“Poppy, don’t lose any more weight. If you get sick, you won’t have a cushion.”

-Megan, 8/4/2022

…

“You are 165 and you aren’t getting hit as hard and your work-rate is up. I see you at 155, being a good weight.”

-Guru Rick, 8/9/2022

…

“Bessy did not recognize you. When I told her ‘that was James,’ she said, ‘Oh My, is he well!”

-Deb, 8/20/2022

…

“Bro, you look good, Why lose more weight? You’re not young anymore. You deserve some rest.”

-Shayne, 8/25/22

…

Virtually all of the people in my life think I should stop losing weight, that there is no point in it. So why do I continue to set my goal at my optimal fight weight, which was 147?

Note, my strongest weight was 143. At 143 pounds I could:

[My current capacity is in brackets, that is as measured at weights between 165 and 185 over the past two years.]

-Curl 120 pounds [30]

-Snatch 130 [zero, can’t even do it empty handed!]

-Clean and jerk 145 [50]

-do 56 push ups [6, I lost a plank contest to a 7 year old girl last month!]

-dips 117 [zero]

-dips with 50 lbs around my waist 75 [zero, shoot, I couldn’t load the belt and get up on the bars!]

-hike without rest, 20 miles [8]

Obviously, the 20 pounds I am carrying over my best weight, being 145, is either fat or some other inert material. It is not doing me any good.

My purpose, since December 11, 2017 has been singular: to write.

Since I do not earn enough money to keep a roof over my head as a writer, outside of a ghetto that I am no longer capable of fighting my way across, I maintain myself as a house guest through various activities:

-Traveling, which requires the hauling of 35-50 pounds with two hernias and two half torn knees

-Training fighters, mostly as a sparring partner, since I am not an instructor

-Doing physical work that my hosts are too busy, to old or two broken to do

-Drinking. I am essentially a professional drinking companion to various people for 9 months of the year.

All of these activities are made more attainable while my body weight is low. Ironically, drinking is the only reason why I am not already at 145 pounds. That activity runs at cross purposes to the others.

The big one is my aggregate weight when traveling. If I rupture one of these hernias than my life essentially ends and I end up a charity case at the worst medical center in the area, subject to the vile attentions of the evil coven of medical vampires that rule us through their reign of terror. If I completely tear one of the two knees that I ruined working in a squat position for 18 months while I had a torn hip rotator, then I will be rendered largely useless to most of my hosts, and be good only for a drinking companion.

I have no medical, and struggle to keep a $1500 balance in my bank account necessary to qualify for a hotel stay. Hotels no longer take cash and you need banking collateral or credit [I have no credit] to qualify for a room even when you show up with the necessary cash.

In short, it is easier on my guts, balls and knees when I am lighter.

Additionally, I have found over the past year, that getting back down to my late stage competition weight, being in the 170s and 160s like I was from 2006 through 2015 [I blew up to 230 pounds in 2016-18 with a torn hip rotator and a high-carb $15 a week diet.] I have discovered that I don’t get hit as hard. This confirms my experience when reaching 180, of getting a lot of concussions. Weighing more gets you hit harder.

The only thing I have ever really enjoyed doing in my life is fighting. So the fact that I can fight again holds out the promise that I might have an honorable way left out of this life, offering its own seduction.

Additionally, and I do not know if there is a correlation, and my friend Doc Dread said it was possible, since I have gone under 170 pounds, the severity of eye seizures has reduced. I can still feel the nerve in my head burning, constantly. It never lets up. My pain floor is at a 7 out of 10, the eye always hurting at 70% of the pain level that causes me to pass out. However, for some reason, since going under 170 pounds, I can almost always keep the eye from rocketing to 9 and 10, and taking to down from 8 to 7 by simply resting and not speaking. I have been punched in the head more in the past six months then in the four previous years combined and have not had to take the medication that halts the progress of the seizure more than twice a week. Many weeks I go without the medicine.

Oh yes, dear Megan, If I get “sick” which I suppose means cancer or more manufactured bio-weapons, I want to go quick, like Jimmy Frederick and Bill. Bill was a stud, had been homeless for a decade, worked his last five years getting robbed on a weekly basis at a 7-11, and would kill the pain of life petting his brother’s dog and drinking a twelve pack of beer every day after work. One day Bill came home from work, curled up on the floor and never woke up. The doctors new immediately that he was full of cancer and put him in hospice in the hands of good old Morpheus, where he died in 13 days. Unless I am lucky enough to get beaten or shot to death while stabbing my foe, a quick end like that is the best I can hope for.

Oh, and it occurs, that this flap of old gut skin still covering my abdominal wall, might help shield my own innards from the foe’s blade.

I’m just trying to stay operational as an unsuccessful writer long enough to finish Plantation America and write better fiction than I have this far managed.

Thanks for your concern.