A Yo-Yo going down, a mad Squirrel coming up

I lolled in the warm sea, my legs dangling weightless in the sunny green water. I didn´t believe in exercise, conscious exercise to build one´s muscles. As a skinny kid, a kid so skinny total strangers would come up to me on the street and offer to buy me milkshakes, I had long ago learned to put up with my freak´s body. The situation was embarrassing, ridiculous, sometimes unbearable, but I knew it couldn´t be changed. Set very deeply in my mind was the idea that any program of self-betterment would be doomed from the start. To change from weakling to strongman, from C student to A student, from bad boy to good boy! I not only believed it couldn´t be done, but even that it wasn´t worth doing. Success would have me made another person, or an actor hiding the past. And I wouldn´t succeed, I would fail. Failure was dangerous, threatening my only reliable source of strength, my pride. I was proud, and God knows why.I had no reason to be. I´d picked it up and it held me together. Better simply to live in my absurd body and not think about it.


Stop-Time by Frank Conroy