Lipo: An adventure in words and pictures

WEDNESDAY NIGHT
I'm not allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight, and I'm a thirsty bird who lives in the Condo of Dryness. ACK! So I chug glass after glass of water after I wash down my favorite meal (peanut butter and jelly) and some pre-surgery herbal drug that's supposed to prevent swelling and promote healing. I also realize I'll probably have bending-over issues for a while, so I pick up everything off the floor I think I'll need in the next few days. And before I go to bed, I scrub my fatty areas with special anti-bacterial soap. I'm so excited, though—I've been thinking about doing this for YEARS and it's finally happening—that I can barely sleep.

6:00 AM THURSDAY
I wake up PARCHED. And there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I take a pre-emptive poop (thinking the first post-surgery one might not be the bowl-of-kittens kind of fun that poop usually is) and another anti-bacterial shower. Then I put on a doctor-recommended button-up shirt (in a dark color in case I ooze); pack an overnight bag with DVDs, stretchy-waisted pants and a dark towel (so as not to ooze on Matthew's 8-billion-thread-count sheets); and head downstairs to wait for Matthew to pick me up.

7:30 AM
We check in and I wait to be called in for surgery. And Matthew whips out his camera to begin recording every moment of the day.


Feeling fat. But not for long.


See that? Get a good look. Because that stubborn, unwelcome band of goo is now in some sewer or medical incinerator or fly-infested dumpster. Or maybe some thrifty indigenous peoples are using it to make soap. In any case, as you read this the stuff is gone from my life like a bad stalker who fell down an elevator shaft. Not that that's ever happened to me.


Stick-on underpants. As in Stick. On. Underpants. It took me awhile to figure out how they worked. And I hate to complain, but they were NOT flattering. But they made it easy for the doctor to draw all over me—just like they do on TV!


Cotton robes. Non-skid socks. Heated blankets. It's just like Spa Day. Except they cut you.


Waking up from anesthesia is NOT pretty. And I don't even remember going under. When I had my wisdom teeth out in high school, the anesthesiologist told me to count back from 100. By the time I got to 96 the surgery was over and I didn't remember a thing. On Lipo Day, I remember climbing on the operating table and being told to rest my arms on the little wings like they have on lethal injection tables—and the next thing I knew I was groggy and begirdled in the recovery bed. And my stick-on underpants were missing.


As soon as the anesthesia wore off, I remembered how freakin' THIRSTY I was—and I chugged water like it was, well, water. And when I got home, I peed like 10 times in the first few hours. The nurse said to expect that because my IV and all the fat-melting liquid they inject in the lipo spots would eventually turn into pee. How cool is THAT?


I don't think I've ever ridden in a wheelchair before. I don't think I ever want to again.


Ho! Ho! Ho! My girdle thing is packed with strategically placed foam to keep the loose skin pressed into the spaces where the fat used to be so it grows onto the muscle underneath. Which, ironically, makes me look even fatter than before. Tack on the surgery hair and the bloody IV band-aid—not to mention that matched set of shoulder zits—and I'm just a hunka burnin' man-meat.


Coming soon to a computer screen near you: A picture of Jake showing off his SHREDDED abs. I hope. (And yes, that's my underwear, looking like little more than an ill-fitting black diaper with a label-whore waistband. Sexy!)

I spent yesterday recuperating in Matthew's fabulous Gold Cost condo, eating like a king, pissing like a racehorse and bravely forgoing my as-needed pain meds. Until bedtime. Trying to lower myself from vertical to horizontal was more than my macho I-don't-need-no-stinkin'-drugs posturing could bear, and I quickly loaded up on the suckers. But I couldn't sleep very well—probably because I'm used to sleeping on my side, which was out of the question, and maybe because the anesthesia messed with my sleep patterns. And when morning came and Matthew had to physically lift me out of bed (which he admitted was not the Jake-and-Matthew-in-bed scenario he'd been picturing) I quickly chowed down on even more pain meds. Which promptly made me loopy and weird. And I hate being loopy and weird. Which is exactly why I don't drink or take party drugs.

Anyway, in between loopy weirdness, frequent trips to the bathroom and Matthew's fabulous cooking, we did 7-step chemical face peels (I had lipo and a chemical face peel in the same day—I'm that gay) and watched two DVDs:
• Latter Days is much better than I'd expected, given that wide-release gay love stories tend to be awkwardly written, poorly acted and scrubbed clean of any homo verisimilitude that could frighten the wimmen and children. I have to say, though, that Jacqueline Bisset is looking like she's had too much work done on her face (people who get plastic surgery are so shallow) and her touching emotional outburst outside the hospital is anything but. And the two leads? Um ... WOOF.
• Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There was a gift to me by my boss. It's quite fascaniting—if you're a shameless show-tune queen like I am—though it is a little more talking-heady than I'd hoped. (Bring on the dance numbers!) I love hearing actors talk in their own words, though, and while I find that movie actors tend to be a rather dull bunch, stage actors are usually articulate, well-read, passionate and fascinating to listen to. And this movie gave us almost two hours of that fabulous pleasure last night.

So that's it. A year that started on 1/23 with LASIK ended on 12/30 with lipo. (And how cosmic is that little number coincidence? Spooky!) Now it's a freakin' GORGEOUS day in Chicago—though I don't think I'd get very far if I went outside to enjoy it—and I'm facing New Year's Eve wih a stack of DVDs and a TiVo hard drive loaded with unseen South Park episodes. And the ever-present risk that I could just fall asleep and miss all the fun.

See you next year! (GOD—that joke never stops being funny!)