Thanks to the miracle of television, people are now talking about my ass. It's funny, because I've been talking about my ass for years, without a single enthusiastic response. Nora Ephron had her neck; I have my ass. It was once a thing of beauty -- toned and sculpted by 9 years of dance class followed by 13 years of high-impact aerobics. Men aren't supposed to think about their asses, much less talk about them. But I'm a gay man. So there you have it.
Over the last few years, despite an ongoing and rigorous workout routine and moderate diet, my ass decided it wanted a life of its own. Clearly, it was angry with me. When I wasn't working it beyond the point of no return, I was frittering away its potential sitting in front of a computer screen and typing. This is what writers do. If I could have asked my sphincter to do that work for me, I would have. It would have been great exercise. I could have freed my hands from the punishment of a keyboard and concentrated full time on biting my fingernails. Maybe then things wouldn't have headed south.
Here is how it goes (spoiler alert). A man's posterior starts life resembling a pair of cantaloupes, perfectly pert and round, occasionally sporting endearing dimples. With minimal exercise and a diet that excludes Philly cheese steak sandwiches and doughnuts, those glorious masculine orbs will remain cantaloupian at least until a guy hits forty. That's when things begin to flatline. The side profile of the male posterior goes from a neat ellipsoidal protuberance to a cliff face. Trust me, it happens in a nanosecond. Then, after fifty, muscle mass diminishes and the skin starts to slide downhill. The male ass simply starts to disintegrate. After sixty, fugheddaboutit.
The tragedy of my particular situation lies in the fact that the muscles of my gluteus maximus remain remarkably firm. I even have those little side indentations on each cheek from thousands of leg lifts executed in my geezer core training class. But with just one more flap of skin at the bottom of my butt, my rear end could be mistaken for an Austrian shade.
There's a cosmetic surgeon I know in West Hollywood who does butt lifts on men -- gay men, of course. It's a pretty simple procedure that involves cutting away the excess skin and burying the scar in the newly created curve at the bottom of each cheek. With time, the scar fades and, from a distance, it appears as a faint shadow line. Up close -- well, let's not go there. In my more irrational moments I have considered booking a consultation with this surgeon. When sanity returns I realize, even with the best possible result, this would only turn me into a sexagenarian who went out and bought a WeHo butt. There may already be an oversupply of this commodity among Southern California gay men; and if this is what I desire it might be simpler just to rent.
So I am resolved to keep on keeping-on with my exercise routine, and let a positive attitude carry me the rest of the way. And I believe I'm getting results. Seriously. Just the other day I walked by two hot guys exiting the gym and, as I passed, one man turned to the other and observed, sotto voce, "What an ass."
Robert Julian stars in the reality series, Golden Gays, which airs in Canada on Fridays at 10 p.m. ET on Slice ™.