I've posed this question to my spouse and two of my friends, but I'll pose it to you, gentle reader: what is it about a woman doing a bench press that fascinates men to no end? I do a lot of weight-bearing exercises in the gym (as Jody, who tagged along during Friday's workout, can attest) but nothing gets a raised eyebrow quite like a girl making nice with a bench press.

Thirty-five pound plates on each side. Forty-five pounds from the bar. Gotta count the bar, baby; it doesn't float. A total of 115 pounds; enough so that it smells a lot more like cold metal than chopped liver.

Still, it's hard not to look at some of the men whom I see in the gym almost every day, and compare my weightlifting ability unfavorably. The truth is that while I know I'm not the first woman in the world to do a bench press (bless Krista of stumptuous.com for her funny and honest weightlifting-for-women site, which reminds me of that fact) it's hard to judge how I'm doing when I don't have anyone to compare myself to.

Then I remind myself: not only am I female, I'm only an inch and a half over five feet tall. Silly girl! The only thing I can do is aspire to the best that I'm capable of being. Ignore the boys. They're on a different playing field altogether.

So I get in the gym, and three days a week, I look at my little list and plate up whatever's the right number for me. I don't always know how those numbers stack up against the numbers of others, and usually, if it's a good day, my desire to finish the next exercise trumps my nosiness about how much weight the guy next to me is pushing.

Except today.

That damn bench press pissed me off. 115 pounds is right on the max of what I'm capable of lifting ten times. I barely did it on Friday, and I wasn't sure how much of today's work would be 'barely' and how much would be 'did it.' I managed nine unassisted reps on the first set, did the first set of the next three exercises, and came back to the bench, flat pissed. That stupid bench had beaten me, and I didn't like it one bit. I knew I was capable of doing those reps, and I hated being beaten.

I chatted with my spotter for a minute or two—he's someone I've worked with before, and like—and got started. I did the ten. Nine out of muscle, one out of mean. I sat up, took a drink of water, thanked my spotter and raised my eyes—

—to see someone who could only be described as an Enormous Muscled Black Man™ standing about three feet from me. I kid you not, this man earned every capital letter and the little trademark symbol. Maybe an extra © and ® for good measure, too. I suspected that if I stood next to him, my head would hit somewhere between his waist and his chest.

He looked at me.

He looked back at the bar.

He looked back at me…and raised his eyebrows.

"Daa-yum. I know men who can't do that." He shook his head once, smiled to himself, and walked off.

Okay, so I levitated. Just a little, and only when no one else was looking.

It's a southern-drawl thing. There's the word "damn." One syllable, right? Not necessarily. Depends on how much emotion you're trying to convey. Want to throw in a little more? Make it two: "daaaaaaaa-yum." Want 'em to know you're really, really serious? Make it three! It's a little more difficult to transcribe, but it's best described as "duh-aaaaaaaaaaa-yum."

Why, yes, I do speak with an accent that makes it possible to turn a four-letter, one-vowel word into three syllables.

It's an art form. Really. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try that levitating thing again. It was pretty nifty.