I’ve been having major body-image issues lately. It all started late last summer, at age 30, when I realized that I’d begun to gain a little weight for the first time in my life. My jeans were suddenly too snug, and some of my underwear was not fitting quite as comfortably as it used to. Then, on Sunday, when we were out to dinner with family, I was wearing a tight-fitting Polo shirt, and my brother patted my stomach and said, “What’s going on there?” Sure enough, there is a little bit of a belly there. Not much, but more than I used to have.

What’s worse, now that the weather is hot, there are guys walking around everywhere with well-developed bodies. Biceps and triceps and chests, oh my. It makes me feel worse.

I’m not sure if I can convey how foreign this is to me. I’ve always been slim. Always. I’d read articles about people trying to lose weight and I’d laugh inwardly. Thank god I’ll never have to worry about that, I’d think. My dad is on the husky side, but while we have very similar faces, our bodies were always different. My brother’s body took after his, but mine took after my grandfather’s lean frame. I could eat whatever I wanted, barely exercise, and not have to worry about a thing. I figured I’d always be immune. Slim was part of who I was.

That’s why it’s so strange to stand in front of the bathroom mirror these days, look at my shirtless body sideways, and see a bit more than I’d like. It’s like I’m not me anymore. I’m someone else.

I have horrific visions of it getting worse as I get older. I’ll blimp out until I’m not only short but fat, too. In ten years I could be short, fat and middle aged.

That’s why I have to stop this now. When Matt and I move next month, we’ll have discount access to the nearby YMCA, and I’m going to start doing cardio activities. Exercise bike, stairmaster, treadmill. Ideally I’d like to lift weights, too, and tone my body up, but I find exercise incredibly boring. I’ve never been able to keep at a routine for more than a week. So I’m going to start easy. No weights. Just 30-45 minutes of cardio, three times a week. That should be enough to help me return to my formerly svelte self, right?

Otherwise, I’m going to change my name and enter the Federal Witness Protection Program. A witness to my own weight increase. He saw things that were never meant to be seen…

This is just not who I am. I want to be me again. The me I’ve always known.

Where the hell did this weather come from? We barely get a real spring and then BOOM, it’s like the middle of July. I’ve had to walk outside of my office building to two different meetings today, and it’s just icky. It’s days like this that I start missing winter.

Since last night’s Tony Awards broadcast, my site has received a number of hits from Google searches for “Sarah Paulson gay.” Yes, the actress who plays Laura Wingfield in the current Broadway revival of “The Glass Menagerie” is the girlfriend of Cherry Jones, star of Broadway’s “Doubt,” and yes, it is Sarah whom Cherry kissed last night before going up to receive her award, and yes, that’s why she referred to Laura Wingfield in her acceptance speech.

Matt and I had a busy weekend. It was basically The Weekend We Spent on the Subway.

On Friday night we went all the way up to Harlem for our weekly movie gathering – this week it was “All Over the Guy” and “The Broken Hearts Club,” both of which I’d seen before. (I originally saw “The Broken Hearts Club” at the Chelsea Clearview in a theater full of queens. What an experience.) Watching these movies back to back allowed me to compare them. They both take place in L.A., both have nary a chest hair in sight, and both use odd slang. I was going to criticize both movies for having scenes in which gay men unrealistically describe things using cryptic initials, but then I found myself referring to some little boy on TV yesterday as an F.I.T. (fag in training), so I can’t really criticize it anymore. Still, you really shouldn’t use initials unless everyone in the conversation knows what they mean; otherwise it comes off as obnoxious. (I do criticize the men in “Broken Hearts Club” for referring to people as “[Blank] Guy,” like “J. Crew Guy” or “Purple Guy.” In my circles it’s not “Guy” but “Boy.” For instance, a friend of mine used to refer to this particularly pretentious and verbose guy he dated as “Efficacious Boy,” because that was one of the guy’s typical pretentious words.)

On Saturday afternoon we rode the Staten Island Ferry, which, admittedly, didn’t involve the subway, but I did want to mention it.

On Saturday night we went uptown again – from Battery Park (or thereabouts), way up to Washington Heights, for Jon and JP’s apartment-warming party. The gays were in one room, the straights in the other. I drank too much; I basically skipped the fun part of being drunk and went right to feeling ill and nearly falling asleep on Jon and JP’s apartment floor. Fortunately, my sweet boyfriend took excellent care of me. After the party, a few of us got on the subway, and when the train started moving I thought I was going to be sick. I leaned against Matt’s shoulder and fell asleep around 168th Street, and the next thing I knew we were at 59th Street and his arm was around me. Several subway stops later, we were home.

Last night, before the Tonys, we went out to dinner with my parents and my brother and his girlfriend, because my dad, my brother and my brother’s girlfriend all had birthdays last week. We ate at the new Bar Room at MoMa, which was absolutely wonderful. I had grilled shrimp with a green cabbage and gruyere salad, followed by sesame-encrusted tuna; my dessert, which was out of this world, was a few beignets with maple ice cream, caramel & citrus mango marmelade. I also had a Mango Passion Mojito. It was an outstanding meal. Go there if you can.

Now that The Weekend We Spent on the Subway is over, we might need The Weekend in Front of the TV. I’m kidding; I enjoy tooling around the city. As long as next weekend isn’t as hot as it was yesterday and today.

Interesting piece in the Times today about sex drive in relationships, even though it’s geared toward women:

A drop in partnered sex among cohabitating or married partners is a fact of life – advice on how to maintain or rekindle desire has been around since the beginning of written history. Almost universally, humans seem to struggle against the notion that sex is just for reproduction.

Professor Laumann’s study indicates that by age 30, three-quarters of Americans are either married or living with someone, but they are starting to have “partnered sex” less often than people in their 20’s. In their 30’s, more people are having sex with a partner a few times a month, and fewer are having sex a few times a week. By their 40’s, this disparity more than doubles for both men and women.

… Helen Fisher, an anthropologist and the author of, most recently, “Why We Love,” has long studied the human brain and love. She theorizes that the brain has evolved three mating drives: lust, the craving for sexual gratification; romantic love, a focused attention on another, often compared to an opiate-like state; and attachment, the feelings of calm, security and union with a long-term partner. Each drive travels along a different pathway in the brain, Dr. Fisher and colleagues say, each associated with different neurochemicals.

“Lust is associated primarily with testosterone in both men and women,” she said. “Romantic love is linked with the natural stimulant dopamine and perhaps norepinephrine and serotonin. And feelings of attachment are produced primarily by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, which at elevated levels can actually suppress the circuits for lust.” …

Dr. Nachtigall of New York University makes a further point: “We’re the only mammal that outlives its reproductive functions. Technology helps us live longer and longer. We aren’t supposed to go into menopause; we were only supposed to live about 50 years.”