(Un)Healthy Obsession

I bought three new pairs of waist-size 30 jeans that day: the dark Levi’s that had made me cry, a lighter pair my wife picked out from Buckle, and an expensive pair of stylish Hudsons from Nordstrom’s.  I had never owned a pair of Hudsons before, although I could remember wanting them since July of ’09 when my dad wore a pair to an Independence Day family gathering.  “I’m a slave to fashion,” he repeated whenever they were complimented.  It was an old line, however true; my dad obsessed over style until the day he died—on July 5, 2009.  Sudden heart attack.  Unexpected.  Devastating.

That party was the last time I saw him alive, and those jeans were the last things I remember him wearing.  My new Hudsons reminded me of him, and that was reason enough for me to ignore the price tag.  But not reason enough for Crystal.

“Those are way too expensive,” she criticized as I swiped my credit card.

“Says Miss BKE,” I shot back playfully, making her eyelids droop.  The employee gave me an odd look.  “Besides, these things are so durable.  They’ll last for years.  If you break the price down to a daily basis, I’m only paying a couple of cents a day!”

The woman ringing me up at Nordstrom’s raised an eyebrow, but eventually laughed.  “I’ve never thought about it that way before,” she said in a raspy voice that made me think of a middle-aged Rainbow Dash.  “I’ll have to use that one when I go shopping with my husband.”

“It’s something my dad taught me,” I recalled with a nostalgic smile.  Crystal placed a loving hand on my shoulder.

“He’s a smart man,” the woman chatted obliviously.

I didn’t mind.  “Yes, he is."  She had me sign a tiny receipt and then handed me the bag with my brand new jeans.

My wife and I found an empty corner of the store and I sneakily changed into the soft denim.  We got a good laugh from our silliness, keeping watch for any approaching customers as I clumsily switched pairs, hopping around on one foot while trying to stay inconspicuous.  We left the baggy sweatpants on the ground rebelliously and hurried out of the store, giggling at ourselves like a couple of teenagers.  Being in our late twenties, the uncharacteristic behavior was especially tickling.

We walked out of the mall holding hands.  I don’t remember at what point our fingers found each other and lovingly interlocked, but sometime between the Nordstrom entrance and mall exit they did.  Crystal and I hadn’t held hands for a long time, but not because of spite.  Since our marriage in 2010, largely thanks to our Applejack-ish personalities, we very rarely fought and never argued seriously.  Good-natured debate popped into almost all of our conversations, but we both recognized it as an agent of our love: a manifestation of our mutual comfort, never a malicious attempt to debase.  Our friends often expressed how jealous they were of our relationship, and I considered myself the luckiest man in the world.

But, even in two short years, our initial giddy love began to fade into a more casual companionship.  I never thought there was anything wrong with that, although I did miss cuddling with her and giving/receiving random kisses on the cheek.  That stuff sort of disappeared as I gained more and more weight through ’10 and ’11.

And then, in the last three months, I lost seventy pounds.  It seemed to me like every bit of weight I lost was a bit of that newlywed excitement coming back.  I could see how proud of me she was.  It shone in her eyes, despite that she never once asked me to lose weight, not even while we were dating.  I never quite understood how a beauty queen like Crystal fell in love with a chub-bub like me.  She attributed it to my personality, but I didn’t believe her.  One way or another, Crystal decided to give me a chance and brought the two best possible things into my life: her, and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

It seems stupid putting it like that, as if my incredible wife and the show are somehow on the same level.  But Friendship changed my life just as much as Crystal did—and really, Crystal was responsible for my bronyism, anyway.  So it all leads back to the most wonderful woman ever to grace the Earth, and I was holding her hand as we left the mall together with three new pairs of size 30 jeans.

“…until you all shared its magic with me!  Big adventure – tons of fun! – a beautiful heart – faithful and strong – ”

“Sharing kindness,” he mumbled blearily as the theme song started to wake him up.  His face was pressed against the keys of the laptop, holding several of them down.  Somehow it hadn’t paused the show.  Due to his settings, the rest of the second season had played through the night, and as the sun’s morning rays peeked through his hotel window, the season finale was beginning.

“Do you know you’re all my very best frieeeeeEEEEEAAAA,” he tried to sing while sitting up, but it had turned into more of a loud yawn.  Rubbing his eyes and checkered face with the back of his hand, the man slid from his bed and flipped on the light switch, letting the episode play on from his pillow.

Even when intoxicated, he had always been a morning person.  All he needed was a bit of sunlight to smack against his eyelids and the rest of his body was ready to go, even when his brain wasn’t.  Still in a slight stupor, he shed his clothes and climbed groggily into the shower, forgetting to close the curtain for a good twenty seconds, leaving a nice puddle around the toilet.

“Great,” he mumbled to himself, pulling the plastic barrier between himself and the rest of the bathroom.  “Another mess to clean up.”

After about five minutes, the warm water revived the man’s senses.  He tried to remember the details of last night, but they escaped him.  As he rubbed his swollen lip, he was pretty confident that he had done exactly what he did every Friday night: go to the nearest bar, drink himself silly, loudly advertise the beauty of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to anyone near, fight with someone who criticized the show and/or his love for it, get kicked out, stumble home, watch a few episodes, and fall asleep.  Straining his brain, he vaguely remembered Pinkie Pie tending to the Cake’s children.

“Episode thirteen,” he mumbled aloud, massaging shampoo into his shaggy, dark hair.  After some quick mental calculations, he figured he’d clocked about four hours of sleep.  Not bad.

With a heavy sigh, he snatched a tiny cardboard box from the rack behind his head, knowing it contained a miniature bar of soap.  With practiced hands, he popped the box open and let the bar fall into his palm.  It was usually a nice cream color that smelled of vanilla, but this bar happened to be orange.  He was about to lift it to his nose and test its scent—he certainly didn’t want to smell like oranges—when his leafy-green eyes lost their natural glint to a far-away, glazed expression.

Orange.

He snapped out of his trance, rubbing the soap over his bony body as quickly as he could.  Once the suds were rinsed away, he slammed the shower’s handle into its OFF position and tore open the curtain to grab one of the fresh towels hanging across from the mirror.

She was already there, poking at the puddle that had seeped halfway across the floor.

“D’ja miss the toilet?” she asked peevishly, offering him a friendly wink.

“Applejack!” he yelped, trying too quickly to reclose the shower curtain.  The jerky motion sent him off balance and he slipped on the slick bathtub’s bottom, slamming into the wall behind him with enough force to rattle the rack hanging from the showerhead.

“Oops!” the pony said, lifting a hoof to her mouth to hide a smile.  “Ah’m more than a mite sorry, sugarcube.  You okay?”

He groaned and rubbed the back of his head with his left hand, using the other to snatch a towel.  “You startled me,” he complained, wrapping the linen around his middle.  “You can’t sneak up on me like that, especially when I’m naked.”

The earth pony laughed and backed out of the bathroom, giving him a clear path to his bed and the open suitcase on the chair by the window.  The blinds were drawn just enough to let the sunlight in without allowing anyone to see inside his room—not that anyone would be looking closely at a third story hotel window.

“Like Ah said, Ah’m real sorry,” Applejack assured as he slid on a pair of grey boxer briefs under his towel.  “Won’t happen again, you have my word.  Pinkie promise.”  She went through the motions; he had to smile as she pressed her hoof against her eyelids.

“I saw her last night,” he remembered, rubbing the towel through his dripping hair.  “She helped me find my room.”

“Who, Pinkie Pie?  Sounds like her.  She loves helpin’ folks.”

He nodded thoughtfully, pulling on a pair of tight grey skinny jeans.  Applejack made a disapproving click with her mouth.

“Don’t you ever wear anythin’ colorful?” she asked critically.  He gave her a shocked glance.

“Well, well, well.  Look who’s been spending too much time with Rarity.”

Applejack sneered at him, but crossed her front legs casually.  “Ah only mean, you’re a right handsome feller and you’d be doin’ good fer yerself if ya spiced up yer wardrobe a bit, dontcha think?”

He reached into a pocket of his suitcase and brought out a stick of deodorant—the blue kind that didn’t leave any marks on clothes.  Applejack’s kind words brought a blush to his face as he applied the stuff to his underarms, tossing it carelessly onto the bed when he was done.

“Aw, AJ,” he cooed exaggeratedly, lifting a black V-neck from the top of his shirt pile.  “That was nice of you to say.”

She shrugged modestly.  “Just bein’ honest.”

“How apt,” he noted, ignoring her fashion advice and donning the plain black top.  After pulling on a dark set of tight grey Vans, he skipped back into the bathroom and started to brush his teeth.  Applejack stayed in the main room, squinting at the words on his laptop.  Apparently a season had recently ended.

“You been watchin’ our show again?” she asked over the sound of his brushing.

“Uh-huh,” he answered simply.

“Ponyfeathers!  Ain’t this the sixth or seventh time you’ve watched ‘em all?”

“I di-n’t wah ‘em ah,” he explained past the foam before spitting it into the sink.  “It played through the night.  I’m on episode fourteen, now, of season two.  And it’s only the fifth time.”

Applejack shook her head.  “No wonder we’re all makin’ visits so often these days.  You must be thinkin’ about us all the time!”

“Yup!” he called out over the faucet water cleaning off the bristles.  “Twenty-four seven.  Call it a curse, if you must, but I can’t get you guys out of my head.”

“Why not?”

“No clue,” he lied, setting down the toothbrush and coming back into her presence.  He sat the end of his bed and looked into her great green eyes, nearly the same color as his.  “The show really is amazing.  You should watch it sometime.”

She caught the joke, laughing again.  He loved her laugh.

“As flattered as Ah am,” she said, tilting her eyes into a genuinely concerned expression, “Ah gotta say Ah don’t like it.  Don’t you think that’s a bit… unhealthy?  Shouldn’t you be out spendin’ time with yer friends, or… Ah don’t know, buckin’ apples?”

His turn to laugh.  “We don’t buck apples around here, AJ,” he said, “but I do have a job.”

“Yeah, Ah remember,” she said unconvincingly, rubbing the back of her neck.  “You write up advertisements fer websites to make sure they hit more people, or somethin’.”

“To help them receive more hits from search engines,” He corrected.  “It’s called, uh… it’s called…”  He rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration.  “Horseapples.”

“There’s that anomia actin’ up again,” Applejack teased.  “You get worse at rememberin’ words every time I visit.”

He snorted, followed by a heavy sigh.  “I love when you visit, though.  Same goes for all the girls.  Let them know for me, will you?  Please come by anytime.”  He pointed a warning finger at her nose and added, “As long as I’m clothed.”

“Ah’ll pass it along,” she said with a characteristic smirk.  He blinked once, and she was gone.  He tousled his hair, sighed again, and got to work writing search engine optimizations.