Body High 2: Beyond Nutrition Betrayal
A quest for that feeling of building as one's body declines
On the way to the Hollywood 24-Hour Fitness, I encountered some Vine Street hobos. Or street people. Or bums. Whatever you want to call them, they were unhoused in these minutes before dawn.
Regular readers know that my jam is hitting the streets before sunrise with the joggers, dog walkers, and people who prep this white people’s playground. The hours before sunrise are among the most covertly dope times on the clock, our most unpretentious and under-utilized.
It was not even seven when the hip hop erupted. Strident lyrics in the chorus were something about being broke. These song words became more comprehensible when I glimpsed the first homeless person dance. Cuz you broke! Cuz you broke! His movements were jerky and emphatic and three feet off the sidewalk, into Vine Street.
Then another homeless Angeleno caught my eye, stepping to the same broke bastard bop. One more popped out of a tent among a row of them.
This is over, like, the space of 15 yards that I’m trying to figure out exactly what the fuck is going on. I will never get over this place. The sun has not yet risen and the volume of the rap song is at concert levels. This is what you miss when you aren’t an LA pedestrian, when you leave behind, as my man Spalding Gray described it, 35-mile-per-hour consciousness.
New Englander Spalding Gray had Angelenos’ number, where transportation is concerned.
It’s possible I entered a fugue state while the rap jam throbbed, because I don’t remember passing the Netflix building or even entering the parking garage. All I can tell you is that, on my elevator up to 24-Hour Fitness, I’d been jolted into a realization:
I am betraying my workouts through poor nutrition.
Since that morning earlier this month, my exercise routine has been hanging with its partner in crime, reasonable eating. My cardio and, especially, my weightlifting were progressing well, I think because of their new triad with yoga. But I also have access to an Instant Pot, and all of kinds of vegetable-oriented weaponry.
On Father’s Day however I betrayed myself again. My younger boy came by and I drank beer and wine—alcohol may be my project’s biggest enemy—and ate a perfect grilled cheese sandwich from Lowboy.
My other son rain checked our holiday time to Wednesday, giving us two holidays to celebrate. Again I double-dealt my physical fitness effort, in the name of spoiling myself. When my damn-near vegan son asked where I wanted food from, I steered him toward The Great White Hut on Glendale Boulevard, where they do a thing with fries that goes a little something like this:
The Hut’s Mega Carne Asada Fritas are a bargain at $12.95, maybe twice the size of these servings shown, and a nutrition betrayal on the lever of banging your best friend’s partner behind their back. The older boy and I sat in my Echo Park office as I began to ritualistically devour my Father’s Day-Juneteenth special.
He made a fist with his hand. That’s how much meat or protein we’re supposed to consume each day.
It’s true. We eat too much red meat as a society, and I eat too many carbs for someone who wants to maximize that work put in at sunrise. Did those Hollywood hobos shock me into conscious for nothing?
Here is where I put away the Mega Carne Asada Fries and leaned into my big pot of vegetable soup. Kids and homeless motherfuckers really can set you straight, if you let them. Oh, as a training table conductor I’m still winging it a bit. The taste of my vegetable concoctions isn’t fantastic, but that carne asada still sits in the fridge.
If I were serious about my body project I would throw them away.
We shall see.
Tip Drill
The ongoing line here is that this Substack is my equivalent to busking in a subway or a park. I’m honestly not sure how much longer we’ll be going with that imagery . Busking suggests a day job. In fact, this is becoming the day job—one that I love.
Thanks for reading so deeply. You know who you are, and thanks to Substack technology, I have a pretty good idea, too. Have an awesome weekend.