I think about a lot of different things while I’m at the gym. On the elliptical machine I don’t think at all, I read. I’m currently reading Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Sufficiently dry NOT to demand I continue reading once I’m off the machine, but interesting enough to keep my mind off the time passing.
I think when I get to the weight room. I notice things. I notice that the skinniest, oldest trainer has really fat clients. I hear them whine about why they can’t lose weight or about their job or about other things in their life. This trainer is upbeat, as they all must be, but it never bothered me until she asked if the book I was reading was the Bible. GOD, no! Best book ever, she claims. I mumble something blasphemous to her retreating back. She’s forever pegged in my mind now as a person who probably has few interests extending beyond church, pets and health. Not bad interests but SO not mine. Of course she’s so skinny and skin saggy that she looks 70 and may be that too!
I notice the guy obsessively trying to get more guys into the Basketball court so he/they can play a game. He’ll work a machine idly and then walk about looking for the arrival of the other regulars that sometimes play. He only does this when not enough people show up. He reminds me of a wiry haired eager dog, ’cause his hair’s a bit scraggy and he’s old looking.
There are a lot of elder guys and young arrogant Armenian guys… young and old. There’s even 1 couple who comes. She works with the trainer although HE’S the one who needs it! (Men with big guts should have to wear a band around their middle with a rod sticking straight up to their noses so they can SEE it!)
Anyway, different regulars come and go on different days and some come every day.
Last week I beat a guy to the drinking fountain with a fun smile and a few quick steps. He said something I barely caught but smiled at my implied joke. He wore a blue hat and I spent some time on a machine wondering why you would work out at the gym and wear a blue baseball hat. Are the fluorescent lights that bright? (What, you’re a vampire?) Need it to keep the hair out of your eyes? (It looks short to me.) Are you balding and embarrassed? (Have you seen the people here?) I toyed with the idea of asking and played out the fun of the conversation in my imagination just to pass the time.
Today I was working an arm machine and as I sat down I noticed Blue Hat was working the machine directly facing me. And it was a machine where he was facing me, not facing the mirror like all the others in that row. No problem, he was concentrating and his eyes were hidden by his hat. I was concentrating on my own workout.
Then he finished his set and moved to the space between his machine and the next one. He dropped to the floor and did push-ups. And everything in my body lit up. My buried Cat was mentally bouncing in her seat purring at the sight.
You see, arms and chests are my big switch. Blue Hat was very nicely muscled and his baggy workout pants and shirt don’t show much. Not like the tight white t-shirts of the young Armenian boys. Or the 1970’s gym outfit of the “I wish Disco would come back” old guy who thinks he’s a player. But to have a nicely built, not bad looking, man drop to the floor practically at my feet and do push-ups for me left me speechless.
I was deer-in-the-headlights riveted on him. For the first time at the gym I had to seriously look away and close my eyes for a work out. I wasn’t embarrassed, there was no room in my mind for THAT emotion. And I don’t really care if other people saw me staring at a guy while I work out because I do that ALL the time. But I didn’t want him to see the naked lust in my eyes if he looked up.
I finished my set and when I opened my eyes he had his back to me stretching his arms. He stretches A LOT. I’ve seen him work the quadriceps machine then step off, plant his feet flat on the ground and bend over to lay his palms on the floor in front of him. “Wow, is he limber,” I remember thinking when I first saw him do that.
Oooooo… he doesn’t wear a wedding band.