The Gym Is A Dreaded Place Of Sweaty Self Loathing And Lifeless Conversation
By Matt Staff
The gym. A circus of self-improvement, filled with sweaty individuals fueled by the fires of self-loathing and others judgments.
The place, it’s a concert of dissatisfied patrons laid before a dying symphony of oblivious spectators; they, the gym-rats, they are all in this gym left silently arguing to best one another in the pursuit for realized glories, toned arms, thinner faces, slimmer waists.
Everyone’s caught up in how they look; yet no one-NO ONE- wants to be seen, and the collective act, the painful irony can drive man sick of thought with ALL of it.
Me the weary spectator. Me the sleuth surrounded by rabbits wearing spandex and fast drying workout attire, and small forced grins.
Invisibility is the gym-goer’s preferred state of occupation, as if the directed gaze of another is a burn upon the other gym goer’s flexed backside; the gym’s this damned smiling, sweaty, uncomfortably exposed mess.
Blue and green and off-colored white and marbled gray and black spandex,
an assortment of loud colors for a room painted with colorless conversation.
An environment numbed to the discourse of primal action..
run,
lift, breathe!
sweat,
wipe sweat, crease your forehead in response,
eyes burn with sweat,
fuck this!
grunt yourself encouraged!
come now, don’t forget to breathe. Breath!
I’m on a yoga mat, and I’m content to sit on this yoga mat ‘till my legs quit their pained whining, their burnings, and ‘till my ass no longer feels as if it’ll up ‘n fall off, or melt, or fucking die.
That’d be something. Wouldn’t it. My ass melting. My ass dying.
Can an ass die? Yes. We all die.
Living is dying. Life, the bastard.
I look around the gym.
There’s a girl with black hair so dark it shines, and tired blue eyes like shallow pools, and a small button nose that’s a pleasant pink, and a scowl she must wear more often than a smile, and loose poorly shaped knees.
There’s a dude with a grossly broad back. The broad back walks to and fro with a kingly, confident stride that thunders purpose. the bastard. I hated the broad bastard and I respected the broad bastard.
Curse the gym and her unfailing ability to remind me my weakness of strength, and her unwavering ability to remind me my weakness of will to change a damn thing about my weakness of strength.
Dammit all.
Dammit all.
Damn him, damn me, damn them.
I’ll forego the gym, and instead head to a joint with outdoor seating, preferably a patio that looks out on a horizon of hazy nothing. there, at that joint, I’ll have a tall cold beer, and I’ll have a burger with grilled onions that melt on my tongue like caramel held next to a flame,
and I’ll have a hundred golden fries, me,
me the fella fat with weakness and skinned of fortitude.