Chapter Four:
Reflection?
Heaving
A heavy metal chair
Into the taunting, full-length
mirror,
The boy then splintered
into thousands of miniscule
fragments
In a grim study
Of twinkling glass.
(A poem written by Julian Hope late in 1994)
"God, I hate being fat". This acid-tongues statement spoken in a disgusting tone by Michael Hope, seemingly out of the blue, startled the semi-slumbering Peck.
"Huh? What? Where did that come from? You're not fat, Michael".
Hope wrapped an oversized, dark coat tightly around his body, which, though not skinny, was by no means of an overly corpulent nature.
"Sure, anything you say. But I know what I see in the mirror and what's worse, what's displayed on the video screen. I despise the way I look and it's time I did something about it".
Peck shifted his lean frame on the sagging, but sinfully comfortable couch, convinced that his friend was acting like a neurotic, insecure and sadly neglected housewife. "Do what you want. I think you are grossly exaggerating, but if losing a few pounds will make you happy and keep you quiet, then by all means, go for it".
Michael, firm resolve etching its picture on his cherubic face, took this as confirmation that he was indeed perversely and inexcusably obese. He decided, at that moment, that his lifestyle would radically alter in order to achieve a goal that he hoped would not be impossibly out of reach.
The year was 1994 and, for quite some time now, Michael had toyed with the notion of becoming a vegetarian, quitting smoking and beginning a strict program of exercise. This would all serve to enhance his onstage performance and greatly increase his physical energy level. At twenty-four, he did not want to be huffing and puffing during the band's shows, a result of too many cigarettes, extra poundage and weak muscle development.
Starting that very day, Michael wrote up a schedule that would cause the Australian army to blanch. He would allow himself no more tobacco or alcohol, accompanied by a very limited vegetarian diet of no more than a thousand calories (extremely paltry for an active young man) and all this was to be paired with five hours per day of strenuous excercising. There would be no gradual working up to this either. He would do a combination of running and fast walking for two hours, beginning at five in the morning, followed by an hour of cycling and two hours of swimming.
Since Oxymoron was on a heavy promotional schedule for their recently-released "Circuitous Dimensions" album, Julian's day was inordinately lengthy, with the swim taking place late at night at the hotels' indoor pools, long after the other band members had retired.
Peck, Giles and Perry were amazed at Michael's energy resources and garnered a great deal of respect for his rigid regimen. "You're really serious about this big change of habits,a aren't you?" Gill asked one afternoon as Michael engaged in a series of one hundred sit-ups between the running and cycling hours.
"Damn right", Michael answered somewhat breathlessly, continuing on. "The only vice onto which I am holding is caffeine. I just can't give that up. Besides, I read that it helps in the metabolizing of fat".
Gill shook his head in wonderment. "You're quite something. I'd join you, but I'm so skinny that I'd likely disappear in the process".
Michael paused for a moment and Peck, standing nearby, saw an expression of iron-clad determination flash across his sweaty face. "You just wait, Gill. I'll get so thin that you'll look twice my size".
Gill laughed and rose to his feet, saying, "Sure, Michael. I can't picture it, really, but who knows? I've got to get going, though. Pam needs a lift to her office. See you around, "junior jock". Just don't strain anything".
Peck continued to watch Michael for awhile, then, as his hyperactive bandmate strapped on athletic shoes for his run, he asked, hesitatingly, "You going to keep all this nonsense up indefinitely, or is it a temporary phase of yours?"
Michael turned, pausing for a second before answering. "I don't know. I hadn't really though about it. It's all sort of addicting, in a positive sense".
Peck had been keeping a rather curious eye on Michael for the past three weeks, as his herculian regimen had gradually metamorphosized from an enthusiastic novelty into a frenzied obsession. There seemed to be a growing urgency to his actions, as though, if he missed even five minutes of exercise, something terrible would happen and he would suddenly balloon to three hundred pounds.
One day, Michael suffered a twisted ankle, after running over a curb, and instead of taking a few days off to rest and ice it, he continued bashing it on the hard pavement in his daily two-hour grind.
Peck was beginning to question Michael's state of mind. "If you keep up this craziness you are going to do some permanent damage to that ankle. Remember, we go out on the road in three months. What are you going to do then? Hop around on one foot all over the stage?"
"What do you expect me to do? Sit around for a week and get fat and lazy? I didn't break the damned thing for God's sake!"
"You're weird, Michael", Peck replied, picking up his jacket and walking toward Michael's front door. The two of them had been discussing the upcoming tour and what songs they were going to be performing. "If you must keep on with all this crap, then at least use some of that common sense that you used to have".
As Peck got into his car and headed toward home, he dismissed his friend's bizarre behaviour as simply the symptoms of Michael's artistic temperament. "He's always been by far the most eccentric of any of us", he spoke aloud to himself, "and when he gets into something, it's definitely all the way and then some. That's one of the reasons I teamed up with him in the first place. The guy's got guts, that's for sure. He's going to push Oxymoron all the way to the top".
* * * * * * *
Back on the promotional circuit, Burton and Michael were in Toronto, Canada, being interviewed on that country's equivalent to MTV, the fledgeling Muchmusic video station, a highly-regarded facet of the media that already had a small but dedicated following of pay television subscribers.
The interview was headed by a young, well-versed video jockey named Lane Darren:
L.D.: "Oxymoron's audience has definitely expanded over the past year or so. Do you attribute this to the slightly more commercial-sounding "Circuitous Dimensions" LP?"
B.P.: "Well, for one thing, I don't believe that this is in any way a commercial album. The title itself is definitely not something that you'll see in mainstream rock, for instance. We don't particularly have any desire to acquire any type of highly-polished, glossy sound that seems so popular today".
M.H.: "That's right. The songs are somewhat enigmatic----you can't figure them out by listening to them only once or twice, unlike most of the technopop that's out there right now. It's all very straightforward. Look at anything Duran Duran have written, for example; or even Bruce Springsteen's stuff. You don't really have to guess what was on their minds at the time".
L.D.: "(laughing) It sounds as though you are adamently against being labelled in any way, shape or form".
B.P.: "You're right there. I like to think that our increased radio play and popularity is due to the fact that people want more intricate music and lyrics than what's been fed to them up until now".
M.H.: "I know that might sound a bit egotistical, but we simply mean that we don't want to be lumped into the majority of the work that's getting an incredible amount of airplay right now and selling millions of records. We want to retain our integrity and if people want to pay to see us live, that's fine too".
L.D.: "Sounds pretty altruistic to me, actually".
B.P.: "We're not trying to come across as anything other than as a group of musicians who want to produce music of which we can be proud. We have no desire to sell out to the mainstream".
L.D.: "How does Keystone Records feel about this? Are they putting pressure on you to change your style in any way?"
M.H.: "Yes, I think so, but that's their job, after all. We have discussions with them periodically (he smiles slightly) but they eventually come to understand that they signed us on in the first place because we're different. So we're not really disappointing them".
The interview went on to include information about the upcoming tour, which would cover large portions of the United States and Canada. They would be on the road for eight months and would feature songs from both the first album, "Dressing Down" as well as their current effort and some new stuff from an album that was currently in the works.
As for "Circuitous Dimensions", Peck and Hope went on to discuss, in brief detail, some of the songs. They were not, after all, into giving step-by-step analyses.
After he interview concluded, Peck, intensely relieved to be of the air, removed his shades and said, jokingly, to Michael, "Another half-hour commercial bites the dust. Sometimes I think all this kind of media stuff is pretty pathetic".
Michael smiled, agreeing wholeheartedly, as he shared Peck's distaste for the television camera, which, among other things, added at least ten to twelve pounds.
Later that evening, in a relatively respectable hotel room in downtown Toronto, Peck lay on the standard, unimpressive bed and stared up at the ceiling, optimistic about the tour itself, but dreading the long, monotonous string of rooms like this one that would stretch endlessly for the entire eight months on the road.
I don't know of any performer who can really stomach the hotel circuit, he thought glumly, wanting company, but knowing that Michael was doing countless laps in the pool downstairs, and his current girlfriend, Brenda Manning, was miles away in Austin, Texas. "Guess I'll just watch some old black and white flick on TV, then sleep away the boredom", he announced to the beige walls. He reached over for the remote control and muttered to himself, "Life doesn't get much more rewarding than this".
* * * * * * *
"What the Hell am I going to do now?!" Michael exclaimed in a state of panic as he and Burton piled into a taxi that would take them to Dallas International airport in order to catch an unexpectedly early flight back to Waco. The promotional tour, atleast their part of it, was over.
"What's the big deal?" Peck looked oddly at his wild-eyed friend, wondering if he was begining to become unglued. "Our flight's leaving three hours earlier than we'd planned. Don't you have any flexibility in your life anymore?"
Michael rubbed his head, where his long, brown curls had recently been shorn stubble-short and dyed blond. "Don't you get it?? I didn't put in my morning run, including two hours of swimming to make up for not being able to cycle, because my damned bike got totalled yesterday! By the time we get home it'll be really late and I'll have to stay up all night and run. Yeah, that's what I'll do, alright. There. I guss that's settled. Crisis averted for now anyway. I can relax for awhile. Sorry, Eddie".
"Boy, are you ever getting strange", Peck sighed, turning to look out the window at the morning traffic. "People lose weight all the time and they don't carry on the way you do. Why are you being so pathological about it? You're going way, way overboard, and for what? You look really good now. You can quit this crap anytime now, so take a downer, for God's sake!"
Peck was unable to comprehend why Michael had become so fanatical about something that, in reality, required one hundredth of the effort and utter pain that he was putting into it, and submitting himself to. It was so unlike Michael to be this irrational. Peck could see it if his friend needed to get rid of over two hundred pounds and had only three months in which to do it, but he was only ever, at the most, twenty pounds or so overweight. Something just didn't feel right about all this. It simply was not normal behaviour.
Still, with the busy weeks ahead, Peck and the other members of Oxymoron would have little time to fret over personal problems.
Gill was getting himself hyped for the tour, experimenting with various chord changes and trying to decide which of his several base guitars was going to be delegated as his mainstay.
Paul, however, was the most enthusiastic of the four, as he loved performing and having the close, personal contact with their fans in the audience. He'd gradually begun coming to life, emerging from his "semi-comotose state", as Peck had once dubbed Perry's normally introverted behaviour, and eventually achieved the quick-witted animation for which he'd always possessed the potential.
As for Burton Peck, he was casually philosophical about it all: "Hey, while we're young and eager, let's go for it. I sure don't plan to be doing this twenty years from now".
Michael, it appeared, shared little of the others' interest in this upcoming excursion. He had become totally preoccupied with his slavish itinerary, so much so that Gill, Paul and Burton began to circulate among themselves, leaving their lead singer to his own twisted devices.
Peck had to admit, though, that the results were impressive. In the three-month period, Michael had chipped tenaciously away at his previously rather unimpressive form to reveal a much harder, sparer and attractively leaner body. This was obviously the direct result of the long and dedicated hours of exceptionally stoic exercise and dieting.
Unknown to the other three, Michael had, over five weeks earlier, achieved the twenty-pound weight loss, plus ten more and had actually, by late November of that year, pared a rather sobering forty pounds from his comparatively small frame. Aware that he would be roundly criticized for this drastic transformation, Michael began wearing several layers of clothing to camouflage his boniness.
If Burton Peck had been able to read Michael's mind during this period, he would have been very upset and confused. His friend and partner of six years was beginning to acquire the harrowing self-destructive mind-set that would eventually completely overwhelm him. This dictated harshly that he must keep on eating less and less, while simultaneously burning off energy he didn't have anymore, and thus becoming the emodiment of impossible, deadly perfection. Michael didn't see it coming himself; he was so caught up in the relentless pursuit of super-skinniness that it seemed somehow normal to him. He still saw himself as substantially heavier than Bryan, his "comparative model", even though he was, in reality, at least fifteen pounds lighter than the wiry base player. Gill was naturally thin and had always been so.
By Christmas, Michael Hope, steeped in the disturbing spectre of anorexia nervosa, turned a pivotal corner in his life: He reached the frightening point of no return. There would be periods of brief recovery and stretches of time spent as a relatively healthy and rational human being, but Julian, one of a growing number of male anorexics, who represented seven per cetn of people with the disorder, would never really be able to shake the monster loose for good. These individuals become so overwhelmingly entrenched in the pattern of behaviour that they don a very chilling identity; one that cannot be shaken.
To say that anorexia nervosa is a problem of dieting gone wild or exercising taken to ridiculous levels is grossly over-simplifying the problem. The illness represents a severe type of emotional malignancy that has, as its solution, a descent into the ravages of self-destructive starvation and/or bulimia.
For women it could represent a power struggle for independence and emancipation, or a paralyzing fear of growing up and becoming one's own person. This is often the case with college-age women who develop these disorders.
Men, however, occupy a different arena altogether: It has eben documented, though not widely, that males of all ages who become anorexic or bulimic have serious difficulties surrounding their sexuality. The jump during the past ten years or so of percentages of male anorexics from five to seven is accountable to the fact that the roles of men and women are radically changing. Lines dividint the two sexes are gradually becoming blurred, as during the 1980's women took on some traditionally male roles and vice versa. It no longer was an oddity to find men working at home as house husbands while their wives held down respectable executive positions and became the chief breadwinners. Thus, some men felt emasculated and, needing to be in control, began starving themselves until they were sick and wraithlike.
Michael did not become anorexic due to a feverish desire to be thin, though that may have been the catalyst. Rather, his wish was to become so small in time that he would simply disappear and be visualy inconspicuous to the men and women who desired to share a special closeness with him. Untouchable and ethereal, he would, by way of starvation, and manic exercising, achieve the enviable postition of the man who can see but cannot be seen.
Unfortunately, it was not a stance that could be obtained for a very long period of time before death and oblivion would ultimately become his permanent home.
* * * * * *
The "Circuitous Dimensions" tour did not actually begin until January of 1985, due to difficulties with concert bookings and the neverending debate surrounding ticket prices, a bone of contention that would never get buried.
They began in Halifax and proceeded to wend their way westward, dipping down to the states and backtracking eastward, upward and out to the midwest. They would finally head through the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, down to the states once more for, many venues, then eventually terminate the trek of the North America in their hometown of Waco.
At the onset of the moderately extensive road trip, whose path Peck found to be nothing short of torurous and bizarre, the four members were, nonetheless, typically wound up and breathlessly enthusiastic, eager to mix with the crowds of mostly young people looking for something more substantial than 1980's fluffy techo-pop, a powder puff kind of music from which Oxymoron shied completely away.
Peck, his intricate guitar work polished to the point where even he, an invenerate perfectionist when it came to his music, was satisfied with the results.
He found touring an exhausting exercise in artistic expression, however. One night, after foregoing small ut conjested post-concert party at Jake's somewhat cramped hotel suite, Peck sat alone in his room, pickling idly at the calouses on his fingers and reflecting upon the past four and a half years with Oxymoron.