Wolfe Silver

Photo by Febiyan

I need to take Ozempic. There’s no other way for me to lose these extra 15 kilos I’ve gained over the past 4 years.

It all started innocently enough: my Crohn’s disease is finally in remission, thanks to some Ayurvedic sorcery I don’t believe in. During the worst of it, food would go through me so fast and so violently that my body couldn’t absorb much of the nutrients from it in the process, and the near-constant nausea wasn’t conducive to eating. But now that my body seems to have gone, well, not back to “normal” (what even is normal for my body at this point?), but definitely back to a point where my digestive function could be considered adequate and non-horrifying, my body can once again absorb nutrients, and my brain can once again conceive of eating. And they’ve both been doing a lot of absorbing and a hell of a lot of conceiving.

I love sugar. Sugar is my best friend. Sugar comforts me after a long day of getting yelled at for nonsensical gaslighting-adjacent reasons at work. Sugar makes me feel good when I’m walking around the city with a friend. Sugar gives every meal a worthy grand finale. Sugar is there for me when no one else can be. When my boyfriend is busy or tired or away someplace else, sugar always welcomes me with open arms, ready to surround me in its loving embrace once more, spiking my veins with its orgasmic bliss, ready to fall asleep.

I get so tired so often, actually. I could barely keep my eyes open, could barely walk back home after that ice cream the other day. I had to sit down on a bench in the street for 15 minutes and drink some water. My boyfriend says he doesn’t mind my extra weight, but I know he does — how could he not? He prefers guys with big arms, puffy pecs, and flat stomachs (as do all of us, of course), but I — thanks to his paramour, sugar, — have thin arms, a flat chest, and a stomach that keeps on bulging more and more. Sugar is my mortal enemy. I hate sugar.

I wake up for my daily weigh-in. My weight graph on Apple Health fluctuates in the day-by-day view, as is normal, but in the 6-month view, I can clearly see it go up, up and away, week after week. I worry. I cut sugar out of my life over a month ago now, and initially lost a bit of weight, but I somehow seem to have more than made up for it by now. If the calories won’t come in as sugar, they’ll come in as other carbs, as fat, even as protein: but no matter what I cut out of my diet, eventually I will upregulate again. Oh well, no time to worry about that; gotta get to the office.

The boyfriend is away with his family in another country, and I have no one to say goodbye to but the Monstera plant by the window, and Blåhaj on the couch. I climb down the stairs, step out into the street, and start walking towards the subway station. I walk by some commuters waiting for the bus, and immediately spot the beefiest, most muscular guy of the bunch. If I exercised as much as that guy, I’d have arms like that too, I think to myself. But I bet he never had to cancel his gym membership after getting a joint inflammation so bad he had to have cortisone injected into his wrist three times. He gets on the bus and I get a green light and cross Museum Street. I need to sign up for the gym again already, wrists be damned.

On the subway, another Mr. Arms shows up, sporting a chiseled jaw and a muscular neck. I feel my own neck with my free hand, still holding my e-reader with the other. My chin is well on its way to doubling by next year, I’m certain. I go back to reading about horny hockey players who feel conflicted about fucking in secret, but I can’t help but keep throwing furtive glances at the arm-y guy. It’s early summer, he’s wearing shorts, and I can see his calves over the top of my e-reader, sculpted and thick. I bet he never had to return his Swapfiets because he kept getting knee pains. I need to go back to the G-d damn gym, and get a G-d damned bike again, and start taking steroids so that my muscles actually grow at all this time around.

Stress at the office, stress at lunch, my boss dislikes me, and I hate him, but my Safta says that’s normal, that that’s just how it’s supposed to be. All day, I think horrible thoughts about a man my dad’s age who can barely use a smartphone. My employees hate our shared boss as well, and we talk about him endlessly. He’s so irrational, he’s so emotional and close-minded. He pretends to be calm and rational, but he’s swayed by his impulses nonetheless, and always looks for someone to blame. We all agree. After eight hours of psychological torture I head home again.

I’m upset, I can’t take this, I can’t stop thinking about my awful boss and my awful meetings with him where we go around in circles and get nothing done or decided. I glance at the snack cupboard. I still have some Mini Stroopwaffels that my mom brought with her from the Netherlands when she visited. I could finish those. I have to finish them. I want to finish them. They’re the only thing that can make me feel less shit for a few minutes, before I feel more shit for having eating sugar after a solid three week streak of not touching the damn thing. I need to take Ozempic so this stops happening.

Later that week I’m on my way to the main train station, going on a much-needed vacation. Some guy boards the bus a couple stops after me, carrying a longboard. His arms aren’t thick (though they’re thicker than mine, for sure), but they have bulging veins and defined muscles. He takes a seat next to the door and I do my utmost not to stare, and fail miserably. I keep thinking about his arms. I need those arms. He’s wearing shorts, and I need those legs as well. Toned, just the right thickness. I bet if I longboarded everywhere like he does, I find myself thinking with every shameful peek, I’d have legs like that too. I need to get a bike again, and I need to go back to the gym, and I need to take steroids and Ozempic.

When I get to Hamburg the next morning, my train to Copenhagen gets canceled because of some mechanical failure, so I have to take 3 trains instead. But I don’t feel threatened by a good time, so I take a Regional to Flensburg, change to an InterCity to Fredericia, and finally get on the Lightning Train to Copenhagen, just in time to make my originally-planned arrival time of 4 PM. I’m sitting alone in a four-seater, reading the in-train magazine, Ud & Se, — there’s a great interview with Vicky Knudsen about her childhood, how she became a biologist, and her experiences as a media personality — when some more passengers get on the train at Odense. One of them, a skinny, dark-haired, brown-eyed man, probably over a decade younger than me, sits down across the table from me. I think I catch him glancing my way a few times.

I fluster, trying to hide his face with my magazine, but I can’t stop staring at those hands. You can count the veins between the hairs, and I swear to G-d, on the book of the Torah, the guy keeps looking my way every couple of minutes. My heart rate accelerates each time; I feel like I’m going to faint; but I have to save face. I keep on reading, the Danish words coming in but not staying long enough for any of the information within them to be absorbed. And there he goes! Out of the corner of my eye I can see him looking at my face again. I try to catch his eye back, but I’m too autistic for this, I miss the moment, and my heart catches in my throat. I have a boyfriend who loves me, but still, I want more than anything else to feel desired by a young, skinny, presumably-gay guy I’ll never see again in my life. I bet if I took Ozempic and steroids and replaced 15 kilos’ worth of fat with 15 kilos’ worth of muscle, this guy would definitely be considering how he should ask for my Instagram handle right now.

I finally get to the city. It’s the short-lived Danish summer, and everywhere I look, on public transportation and on the street, I spot Danish men wearing shorts and T-shirts, with arms as big as my legs, and legs as big as my midsection. Danes my age, for whatever reason, seem to always have at least 2 physical activity related hobbies they partake in every day of the week, and it shows. They also seem to always have an abnormally high number of colorful tattoos everywhere. I do my best not to gawk, but I can’t. I need to look like them. I have to. I need to take Ozempic and steroids, and I need 5 new tattoos. Right. Fucking. Now.

I manage to get through the Via Dolorosa of athletic men that is the Copenhagen Metro and make it to my hotel. I check in, take a shower, studiously avoid looking at the mirror, and go out to meet my brother and his partner, who live here in Copenhagen.

We take the S-Train up to the northern suburbs and catch up on the way. I’ve forgotten how much I enjoy talking to both of them, and within 10 minutes, it’s like we all still live together in Rišon Leciyon. We walk from the station through a highway interchange, past stinging nettles, past the strip mall with the Ikea where our mom used to take me and my brother, past houses and real-estate agencies, and make it to our favorite bad Chinese restaurant that we used to go to as kids, and now holds mostly nostalgic value. The fake pagoda arch with the Chinese writing above it has probably remained the exact same for decades. We take a selfie with it, and send it to the family group chat.

Inside, we order drinks and head to the buffet to assemble our own stir-fry dishes and eat under-seasoned sweet-and-sour beef in corn starch gravy. My brother’s partner makes a comment about the restaurant’s “Sushi from Hell” and we all burst out laughing. I’m having Shabbat dinner with family. I’m home again.