Every* Muscle in My Body 2020
*A lot of the important ones
It’s December, which means it’s time to take stock of my body. For the internet to continue tracking my personal growth it’s important that I provide data that can be empirically judged: on its own, against someone else, against next year’s data, or against last year’s (if you got my 2019 muscle report).
Yes, I’ve decided to keep the intro the same. The parallelism is a stylistic choice, not laziness — and certainly not that I’ve run out of new words or phrases.
My opinion of muscles as a thing is more or less the same. I need them to survive, which most days I want to do, but intricately developed muscles are antithetical to the image I’m trying to create for myself: guy who’s fit enough to survive and can probably run pretty fast asthma permitting, but who places no value in pursuits as vain as having sick muscles, and who is kind of lanky because he’s an intellectual, and intellectuals are either fat or lanky.
Going deeper into that image of what I want — what can be seen and what it says about the parts of me that cannot be seen — the more questions unrelated to the forthcoming semi-nudes I’ll have to answer (i.e. what does leg strength have to do with you being a mercurial, inaccessible quasi-comedian? Why not just go for a run? You might feel better), and I neither want to answer those nor detract from the task at hand, which is analyzing my body as viewable from the eyes of those without access to or my permission to use ingestible or penetrative cameras on me.
I’ve lived in the same world that you have this year, and I haven’t been exempt to the fear of death, the feeling of being trapped, the futility, the listlessness, the malaise, the pervasive anhedonia that only gambling and drunken shithousery can temporarily assuage, and the lack of public resources a la the gym or the lap band surgeon. All things considered, I exercised a total of zero times this year. Notwithstanding a few bouts of healthy dieting, I abused my body with fat and sugar and booze. I worked a mostly-sedentary job: not completely sedentary — with enough movement to keep my joints working — but sedentary enough that my heartbeat was rarely elevated, save for a few stressful phone calls with overseas clients threatening to pull out of lucrative deals. Mind you, I spent half of 2019 walking dogs, and for that half a year you couldn’t find someone more fit of leg and with normal, working heart.
Those of you following my GPS status know that I’ve spent every day this year in sunny Los Angeles, a town whose streets are paved with the discarded bottles of diet pills and driven on by people on their way to GNC to buy more diet pills. Not everyone here is superficial — my roommate, for instance, is quite large (and a pure soul, I should say to soften the blow of that burn) — but the pressure to look fit and tan and strong is escapable only to the select few who have the partnership of high metabolism and confusing, destructive self-image that I do.
I also, I regret to report, have made no love in 2020 (the consequences of this far outreach my musculature and the implications will weigh heavily in my psyche and my sensitive, sensitive genitals for what could potentially be forever). Obviously 9–10 of these months of abstinence were a public health measure and a commitment to not being part of any sweaty, carnal transfer of fluid, which I understand is how this virus thrives. The other 3 months we can attribute not to my failure to memorize Neil Strauss’s “Rules of the Game,” but to the psychosexual games I am sometimes given to. ( I am also a great coward!) (Also not really re: games. I’m just a guy trying to get by.)
This is not just me bragging about not having touched a person in 2020 — it’s important to note that the act of banging has been a primary source of exercise for me in the past. I’m a ferocious lover, and an even more ferocious banger, and no gym in the world can offer me the full-body workout that a bout of concentrated passion can (if there is such a gym, please advise). It has long been the answer to the mystery of ‘why does Dustin look so fit when he fails to stick to a conventional work-out routine’ that my ferocious banging will keep the pounds off, keep the joints loose, keep the muscles engaged, and allow me to eat what I want. This year, no such protection.
And with a year of celibacy, self-pity, indulgence, and refusal to put effort into my health, I now have a new body to show — perhaps a body recognizable to you, and perhaps even recognizable to me if I squint hard enough or remember what I’ve always looked like, but a body weathered and neglected (though still kind of sick). Without further ado, see: title of piece:
Not naked yet
Important to show myself with clothes on, first. I’m here in my brother’s bathroom — come to think of it, I’ve gotten naked in lots of other people’s homes, and I’m not sure how they’d all feel about that. Obviously showers, but for other weirder things, too. Anyway, I haven’t weighed myself in…two years? I’m probably around…175 lbs? I really, really don’t know. I’d have to imagine my hair accounts for a pound or two.
Chest, abdomen, general front view
Jesus, I kind of look the same. Is it fair to those who work hard on their bodies? No, but then it’s not fair to me that the list of foods I find myself allergic to seems to grow by the month, directly impacting my weight, if you know what I mean. You’ll notice that I’ve grown no new chest hair since last year, which I think is normal, and that the chill in the December air has my little nipples at militant attention.
Biceps and tongue
Left bicep: I’d say that this muscle has atrophied but there wasn’t any mass to lose, so it remains on my body mostly for balance.
Right: Y’know, it’s not that bad. I love the feeling of wearing a t-shirt with tight sleeves (I like a ringer t-shirt, I like what they were doing in the 70s) and I’m not at the point where a sleeve will reliably grip my arm like a you-know-what on a you-know-what, but wearing the tightest of my shirts on my strongest of days I can feel the tension. This muscle continues to develop faster than it ought to whenever I do anything laborious, but then will reset when I then spend the next two weeks resting. The third picture kind of makes me look ripped, which we can attribute to lighting and angles.
Tongue: I have a famously tiny tongue, but I think it’s stayed in decent shape this year. Of course, without human crevices to explore you’d think it would have diminished this year, but I’ve been eating lots of seeded foods and my tongue has been consistently busy. I’ve also continued my accent-work, and many of the cultures that I can now expertly imitate rely more on the tongue’s movement than we do in the United States.
Tricep
Again, maybe just a good day with good lighting but I think it looks alright. Do not be fooled: my triceps are not strong and are not to be considered one of my premier muscles.
Back (trapz, deltz, latz, etcz.)
There’s not much to be gleaned from these photos. The muscles do not look developed, although on the right we can see that beautiful ridge that I spoke about this time last year (I did not deliver on my promise, and for that I feel no remorse). We do see the protrusion of the love handles, which is my body’s destination of choice for fatty deposit. While I’m not insecure about the skinny under-part of the rib cage, then the bulging love handles, then the tiny hips and buttocks, I think that if I were the type to be insecure about such things, I’d be very insecure about this in particular.
On the right-most picture we can see what looks like a decently-developed trapezius muscle, which I take no pleasure in. Would love to transfer all that muscle into my brain for a stronger brain, but alas I cannot!
Two more things while we’re looking at these back pics. First, when I said “love handles” I was carried into my daily dissociation where I remember a line from 2013’s “Who Let Phil Spector Have Two Dogs?” — a song in which most words that I know are mentioned. I don’t always remember the exact verbiage and the rap genius page for it won’t load right now, so I’ve gone and scanned through the song (I am profoundly embarrassed listening to this but I also understand why I think so highly of myself — I have the ability to be unbearably clever, which I value) and found the following line:
“get your gyros at Niko Niko’s//Greek food made by actual Greekos//all that food goes to your obliques, those//love handles, sex grips, hang on you might need those” And then I go on to talk about Chester Arthur and some word play with Heath Ledger.
In looking that up I found this link, for which I have no explanation (not a Rick Roll!). Did I know back then that my obliques would be a problem for me? I haven’t been to Niko Niko’s in years, but the point applies to all foods that I enjoy.
The second additional thing from these photos (I swear we’ll move on soon!!!) is the unprecedented head of hair I now have, and the view from behind, which again I rarely see. My neck has surely gotten stronger over the past many months for all the whipping I do to clear my line of vision. It is a marvel, my head of hair, and I wish I knew what to do with it.
Gluteus maximus (ASS)
Those of you who witnessed one of my social media spirals this year know that I went through a phase of posting ass pics (there was some nonsense about having gotten it tattooed, which hasn’t happened yet but will surely happen before I die, and in one pic I even used a price gun to apply a sticker to the ass that said $29.95 and I think that’s a) funny and b) a steal). I think my ass looks fine. I think the not-viewable parts of my ass (the portal to the interior) wouldn’t flatter me, but it’s a cute little ass, if a little underwhelming, and I gladly and firmly slap the stigma of showing ass online. In terms of ass muscle, I’m weaker there than I was this time last year, I’m certain, but my review remains: pretty good.
Quadricpes
On the left I’ve just lowered my pants and covered the business and not flexed, while on the right I’ve lowered slightly more (revealing a grotesque smush of knee skin, still covering the business) and flexed slightly. My quads are serviceable. They remain two of my body’s great anchors.
Calves
Underwhelming and unlikely to be the muscle I use to save anyone’s life (that’d be the brain, the tongue, or the quads). My relationship with short pants is still inharmonious, and my relationship with capri pants is still only on display in my darkest dreams.
Misc.
Truthfully I’m not really sure which muscle I was hoping to target with this picture, but it does give some useful alt angles. We see again the trap I developed against my will, we see a generally strong and sturdy neck, we see some degree of definition and width of one of the pecs, we see a soul patch, and we see the rear view of the hair that I’m growing to love so much. Also this wall decor in the bathroom that I cannot explain.
Forearm/wrist/fingers (?)
Sort of grasping at straws here in showing the potential of my grasp. My hands are still stronger than they appear and softer than anyone would guess, and my wrists remain small-ish (which makes me quite the catch to Ray Charles types aka the soulful blind), and my forearm muscles, whatever the fuck they’re called, are ok…they’ve gotten weaker since last year, about which I feel indifferent.
These muscles of mine, which have grown and faded and occasionally ached over the last 12 months, are what they are and I have no choice but to be at peace with that. Perhaps when the new year comes I’ll be inspired to sculpt my body into something that could better strike fear in an enemy, or perhaps an aunt or uncle who don’t understand me will gift me a gym membership or a pair of perfect pushups™, but I’d be shocked if I reprioritized my shit and chose building muscle over every now and then writing pieces so bizarrely vulnerable that it couldn’t possibly register as actual vulnerability to me, or dreaming of a world in which we’re neither judged for our appearance, nor do we need to keep ourselves healthy to live. Until then, my phone number is the same as it has been, my twitter is nominally the same, and I welcome all feedback.
