The man who we thought would never die has died. Jack Lalanne is  finally gone, but he lasted 96 years. I always imagined  he would meet his end in poetic justice, either having a barbell crush his head or being turned into juice by one of his giant turbo-engine juicers. Instead, he died  peacefully of pneumonia in his Los Angeles home this week. He is now in Public Broadcasting Heaven  joining Julia Child who also lasted into her nineties.  Jack was to exercise what Julia was to food.  Whatever weight Julia helped us gain, Jack helped us loose. They were the first of their kind, coming into the homes of millions Americans when  television was still black and  white, to show us how to cook and exercise for the first time, back when working -out  was called calisthenics and Ripped Bod  was called a Physique.
  One of the millions of homes Jack  was invited into every morning was mine. I'm not sure in how many other of those millions of  homes was there a mother who was exercising naked in front of the T.V. as her eight year-old son counted reps for her. I would watch from her huge antique four-post bed as my mother Priscilla huffed and puffed.
      "Down to floor for bicycle kicks!" Jack ordered.
    She dropped to the carpet with hands behind her head, legs up and knees bent.
      "And kick, and kick, and kick!" he  ordered on.
      I counted  "... 29, 30, 31..."  as she peddled into the air.
      " Up for Jumping Jacks!" he switched commands.
      She shot up from the floor and started jumping up and down.  She did her best to follow the cues but her arms and legs and boobs and hair all moved at different speeds every time she tried them.  She just wasn't good at following directions, for either exercising or motherhood. She did perfect the bicycle kicks though, able to do them fully clothed in the front seat of our Cadillac turned towards my father as he was driving the whole family on an icy road one of many stormy winters.
      Her morning naked calisthenics were the last time I saw a vagina, or The Bermuda Triangle as I had named it. If one single thing  turned me gay AND made me stutter, that could have definitely done it. Unfortunately I stuttered already so I can't pin that on her, but as far as the gay thing goes, her naked bicycle kicks certainly didn't help me turn any straighter. 
      Ten years ago, when I described this to my ex-boyfriend Brian, he  pointed out that I did my ab work-out naked in front of him. I argued it was not the same, that my naked ab routine wasn't half as traumatizing as hers, but he still called me Priscilla every time I did them.  I realized  I had been doing naked abs in front my second ex-boyfriend Pepe before Brian and my first ex-boyfriend Scott before Pepe.
       It's scary to think that I have naked exercising in common with my mother. Not to the mention the fact that out of three children, I'm the one who looks most like her. Put a wig on me at Halloween and the similarity is frightening, especially to me. How much do you have to look like a person to start acting like them too? Is there a science behind it, and a pill to prevent it?
      My mother still exercises but now its in a gym, and I assume she's at least wearing a leotard. All that exercising back in her twenties in front of the TV has kept her in remarkable shape, along with plastic surgery and the boob- job she had in her 50's. She's 71 and is showing no sign of slowing down. I guess I have Jack Lalanne to thank for this. But let me tell you, if she's going to live to 96 too, just please drop a barbell on my head right now.  

I have to explain the name 'Stutterpuss' in case people who don't know me actually read this blog. Stuttering is what I do, and puss, or face,  is where it comes out of.  This  is the first time in my life I have to prove I stutter without it being very apparent to anyone who is hearing me. But because you are readers instead of  listeners you will never have the pleasure of hearing my stutter, unless for some reason I am forced to do a 'books on tape' version of my blogs, which would be a stuttering nightmare. Stutterers  have a lot of nightmares and unfortunately they all occur when we're awake. It's what any interaction can instantly turn into. All it takes is that first stutter and the avalanche begins. Something as simple as calling the operator for a phone number, giving a cab driver an address, giving  directions to a lost person, being lost and having to ask for directions, a stranger asking me for the time on my watch, ordering a sandwich over a counter in a deli, trying to ask a conductor something before the train doors close, being stopped to sign a petition, having to identify myself over an intercom, asking a stewardess for  a pillow,  telling a person he is in your seat, choosing paper or plastic at the checkout isle, describing my coat to the coat-check girl who can't find it, leaving a message on a voicemail, having to make a toast, complaining to a waiter, or whatever you, The Fluent, think is easy to do can be monumental for a stutterer. In the course of a day I go from one verbally hazardous situation to the next,  a stuttering minefield that could blow at any time. 

         Yesterday, during lunch, a car filled with passengers stopped in the street and rolled down the window to ask me for complicated directions. "I'm from out of town too," I apologized and shrugged my shoulders, just to avoid the guaranteed stutter on the deadly 'D' of Duboce Park and the treacherous 'S' of Safeway Supermarket.  The fact that I was wearing my hospital scrubs and obviously work at the huge hospital behind me only occurred to me after they pulled away. There have been times when I did offer my help that cars have pulled away from me before I could get out  the word I was stuck on, and other times when strangers on foot have moved away quickly after making the mistake of coming up to me for a question. I can promise you that an unintended encounter with a stutterer is amongst the most socially awkward and uncomfortable moments you will ever experience, if you haven't experienced one already, depending on how long the stutter lasts. I've seen some stutters so long at Stuttering Conventions that The Guinness Book of Records should be notified. There's kind of a Kinsey Scale of Stuttering, but instead of being a zero and totally straight or a 10 and incredibly gay, you are perfectly fluent or  it takes you five minutes to say your name. I rate myself a 3-3.5. Being part of a continuum,  I might sound less fluent than a 1.-1.5, but compared to an 8.5, I sound more eloquent of an orator than Barack Obama. 

       My longest stutter happened six years ago in  front of my ex-boyfriend Grant. I was able to clock it on my watch at one minute 20 seconds give or take a few. I was  trying to say the words "medically necessary" over the phone to an insurance agent. Try doing anything that's not enjoyable for one minute and 20 seconds and you'll see just how long it actually is.  All Grant could do was helplessly watch as I did a convulsive rain-dance around the bedroom with my head bobbing up and down like a sewing machine on high speed trying to force the words out. It became a game between us for him to time business calls I made to strangers. We would see if I could beat my personal best and stutter even longer, but 80 seconds still remains the record four years after Grant and I broke up. 

     Now Grant and our friend Ron make me order the food whenever we're hanging out and calling for delivery. The worst is when its Chinese because  the woman answering at Hunan Palace has a  hard time understanding even when someone who doesn't have a speech problem orders. As I order the appetizers and soups and entrees and give the address and my charge card number, Grant sits in front of me and Ron sits on the side, both holding their IPhones switched to video to capture my stuttering at different angles in hopes of putting it on YouTube and, if the stuttering is bad enough, it going viral.  But so far the plan has backfired and I haven't stuttered enough for it to be worthwhile. That's what makes stuttering a particularly spiteful handicap. It will always do what it wants to do, appearing when you don't want it to and disappearing when you try to make it appear.  I can't coax it out on cue no matter how hard I try. It comes when it comes. We'll just have to keep on ordering Chinese delivery, and if you ever see someone taking much too long to say Mongolian Beef and Won Ton War Soup on YouTube, you'll know it's me.    

STUTTERPUSS

Appproaching 50,
 fully dressed with all my hair.

    Me,  I’m a Mediterranean with a shaved head. Alright fine, a bald Jew. But that doesn’t mean I’m not hot. I’m the hottest a Jew can be without being put in an oven.
   Exactly what do you think is more offensive about that last sentence, the oven or my vanity?  You might think it’s the oven, but trust me, my vanity will offend you again and again.

        Part of my hotness is my hairiness.  God taketh and God giveth.  Gone from my head but bountiful on my body. God spareth me back hair though, which my straight brother Mitchell doesn’t understand or think is fair. Mitchell is two years older  than me, forty pounds heavier, as bald, but is as hairy in back as in front. And his body hair is patchy, like a frequently pissed- on lawn. “ How the hell do you only have a little bit of hair on your back? Is it in the gay gene?”  I told him I simply refused to let my back grow it. “Willpower. The same way that some people fight off cancer with their mind, that’s how I fought off back hair.” That’s what I would like to think but I was just follicularly luckier than him. My body hair always has gotten me attention ever since it came into bloom in my late teens. Long ago I learned people either like it or they don’t. There is no middle ground when you are as hairy as me. Some people are even disgusted by it. Repulsed, revolted. But let me tell you, when people do like it, they really like it. They can’t stop stroking it when I have my shirt off. I have become a walking petting zoo. People think it just grows wild and does what it wants. If my body hair isn’t trimmed occasionally I would start to look like I am wearing a Persian rug. Trimming it is tricky because it has to look like it hasn’t been trimmed, or else it winds up looking like short manicured gay porno star body hair. My entire body takes around an hour and a fully charged buzzer for it to be professionally coiffed. Luckily I have found a man named Anthony, the Leonardo DaVinci of manscaping, who is up for the task. I also have to do is make sure I am tan.  My hairy forearms look like long dark opera gloves on my skin if  I stay out of the sun for too long. Luckily I come from a long line of tanners so sunning myself is something that comes naturally.  My mother tanned, and her mother before her, back in the days of baby oil and aluminum reflectors.  Since high school I have had a tan. But I swear I  know when enough is enough. Thank God  I don’t suffer from the dreaded disease Tanorexia. Not knowing when you’re tan enough is a terrible thing.  And now there’s Smilirexia, not knowing when your teeth are  white enough. Having both at the same time is especially dangerous because they play off each other. That’s when Jewish housewives start looking like their black housekeepers.

      As part of my master plan to be just tan enough, I have given up  all outdoor sunbathing and allow myself only one 18 minute high pressure tanning booth visit every four weeks, or maybe three and a half weeks.  Tanning in public is just too embarrassing now.  It should be done clandestinely, out of  people’s view, late at night or very early in the morning before everyone else is awake. The worst part  is leaving the salon when you’re done, especially when its on a busy street. The only other time I experience the same shame is coming out of sex shops or drug paraphernalia stores. I feel safe when I’m inside amongst my fellow tanners, the only ones who I can trust to understand and not judge me.

    The reason why I bring all this up is that I just got back from the dermatologist. It seems that God not only finds it necessary to make me bald, but to also give me pre-cancerous spots on the top of that bald head. They are called Actinic Keratosis, or AK’s for short, and grow into cancer 2% of the time.

  “The chances are still enough to make me concerned, and hopefully to make you concerned. Having no hair makes you much more susceptible to cancer there.”

  “ Oh that’s fair, “ I said, annoyed at the injustice.

He asked me how much sun I normally get. There are certain things people will over-estimate, such as how strict they are about recycling and how much they still have sex with their significant others, and there are things they will under-estimate, such as how much alcohol and drugs they have a month and how often they cheat on their significant others. I tried to play down my UV exposure,  only admitting to tanning in a booth once every 2 months.

     “Nothing is worse than doing that”.  

“ How about using my cell phone while I’m in the booth. Then I get brain cancer too. That’s worse,” I said.

Dermatologists have no sense of humor when it comes to tanning.  He was proudly pale and didn’t understand why I would even think of tanning with the writing so clearly on the wall, or in this case my bald head.

 He took out small sample tubes of moisturizer with an SPF of 30. “You’ll be wanting to put this on your scalp and face in the mornings before you go out.”

   “ But I work six days a week inside the hospital. I’m hardly ever outside during the day.”

   “ You can get damage from the sun from just your walk to work,” he said ominously, the same way a shark expert says you can get attacked by a Great White in three feet of water.

   I started to panic, envisioning a life wearing long black opera gloves. I started deal-making. As a middle child, that’s how I have gotten through life. You make me happy, I’ll make you happy.

  “ I’ll put it on if I eat lunch outside but not in the morning. How’s that? And I’ll only do 14 minutes in the booth instead of 18.”

  “Anytime in a tanning booth is too much time”.

  “How about I wear a hat in the summer and never tan outside again?“

  “ Listen.  It’s all up to you, Gary. This is the only kind of cancer that we actually choose to get or not get. Let me at least take care of these for you right now before they grow into anything worse“ He left the room for a minute and came back with his liquid nitrogen canister, which looks like a blowtorch without the torch. “ This might sting a little, and the spots will get red then scab, but the marks should be totally gone in a few weeks.”

   “So wait a minute, you’re telling me that all I have to do is come here and have you burn them off and they wouldn’t turn cancerous?”

    “In theory, but…”

     I interrupted him before he could finish. “ That’s a theory I like. Let’s go with it, “   I smiled, leaning my head towards his blowtorch. “ Freeze away.”  

    Suddenly the world was bright and sunny again knowing that I could continue tanning as long as I keep coming back and having the AK‘s zapped off.  This will of course someday catch up with me, but at least for now I wouldn’t be going to the opera.