Every* Muscle in My Body 2021
*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 data from past years (the 2020 and 2019 reports are available here on medium).
Whereas last year I decided to replicate 2019’s introduction as a stylistic choice, this year my brain does not seem to work as well as it once did and I am absolutely leaning on any free words I can get.
Since our last report my relationship with my body has not improved. There’s been no heel turn, no insistence that now is the time to preserve this decaying, godless temple. The apathy I’ve garnered towards my own physique has only grown stronger in my body’s stead. Perhaps it’s even grown into the negative, into a space where I not only avoid physical strength, but resent all suggestions that I possess any. That negativity is limited to the darker days; on an average day it’s pure lack of interest in gaining muscle mass, not a stubborn stand I take on a dumb hill — a stand requiring regular pauses to sit and rest, my feeble legs unable to support me for more than minutes at a time.
Apathy yes, misplaced bitterness sometimes, but as I touched on last year there is still a relationship between who I feel I am and how I wish to be seen that muscles just do not play a part in (on first write of this sentence I included no fewer than two sets of air quotes). There’s a great dissonance between visible, physical strength and my observable body. It doesn’t add up. It makes me suspicious. When I see old photos of myself with muscles I lose trust in who I have been. And trust in myself, strong reader, would be a devastating thing to discover I’ve lost. I also never really had muscles but I did have a mentality aligned with the pursuit of muscles, which the trained eye can spot on my face in old pictures.
Again I do not discourage anyone from getting fit! Make your body what you want it to be. My body is mine and yours is yours. Hurt yourself as you wish: in the name of health or mocking health behind its back. Laissez faire. Live and let lift, I say.
Speaking of health, I must once again remind you that yes, I know it’s important to “be healthy,” and yes I know health is so much more than how jacked you are, and yes I know it is possible to live a healthy life and not present as a self-obsessed gym-rat — in fact, I know many of you are living that life and I think that’s wonderful. My life just happens to require a cap on how muscular I can be…not a cap on how healthy I can be, just how strong I can look. And I will do my best (not really) to avoid harping on internal health as I go on, so as not to worry you. I will take care of myself in the ways I do, which fluctuate in degree of commitment, but that’s neither here nor there; this piece is about my muscles, not my will to live.
And do not think I do not get exercise! I do! I’ve gotten more exercise this year than I did last year. If you recall, last year I admitted to not just having abused my body but having gotten no exercise, while this year I have abused my body and I have played some tennis! It is a fun game, tennis, that I’d like to play more. I played with some frequency in my youth and I do like the specific level of activity it requires. I like running around, if my lungs will allow it. I like hitting a ball.
I also had a few odd one-off fitness tests. A month-ish ago I went to a batting cage, over-exerted, and found my obliques and shoulders sore for a week after. I went for a hike. I made one impassioned sprint at an airport earlier in the year. I did a wall sit at a bar a few months ago. I am incorporating fitness into my everyday life in a way that we can applaud, if we’d like.
In conjunction with effort exuded, my diet this year has been, I think we could say, harrowing? Looking back, actually, it appears as if I’ve spent the last 7 years of my life carbo-loading for an unknown event that may never come.
Anyway, I have written all of this before beginning my annual photo shoot in the nude. This time I’ll be returning to my own bathroom and the generosity that is the lighting therein. Together we’ll see, bit by bit, once again, what my body looks like.
Pre-strip
Here we are. Do I look like a parody of myself from last year? Or do I just look this way? I think I just look this way, which is fine by me. Or at least this is how I look at home in December, in an apartment with poor heating where a hoodie is required to keep me from shaking more than usual. Also important to note before I de-robe: I’ve spent much of the last week in bed due to a covid scare (negative) and a depressive, unemployed malaise, so the muscles may look even weaker than usual, as I’ve used them minimally.
General front
Ah, my body. It does look a bit gaunt, but not too gaunt — just right gaunt. What do these photos tell us? My head does appear disproportionately large, but when you lack bodily curves outside of a bulbous Jew-bob this will sometimes be the case.
The front, engaged (pecs, abs, furrowed brow, pursed lips)
Perhaps I think I should have cleaned the mirror? Or gotten a little closer? I’m not a mirror-selfie pro and I struggle with angles, but I don’t actually think these pictures fail to get the idea across. The idea of muscles is there; the chest, the stomach — they posses the same framework an olympian might have as a tween. There is a whisper of a dream of a glimmer of fitness. I am surprised by the lack of discernible beer-belly, which has been a friend of mine over the years. I did have food poisoning or something like it a few nights ago (I had too much latkes and juice — not a euphemism), which cleared me out a bit.
The left arm
On the first/far-left picture, we can see that little bicep ridge just north of the forearm, suggesting that there is in fact muscle in play, and in the other two pictures we see an unremarkable arm. I’d never stake my left arm against anyone else’s. I have no faith in its strength, coordination, or overall ability. There has been no growth and no loss.
The right arm
My right, dominant arm, is one of my main, meager providers. I do enough random shit to keep it loose and warm, but never specific shit to keep it growing steadily. I mentioned tennis earlier in the piece — during my tennis days my right forearm was in fine form, and when I’d twist my wrist over you’d see the muscles rearranging. Now it is in average form, and when I twist my wrist over it looks only like I am turning my arm.
Back
I’d forgotten what a joy it is taking this picture. Joyous, but not effective, as we can’t tell much about my back and the included muscles from it. I’ve just looked it up and that little bit at the central lower back is called the thoracolumbar fascia — looks like that guy’s doing a-ok. We see the ridge of my spine and it seems like there’s some muscle there. We see my shoulder blades and it’s tough to see if there’s muscle there or if all we see is the blades themselves.
Neck/Shoulders (trapezius/deltoid/neck beard)
These muscles are there? I see them? I have nothing else to say about them, but am suddenly remembering an interesting-if-concerning anecdote from last month, where a woman I was sitting next to at a poker table asked if I could easily grab a certain part of my neck with my finger and thumb and then told me that I definitely have a connective tissue disorder/disease. Yikes! This woman was not a doctor but said I reminded her a great deal of her son, who was just diagnosed with one of those things. She cited something about my Adam’s apple and my long arms and fingers. She said her son and I would get along. She gave me information of several doctors, was very helpful, very matter-of-fact, and very insistent that I get an echocardiogram. I told her I would but have yet to act on this. I hope she’s not right but I’ll see a doctor soon for good measure. Until then I’ve grown my neck beard out a little longer so people don’t offer grave prophecies out of the blue.
The quads and knees
Two once-great personal features, now in a lull. My legs are not strong. They once were but now are not. More so than any other part of the body, I often feel sore in the quads and hamstrings after heavy activity. A lot of squatting or lunging, as will occur naturally, and I’ll begin to quiver. I’ll keep going and I’ll quiver some more. I’ll wake up the next morning, sore and reminiscent of my days of what felt like infinite leg strength. It is also personal canon that an orthopedic doctor once told a teenage me that those muscles around my knee (vastus medialis?) were very well developed. Oh, if he could see me now. If he could watch me quiver. How we would reminisce.
The legs’ backs
Glean what you may from these pictures, I’m not sure what they add.
Calves
The leftward calf is weak, as is the rightward calf. Pictured is a bruise from a night last week I got blackout drunk at a karaoke bar. Don’t know what the bruise is from! Maybe from falling! I’m not proud! The lady from the poker table asked if I bruise easily and said it’s a good sign that I don’t but maybe I do and she’s right! I’m doing well.
Buttoxx
My bottom is still a cute little bottom. It’s not muscular and it’s more flat than not but we still like it. In the second picture I’ve clenched and found something of which I was unaware: when I clench my ass I create a heart shape. How marvelous! It’s like when you find a perfectly heart-shaped leaf on the ground, but it is my ass.
Obliques/lower belly
Those oh so sexy ‘penis pointers’ that swimmers love to have. I can hardly swim and I don’t have the muscles. Looking back on last year’s report, I seem to have lost some mass this year...the mass loss is general but is noticeable around the obliques. The batting cage visit did a number on my sides — I have to imagine that had I not gone and swung so hard I’d have even less to show. But then swinging hard has always been my hamartia.
Stomach and under-pecs
Imagine: I am a giant and I am going to step on you and the last thing you see before being crushed to death is my damaged ceiling. Despite this picture not being of any specific muscles I do feel like it somehow encapsulates the spirit of my body, and additionally feels the slightest bit pornographic.
There they are. My muscles. All of them (a lot of the important ones). This year’s report does feel a tinge sadder than the others, like it was written by a man lost in a reality of his own design, misguidedly ascribing virtue to the tendencies that will one day ruin him. Like a preemptive ‘I told you so’ or a cry for help wrapped in a scarcely read, forced tradition.
But it’s also fun to look at pictures of my body, and when the scarcely read, forced tradition becomes fact, publish the scarcely read, forced tradition.
Be safe, everyone, and have a happy holidays.
