You Know What Sucks? LipoSUCtion.

My fat ass and I admit it. We’ve had liposuction. It hurt like a mother, but it did do exactly what the doctor claimed it would. It “reshaped” my trouble areas. The only thing is that the new shape is more Quasimodo than Barbie. Never did the physician tell me that once I had fat sucked out of my squarish hips and my inner thighs—which I always wanted to have a space between while my feet were together the way cheerleader legs have—that fat cells would sprout up in places I’d never had them before.

In case you’re not familiar, here’s how liposuction works in twenty easy steps:

1.)    Anesthesia is administered, but apparently it is only the “twilight” kind which doesn’t deaden a goddamned thing but makes you “forget” the pain. My ass.

2.)    Incisions are made in areas near the suction sites. The surgeon skillfully slices your tender flesh open with something mother-fucking sharp. I remember thinking, “That son-of-a-bitch is using something mother-fucking sharp to slice the tender flesh of my…private area, which I clearly did not give permission for him to do.” What I actually said was, “Ouch. Ouch. Ouch,” while some gloved hand repeatedly slapped mine away.

3.)    A very long, straw-like canula (from the Latin word for reed because the canula is hollow and large like a reed instrument such as a fucking clarinet), is threaded into the incision and down to the suction site where it is then jammed over and over and over into tender flesh to hack away large portions of fat-cell-filled tissue and to suck them out. The contents are vacuumed into an extra-extra-large Ziplock bag. The canula is mother-fucking sharp.

4.)    There is no attempt at actual cosmetic shaping because the surgeon is too busy viciously slashing as if he is angry with the fat or with you or with all of humanity.

5.)    Once the carnage is over, the incision sites are stitched, and compression garments are heaved up over your vacuumed areas.

6.)    You will be sent home high on some drug, your incisions leaking excess saline tinged with your blood, which you deserve to have stain and ruin the car’s upholstery if you forgot to bring old towels.

7.)    You will be in sweaty delirium and scathing pain for days and days until you go back to the doctor to have him take out your stitches, which is akin to having some son-of-a-bitch stick needles into your inflamed bruises and then rip them out really fast.

8.)    You will continue to wear the compression garments for several weeks, and you may or may not get used to peeing through the cut-out hole in the girdle.

9.)    Finally, the day comes to remove all the bandaging and to view the new you.

10.)                        There will be lots and lots of cussing.

11.)                        You will be all lumpy and green and yellow and not at all svelte like those brochure thighs in the waiting room.

12.)                        You will wait patiently for years for the brochure thighs, which never materialize.

13.)                        Meanwhile, your sides grow considerable handholds which flop over the elastic waistbands you are now forced to wear.

14.)                        Your upper back has folds.

15.)                        Your upper gut looks like it’s expecting. Triplets.

16.)                        No clothes of any kind will ever fit correctly again.

17.)                        You no longer fit into the “apple” or the “pear” category. You are a one of those bumpy, misshapen gourds that comes out only at Halloween.

18.)                        You can never wear a swimsuit to the beach for the rest of your life without someone calling for a marine rescue.

19.)                        There is still no space between your thighs when your feet are together.

20.)                        The only thing that sucks more than liposuction is that you have no one but your own sorry fat ass to blame.