The Incredible Shrinking Pete, part 1

No, the Incredible Shrinking Pete isn't what happens when I sit in a swimming pool all day, it's the result of what happens when I'm on a mission to shed years of beer guzzling and midnight Choco Taco snack attacks. In the past month I've lost 18 pounds, a feat accomplished partly out of unbridled determination, and partly out of curiosity.

Yes, curiosity. I'm curious as to what it'd feel like to walk around with a six-pack.

Used to be, you could put your ear against my belly button and hear not only the ocean, but also Chewbacca wailing in the distance. Nowadays you just hear grasshoppers chirping. It's nice.

Let me be clear, however, that I still have a beer gut. It's just a smaller, less frightening one.

Now, I can hear some of you out there going, Pete?? Fat?? What the hell is he talking about?? Trust me folks, having skinny arms and a pencil neck that would make Barack Obama blush doesn't mean you can't still be a fat fuck. Kim Jong-il, anyone?

There was this chick I met at a house party back in college that was so convinced that I was just being modest when I told her about my beer gut that she decided she wanted to flirt with me. So she followed me everywhere around the house, giggling, squealing, tossing her hair over her shoulder, trying to yank the bottom of my shirt up, demanding to see my washboard abs.

After five minutes of being chased, it finally occurred to me that she'd quit her harrassment if I just simply gave in, so I turned around and let her lift up my shirt.

The girl frowned. What she saw was my big fat belly, the rolls spilling out and forming a crude face with lips. When she leaned in for a closer look, my rolls smiled at her and said, "BOO!", which got the horrified girl covering her mouth and then running and screaming and flailing her arms until she jumped through a glass window, plunging three stories onto the parking lot asphalt below.

The music quickly stopped, and everyone at the party tip-toed over to the window while pieces of glass debris continued to crack off the edge. They eyed the poor girl below, then slowly turned their heads to look at me.

Smiling my sinister smile, I looked around the room and said, "Who's next?"

So. The moral of that story is: Believe me. I've got a beer gut. Don't make me lift up my shirt to prove anything.