Another Slimmer Story

Tank Slimmer: Wrinkles Due to Tight Fit and Acrobatic Removal              

This is the real thing:  This is my real life.  My diet went to shit last week.  I don’t know what to say, I want tea.  I want to calm myself and feel myself.    I want to live in a world where we don’t need so much tea and coffee and crack to calm our nerves.  I mean I don’t smoke crack but there may have been a time I was doing the pharmaceutical version of it.

But I’m here, and I’m lucky and kind of happy.  I mean I’m calm cool and collected. No one named nina is jumping around acting like a fool.  I like the British because they say things like:  “You bloody fool!”  Why all the blood, I don’t know, but I find it rather amusing.

I’m at Pete’s Coffee, which has apparently replaced some of the Caribou Coffees around town.  They have some Hawaiian promotion going on and some tables are decorated with paper Hawaiian skirts.  And they have exotic lays everywhere. I hate to be tweeny about it, (a tween is an adolescent).  I hate to be a tween but sometimes I want to just tell people a thing or two.

I want to say what’s on my mind.  I want to say to this café:  This is a rather tacky and cheap looking version of Hawaii.  Nobody and nothing but me looks even remotely Hawaiian in this joint.  Of course I’m sitting here wearing a sports bra under a very see through white top with a long skirt.  I don't just look Hawaiian with my long skirt and sports bra, but with my computer I look like an intellectual belly dancer.  You know belly dancers have real bellies and I'm no exception.    

Of course I did buy a white tank top to wear under this top, however it was another  “slimming” device.  I wore it the other day before burning it.  I will tell you why:  It was obviously a few sizes too small for me (I was being ambitious).  When I put it on, I was huffing and puffing.  My face turned bright red as I pulled the thing over the middle of my stomach.  It was a sort of acrobatic feat.  I had to roll the fabric over the bottom of my tummy. 

I looked amazing.

Again my stomach never looked better. 

However, the problem began when I started driving.  The bottom of the tank top started to roll up on its own.  I had little in the way of power in terms of stopping the bottom half of the top from rolling onto right below my chest.  The only reason it didn’t’ roll all the up to my face was because my boobs stopped it.  So I was driving and simultaneously trying to roll this particular slimmer down.  All the while it is illegal in Troy, Michigan to do anything while driving.  This includes drinking coffee, anything that will make you drive with one hand.  There however is no clause for rolling down slimmers.  I have just created a new illegal act.

I was late for a party and too far away from home to go back and simply take off the slimmer.  I wasn’t at this point even sure if I was going to be able to take it off.  The thing is, it had gathered in a roll very tightly under my breasts and to be quite honest I was kind of unable to make it come off or come back down over my stomach.

I couldn’t exactly take it off anyways because I was wearing a completely sheer shirt and I was gong to an Indian party.  They were likely to first of all think I was being rather slutty if I took it off, being thought of as an Indian slut is not the route you want to go, especially in the judgey Indian community.  I’m sorry to my peeps but come on, we all know it’s true.  If I had waltzed in there with a shirt that you could see my lacy bra with…people would talk and likely take pictures and post them on Facebook.

It’s enough that I bare my soul on Facebook, but I can’t bare my bra too.  I just can't.  So I decided that I would have to somehow roll the slimmer back down over my stomach and try to breathe like a human while at this party.  It was a kid’s party by the way, my friend’s kid.  I don’t even remember whose party it was at this point, no it was my friend’s husband but there were kids there.  Who cares?  The fact that it had to be a PG kind of situation made everything worse.

So I got to the bar/restaurant and sat in the car trying to adjust my tank top slimmer. I got it so it was sort of rolling down and I decided if I could get it over the belly itself, it would roll right into a position right under my belly.  So I managed to fandangle wangle with it and I finally got out of the car.

Walking was another feat all together.  I had to walk and make sure the tank top didn’t roll up and end up like a big roll under my chest.  So I sort of held on to the bottom end of the tank top and finally made it inside.  I 'side hugged' everybody.  This little sweet beautiful girl hugged me.  No, no, no, I was not going to bend, considering my situation.  There would be no bending people.  So I sort of snorted at the kid and didn’t really hug her back.  I’m sure she hates me and thinks I’m cold.  I probably traumatized her little brain with my weird non-hug.

I didn’t want to hug anyone because my “abs of steel” kind of felt like steel, they were hard as a rock.  If someone really tried to hug me they might think I was wearing some kind of armor under my clothes. 

There she was: my old good thin beautiful friend.  She was dressed so lovely in a poke a dot dress I think.  Who knows?  I wasn’t paying attention to anything but the status of my slimmer.  She of course gave me a full on hug, it was a long hug, and I had to let go of the bottom of the tank top.  People it was a situation, that thing could have rolled up as fast as a rubber band snapping.  But there is a god and he was kind to me while I hugged her tight and prayed for the best.

So I tried to mingle, but kept my distance in case anyone else felt the spontaneous urge to hug me.  I was on the diet so I couldn’t even eat anything at the party except a turkey sandwich and some fucking salad. I say fucking salad because fuck salad.

So I ate my salad, with one hand conspicuously on my tank top, pulling it down with great force.  I tried to make convo and smile when it was appropriate.  I probably looked constipated and I felt like my breathing and digestion were being compromised. 

To make a long story longer, I told them I did not, under any circumstances want my picture taken.  You know what people do with pictures these days, they send it like five times around the world before you get a chance to scream and delete the picture.  Don’t ever “tag” my picture; I look like some kind of freak in photos.  The camera flips my face backwards and that doesn’t really suit me.  It makes me look like I have a bird’s nose and freaky cheeks.    Not to mention those extra ten pounds.  Trust me, it’s not the million and a half pounds I need to lose that’s the problem, it’s the extra ten pounds that the camera puts on.  I cannot afford another ten pounds, I just can’t.

So I told them no pictures and they hesitantly agreed.  Phew.   

So I went in the car and was on my way home and I just let that motherfucking tank top ride up to my chest.  I did not care to keep it down, it made my belly protrude out more, and I didn’t care.  If got pulled over by the Troy Police I would proclaim a slimmer emergency.  If they ticketed me for trying to slim while driving I would simply proclaim that it wasn't easy trying to be thin in this country.  Instead of my license and registration, I would take my Weight Watchers card out and claim that I was trying my best!  

The problem was getting home and getting out of the thing.  I should have thought of scissors.  I didn’t.  I tried to get the elastic shit it was made out of over my chest.  Let me just say, it was jutting into the middle of my chest.  Let’s just say I had to stop breathing and go the other way.  I took off a shirt by trying to roll it down over my belly and down to my legs. I almost started crying, I was defiantly praying at some point.

Madness I tell you, madness.  These are things we must go through in order to be slim, if we are not naturally slim.  I remember the moment I ripped that shirt off, oh the freedom of it! 

Now what do I do with it?  I could give it to charity, but that seems cruel and unusual.  I could burn it but that seems drastic.  I could keep it as a memento, reminding me of how I've struggled.    

The Surgeon General needs to put a warning on slimmers, just saying.   

nina

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Slimmer curtesy of Target