To which I muttered, "Fine, I'll get soaked in the name of soccer!" and put on my shoes. I accepted my fate, believing that my fate intended me to get thoroughly and utterly doused between my car and the gym, guaranteeing me a thirty-minute stairmaster stomp with soggy gym socks. (Mmmm, consonance.)
However, Fate is female, and has quite the sense of humor. Yes, she intended me to pick up a good, solid drenching on the way to the gym's front double doors, but there was a reward there for my pains.
There are four televisions in the cardio area of my 'home' gym. The one on the far left is technically closest to the stairmasters, but is difficult to see unless you crane your head back. I was pleased to see when I got in that the match was already on that television, and a couple of regulars (whom, from long observation on my part, I know don't care what's on) were on various other cardio machines.
The stairmaster on the left was taken, and the man who was there was a regular, and clearly engrossed in the match. I asked the gym owner to turn another TV channel for me (because again, I am 5'1" and cannot reach the damn thing). As he did, the man on the stairmaster to my left turned to me with this blinding large smile and said …
"You like ze soccer, yes?" in this blindingly Hot And French accent.
Dammit, I thought. I finally grok the Hot And French thing. I've admired you from afar for how many months and never picked up the Hot And French thing? Kittynitwit, you're slipping… Quick, say something intelligent. Defy the Southern-redneck stereotype. Quick! Do you have ANY soccer knowledge at all? Dammit!
"I'm still trying to figure out how in the world France managed to beat Brazil. Did you see that goal?"
I kid you not, Soccer Guy lights up. It's as if I'm the first person he's met in the past decade who is from the same home planet as him. We talk about the unlikelihood of the French win over Brazil. The woman on the recumbent bike, also a long-term regular, chimes in about that morning's Wimbledon men's final and we talk about how Federer destroyed Nadal, and all the while I'm trying not to glance to my left and telegraph "Oh my God, my hotness just went up at least +4 just because you're talking to me."
It turns out he's from Montreal. To which I said, "How in the world did you end up here?"
His response was fast, full of delightfully oddly accented phrases, and mostly incomprehensible due to the fact that he was practically at a dead run on the stairmaster.
We watched the match, sweating companionably, occasionally commenting.
When stoppage time for the first half ended, he planted his feet with a great sigh and said, "There. I was waiting for that."
I turned, and smiled, and said, "Quick shower, head home, watch the second half?"
He nodded, with a wide, genuine smile. "I like hockey better … but zis will do." He wiped down the machine, gathered his things, and extended his hand. "Your name ees?"
"Amy. Yours?"
[completely incomprehensible syllables with gargled r's galore]
Right. Hot French-Canadian Guy it is.
The wet socks were worth it.
]]>(Worried? See the title of this entry.)
So I'm on the elliptical, and one of the regulars hops on the machine next to me and starts aiming the remote control at the TV in front of us. "I absolutely cannot watch golf while exercising." Amen, sister; it makes me want to shoot myself, too. She flipped from channel to channel, eventually finding the correct channel, only to discover that it was true … there would be no Oprah to watch that day due to the damn golf.
Aside: What the hell is it about Oprah? I don't get it. Yes, the woman's got the on-screen magnetism of a hundred pounds of iron shavings zapped by lightning, but I guess I missed out on the cult membership. These women are devoted. They show up right before Oprah starts, and work out for the entire duration of the show, nodding and smiling along like very cute little suburban puppets. Luckily, they're so busy tuning in that they don't notice that I'm mouthing along with Eminem. It's probably good. They'd probably be offended. After all, most of them like me, because I'm a Good Girl just like them. If only they knew.
So she flips to the Food Network. She turns to me and shrugs and says, "You know, it's kind of like dangling a donut in front of the elliptical. In theory, I think it's supposed to make you want to work harder, but in truth, it just makes me want to go home and eat."
Suddenly, my workout is filled with visions of food. Tasty food. Hmm. I'm doing an überspiffy Italian-style pot roast for the Wednesday night dinner - what was the recipe saying about the varying tenderness of different cuts? Oh, yes, the good adage - the farther from the horn and the hoof you go, the more tender and mild the meat's going to be. This pot roast: untender yet tasty, thus requiring long simmering.
That's when the intracranial conversation jumped off the deep end. So what about animals that don't quite fit that configuration? Take humans, for instance. We're configured a little differently (see also general lack of horns and hooves) - I wonder what the most tender and tasty muscles on a human would be?
At this point, part of me is highly amused, and part of me is recoiling in horror. You know how sometimes you look at the people you meet in this world and think, "They really should be stopped for the good of humanity?" Imagine having that moment with yourself as the subject.
I mean, really. Don't get me wrong, I think some of my friends are tasty, but I can honestly say I've never thought of ANY of them as tasty in the worcestershire-and-a-little-lemon kind of way. Besides, do you realize how difficult it would be to fit a full-grown engineer into an enameled cast-iron stockpot? You think it's hard to wrestle a crab into a stockpot? That's an overgrown bug; imagine trying to wrestle a lid onto something that actually understands calculus!
Hell, I don't even understand calculus. Maybe I should be the one in the pot?
In all seriousness, I wonder which muscles qualify as 'tender' on humans. In even more seriousness, I wonder if I need professional help…but in rock-solid, kiss-your-grandmother-in-church-on-Sunday seriousness, I'm betting everyone who eats my pot roast tonight is gonna give it at least one funny look.
It's cow. I PROMISE…and if any of my friends turn up missing, I didn't have a damn thing to do with it.
]]>I'd realized the shaggy state of my exercise swimsuit while I was in Colorado, and thought that since it was the off-season, I might be able to find a reasonably-priced swimsuit while I was on vacation. This, of course, led to the uttering of the World's Worst Sentence, which I knew better than to say but said anyway:
"How hard can this be?"
I dug around in the apartment until I found a phone book. "Swimwear." Yep, that was easy. Oh, look! A shop that specialized in swimwear, said they had plus sizes (which according to some manufacturers I still wore), and which carried mix-and-match separates? Perfect.
]]>I'd realized the shaggy state of my exercise swimsuit while I was in Colorado, and thought that since it was the off-season, I might be able to find a reasonably-priced swimsuit while I was on vacation. This, of course, led to the uttering of the World's Worst Sentence, which I knew better than to say but said anyway:
"How hard can this be?"
I dug around in the apartment until I found a phone book. "Swimwear." Yep, that was easy. Oh, look! A shop that specialized in swimwear, said they had plus sizes (which according to some manufacturers I still wore), and which carried mix-and-match separates? Perfect.
I called for directions, and was told they even had a sale bin that I could root through to try to find pieces that fit me exactly. So I got in my car and drove. Tiny little shop, not far from the university. Lots of unnaturally-blonde women paying for tanning. Something was not right with this picture, but I wasn't quite sure what.
I found the sale bins, and began to rummage. They were roughly sorted by type of piece, so I methodically sorted each bin, looking for the sizes that I was most likely to be able to wear. Those pieces meeting first muster I sorted by whether they were tops or bottoms. Twenty minutes later, when I was done, I began going through the two stacks to try to match up tops and bottoms to create complete outfits.
By the time it was over, I had a few. Maybe four. They weren't bad. A couple were cute, bordering on hot. I walked up to the girl at the front desk (believe me when I say that she did not have enough years under her belt to qualify being referred to as a 'woman') and asked if I could try on the swimsuits.
She looked at me as if I had a third eye growing out of my forehead. "You know, we don't get asked that question a lot." (Again with the warning bells going off. I really wished someone would shut the silly things off; it was getting hard to hear.)
I tried on the suits one at a time. Didn't like, wrong fit, hey, wait a second…
I stared in the mirror for a moment and realized that I was standing in the world's tiniest dressing room, whose door was held shut only by a proppable wooden gargoyle, and that I was missing something terribly, painfully obvious here. I was standing there in a two-piece swimsuit that didn't quite fit correctly and reached behind me to confirm my suspicions.
Yep. All I had to do was nudge the back clasp of the top half of the swimsuit, and the whole thing practically sprang off of my body. Why would…? It didn't seem sensible to me for a swimsuit to be so easily undone, much less worthwhile. True, I greatly enjoyed visiting with the lifeguards at Dublin Park, but I had trouble believing they wanted to encourage swimming wardrobe malfunctions.
I got dressed, grabbed the handful of Cute Little Swimsuits in my hand, and walked up front to speak with the Resident Blonde. "Hi. I think I've got a bit of a problem here. These seem a little flimsy. I do a lot of lap swimming, and I just don't think these are going to work. Any suggestions?"
She looked at me with one of the most baffled - dare I say dumbfounded? - looks I have received in my entire adult life, and uttered the following words:
"You mean you want to swim in your swimsuit?"
Now, let's just stop right there. Just stop. Stop and think about this, roll it around in your head for a minute or two and consider exactly what the hell is going on in that question. I'll even italicize the appropriate words for those of you who didn't catch it the first time:
"You mean you want to swim in your swimsuit?"
You'll all be pleased to know that I blurted out the one and only POSSIBLE response to her question: "What the hell else would you use a swimsuit for?"
She cocked her head to the side, a motion which I think was supposed to artfully toss her hair over her shoulder, and said, "Well, honestly, most of our customers just buy swimsuits to tan in. I don't think any of them actually swim in them." She turned to the girl working the other register and asked, "So if she wanted to get a swimsuit to actually swim in, where should she go? I know we don't have anything for that."
The other girl suggested a sporting goods store.
I thanked them for their time, politely placed the nonswimmingsuits back in the appropriate bins, and tried to run screaming out of the store without actually running or screaming. Mostly I just mouthed the words "oh my God" over and over.
A week or so later, I bought a real swimsuit -- and yes, my freckly chubby untanned ass actually swims in it. It has an industrial-strength halter top and probably the most conservative, least sexy bottom half you've ever seen, and there's absolutely no way it'll ever unintentionally disgorge 'the girls' during a 45-minute swim, either.
I consider this a good thing.
]]>I was nice about this … for about a week. After that, I realized that a) I was working harder than virtually every other person in that gym, and b) that most people actually did prefer the fans to be turned on while they did their daily workouts. Once I figured that out, I made a point of announcing Very Loudly to the people coming in:
"Don't like the fan? Move to the other side, because it's not getting turned off."
Secretly, I keep hoping someone will challenge me on it, because I know my OK Corral answer already: be at Dublin Park at eleven a.m. tomorrow. We'll do a forty-five minute swim, and then at four-thirty, your ass had better be at the gym, because it's time to do a forty-five minute run at level seven. Oh, and don't mooch off my water bottle, you wanker. Bring your own and shut your whining mouth.
I wont' be quite that ugly about it, even though I'd like to be.
I had one person try to explain to me why it was bad to have a fan on while exercising. As I recall, the answer was this: if the fan is off, she would sweat more, and then she'd lose more weight.
Yeah, and you know what, gym princess? Guess what's coming back the next time you drink a glass of water? Shut up. I don't like you. Do an actual workout for a change.
* * * * *
Gym princesses. Such loathing they inspire in me. Why do people (admittedly, they are overwhelmingly female) buy gym memberships, then come in and waste their time looking cute in expensive clothes while doing nothing of note in them?
I watched one this afternoon, and I admit it - I really wanted to go over to her and talk to her, to ask her what it was, exactly, she thought it was she was accomplishing. She pulled up in a jet-black, buffed-to-the-nines Envoy at the same time I did. She was wearing a close-fitting, long-sleeved, velour top with pants to match.
I was sure that she was going to head to the bathroom to change, but no, she hopped right onto a treadmill and proceeded to do a glacially slow walk for thirty minutes.
Had she ever managed to work up a sweat, it would have shown through the velour, because honey, it didn't leave much to the imagination. Instead, when she got off the treadmill, it was the exact same color as it was when she got in. She had, essentially, wasted thirty minutes of her life, but her hair hadn't moved an inch, so I guess it was all for the best.
* * * * *
On the flip side, though, I've begun developing serious amounts of respect for some of the people I see in the gym every day. There's Lisa, who is about my height but Jessica-slender, who is the only woman I've encountered in this gym who works harder than I do. I later found out she's on the tail end of the process that I'm only halfway through; she's lost just over forty pounds, feels that she is done, and has moved from weight loss to weight maintenance.
She gets grumpy when the fans get turned off, too.
There's the woman whose name I don't know, who comes in several days a week, pushes her hair out of her eyes with an elastic sweatband, and runs for forty-five minutes. No walking. She gets on the treadmill, jogs for a minute or two to warm up, and then she exorcises every demon in a three-mile radius by running.
I look at her and I think, in a year, I'm gonna be you.
There's the guy who looks like Dick Cheney, who doesn't move terribly fast but puts in a slow, steady, and hard workout every time he's there. He never says anything to anyone, just puts on his headphones and watches Fox News while he works out.
There's the thirtyish fellow with close-cut brown hair who runs with the most effortless stride I've ever seen. I don't have a name for him, but mentally I refer to him as "the guy who shames me every time I come in." I say it with a laugh, but it's become my mental tag for him. I'd love to know how long he runs, but I know that it's over forty-five minutes, because he's one of the few people who will be on a machine when I get in, and who will still be on it when I haul my dripping self home.
The serious ones don't talk much. I've gotten the impression that most of us use our gym time to burn off the frustration of our day, or as quiet time alone with our thoughts. I've done both. There's something inherently clean and simple about sublimating thought and worry through physical exertion; I just hate that it took me this many years of my life to figure it out.
]]>"Rub it?" I asked Jeff, hopefully. "Not like scritchies, but real massage work?"
From the master bedroom, he nodded. I picked up the nearest bottle of massage lotion and thought for a moment how much my life has changed in the past six months; my now-life dictates keeping a few bottles of massage lotion in different rooms around the house, because there's no telling when or where a sore muscle might strike.
"Which side of the bed? You're right-handed, and the sore muscle is on my right side…" I looked up and realized that Jeff was giving me his 'That's-too-much-information' look. I shrugged, took off my shirt, unhooked my bra, and lay down on the guest bed.
"Where's it at?" His hands, dry, pressed slowly down my back.
]]>"Rub it?" I asked Jeff, hopefully. "Not like scritchies, but real massage work?"
From the master bedroom, he nodded. I picked up the nearest bottle of massage lotion and thought for a moment how much my life has changed in the past six months; my now-life dictates keeping a few bottles of massage lotion in different rooms around the house, because there's no telling when or where a sore muscle might strike.
"Which side of the bed? You're right-handed, and the sore muscle is on my right side…" I looked up and realized that Jeff was giving me his 'That's-too-much-information' look. I shrugged, took off my shirt, unhooked my bra, and lay down on the guest bed.
"Where's it at?" His hands, dry, pressed slowly down my back.
"That's the right area. Move a bit further out from the spine - up just a little - ow! Not so hard! You'll have to ease into that much pressure. I can't take that all at once." His hands eased, and began massaging the sore spot, first dry, then with a bit of the massage lotion.
With time, and gentleness, the clenched muscle began to relax. He began to sweep his hands up and down my back, gently, fingers splayed, thumbs following spine; my mind drifting gratefully toward thoughts of sleep, comfort, other nights like this.
He drew his hands down around my waist, momentarily curling his fingers around my waistline, and I remembered.
* * * * *
I had been lying on my side, a slight glow, a slight sweat, emanating from my skin. We were both blue-eyed and blind, our glasses guarding our respective nightstands, our eyes seeing only degrees of shadows. He brushed the hair away from my face and trailed the hand down my body, coming to rest at the notch between rib cage and hipbone.
"I like this. It wasn't here before." He traced it, gently, letting his fingers tell me in the darkened room of the curves: inward from rib cage, outward again at hipbone.
"That wasn't there before. I like it."
* * * * *
I felt the bedspread rasp against my lips as I smiled. He continued stroking his hands down my back; up, down, up, down. I remembered comments of friends hugged, and wondered if they were true.
"Does it feel different to you? Look different?"
"With your arms up, like they are now, it's hard to tell. When they're down, though…yes."
I know the internal answer, but I'm not always sure of the external answer. I can feel the changes in me, an awareness of muscles growing and strengthened, but I'm not sure how much of that translates into changes visible to others.
In the mirror I catch glimpses of it. A stretch in front of the mirror unwittingly shadows unfamiliar curves. Where there was once round, and pudge-there is, admittedly, still so-but less of it, now beginning to share center stage with what this body must look like without it: the swell of breast, a noticeable dip at waist, the flare of hips.
He trailed his hands down my back, spread them softly against the sides of my rib cage, and squeezed gently; a hug in another guise. "Better?" he asked.
"Yes. Thank you."
We were once described as violinesque, and I cannot argue. I've been called far worse.
]]>After speaking with her again, Val has cleared me to do cardio work this week. I'm to do no weightlifting for the next eight days, though. Let the healing and rest commence.
Me, I know that I showered this morning, and that my clothes were washed just last night, and the only thing untoward that might be in that sweat is a couple of bits of kitty fur lovingly mixed in by Edmund and Tenzing during this morning's cuddle session.
It's even uncaffeinated sweat. Take that! How many of you can say that?
So, Unwritten Rule #1 is to check the seat and back of any machine you've just used, and to wipe them down if necessary. Don't trust that evaporation will take care of the problem while you sidle away. The gym gods see you. Don't even think that pesky abdominal strain was anything but divine retribution. You know better.
In no way whatsoever does that bring us to Rule #2. Rule #2 is regarding the gift of your presence. While we-the-management do not endorse the idea of gym burqas, due to the possibility of injury and the probability of increased laundry levels, occasionally we indulge the whim and imagine some of our fellow gym members carefully swathed in clothing that actually conceals.
While the No Flashdance sign is lit, please refrain from cutting off your sleeves and scissoring in new, more 'aerodynamic' necklines into your t-shirts. Your frequent posing in front of the mirror has confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that yes, you are overly impressed with the hyperinflated state of your arms and chest. However, for the sake of those of us who are trying to perform regular exercise breathing, please stop preening so we can stop choking back our laughter.
Don't even try to tell us that you can't work out "with that much clothing on." Please. As soon as we time-travel back to ancient Greece for a sprightly morning of naked co-ed wrestling, I'll buy that argument. Women work out every day in more clothing than you're wearing, boy, and we aren't 'hampered.' Quit your whining.
Rule number three comes to us from Misty: despite what your mirror tells you, you are not the fattest person at the gym. There's always someone bigger than you. Don't believe me? Keep doing daily workouts for a month. There will be a day when the double doors will swing wide, you'll look up from your cardio work, and you'll know - just know! - that you were crazy to doubt me.
Try not to fall over from the force of the realization. I don't have exercise liability insurance. Your injuries are your own fault.
Rule #4: No grunting! Not only are you impinging on Monica Seles' very legal patent, you are making our ears bleed. By all means, make manly heaves of exertion. Breathe hard. Whimper a little. Turn red. Make horrid faces. Don't perform grunts worthy of a champion weightlifter while slapping a couple of dumbbells around. It's like spitting: if it were really and truly necessary, you'd see women doing it too.
I'd hate to have to get grumpy, y'know.
]]>