My Brother-in-law’s Body

He’s my age.  And its nice.

I went on vacation with him and his family.  It was a beach vacation and, well, there it was, for all to see – a mostly exfoliated hard torso, crowned by a full head of hair.  I was envious.

The thing is, I’m not exactly sure why I’m much flabbier than he is.  His eating is not much better or less than mine (although he drinks alcohol only rarely and in small quantities).  His lifestyle is no healthier.  He stretches daily for his back and gets 30 minutes of aerobic workout three times a week, but otherwise doesn’t work out.

Two primary reasons thus present themselves.  Genetics – I simply can’t do anything about that.  The other, less generous, thought, is that those two faint scars on his abdomen look like they are from incisions.  Could he have had liposuction or some kind of cosmetic procedure?

Regardless, I’m back from vacation and have renewed  my trips to the gym with increased vigor.  My goal is an hour of exercise (combination of aerobic and weights) five times a week.  I’m watching what I eat, and drink.  My wife has commented that the rogaine like product is visibly doing something that she likes.  I know that I will have to wait a while to see any movement in my weight, and my goal is to stick with the regimen long enough to stick it out.

I saw my brother-in-law’s body.  It’s a new ballgame.

Middle-Aged Sex

The other night my wife and I had amazing sex.  “Treat me like your slut,” she cooed as she turned over and looked at me. “Put it in my ass.” I did, and few minutes later we both exploded.

Maybe the meds are working.

Almost ten years ago my wife went on anti-depressants  Since then, our sexual life has been challenging.  It turns out that there are few discussions, in the medical literature or in popular discourse. on the side-effects of these drugs on female sexuality.  For those of you without intimate experience with such matters, some classes of anti-depressants (the largest ones, in which drugs like Prozac are included), cause in many women decreased sexual interest (libido), decreased sensitivity, and increasing difficulty in achieving orgasm.

This was not a set of side-effects that my wife would take lying down.  Yet her consultations with doctors were almost always unsatisfying.  By and large, they treated this as a minor side-effect; the benefits of the drug far outweighed this slight decrease in quality of life.  Some took it slightly more seriously, and experimented with lower doses, different classes of drugs, and drugs thought to offset some effects (e.g., Buspar).  Sometimes we would see some improvements, but they were usually short-lived.  Mostly the new drugs exacerbated the existing underlying problems that led her to the drugs to begin with.

It is true that the sexual costs of the drugs were minor compared to their benefits.  These medicines have dramatically lifted my wife’s mood, which has also dramatically improved the quality of our life together.   One of the ironies of taking these drugs is that while she has missed sex and the emotional connection that it causes, her decreased libido also blunts the effects of this loss.  There is some emotional fallout for her, but not physiological urgency.  I do not mean to minimize my wife’s own feelings about this, but she would be better equipped to discuss these than I am.

I am the collateral damage.  I don’t mean to suggest that over the past decade we have not had a sex life.  By statistical standards, we seem to have done fine.  We regularly have had sex 2-3 times each week, occasionally supplemented by other sexual activities.  Our sex came in the usual range of flavors: sometimes passionate, romantic, angry, etc.  We role play some of our fantasies; she’s willing to try new things that I suggest.  Mostly, though, it was predictable, dull, and filled some very basic needs.

Part of the problem for me has, of course, been physiological.  Frankly, I’m horny a lot.  Somewhat regular release keeps me somewhat sane, but it has often done little more than take the edge off.

The greater damage has been emotional and psychological.  Again put frankly, not being able to sexually satisfy my wife for extended periods of time and having her exhibit little sexual interest in me has and continues to take a toll.  For better or worse, part of my self-esteem is based in my attractiveness and my sexual prowess.  Feeling unattractive and unable to make my wife cum is, well, a real downer.  Abstractly, I recognize the low relative cost.  But even low relative costs can be a high absolute one.

Recently my wife has experimented with lowering her dosage (the summer, with its lower stress and increased sunlight, helps) and at one doctor’s recommendation (for some information, see here) using an herbal supplement, ginkgo biloba. So far, so good: increased libido, increased sensitivity, increased ability to orgasm.  Once again, I can drive my wife wild, at least far more often than in our recent memory.

A few days of great sex does not repair a decade of emotional damage.  But it’s a good start.

Dressing the Part

Those ads from Mohan’s Custom Tailor never fail to get my attention. They are always the same, and always have been from the time I began noticing them many years ago. Run in the Times, they promise three custom suits (which can be defined as a sports jacket and slacks) and some extras for a bit under $2000.

Every time I see this ad I regret that I do not and never did own a single piece of custom made clothing. I bought my wedding suit off the rack at a discount store, and to this day think that the $200 Barney’s suit was one of the better deals I’ve ever found. But all the magazines that I turn to for fashion advice – GQ, Esquire, Men’s Health – tell me that a man my age should own a custom suit. Am I in some way inadequate because I don’t own one, or can’t justify the cost?

I never really learned how to dress right. I was never wildly inappropriate – my clothes were always clean and free of obvious holes. But my color palette hovered in the gray zone (a result of never having the energy to separate my lights and darks in the laundry). I did not know or think about matching my clothes. Fraying and small, less obvious holes did not bother me. I wore sneakers whenever I could.

Over the years, I have become my wife’s reclamation project. She taught me what colors look good on my and the basics of identifying clashing patterns. She points out to me unacceptable fraying. She encourages me to prefer shoes over sneakers. Whenever I wear an article of clothing that she has bought for me, almost inevitably – and this really is uncanny – someone will compliment me on it.

From a very early age my wife learned something that took me some four decades to realize: looking good invariably comes down to dressing well. Genetics and physical shape play a role, of course, but what people notice first and foremost is how you dress. That is where the battle is to be fought.

Reading the men’s magazines is fun, but their fashion tips to a man like me, struggling to figure it out and with a limited clothing budget, they are worse than useless. They are downright counterproductive. How, in the photo-shoots, can I possibly learn anything from a black and white photo of a man in a $6000 suit? What exactly do these chiseled models whose hair has not yet begun to thin and who do not pay for their own clothes have to do with me?

This is where I would like to offer my own 12 point plan for good dressing. But, of course, I don’t have one. Most of the time, I make an effort to match, and I know what colors work best on me. Like my European friends, I sometimes go through phases of wearing a sports jacket wherever I go.   Often, though, I regress. Lately I wear my jeans with sneakers more than I know I should, but it’s easy, comfortable, and cheap to do so. My periods of regression inevitably come after several months of dressing better, but without any discernible results. Is anyone noticing that I’m wearing shoes and not sneakers? Does anyone really care?

I will not be buying a suit from Mohan’s, or the custom shoes that I want.  In the meantime, I do my best with the conflicted hope that somebody really does notice.

I Will Never Have a Six-Pack

I work out. In an ideal week – which admittedly I have not had for a while – five to six times a week. More typically I’m at the gym 3-4 times each week. I alternate between classes (spinning, body sculpting), running on the treadmill, using the crosstrainer, and lifting weights. I tend to go through phases of gym attendance, usually about 3 months of regular use followed by a lengthy hiatus. I am now at about the 3 month mark of this phase.

My numbers have improved during this phase. I can now make it through the classes without too much trouble (although I ache the next day). On the treadmill I run about 3.25 miles at a 1% incline and a 9 minutes/mile pace. I bench press 80 lbs (plus the bar) and squat 180 lbs (plus the bar). I try for 450 sit-ups (combined, of different kinds) each time. Once upon a time I used to be able to run 5 8-minute-miles outside, but I’m not unhappy with my progress. And, as I have noted before, I walk or bike to and from work (1.5 miles each way) most days.

I also eat right. I eat little junk, lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and little meat. No soda. I might have eggs for breakfast; a bowl of soup for lunch; and then a regular dinner (at which I do often take seconds). If I snack, it is almost always fruit and nuts. I have a few drinks at night, but otherwise avoid nighttime snacks.

Yet my belly does not budge.  I look good at 180, great at 170-175, but I do not go below 190.  I am not really fat, but my belly is discernible.  I never remember trying as hard as I do (which, admittedly, is not extremely hard) to slim down a little with so little to show for it.

There are a gazillion “10 point plans” for getting rid of your belly and thinning down generally.  They all pretty much boil down to platitudes and, frankly, bullshit.  We all know that if you burn more calories than you consume you lose weight.  Period.  No matter how many “ab fat burner super crunches” you do, it won’t change that simple fact.  The more sophisticated of these plans, which combine exercise with diet, are simply impossible for middle-aged family men like me.  They require more time in the gym than even a professor on leave has, or taking over the family-dinner menu to the point where the children revolt, or eating dinner alone or with a “skinless chicken breast” the size of a pack of cards while your family eats  from the large pasta bowl on the table.

But the real question is how much I really want to lose weight.  I assume that if I was willing to give up time to exercise more, or my family dinners, or the pleasure of having a glass of wine with my wife, I really could lose weight.  And I want to – I want to look good!  The cost, though, seems high.  If I’m healthy, why sacrifice some basic pleasures for the sake of vanity?

Maybe, instead, I should finally take the trip to the tailors, let out my pants, and just live with it.

Looking Good

We all know, of course, that we live in a world obsessed by image and appearance. There is no getting away from the media barrage; magazines, TV, movies all reinforce the message that we need to look good. They appear to be effective. The statistics are staggering: In 2005, Americans spent $12.4 billion on cosmetic and plastic surgery, but that is a small part of the more than $160 billion-a-year world beauty business. “Americans spend more each year on beauty than they do on education,” the Economist reported in 2003.

We know that this obsession with beauty is a little bit about health and a lot about money. A lot of people have a lot of money at stake in making sure that we continue to want to look good.

Although it is easy to be cynical about our cultural emphasis on appearances (and looking young), it is not easy to escape it. And I am no exception. Over the past four or five years, I’ve increased my desire to look good.

Why?

This is not a particularly easy question to answer. It is not to attract woman for any practical reason; I’m not looking for an affair. It is not to get ahead at work; it really makes no difference in my line of work. I don’t think it’s out of some sense of my lost youth. It’s also not as if everybody around me, in life and work, are beautiful and I simply want to keep up. They aren’t.

But there you have it. Although I recognize the artificial cultural expectations and I am unable to articulate a good reason, I want to look better.

Let me put a finer point on this. I want to be noticed, just a little.  I want my friends and colleagues to say to me, “You’re looking good!”  I want the women I know to think of me, just a little, when they make love to their husbands. I want the co-eds I teach to think I’m hot and to become the object of their fantasies.

(Important note to parents: I have never, ever, touched a student, graduate or undergraduate, whether of mine or simply at the universities I’ve taught at. Nor would I; it is well beyond the line. This, though, does not mean that I don’t fantasize.)

Now, it seems to me that there are four factors at work in looking good: genetics, physical shape, clothing (and other aspects of putting oneself together), and attitude.  Over the next few posts I want to explore each of these in more depth.

First, genetics.  I did not hit the genetic jackpot.  I don’t think that I am in any way “ugly”: I am decently proportioned, 6′, strong chin, dimples, hazel eyes.  But nor do I conform to any cultural stereotype of handsome.  I am not the “dark and handsome” type (unfortunately, the type my wife prefers).  I have light hair, but don’t have the whole “blond bad boy” thing going on.  My shoulders are not broad, and my butt does not tend toward “tight.”  And my hair, as I previously mentioned, is thinning.

These are things I can’t do anything about.  I’m in the ballpark, and I know that that leaves my “hotness” pretty much up to me.