Excuse me, ma’am–EXCUSE ME–Yoo-hoo! My eyes are up here.
Say, it’s not polite to let yo’ gaze linger so long anywhere near, uh, um, er…
“Sir, can I just say how much I love your, um…”
The random SmashBurger1You may be wondering what vegan (or at least mostly vegan) like me would be doing at slaughterhouse like SmashBurger, to which I will point out that this happened several months before I went vegan, when I was reveling in my meat-and-bacon-and-cheese-heavy half-ass keto days. employee paused her fawning phrase just for a split-second as her eyes flittered to my lower half under the restaurant table.
Aaaaaand…Freeze Frame.
*breaks fourth wall and looks directly at the camera*
It didn’t take more than that split second for me to autocomplete her sentence. I could already tell where she was going with this–and I ain’t gonna lie: I was totally cool with the compliment forthcoming from this complete stranger’s mouth.
And, I think that you too, Dear Reader, would be able to see for yourself exactly why she would be motivated to bravely approach me and say to me what she dared say to me. Please, observe Exhibit A: a family picture circa that particular day several moons ago (or whenever 2019 was), which quite accurately portrays pretty much everything under that table that our new friend was eye-balling:
Pray tell, as you were eye-balling it for yourself, what caught your eye? What really jumps out at you–something you might even notice from the other side of a restaurant?
Not to finish anyone’s thought for them, but, yeah, even to this day I miss my sweet af blue shoes that I got on clearance at Old Navy for less than fifteen smackaroos. I didn’t wear them to get attention; I just found beholding them so pleasing and so satisfying–and they were also surprisingly comfortable, on top of that.
What I’m getting at is that despite my gaudy choice of footwear, I swear I didn’t don them cause I’m an attention wh–wait, wrong word. Let’s not give into the patriarchy and use the right phrasing: I’m not an attention sleaze-bag.
Naw, bro, I’m not out here fishing for compliments. Y’all know me, though: I’m humble enough to graciously accept one when it comes my way–just as was happening this fine day.
Okay, unfreeze frame now–she was saying…?
*leans in expectantly*
“Sir, can I just say how much I love your calves?”
“Yeah, I got these on clearance at Old Na–wait, what?”
Well, that was a plot twist.
“Oh, yeah, those are some real nice calves–and if I may be so frank, you’re kinda making me jealous.”
“Uh, yeah, thanks. That’s really kind of you to notice,” I said recovering from my surprise, and accepting this truly unexpected nicety with grace. Though the jury was still out, deliberating the question: was she was hitting on me by telling me I had sexy, attractive calves. C’mon, she was openly gaga-ing over how well-endowed I was below the waist, after all…
“…I mean, no matter how much I focus on them at the gym, I can never get them looking like that,” she continued.
“Wait, what?”
Plot Twist #2: she didn’t want me for my calves–she wanted my calves for herself!
It was like my dad’s very gender-confusing compliment from my teenage years. As ol’ Bob J. used to weirdly love to say: ‘You have an ass that would make a black woman jealous!’
Your prescient prophecy was so close, Bob J., sooo close. Here I was, very clearly, unequivocally, beyond a shadow of a doubt making a woman of color jealous of my…calves. LOL?
She paused talking for a moment as she continued ogling my body like the juicy piece of meat that it was, basking in my gastrocnemius glory,2Editor’s note: I actually had to look up the scientific name for our calf muscles, and the fact that it lent itself to some sweet alliteration was just a very happy coincidence. forcing me to fill in the silence before it became too awkward.
“Well, I do what I can…”
Okay, so that’s just a bold-faced/bald-faced lie: there’s nothing I can do to not have calves so huge, so bulbous, that technically we should be calling them ‘bulls’ instead. If there was an exercise that would reduce them even 10%, I would be hittin’ that every day.
Or, to put things in a different perspective, even when I was in my peak fitness form as a rower in college–something that, *sigh*, yes, I was only good at on account of my disproportionately massive muscles down there–I was never anywhere close to hitting the ‘normal’ BMI range for a man of my 5’11-3/4″ stature.
As I liked to quip, “The only way I’ll ever have a ‘healthy’ Body Mass Index is if I ever amputated one of my legs…”
“I didn’t know that was medically possible…” the doctor pondered aloud.
One Thanksgiving around that same time, My Beautiful Bride had a little food prep accident which left her with slightly less fingers (by a fraction) than she had started with that morning, so I had to take her to the nearest Urgent Care that was actually open.
Now, imagine you’re me: if you hear a doctor utter those words, you’re going to get concerned real quick, right? Well, the mother of my children was in so much pain that I had speak up on her behalf.
“Give it to us straight, Doc. Is she ever going to have feeling in that finger tip again? Or at least have normal food-prep functionality with it?”
“Huh? What?” he seemed caught off-guard by my question.
“You said you didn’t know something was medically possible?” I said, trying to jar his very short-term memory.
“Oh, that! Yeah, I just couldn’t help but notice your calves. I’ve never seen anything quite like them in my entire medical career.”3Side note: I had my doubts about how illustrious his so-called medical career could be. I mean, no doctor at the top of their game is going to be stuck working an Urgent Care on ----- Thanksgiving Day, amiright?
Oh, for fuck’s sake, not this again. Apparently, I had picked the wrong Thanksgiving Day to wear shorts.
“Seriously, you’re supposed to be sewing up my wife’s finger with great precision and care, and you’re over here getting distracted by my legs? Where did you say you got your medical degree from again?”
“He’s not wrong, bro…”
At that point in time, the medical assistant piped up, coming to his boss’s defense.
“Like,” he continued, sounding a bit too much like a valley girl, “I totally noticed them the moment you walked through our doors. And I gotta admit…I’m kinda jealous.”
“Not you too,” I mumbled to myself in my head. “Homeboy better not be hitting on me…”
I mean, with my black girlfriend from SmashBurger, I could totally write it off as me not understanding the female mind. Or maybe it was the black mind I didn’t get? Perhaps BBCs–Big, Bulky Calves–were prized in African-American culture? Or was it the combination–the mind of a black woman–that was a mystery to me?
No matter which way you slice it,4Apologies to my wife, no pun intended. I wasn’t too worried that the SmashBurger Incident was an enigma that I couldn’t crack.
But these two Urgent Care clowns? No ----- clue…
“Agreed,” stated the so-called doctor matter-of-factly.
What the hell was going on here? Was my G0d-given abnormal anatomy some sort of beacon, out here attracting pretty much everyone across the demographic spectrum? And how come I was not aware of this until I was well into my late 30s?
I’m not telling you all this to be #HumbleBragging about huge-ass muscles–these were legitimately confusing situations for me.
“Bro, what are you doing in the gym to get those bad boys pumped up like that?” the medical assistant asked with a chuckle.
I had to defend my honor, I would not let him besmirch me by insinuating I was so vain as to actively pursue these bizarro-Popeye monstrosities dangling from my otherwise mostly-well-proportioned torso.
“Actually, these are naturally-occurring–I’ll have you know, I don’t even have a leg d–“
“Young man, let me just cut you off right there–you don’t need to lie to us. Your secret is safe with us,” the doctor interjected.
“And exactly, pray tell, Doc, what secret is that?”
“C’mon, do I have to say it out loud?”
“Yes. Yes you do.”
“We know that for you, every day is calf day…”
Content created on: 6/7 June 2025 (Fri/Sat)
Footnotes & References:
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