Odds and ends

CELEBRITY EQUILIBRIUM
Jude Law is off the market. But Brad Pitt is back on.

I saw Jude Law naked and in person before he was famous. He was in a disturbing little Jean Cocteau play called Indiscretions on Broadway with also-yet-to-be-famous Cynthia Nixon and starring an in-over-her-head Kathleen Turner. Jude (I call him Jude) started Act II in a tub and spent a good part of the opening scene drying off and wandering around the stage looking for his clothes. And I was in the front row. I have never, for the record, seen Brad Pitt in person, naked or otherwise.


THE NEW NOFO
Apparently the sidebar on my new blog template isn't showing up in Inernet Explorer browsers. And I'm not sure what to do about it. But it looks like once again, Microsoft is incompatible with the rest of the world. Imagine that.


NEW FAVORITE MOVIE
I saw the boringly named National Treasure last night with Eric, and we freakin' LOVED IT. A fabulous hybrid of Indiana Jones, Leonardo "Da Vinci" Code and Alastair Cooke, it has everything I love in escapist adventure movies:
• Ancient secrets propelling modern protagonists (and antagonists) from adventure to adventure all over the country
• A quest for long-forgotten treasure that may or may not even exist
• A creepy old ghost ship that—BONUS!—has lain undisturbed under ice for centuries
• Comically implausible plot twists you happily embrace just to keep yourself in on the fun
• Rah-rah American patriotism that makes me tear up with no warning
• Educated scriptwriting peppered with arcane and pretentious historical tidbits
• A wrinkly old (way older-looking than he actually is, at least) leading man who thinks he still reads as virile and sexy paired opposite a nubile young love interest who looks half his age
• A goofy sidekick who just gets cuter and cuter as the movie progresses

If when you go see it, don't be a dork like your friend Jake and make sure you pee first. By the time the movie was over and the butler had killed everyone before being devoured alive by the alien I was markedly uncomfortable—and more than a little worried as I waddled as fast as possible to the bathroom.


LIPO: DAY NINE
The pain is virtually gone (except when I roll over in bed). The swelling has gone down enough that I'm clearly smaller around the middle than when I started (but I'm still puffy and still not so pretty). The bruises are all healed except for the big painful one right on my pubic bone. The giant black porno cock has faded from aubergine through the periwinkle family to its current state, where it looks like I went commando in a new pair of jeans and suffered some minor dye-to-sweaty-crotch transferring. I've more or less gotten used to the girdle, which is good because I may be wearing the damn thing for another week.

And I'm still shocked by the the reactions I've been getting. I thought I was taking the route of admirable honesty by being open about it—instead of giving me undeserved pity for undergoing a mysterious "operation" and undeserved praise for working out so hard when they see the results this summer, people will know up front that 1) I chose to suffer through surgery and recovery and 2) if I look good this summer it will be from a combination of hard work and surgical help. In any case, that honesty is lost on pretty much all the straight guys I work with, who now give me a you're-a-freak look when I talk to them. Yay.

The lipo has also inspired a bunch of blog posts about gay self-image issues—some of them thoughtful and introspective and some of them about the "rage" they feel as gay men when they see guys like me succumb to aesthetic pressure.

I know my inability to write short posts may have clouded my explanation for deciding to go through with lipo, so I'd just like to state it again. And I'll try to be short about it: I had love handles that made me extremely self-conscious and would not respond to more than a decade of eating right, working out regularly and running competitively—including a marathon. I gave it a lot of thought, I did a lot of research, I saved up for five years, and I decided to surgically remove what wasn't going away on its own. While I was going to be having surgery and suffering through recovery anyway, I asked the doctor to also remove the thin layer of fat over my abs while he was in there—though he said it probably wouldn't make a huge difference. But I'd worked hard (waaaaay harder than most, and without the "help" of drugs) and I wanted the body to show for it—for no reason beyond the fact that I simply wanted it, kinda like some people want Hummers or yachts to show off their wealth; it's superfluous and largely symbolic, but I wanted it nonetheless. So I decided to have both procedures done.

I honestly don't see a difference between what I did and someone who gets floppy ears pinned back, a woman who reconstructs her abdomen and breasts after childbirth and breast feeding, HIV patients who have fat injected into their cheeks to mask the effects of wasting, balding men and women with plugs or implants or Propecia prescriptions, people who straighten and whiten perfectly functional teeth—and, to a lesser degree, anyone who's had a piercing, tattoo, body waxing, laser hair removal, tan or even a dye job. We all found something we didn't like about our appearance, and we all had it fixed, with varying degrees of risk but with no degree of necessity.

Anyway, sorry to keep harping on the topic. I'm just genuinely surprised by all of this oddly hostile backlash. But, for the record, I've definitely had my last adventure with plastic surgery.