When you find your match, when you experience that previously unknown sense of completion, it hits you like a ton of bricks. Yet it is tempting to become complacent, to take what you've found for granted, only to witness what seemed to be the perfect fit leave your life with an exit as sudden as the entrance.

Trust me, I know.

I endured such heartbreak a few years ago and swore that I'd never put myself in a position to endure it again. And would you believe it? Here I am, yet again, cursed and alone. And confused. And afraid.

I'm talking, of course, about hair gel.

About four years ago, my salon stopped carrying Alterna Hemp Seed Sheer Pomade - my first true love, as far as hair products go. We were an unbeatable match. It gave me perfectly spiked hair with a curiously non-greasy shine, and in return, I drove Alterna's profit margins through the roof as I was feeding a tube-a-week habit.

Many good things come to an end, and this was no exception. The salon stopped carrying it, and I was left crying in the aisles of CVS, shamelessly rebounding with inferior pomades and gels. I'll admit to it: I was a total whore.

But then I met Studio Crystal Wax by L'Oreal. Not as good as Alterna, but it was certainly cheaper, and, when combined with a vigorous dose of hairspray, it did the job. I've been using that shit exclusively for the past four years. To say I use one 1.7 ounce tub every two weeks is a conservative estimate; that's about 20 pounds of hair gel, for those keeping score.

All of this leads up to the fact that L'Oreal has decided to STOP MAKING CRYSTAL WAX. They replaced the entire Studio line with a bunch of bullshit sprays and gels. I need WAX, people. My Italian mane does not spike itself.

I'm out of Crystal Wax and have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. Maybe I'll have a meaningless and ultimately unsatisfying fling with L.A. Looks. Sigh.

Posted by Toby at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

The only thing better than a power ballad about an umbrella is having someone special to think about while you listen to it.

Posted by Toby at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Dear Lord, was I ever as skinny as the 110-pound Guradesh? Probably, if only in my head!

Zoom ahead five years, and Guradesh is now 186 pounds. OK, so he has the weightlifting and protein shake thing down. Now maybe someone can introduce him to a pair of tweezers.

Posted by Toby at 03:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Upon waking today, I thought to myself, "I feel as if my whole life has been leading up to this one moment, the morning of my 24th birthday!"

Actually, no.

I woke up disoriented and not at all refreshed. What the hell did I do last night? Oh, that's right. Two-dollar drafts at Toledo. A few cigarettes. Running into TJ. Going down to Larry's for some more drinks. Potty humor. The wonderful bartender randomly comping our beers. More drinks with Agathug at our apartment. "The Simple Life" on DVD. Sangria. A "Happy Birthday" text from my boyfriend. Scratch-off tickets from my aunt. Third-degree burns on my leg from spilled matzo ball soup. A pint of Haagen-Dazs. Drunkenly IMing everyone on my buddy list. Crying because my parents sent me a card and a check but not a care package. A completely unnecessary glass of Shiraz.

Just another night for 23-year-old Toby! And really, why should the 24-year-old Toby be any different?

Posted by Toby at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

It's Tuesday, and you know what that means: the "Fit" section in The Washington Post's Express! Lots of good stuff in this week's edition; let's take a look, shall we?

- First, a little blurb about new Diet Coke Plus, fortified with vitamins and minerals - including "NutraSweet and caffeine." (Ha!) Express begins by dismissing Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke as "wholly unnecessary," with which I could not disagree more strongly. (When are they going to come out with Caffeine Free D.B.C.V.C.?) But the review of Plus was favorable enough for me to go directly to CVS and buy four bottles of the stuff. The packaging is very summery and cute, with Tiffany Blue trimming and a rainbow "Plus" logo. Um, yea, I feel really gay drinking it, but then again, that's never stopped me before.

- Second, a reprinted Men's Health article about the importance of building "the muscles you can't see in the mirror," namely one's back and glutes. Hear, hear! I've been all over this one for months, people. My ass is my favorite body part, not because it's perfect, but because I feel so hardcore being the only person at my gym who uses the squat rack. You've seen the before-and-after pictures; my back is enormous, and my ass is getting there, as well. It is very rewarding to put as much effort into building these muscles as most people do their bis, tris and chest. So don't be a pussy; start squatting today.

- Lastly, an item about eco-friendly yoga accessories, for those who "resisted getting into yoga because you thought it was bad for the environment." Ha. Someone at Express has a great sense of humor.

Posted by Toby at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

If forced to choose, I'd rather have one disproportionately large pectoral muscle than two small but equally sized muscles - and so I am not too concerned about my left pec being significantly (in the mind of someone with a crippling body image disorder) larger than my right. Perhaps the nipple ring stimulates growth? If so, then I've a list of body parts in need of immediate piercing!

Anyway, I mention this because I woke up this morning to an intensely sore left pec - but a normal-feeling right. Worried that I inadvertently isolated the left muscle during Sunday's chest workout, I ran to the bathroom and investigated. Nope, nothing out of the ordinary - just the usual stretch marks and cancerous lesions! (Just kidding.) If anything, both pecs looked bigger... although this is most likely a cruel product of my body dysmorphic imagination. (I bet that this afternoon they will look smaller and I will cry the tears of a dysmorphic clown.)

Upon leaving the bathroom, I suddenly remembered why I felt so sore: Some guy at the bar on Friday attached his bear paw to my left tit and squeezed it as Lennie would a rabbit. Sure, my nerve endings are effectively deadened from years of alcohol abuse and reckless overstimulation, but damn, I'd be lying if I said that shit didn't hurt! Is this what it feels like for Agatha when I squeeze her breasts while she's sleeping? I hope not!

P.S. Don't read into this question, but what are the common signs for implant rupture? K, thx, bye!

Posted by Toby at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This isn't the best before-and-after I've seen on Bodybuilding.com, but it's impressive that this guy gained 65 pounds (of muscle, I'm assuming) in 18 months. That's going from 145 pounds to 210 pounds. Hey, I can do that!

So, just how does one go about gaining 65 pounds? Well, nutrition-wise, Josh credits Muscle Milk (which is total garbage, from what I've heard) and "a whole lot of food." OK, I can rally around that. The only supplement I use is Cytogainer (aka Tobygainer), a powdered weight gainer that also contains creatine. Everything else that enters my body is chicken, turkey, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, brown rice, olive oil, and booze. Try it sometime - you'll lose any appreciation you once had for food, but at least you'll be huge!

As far as his workout routine is concerned, it appears Josh overtrains big time. Flat bench, decline bench, incline bench, machine flyes, and dumbbell flyes - five sets of each, all on a Monday? For real? This guy is all bench presses and curls. I would never model my own workout after his. (This is my personal opinion; I'm not a licensed trainer.)

At the end of the day, Josh put on 65 pounds, but, for crying out loud, his waist is 38 inches! Time to hop off the bulking wagon, my friend. He looks good and I half-suspect that he isn't anywhere close to 210 pounds, if his picture is any indication, but a 38-inch waist is not acceptable, in my opinion. I want to look like a V from the waist up, not an hourglass, m'kay?

Posted by Toby at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

I don't really deserve nice things because I tend to destroy them. When I was in middle school, my mother bought me a new pair of green Nike running shoes, but when I didn't properly lock them in my gym locker, someone stole them. In high school I ripped off the back bumper of my car during a parallel parking snafu and totaled it a few weeks later by rear-ending someone at a traffic light.

During my junior year of college, my boyfriend at the time gave me a silver Tiffany bracelet, which I wore everyday, even after I broke up with him - that is to say, until I misplaced it somewhere in Atlantic City over spring break. I've destroyed at least two expensive cell phones by dropping them in toilets. I successively ruined five of my old roommate's garbage cans by throwing up into them - and although the garbage cans were not necessarily nice, they were not my property, and if I can't be trusted to respect someone else's property, how could I be trusted to respect my own?

I broke my old digital camera by spilling beer on it. One afternoon I bought a brass coffee table worth hundreds of dollars and then drunkenly scratched the glass top with a bottle cap later that night. (Hmm, I see a trend here.) Even non-material things I tend to take for granted: relationships, my body, other people's feelings.

And so I wonder: Do I truly deserve something as luxurious as a brand-new, queen-size mattress, with crisp, blindingly white linens and hypoallergenic latex pillows? For years I've slept on a previously used full-size piece of shit, which, at the time of purchase, seemed almost indulgent, compared to the horrid futon that came before it. But in recent months I'd grown to resent this mattress, with its lumpy core and embarrassing moans. Perhaps, I thought, it was time to accept adulthood and purchase a sleep system suitable for a human being.

Which is exactly what I did. But already the mind reels with possibilities; I figure the odds of my destroying the new mattress are 2 to 1. The most obvious and likely method of destruction would be to vomit all over it. This certainly would not be unprecedented. There’s also the chance of my setting it on fire. I no longer smoke cigarettes, but doesn’t that seem like something I’d do? After a long day of doing absolutely nothing, I’d unwind in my new bed, breaking out a stale Parliament Light simply for a change of pace. I’d chase the first drag with a handful of Lunesta, and no more than 15 minutes later would all of Adams Morgan be engulfed in flames.

I am forgetting one critical source of destruction: self-tanner. During the summer months I am the guido equivalent of Pig-Pen, known best for the orange film that trails behind me wherever I go. My last boyfriend would not allow me to sleep in his bed unless I was fully showered, for else his white sheets would suffer questionable brown smears come morning. And I think we all remember the incident in which I thought my arm was bleeding. So, to preserve the integrity of my linens, I will use the new white pillowcases for my decorative pillows and the old, self-tanner-colored (seriously) pillowcases for my latex pillows. That way, I can pass out at night without having to first wash my face.

I will take a picture of my new sleep system when my digital camera comes back from Canon. Yup, I somehow managed to break that, too.

Posted by Toby at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

John at AMERICAblog suspects that the federal government keeps track of anyone who has ever been prescribed antidepressants, which are sometimes used to treat body dysmorphic disorder and other obsessive-compulsive disorders.

He quotes the following paragraph from an ABC News story on the Virginia Tech killer (emphasis added):

Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government's files. This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet sources, or a gap in the federal database, but the sources say theirs is a reasonably complete search.

No record of such medication in the government's files? A federal database? Why would the government keep a record of the medication that I or anyone else is taking? Wouldn't this violate a patient's right to privacy?

Something has to be missing here. I think ABC News used unclear phrasing in its story and AMERICAblog is reacting over nothing. That's just my guess though.

Update 1: Hmm. According to the ACLU, the police can get your medical information without a warrant, and the government can access your medical files through the Patriot Act. Lord.

Update 2: Boing Boing explains why ABC News' use of the phrase "federal database" is somewhat flawed. It's a lot more complicated than a simple "the government keeps track of people on antidepressants" - I don't think there is any real reason for outrage here.

Posted by Toby at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Wall Street Journal today reports that treatment options are limited for men with eating disorders, given that only a "handful" of residential treatment centers have programs that focus exclusively on men and boys.

Of course, those centers with all-male programs sound like a real blast:

Male-only therapy lets them "see other males cry in group therapy and then go to dinner and talk about sports," he [a male patient] says.

The crying part sounds like it'd be right up my alley, but my limited knowledge of competitive sports would only get me so far. Are there any treatment programs specifically for gay men?

The answer is no, because if you're a gay man, you can never be too thin or too muscular!

The article does note that, among men, an eating disorder is often less about weight and more about controlling one's body. I strongly identify with this statement - but weight is still the only quantitative way for me to assess my progress at the gym. In fact I've allowed my weight to define me so completely that I no longer care if what I'm gaining is fat.

OK, I do care, but the odds of my becoming morbidly obese are - dare I say - slim.

Posted by Toby at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Well, this certainly explains a lot: People who are strongly right-handed might be more vulnerable to disturbed body image disorders such as body dysmorphia and muscle dysmorphia!

Researchers speculate that the unusual connection [between strong right-handedness and poor body image] might be explained by brain activity; people who consistently favor their right hand may be less able to access the body image processing centers in the brain's right hemisphere.

Now, have you ever been on a first date where you notice somehow that the guy is a lefty? It sort of shocks you a little bit, right? Like, it makes him seem damaged somehow. Less human. And you wonder, what other things about this person fall outside the range of normalcy? Well, I'll tell you one thing, I've never stuck around to find out! (They call it "right" handed for a reason, people.)

Anyway, I was born and raised a right-hand man, and so be it if the one "normal" thing about me is in fact that which makes me feel so freakish and flawed. Lefties and "mixed-handed" people (Yay, a new deviant subclass!) can take their well-adjusted body images and go struggle with something as banal as using a pair of scissors or operating a band saw.

Posted by Toby at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm a lot like my mother (Are you sure you want to continue reading this?) in the sense that I research the hell out of every major* purchase before I hand over my credit card, taking into equal consideration both cost and quality, as well as less tangible things like aesthetic value and whether or not the neighbor has one. (OK, that doesn't really apply in my case, because my neighbor is a homeless shelter - a nice one though!) I did this with my microwave last week (A Whirlpool for $45!) and, drunkenly, my vacuum on Saturday afternoon. (A $57 Hoover. I considered a wet/dry, for obvious reasons, but decided against.)

And so I did a lot of research before going to Macy's this weekend to pick out my new linens for my new amazing queen-size mattress. (Do we all remember my previous sleeping arrangements?) Thread count is what it's all about, but studies show very few people can actually detect a difference between a 400 thread count sheet and a 600, 800 or whatever thread count sheet. The only difference (more or less) between linens above a 400 thread count is price, and so I'm DELIGHTED to have purchased a set of 500 thread count white linens for such a small price. I ordered one set, because that's all I need and that's how I roll.

And now for the duvet cover. I liked this gold one with inch-wide vertical stripes - extremely gaudy in a cheap, ersatz way. That's so Toby! But there was also this maroon one, and there's always the possibility of finding a cheaper duvet cover online...

"Well, um, just how many people are going to be seeing your bedroom?" my boyfriend asked, with a hint of concern but mostly with impatience, because he'd been educating me about linens ("Wait, what's a duvet again?") for the past 30 minutes.

Before seeing his very good point, I nearly answered with a figure, because I'm not very good at picking up on questions that are designed to answer themselves.

I bought the gold duvet cover. It will go well with my deluded sense of grandeur and self-tanner stains. I'll take pictures when they arrive and when my digital camera stops being a dick.

*Major = anything to be used in the long-term. For example: Mattress, digital camera, linens. Not for example: Alcohol, clothes.

Posted by Toby at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

1. http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/mis/312324992.html

The end.

Posted by Toby at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I love how the simplest things can make a challenging day at work just melt away. Taking the time to walk an extra block and listen to the end of Amy Grant's "Baby Baby." Making crude jokes with fun friends at a nice restaurant. Jamie taking great pictures of me, where my skin looks tan and my arms look big. Your boyfriend surprising you with a rose in a way that somehow is not at all cheesy. Having a 10-minute conversation with your friend about training supplements. Your boyfriend telling you that he wants to have lunch with you on Thursday AND Friday since you'll be out of town this weekend. Catching up with your roommate over a beer before going to bed.

A really great night. Happy birthday, Jamie!!!

Posted by Toby at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

I was really cracked out on Lunesta when I wrote the previous entry last night. I think I fell asleep and then woke up to blog. I don't even remember writing it.

Still, as one commenter put it, this blog is "Vivid Boring" - and it must be true because I've been nominated for "BEST DC Blog You Most Want Run Over by the Redline or a Metrobus."

You can vote here. I'm currently in second place, so go ahead and make my day.

OK, leaving work FINALLY and heading to Jamie's birthday dinner. Yayayayay!

Posted by Toby at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The only thing more depressing than dead flowers is having to clean up after them.

See! I stay away from the gym for two weeks and this is what happens. I get all emo and philosophical and annoying. I think it has something to do with having too much time to think about and obsess about and dwell on things, without the intense weight training and binge eating and full-length mirror staring to occupy my time. But it's ok. Come Monday, I'll be bringing my A-game. I'll gain back all the weight I've lost over the last two weeks and then some, bringing to my goal of 190 pounds. And then it's on to 200...

To be clear, I haven't been to the gym in a while because my routine got all fucked up. I was living out of boxes for a week (since Agatha and I moved), I was without a gym membership for a while, and work has been taking a lot out of me lately. It will all pay off in a week or two, when the project wraps. But for now I am trying to keep the late nights and weekend office visits to a minimum.

I finished my taxes, ordered a food scale from Amazon (that's right, I'm going back on a diet!) and a lovely $45 (!) compact microwave from Whirlpool. I'll be so excited to finally have a microwave to assist in reheating all of that oatmeal and grilled chicken and sweet potatoes. And since it was only $45, I never have to clean it; I'll just throw it out and buy a new one!

Up next: a new queen-sized mattress (any recommendations? I'm thinking memory foam), some side tables, speakers for the kitchen so that I can play my iTunes wirelessly from my desk to the kitchen when I'm cooking, and some new furniture. I will try to take pictures of this place, but I think I broke my camera. I was intoxicated the last time I tried to use it, so it could be just that.

Before I go to bed, I would like to dedicate this day to Amy Grant, whose music (most notably "Baby Baby" and her assorted Christmas albums) was the only thing that got me through this day alive! I also played "Baby Baby" and "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" while making dinner (aka frozen CPK), but that was just for fun.

OK, time for bed, peace out fools.

Posted by Toby at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)