Please describe your physical, mental, and emotional state as pertains to this clinical trial.
Hi—my name’s Emmett. Not participant number 82941. Because I am a human boy, not a robot. Beep beep boop. Lol j/k. (You’re already regretting letting me do this trial, aren’t you? XD)
Okay, so it’s been a few days since the gene therapy procedure, which I just have to say—what the fuck. I was… “not prepared” might be the understatement of the century. Perhaps “totally blindsided” is closer to the mark? I probably missed the detailed rundown of what was going to happen in that mountain of paperwork you sent me, so I’ll forgive you this time. But when you start charging people $200–300K for the pleasure, maybe you should make sure they know what they’re getting into??? ¯\_(:D)_/¯
Jokes aside, I’m actually not feeling great. In addition to dealing with the—trauma feels like too strong of a word. How about *emotionaland psychological aftereffects*?—of the procedure, I felt pretty weak and nauseous after leaving the hospital. I couldn’t bring myself to eat for a whole 36 hrs. Crazy, right!?! Lol sob.
Yesterday was better—I’m feeling good and eating pretty normally. But now that my body’s past the initial shock of it, my mind’s starting to catch up and it’s freaking out a little bit. Honestly? I’m feeling kind of scared. Obviously I haven’t lost any weight yet—in fact, I’ve GAINED a pound, as your automatic calculator so helpfully pointed out to me (NEGATIVE pounds lost?! Is that REALLY necessary?!?). And even though the nurse said I shouldn’t expect to see any results for a couple of weeks, I can’t help but feel hopeless. I’m sure your product’s great and all, but you have to understand how many different pills, potions, and diets I’ve tried to lose weight. None of them have worked and now I’m doing this trial—probably my most drastic attempt yet—and part of me is just kind of depressed about it.
Like, why do I have to be this way? Why’s it so hard for me to control my weight like everyone else, to just do the things I KNOW I’m supposed to do, like eat less and exercise more? When’s the last time I even went to the gym??
Ugh, I should go to the gym.
Of course I’m going to give the trial more time—at this point I don’t have a choice—but no, my “emotional state as pertains to this clinical trial” isn’t great. As of day four, it feels pretty unlikely that this trial will work out any better than my previous attempts to slim down. In a month, six months, a year, I’m probably going to be even bigger and more hopeless than I am now. Begging you to prove me wrong :’<(
CHAPTER 15
Unable to resist weighing in daily, though the trial protocol recommended only twice a week, Emmett despaired that he still hadn’t lost any weight after the first six days. He remembered reading that some of the participants would be given placebos, and he began to worry he was one of them. It’s not like they would tell him, right? It was just his luck to be admitted to a trial like this and then get stuck in the control group, so much time, energy, and hope wasted on nothing. But what about the procedure? Surely they wouldn’t have put him through all that if they were just going to give him a weekly saline injection?
Either way, he wasn’t losing weight, and desperate measures were called for. After digging his track shorts and zip-up hoodie out of the dresser, he drove the entire 0.7 miles to 24 Hour Fitness, signed in for the first time in eight months, and immediately ran into a guy he’d hooked up with fifty pounds lighter.
Jesus fucking Christ.
It was bad enough that the guy lookeddamn good, bearded and swole and tatted to hell and back. Worse was what (hadn’t) happened last time they were in the same room together. Emmett could barely think about the late-night encounter without blushing.
After years on Grindr, it was twenty-three-year-old Emmett’s first time meeting someone from the app. The thirty-one-year-old man, whose username was simply J, had agreed to host at his apartment around the corner from the gym. From the moment he arrived, Emmett was awkward, nervous. They kept their voices down to avoid waking J’s roommate. He escorted Emmett into his bedroom, put onDonnie Darko, and they sat watching it on the bed.
“Nooo,” J reprimanded, moving Emmett’s hand from his crotch to his thigh ninety seconds into the movie. Emmett apologized, mortified. He didn’t know the proper etiquette, was just doing what he thought J wanted.
Afraid of messing up again, he focused on the movie and let J makethe first move. Things progressed—he allowed Emmett to touch him, unbutton his jeans, roll his dick around in his mouth for a minute or two—but nothing seemed to do it for J. Not even hard, he finally pushed Emmett’s face away and dragged his underwear back up. “I thought I could make this work, but I’m just not—” His eyes flicked over Emmett’s body. “I’m tired.”
Emmett was so naïve he might have believed it, were J not back on Grindr in seconds, his phone pinging with the app’s distinctive notification.Brrrrup! Brrrrup! Brrrrup!
These days Emmett remained on the app only as a lurker: no profile pic, no name, just a green dot showing he was online. It turned out, he got more messages with a blank profile than he did with a face pic. Gay men—the kind he was typically attracted to, anyway—could be ruthless, blocking him as soon as they saw his message. Lizette encouraged him to get on GROWLR and Grommr, sites geared toward bears and “chubby chasers,” but ninety percent of the messages he received were from men thousands of miles away wanting to exchange photos, or locals some thirty or forty years older than him. The whole thing made him uncomfortable; somehow, being fetishized for a body he hated was worse than being rejected.
As he entered the cardio area where J was stepping off a treadmill, Emmett’s weight gain for once seemed to work in his favor. Mopping sweat off his forehead, J walked past him. A flicker of recognition behind his eyes, and then it was gone. Emmett had gotten away with it.
Thank fuck for that.
The cardio section was as busy as ever, a dozen ellipticals and treadmills facing a floor-to-ceiling glass window. Mounted TVs played mute subtitled sports and soap operas. Emmett climbed onto his favorite elliptical, whose position beside the wall meant he could be perceived only from one side. His phone piped high-energy dance pop to his earbuds as he churned his legs against the foot pedals, hands driving the handlebars. He ratcheted up the resistance. The music flowed through him, fueled him, set his pace.
He’d forgotten how good this felt—the unleashing of his pent-up energy, getting out of his head and into his body. The way he moved with and responded to the music was the closest he’d ever get to dancing in public.
A woman stepped onto the machine beside him, blond, tiny waist, peach-emoji perfect.
Emmett withdrew into himself instinctively, like an anemone prodded with a stick. Suddenly he was hyperaware of his breathing, concerned about odor. Could she smell him through his body-hiding hoodie? Did he disgust her?
The woman had done nothing to warrant this reaction, barely even looked his way—but it wasn’t about that. Enough had been done and said over Emmett’s lifetime, both to him and about others like him, that the response was automatic. The cruelty of others tattooed into his psyche by years of tiny, needling pricks. Being here only amplified the voice in his head. The further he pushed himself out of his comfort zone, the more loudly his self-loathing urged him back into the safety of home. Home, where he couldn’t impose his abnormality on others. The one place he could exist totally free from judgment.
When he could take no more, he dismounted the elliptical and took the stairs down to the lower level, a crowded sweatbox of weight machines and grunting glistening men, pushing, curling, bending over each other, spotting one another’s reps.
The chest press was free; he hesitated, then started over. It was one of six or seven machines he’d learned how to use with Chad, his former personal trainer. Straight and toned with tanned hairy legs, Chad had slotted right into this world and couldn’t seem to fathom that Emmett, being a man, could feel any different.
“What do you mean you’re not gonna do burpees?” Chad said a few minutes into their first session. Emmett’s explanation seemed to go over his head—that it had nothing to do with the intensity or physical discomfort of the exercise, but the discomfort of making a spectacle of his body, of his shirt riding up and his crack showing, of drawing attention to his fatness in a place where he already felt like a sideshow freak. Chad had relented, then worked him so hard and with so little regard for his requests to slow down that Emmett had wondered if he was being punished. Less than twenty minutes in, he became lightheaded and nearly passed out. Sitting him down on the mat, Chad called an early end to their session but still counted it against the package of ten that had cost Emmett two weeks’ pay.
At least he’d come away with some basic knowledge about sets, reps, and how to operate the machines.
