Flexing

At some point I suppose I'll stop apologizing for making these blogs about me and my medical stuff, but with what's going on right now, my choices are a) personal medical stuff, b) the suddenly rapid unraveling of our modern polity by judicial fiat or c) Trump stuff. There's a mile more social utility of course in contemplating the things that affect us all more broadly, but let's consider the medium as well. The blog as it is was not invented to make the world a better place. It's a means of communication with its roots firmly in an aesthetic of self-reflection, so long as the reflection is in an almost literal sense: here is me looking at me. It's exactly as a mirror, shiny and two-dimensional. Also if I lean into anything else, I'm going to somehow get pulled into talking in some way, however tangential, about Matt Taibbi and nobody needs one more character devoted to that.

The latest is that as of this morning I've completed my fifth (and final?!?) prescription, a six-day run of steroids to reduce swelling and promote healing in my stupid, overworked lungs. I was warned there might be some side effects, but I grew up in the 1980s, goddammit, you don't have to tell me about steroid side effects. In the doctor's office I nodded somberly, but secretly I prepared myself for what was inevitable: a burgeoning, nascent rage I could tap in to at any time to activate superhuman strength to destroy my enemies and probably also baseballs. Like every superpower, it would have its drawbacks, like the constant threat of my empowering rage running out of control into some kind of berserker madness that might lead me to come back to my senses panting, lost, covered in blood only partially my own. Also back acne. But the price would be paid if I wanted to be basically Bane from Batman. Not that Dark Knight Rises one who was, as far as I could tell, just a Party City Darth Vader, I mean the Batman and Robin one, all distended veins and unjustified aggression. If he's got back acne, he doesn't let on that it bothers him at all! That's what I want out of my supervillain power fantasy.

I can't adequately describe to you the disappointment and humiliation of walking around for the last five days being my regular amount of strong. Couches, cars, firmly rooted trees, all exactly the same amount of heavy. Worse, I even went to the gym once for the first time in the better part of two months (you know, because of the trouble breathing and the possible communicable diseases) and I was actually weaker than normal! It turns out there's no magic to steroids whatsoever. If you miss out on the gym for two months, it's not a solution to any degree, if you can believe that. Nothing about my public-service-announcement-based education in recreational pharmaceuticals is panning out really. Next thing I'm going to find out marijuana isn't a direct guaranteed gateway to heroin addiction and AIDS. I'm not sure I'm emotionally prepared to take that in.

For now I'm going to have to live with the realization that not only do any kind of steroids for any amount of time not imbue you with Herculean fortitude or endurance, they don't even really get rid of your fucking cough. I recognize of course that this isn't a scientifically meaningful sample and maybe the answer is to double down and commit to a course, unprescribed and over years, that I'll only know is working once I reach Bondsian levels of skull bloat. There's a cost of discovery whenever you decide to sell out for whatever bullshit version of information "truth" actually is, you just have to be willing to pay it, however stupid it makes you appear. But look, I accidentally started talking about Matt Taibbi anyway, shit.