Healthy People Don't Know Anything

I laid in bed feeling more bloated than rested, like I’d eaten my dreams for dinner and they hadn’t digested. The room smelled like the unattended grill outside, which someone had forgotten had been lit. My window AC unit hummed a comforting rhythm, like a mother soothing an anxious baby.

Wimbledon was on. Fritz had just self-destructed in the third set against Davidovich Fokina, but I hadn’t been watching—too busy thinking about my son, who passed out midafternoon like a tiny drunk celebrating his 11th birthday. He’d been up since before dawn. It was Christmas morning for a boy who asked for nothing but love and time.

I had just checked on him, watched him breathing from his doorway, and felt something soft and savage in my chest.

Now, the screen cut to break and a beige parade of commercials for men’s vitamins and cereal that looked like something you’d feed livestock if you hated them.

It struck me that these health gurus have no idea how to live the good life. If you’re counting calories and panicking about hair loss, how do you savor anything? How do you choose wine? Tell a joke? Flirt?

How can you possibly make good conversation when you’re busy thinking about your dick not working? Isn’t that the whole point of life? Enjoyment?

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