Perhaps not a post about steak and boobies, but if you’ll compromise, asses: mine and my husband’s, and the pattern of the latter kicking, and the former getting kicked.

At the base of Mount Katahdin, my new boyfriend Justin said to me you can’t be serious and I said um, no? I was... kidding? and he said you’ve never been on a hike before? and I said define ‘hike’.

But figuring that four thousand feet up and four thousand feet down was simply A Really Long Walk, I shrugged and followed, as I always did for the decade following, because he kept saying c'mon, it'll be fine just like this:

...and what else could I do but reply uhh, okay?

I hobbled back down the last ten miles of Maine woods with nothing but wool socks on my feet and as a testament to my unbridled sex appeal, spent the next month repulsing that new boyfriend with daily status reports on the five toenails that turned black and fell off.

(licks finger, touches to self, sizzles.)

Refrain from adjusting your screen and behold: the sum of all the physical grace I’d accumulated up until the point at which I met Justin.

Previously, my expertise was limited to antics like this and feigning busyness at corporate jobs. But then I met Justin and figured he was less impressed with my cello-playing skillz and band camp memories than, you know, my mother was. And so I went where he went. First it was hiking, followed by climbing. Then telemark skiing, kayaking and mountain biking, all with the same scenario replayed ad nauseum, often literally:

(Justin slows and waits, again)
(Justin checks watch)
(Justin orders and eats an order of handcrafted poutine from a backwoods trolley pushed by an 80-year-old acadian gypsy)
(Justin listens patiently as acadian gypsy recounts life story)
(Justin checks watch once more)
(Litany of self-loathing curses precedes Kate)
(Kate appears around corner sweating profusely)

Justin: Are you okay?
Kate: YES. I AM FINE.
Justin: You sure?
Kate: HELL YES MUTHERF*CKING DAMMIT.
Justin: Um. Okay.
(Justin disappears)
Kate: (shakes fist at the figure of perfection cut by ridiculously gifted boyfriend, mouths F*CK F*CK F*CK F*CK, gulps, spits, plugs one nostril, blows, kicks tree, slaps self, mounts noble steed)

But then, victory: a few years ago, skiing underneath a chair at Whistler/Blackcomb in elephant-snot powder, I managed a few near-graceful turns and the lone passenger above let out a wolf-whistle and yelled NICE! and I promptly faceplanted, rolled over and waved, and he waved back, and I yelled THANKS and blushed for three days.

My legs have always been jello, and never more than post-motherhood. I am a bum—a cranky, lazy, instant-gratification-requiring bum next to Justin’s assertion that this is child’s play. I am invited along to Sugarloaf only for the entertainment of the day-and-a-half mark, at which point I can no longer walk up or down stairs. But those first five runs? Heaven. The wolf-whistle is my handshake drug, my welcome wagon to borderline credibility.

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Two of six seats in a vintage VW van were open for the 30-hour drive to Utah and Justin said but you don’t have a bike and the lightbulb at the top of my 25-year-old head shone like a 25-watt beacon of maturity and I replied hey, the bank just gave me two thousand bucks to pay off my overdrawn visa!

(ed. note: it is completely obnoxious, as it happens, to buy an unearned mountain bike called The Stiffee when the last one you rode featured a banana seat, glitter streamers on the ends of handlebars and playing cards in the spokes.)

On Moab’s Porcupine Rim trail I ran out of air during the three-mile climb and in slow motion, got stuck in my clipless pedals and toppled sideways, bike and all, into what looked like a giant pufferfish. Now you know my sans-undies secret, because my then-boyfriend did the same, and I did what I was told, and look what it got me. Or better put, look what it got every other rider stuck behind me. The ass-gash grew throughout the day, but there was nothing to be done but pedal.

The pufferfish cactus knocked the wind out of me but left me thinking what’s the worst that can happen, other than launching off the edge of a cliff or a compound fracture or knocking out a few front teeth? I mean, really? and so I decided to heed yet another Justinism and forgo the brakes: the faster you go, the more likely the bike will just take you over shit.

On the twelve-mile technical descent I went over my handlebars three times (as per this illustration), once being airborne long enough to note my legs flapping behind me through the wind like wile e. coyote and think It would seem I am no longer attached to the ground, how strange, and it would seem I am flying through the air and I landed headfirst, my helmet lodged firmly between two boulders. I braced my feet against the red rock and pushed to uncork my head and of all things to feel at a time like that: elation.

At the end of that week I was bloody and bruised and burnt to a crisp and if I could bottle the way the trailhead beer felt at the end of each day I’d simultaneously get rich and inspire world peace.

Or to accomplish the same I could just share this view.

(You’re thinking what I’m thinking, yes? Good, clean, nickel-bouncing fun. Go ahead. Grab a handful.)

Check it out I’d said upon arriving back to my cubicle at the software company I worked for, pulling down my shirt and up the hem of my skirt to display a diverse variety of maimed body parts and saying yeah, it’s purple now and it’s going to fall off, but you should have seen it when it was all crusty. It was AWESOME.

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Today’s dive into the basketcase is brought to you by the word YES with a reminder to employ it more often, even if you look like an ass while doing so. And even if a small section of your actual ass is hanging out at the same time you look like an ass in the metaphorical way. Because if you say NO WAY am I letting him see my infected toenails, think of all you might miss.