Underweight benchwarmer admits to steroid use

ASHEVILLE, NC — Though more and more high-profile professional athletes are under the microscope for alleged steroid use, it is arguably more disturbing when a former over-30 B-league soccer player uses performance enhancers – even if it is just to look normal.

35-year-old David Coolidge is not exactly what you would call the finely tuned athlete at 5′9″ and 125 lbs. He’s just a less-than-average Joe in need of professional help – his own personal Brian McNamee – to fight off the old ladies and well-intentioned relatives who insist he needs to pack on a few extra pounds in case he gets really sick one day.

Just making it through each day has become a cumbersome task for Coolidge, a vegetarian, who says the anxiety from being “thin as a rail”(a result of his healthy eating habits) is ruining his life, not to mention hampering his chances of breaking the hallowed records in the Asheville Buncombe Adult Soccer Association.

Coolidge sorrowfully revealed that his cousin Jenny, during a recent family feast, announced to everyone that he looked anorexic and suggested he should “eat a sandwich or two to look more like a man.” Coolidge told SSNN that he could only look down into his genetically modified instant potatoes and pretend that everyone at the table didn’t need to lose 50 lbs or more.

“It’s not politically correct for me to call her a beached whale, even though she’s fatter than Santa after a cookie binge,” said Coolidge, fighting back the tears from his nearly emaciated face. “But it’s perfectly fine for her to tell everyone at the dinner table I have a body like Kate Moss.”

Anne Stemler, a holistic dietitian and psychiatrist, says she is seeing more and more cases just like David’s. “You wouldn’t believe how many of these healthy people have fat-person envy. It’s becoming more acceptable to be fat than thin.”

The constant accusations of performance-reducing drug use – commonly referred to on the street as “the skinny”– finally led Coolidge to try a new, all-natural, soy-based substance not detectable in drug tests or even recognized by Major League Baseball.

“I wasn’t using this stuff to get an edge on anyone, chase Barry Bonds‘ record, or try to pick up Mindy McCready at a skanky karaoke bar,” said Coolidge, while perched upon his chair at a local vegan restaurant, sipping slowly from what he claimed to be “amizake shake” in a bottle. “I just used a very obscure soy shake/flaxseed oil cocktail a couple times last March because I wanted to get back to a weight that my fat Aunt Marie can feel comfortable around.”