After the painful breakup with Lindsay, I was forced to find alternative ways to get slim. I started out by joining a more expensive gym because it stands to reason that the more expensive the gym, the thinner you get by being there. (Or if you can’t afford to eat, you can afford to get thin. Which reminds me, inappropriately, that I sometimes fantasize about getting dropped off in the depths of a third world country where I am forced to starve for 8-10 days because I wont eat mung. Of course when it’s all over, I magically wake up in the Back Bay. Left only with a new body and a deep, spiritual understanding of the horrifidy of the third world.) After joining the new gym, I immediately found a new gym BFF at my old gym, and now I feel like I’m marching towards doomsday. My membership is over in T minus 25 days and Nicole (my gym BFF) has given me new eyes for Equinox. With the help of her whimpering and somewhat self-sabotaging spirit, I am able to get my ass up at SIX IN THE MORNING to work out with George. The gym fairy. (Both because he loves him some Pussycat Dolls, and because he is light and springy like a wood nymph.)

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I don my finest lululemon headband and stretchy pants and spend one hour wishing whole heartedly that I were dead. Unlike yoga, true working out involves a delicate mixture of jiggly fat and mirrors that can cause a person to consider Ace bandaging their body ala a lesbian who can’t afford to have her tits cut off. As I cardio dance my way to anorexia, I am forced to look into the mirror at what is clearly not a severe case of anorexia. Instead, its pre-makeup, cant-afford-matching-gym-outfits, or wake-up-in-enough-time-to-get-the-cowlick-out-of-my-ponytail itis. It’s a painful, painful realization that there are more bad angles than good ones and if I cant stop eating fried scallops and oysters for dinner I am never going to look like a gym fairy.

These Tuesday/Thursday workouts are nearly indescribable. In addition to puffing an inhaler before, during, and after class (are you getting a good visual yet?), I sometimes step on my own shoelaces so that I can buy myself some time to kneel down and pray to Jesus that he doesn’t take me at the mainstudio. To die in that lighting would mean the blush was really, truly off the rose.

Tuesdays are all about weights and cardio. Dance, lift, dance, lift, and just when you think you might pass out, do a few jumping jacks. (I had to alter the jumping jacks to more of a Fonda workout move. I think I have a fat pocket behind my shoulder that keeps me from succeeding with that range of motion. I’ve also had to start dressing in layers. One fateful morning my shirt rolled over my midriff whilst jumping and I nearly passed out from the shock– not to mention I was wearing boxing gloves and couldnt pull it down. Now I’m a two t-shirt girl. No more of that shit.)

On Thursdays, George has crafted a kettle bell boxing routine that makes me hate pilgrims and immigrants. (Something about kettles makes me think of pilgrims, and you know how scrappy immigrants can be.) After thirty minutes of swinging a 15lb bell around, trying heartily not to embed it accidentally in someone’s skull, we put on our boxing gloves.

The gloves are a blog unto themselves. If you can imagine what it would smell like to rub the toe of a sockless, recreational-basketball-playing homeless man on your upper lip, then you can begin to understand what we are dealing with. When you get past the moisture of other peoples’ sweaty palms decaying inside a pleather wrapped piece of floam, you can enjoy an aroma like dead babies. Mid-workout my mind wandered to a very dark place, and I began to believe that when I removed the glove my hand would be nothing more than a shriveled black mass. Plus, because I have a smell compulsion, I treat myself to a deep whiff every few minutes. Just to make sure it still smells like Ghandi’s pits.

When the gloves are on, we commence to swinging at freestanding boxing bags like a bunch of pansies. If La Hoya saw what we’ve done to the sport of boxing, his balls would crawl back in his body cavity. And we listen to Britney and Leona.

This morning, after eating inappropriately last night, I was enduring the most painful hour in a long time. At a certain point I offered myself a break, and clung to the boxing bag for support. Looking at my gym BFF, her face turning ruddy and spirit failing, I thought about how depressing it was that we were doing this to ourselves. I was about to go all Norma Rae on her ass and tell her that we were leaving. Going to the Paramount for eggs. But then I caught a gander of myself in the mirror. Right then, as I was gasping for air, unsure that it was me (because in the past I have spent time being mortified by my own body, only to realize that I’m looking at someone else in the mirror…. clearly I get a little delirious while working out) George danced over and insisted we get our asses in gear.

I took a deep whiff of the cuff of my glove and continued.

There I was standing at the steps in Philadelphia, hands raised over my head, 12 raw eggs sloshing around in my belly, sweat dripping down my grey matching sweatsuit.

“You know what you are? You’re a tomato!”