Gymrats

By a/k/a Simon
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One of the resolutions I made this year was to get in shape and stay in shape. I found out that my current gym membership runs out on Friday, May 16th. That gave me four and a half months to lose the twenty-five extra pounds or, at the very least, turn the majority of it into muscle. Despite the fact that my promising start of altering my diet has now sunk back to the lows of ordering too much take out and eating entire bags of Pepperidge Farm Double Chocolate Milanos, I’m still managing to get to the gym on a fairly regular basis. And anybody who’s been to a gym more than once will tell you it’s one hell of an freakish sociological tide pool.

Warm Up
Eight a.m. and the alarm goes off. It’s Howard again. I’m tired and I’m thinking about going back to sleep for another couple hours. But I decide to wait and leave the radio on because I know what the outcome will be. Ten minutes of blinking in and out of consciousness and finally the inevitable happens. I swear, Howard Stern hasn’t come up with a new idea since he first thought of having chicks get naked on a radio show. After too much testosterone-fueled ogling and drooling coming through the speaker I get up and ready for the gym.

I used to bring music, maybe a little Foo Fighters or Andrew W.K. to motivate me through my opening round of cardio. But I found that it wasn’t enough to occupy my mind and batteries are a luxury I can’t really afford anymore. So now it’s books. I just finished a decent book on the historical life of the Biblical King David. Now I’m onto a recent John Irving novel called The Fourth Hand. The back copy says it’s about a guy who has a hand transplant and the wife of the donor demands visitation rights. Sounds right up my alley.

Synergy is two long avenues down and four streets over from my apartment. As I swipe my ID on entry, The Natural is sitting behind the desk and greets me with his heavy (Latin maybe) accent. I call him The Natural because he has an almost-fro. During the warmer months he stands out on the sidewalk asking people if they’d like trial memberships. I don’t think anybody understands what he’s saying. He’s asked me a good dozen times in the eight months I’ve been going there and he still doesn’t recognize my face. He’s always very stylishly dressed and wandering around the gym. I never see him working out. The owner’s relative perhaps?

A short, middle-aged Greek guy in his briefs says hi to me like we’re best friends as I look for an empty locker. The Roto-rooter man is snaking the toilets in the bathroom half of the men’s locker room. For the last month the women’s locker room has been sealed up due to other plumbing troubles. So far I have yet to ever see this place operating at one hundred percent.

I slip into my polyester work out clothes, t-shirt and shorts, which I picked out specifically because they make me look terrible. There are mirrors everywhere around the gym and I figure a glimpse of myself will trigger such self-loathing that I can’t help but be spurred to push harder. "Come on! Push yourself you fat bastard!" I play the mental game.

My favorite elliptical machine is open at the end of the row, in the back, with the mirror to my right. I set it for a half-hour on level ten (of twenty). Maybe a quarter of the way through this hoochie walks by dressed in tight black stretch pants and a thin, off-white tank top with nothing underneath. Already this would be a problem, I would think. But compound this with the fact that she’s got at least a pair of D’s going on under that slip of clothe, plus the largest, most perpetually erect nipples I’ve maybe ever seen, and I would think she’d want to reconsider her workout attire. Doesn’t seem to bother her, though, so I do my best to ignore her.

OKAY! Fine! So I do my best to sneak as many peeks as possible without getting caught. Oh, like you wouldn’t do the same. Now that I think about it, Peaks is a good nickname for her.

Just after ten minutes and I start to hit the wall. I catch my first glimpse of the skinny Asian guy who works at the gym, which is to say his job is pretty much to wipe the sweat off the machines. I wonder if he knew as a kid what his future held. Whenever I feel bad about being unemployed or my book not being sold yet I should remind myself that at least I’m not cleaning ass sweat off the Dorsi-Flexor for a living. Just after ten minutes a little bit of adrenaline kicks in and helps me through to the end. So far the main character of the novel hasn’t even lost his hand. But he’s had some sex with a German chick, so it’s worth continuing.

Stretch
Next up on the routine are abs. I always start with that thing where you hang in a standing position and lift your knees to your stomach. Not sure what that particular piece of equipment is called but I know when I get there The Natural is leaning against it as he talks to two other guys who are actually working out nearby. I say excuse me, signaling that I want to use the thing. The Natural gives me a, "oh, sure buddy," shifts his position slightly, but still manages to be leaning all over the thing. Finally I decide to stop being polite and just mount the contraption. I’ve just come from thirty minutes of intense cardio. Sweaty? I think so. And The Natural decides he doesn’t want his nice, black tweed overcoat to be tainted with the perspiration of the likes me. I get the lifty-knees-crunchy-thing all to myself and The Natural heads on his way.

While lifting my knees on the second set, Peaks comes walking into the ab area, her shirt slightly dampened by her own cardio workout. There’s a good ten feet between the thing I’m on and the mirror I see myself reflected in. Peaks decides to use this space, out of all the available space around, to do her stretching exercises. Specifically, she spends a lot of time bending over to touch her toes. As she bends each time she has to hold one arm over her breasts or else they’ll fall forward and bounce off her chin. I wonder if I should introduce her to the idea of a ‘foundation garment’. Now, there’s a good a possibility that she’s doing this all for me. But the entire show is just too funny for me to consider it anything but comedy. On top of that, as she bends over I see a thin, zigzagging tattoo line wrapping around her midriff. I’m not opposed to tattoos in general, but I am seriously turned off by shitty quality in ill-chosen locations. And hers were about as bad as you can get. As the cake topper, when she stood up from one of her stretches I happened to catch a glimpse at her face. Let’s just say I thought about introducing her to another widely used modern product: Clearasil.

Hey, I’m not buff. The pecking order at the gym only allows me to make fun of either the super-fat or the facially unfortunate.

Peaks fails at whatever she may have been attempting and I head into the room where they hold aerobics classes, which is empty at this time of day, to do my own stretching. While in there, attempting my Downward Facing Dog, the guy in the other corner of the room is very verbal with his actions. Every move solicits a loud grunt or other such guttural expression of his discomfort. I wonder if he’s really in pain or if he didn’t read the Beginners Pilates manual properly. Or maybe he’s just shitting himself. I real hope that isn’t the case.

Strength Training
Finally I get to weights, my favorite part of my day at the gym. According to Workouts For Dummies, my body type is meso-endo, which means I should focus more on cardio because I tend to build bulk fairly easy but have a hard time with tone. So I do forty-five minutes total on the elliptical machine and the stationery bike and only about a half-hour on the weights. The ten-minute walk to and from the place also factors in somewhere. And yet I’m still a pudgy fucker.

Today I want to do legs, but a group of tiny Mexicans are occupying all the good leg machines. Okay, so it’s their gym too and I got there after them. But these hombres aren’t even really working out. There’s a gang of about five of them and they’re holding up the machines while they test to see how strong each other is. On the Leg Press they start with a forty-five pound weight on each side. Each does one rep (can it be called a rep when there’s only one?) and then they add ninety more pounds. This goes on until you’ve got five little almost-midgets pressing over six hundred pounds each to the cheers of their friends. Why the hell does anyone need to be able to press more than a quarter ton ONCE with their legs? Why don’t they just get a ruler, go in the locker room and compare cock size and get it over with. At least then the machines would be free for the people who want to use them correctly.

So I decide to do chest and triceps instead. As I head over to the Chest Press I’m almost knocked over by a bronzed, slick form with a ponytail trailing after it. I whirl around and focus to see what it is. I name him K-Y, based on a comment Moby had made about what substance the guy probably sweats. This is the quintessential gymrat hopped up on Ephedra. His body is the closest thing to what modern society considers perfection. He has the best workout clothes money can buy. His hair is just so pretty. And he doesn’t stop for a second between exercises because he’s so amped on narcissism that he doesn’t dare take a break or his beauty may get away from him. I watch him do a set of dumbbell curls. Before the weight hits the floor after the last rep he darts across the room to do a set of shoulder flies. They say to rest thirty seconds to a minute between each set. But don’t they realize how much more body fat you could be burning if you used that minute to alternate with a different muscle group? There is a word that comes to my mind and it is ‘obsession’. This is a man who experiences his happiest moments of the day in the gym. I’ve come in at all times and he’s always there. I suspect he has a cot in the office to sleep on. But only fifteen minutes naps every three hours. Time spent sleeping is time that could be spent pumping iron.

Four sets on the Chest Press and I move to the machine right next to it, the Incline Chest Press. Rep five of my first set and a familiar face sits down next to me at the machine I was just on. I finish my set and catch Peaks out of the corner of my eye. She raises and lowers the handgrips, every time she returns to the start position her breasts separate and her nipples point out in perpendicular directions. All I can think of is the Scarecrow. "Some people go this way, but some others go that way." If she only had a brain…

Nearby two women, each pushing the three hundred-pound mark, are bitching loudly because the personal trainer they hired is making them do exercises they find difficult. Yeah, ladies, it’s called WORKING out. It’s not like EATING out. Don’t pay the man to do his job and then bitch because thirty years of Supersizing your Big Mac Value Meal made your ass the size of Mayor McCheese’s head.

I do my tricep exercises at the dumbbell rack as K-Y bounces in and out between sets. I see Peaks putting a jacket on across the room in the reflection of a mirror. The Mexicans have moved on to the Squat Press. The Asian dude is wiping down the machines the Mexicans just vacated. The Natural is nowhere to be found. t.A.T.u is playing on the radio. "I have lost my mind."

Cool Down
To end things I hop on the stationery bike for fifteen minutes, again breaking out the John Irving novel to entertain my brain. Within two minutes of cycling to nowhere I find myself between bookends of stench. To my right is an old guy, obviously supposed to be doing some physical training to help whatever he carries a cane for. Also obvious is that he isn’t nearly as jazzed about the idea as K-Y and that he hasn’t showered in quite some time. Maybe he remembers the Depression and still thinks bathing on a regular basis is a luxury. On my left is an over three hundred-pound guy pedaling his ass off. Naturally it has to be at the end of his workout as well, and along with his muscles he’s worked up one righteous funk. I endure as the main character loses his hand and I realize my situation could be worse.

The cute blonde is on duty now behind the sign-in counter and wishes me well as I head out. I get home and peel my rank gym clothes off of me as I head into the shower. After that I cook up a healthy plate of broiled chicken, black beans, and a vegetable mix (corn, peas, green beans, broccoli). This is a Monday. By Wednesday I’ll be ordering a PuPu Platter, two quesadillas, and an order of nachos from the Chinese/Mexican delivery place around the corner and eating all of it in one sitting. So much for weight loss.

From The Monkey House
a/k/a Simon
Feel the burn

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