive—of his ownvolition! He was like the cartoonworm avoiding Elmer Fudd's fishhook! If I had known that he wascapable of such rapid independentmovement, I might have had himtry out for conductor of the NewYork Philharmonic years ago. Ialways wanted to make the Artssection of the New York Times...
Anyway, in a cruel irony, thenurse in charge of this procedurewas named "Joy," and bless herheart, she almost had to have merestrained in the bed like a mental patient. I screamed abuse ather, yodeled The Sound of Music, and threatened to disembowel theSurgeon General with a broken bottle before Joy got it done—butthen it got worse! Before I was capable of wringing out the pitifuldribblage required for my release, this torture had to be repeatedfour times, rendering Joy incapable of finding her happy place,and me a hollow-eyed basket case, trapped in the corner of theroom like a rabid wolverine.
But that was then. Now, if I say it myself, at 52 years old Iam 170 lbs., with a new hairstyle I like to call "Insane Civil WarGeneral," an utterly magnificent panty-waisted specimen of windsweptand interesting manliness, rivaled only by the great BarryMelrose in his prime. I can eat whatever I want, I am taking halfthe amount of insanity medicine I was previously on,and in my greatest triumph, one of those nine CamiloVillegases now owes me lunch. Of course if I eat morethan six bites of it I'm liable to woof it all over him,but whatever, that works for me too.
It’s time for the LPGA Tour to go globalFCD suddenly solid after second straight win
