Ido push-ups. I am not good at them but I do them anyway. I can only do like 6 in a row before my arms start to buckle like a house held up by balsa wood. I do them anyway. I may not be good at them, but sometimes when my arms are on the verge of disintegration, I can feel my whole body lifting of the ground. I breathe in. I breathe out through pursed lips, making a sound like a balloon deflating.
They do themselves.
I push up with so much force that I can feel my ribs buckling, my heart swelling up with mucus-thick blood. Go, go, go, baby. You’re too fat. You’re too weak. You will never be able to punch the head off the Venus de Milo. You will never be able to open a stubborn jar of red sauce or pickles. You can’t even lift a trailer over your head. Fight, my boy, for the sun is barely risen and you are here — an Olympian — fighting a lion in your living room.
And then I am levitating, looking down at the filthy mat that I’ve never washed (it is white with sweat).
I can feel invisible shackles flip out of my wrists.
They free themselves.
I do a back flip toward the front door, which opens for me. And I am like an astronaut deep in the heart of the universe, being pulled by the gravity well of a dwarf planet. The door closes behind me and I pick up the phone to text my girlfriend. I say, “I’ll be back in just a bit, trying to figure something out.”
It opens and closes itself.
I spread my arms and legs out wide like the Vitruvian Man. I only have two arms and two legs, though. Having more would be ridiculous.
They spread themselves.
I float lazily, spinning splayed like an asterisk of flesh and grease and blood and bone. I do my antigravitational cartwheels at just about the height of a Ford Expedition. The neighbors are staring.
They always stare anyway. When cars pass my house I look down. I don’t want them to know me.
I know myself.
I gain speed. I am the propeller of a biplane, soaring violently over a battlefield. My munitions have all been jettisoned.
Soon I have reached about fifteen miles an hour. If the school zone was active, I would be pulled over. But the police cannot stop me. No one can stop me, not even the gods that have died before me.
They killed themselves.
I turn a sharp corner and pretend I am pressing down hard on the clutch that’s stuck the bottom of my right foot. I only drive automatic, so I only assume that’s how it would work if I was a manual. I drift around the corner, almost decapitating myself on a yield sign. I am a man now.
I will star opposite Vin Diesel in our new Fast and Furious spin-off in which we race a clan of Asians that can also become human propellers. It will take place in a third-world shantytown that is almost completely submerged in water. Two turbines — me and my comrade Vin — will be parting the water under us with our inhuman speed, absolutely mopping the Asian guys.
At the end of the movie, one of them will pull a gun on Vin’s character (Malachi) and I will jump in front of it. He will scream in slow motion as the CGI bullet leaves the chamber. The camera follows it until the last second where it hits me and it shows me from the back. There is no exit wound. My pectorals must have slowed it down enough for it to land and rest right in my aorta.
I will fall to the ground. Malachi (Vin) will jump over my fresh corpse and punch the guy in the face and he will fall out of the large bay window behind him into the sea below. Malachi will cradle me (Drake) in his arms and I will smile. Malachi smiles and cries at the same time. His tears will fill my mouth. I will spit out the tears and use my right hand middle finger knuckle to knock on my chest. A clang rings out. The audience cheers. The necklace he gave me at the beginning of the movie (it was a big novelty dog tag that read “Best Friend of All Time) saved my life.
The lights will dim and we will appear in front of the movie screen to wild cheers. We will answer questions. Someone will ask me what my inspiration for the character was. I will say, “Well, I was doing those air cartwheels once and I drifted around a turn and that’s when I knew this had to be a movie.”
When I finish drifting around the corner, I pick up speed. I am spinning so vigorously now that I the trees around me dance in my wind. Am I mother nature now?
They rustle themselves.
Within seconds, I reach 80 miles an hour. All my skin is being pulled back. I feel so tight and so thin and so attractive. I can tell that my cheek bones are visible. I never knew I could have a face like this. I can only imagine how it looks — probably like the tuxedo of faces.
Is this what it’s like to be fit? Must be nice to feel like this all the time.
I fly forward, going ever-higher. With each foot I ascend, I gain more speed. Eventually I am well above Orlando, flying like a Blue Angel, looking down at all the plebeians working their sandwicheria jobs making eight bucks and thirty-four cents an hour. What a bunch of fucking idiots.
I inhale mucus from my sinuses and cradle it in my throat. I wait three seconds between each inhale until I’ve built up a cannonball of gelatin. I can barely get it out of my mouth it’s so fucking big. When it shoots out, the pressure is tremendous. The snot ball breaks the sound barrier right before I get a direct hit on an extremely fat woman in a shopping scooter. She is smashed paper-thin. That’s what it feels like to be fit, bitch. Get in line.
I am going so fast now that my skin is actually tearing off. I knew I could be fit, but I never thought I’d be able to feel what it’s like to be a banana. The whipping wind sends electric shocks of pain into my exposed veins and muscle. I have no eyelids, so I can barely see. It feels like someone salted my eyeballs and they are shriveling like slugs.
Eventually the muscle starts to go when I reach 800 miles an hour. First my face falls off. My eyeballs are pushed into the back of my skull and sit in my throat. It’s really annoying until my throat goes, then I don’t feel it any more. By 1,200 miles per hour, I am nothing but a skeleton spinning wildly in the air.
It cleans itself.
I have never felt so fit. I am so fucking strong. I am a blade of calcium, the Moses of wind, parting the air before it ever has a chance to touch me. I feel like I’m floating again. I feel like I’m in my house with the AC off: just warm enough and floating and not too happy but happy enough to not want to kill myself.
I remember when I could do push-ups. I could only do about six of them.
They do themselves.