Gym? What’s a gym?
I’m reading the comments over at Jezebel about what it’s like for people to exercise at a gym, and I’m extremely tickled. I have no idea what they’re talking about, except I do when I think about how I feel when I’m not at the gym. If the whole world were a gym, I would be CEO of everything and everyone.
I joined my first gym in the summer of 2004. I had just moved into my first, off-campus apartment, had landed my first full-time job, and was boyfriendless for the first time since puberty, so when I found a flier for Gold’s Gym rubber-banded to my doorknob, it was on.
I was already committed to join this particular gym because I had heard it had a pool. This gym was also on the way home from work. The flier, with its USC summer discount promotion coupon (which I didn’t immediately mention to “Jose”, my Gold’s Gym account guy), was a mere super-bonus.
Several things, before I go on. The first is that I’ve always been super comfortable with my body. That’s one truism that transcends the magic that occurs for me at gyms. I think bodies are hilarious and a lot of fun, but also incredibly boring with their normalcy and dailyness. I don’t laugh at fart jokes (oh, everyone endeavors to poop on a regular basis, yawn), but if one were to dress like Borat in a man-kini or spend a couple hours just on foreplay, then one is a person worth knowing. I mention this because gyms are places where bodies effort in boring and awkward ways. Bodies send blood to faces when the heart is strained, bodies push sweat through thousands of pores which then can smell or stain, and the extent of a lungs’ capabilities registers immediately, whether through perfect form or the fact that one fainted. There is no hiding from or muting your body. These processes seem so utterly and unfortunately normal that they have never kept me from running, swimming, or Jazzercising as fast as possible.
Which brings me to the second thing: the nude body. The naked human being can embody everything from shame to art, which I find hilarious, because it actually and only literally embodies selves. Everything beyond that is purely cerebral or poetry or cause for social construct or projection. The irony is mostly a great source of amusement for me. That’s why the only thing that’s scary about a locker room for me is having my shit stolen.
The issue of nakedness is one that goes hand in hand with the vulnerability that people feel when they enter a gym, whether it is a new gym or familiar one. I’m writing only from a point of observation when I say this, because the only thing I’ve ever felt when walking into a gym is: I’m home. Everyone feels as self-conscious and shy and un-adaptable as I feel everyday. Everyone is watching each other, as ardently as they’re watching their own gestures, whereas I can, for once, concentrate on how fast I can run before I feel like throwing up.
If I don’t know where something is, I like to (remind the staff they are working and) ask and be shown where that thing is. I’ll just go right ahead and sit in the sauna/steam room/hot tub for hours, I don’t give a fuck. You have classes/trainers to woo me? Don’t mind if I do! In fact, and I don’t know where this comes from, but the only time I ever negotiated on anything was on my gym monthly payment. I literally walked away, until “Jose” chased me down the hall and, miraculously, discovered a way to waive a lot of fees here and there. (Knowledge is power.)
I come from a family that emigrated from a third world country. Health is still a luxury; as a concept to me, and as a reality for those I know share my name. Indeed, the need to climb on a treadmill to burn energy is one that I only acquiered in my later adolescence, when I went to a boarding school in Michigan and found that the only way to feel normal in below zero weather was to move a little bit. When I look back on it I find it pretty amazing that I was even willing to hop on that little machine every evening even when that little machine was placed right on a major hallway that was frequented by students and faculty heading to and fro, everyday, all the time (24/7). After 3 p.m, and before curfew, anyone could come down those halls. Maybe that’s why I’ll wear anything to the gym. Stella McCartney for Adidas or threadbare clothes for Goodwill, it’s all good.
But I guess when it comes down to it, it’s all about the fight to attain equilibrium. I feel miniscule and immobile and confused always, all of the time, but an inexplicable drive leads me to stretch my gym hours, to as many (as four) hours at a time, and during those hours, I literally WILL challenge you to a fight to the death. If the gym is everything opposite of what I hold to be true all of the time, then it would only make sense that others approach it as a place where your brain could fail you, as a place where your body will deceive your flaws and your emotions. You’ll go, but it won’t be pretty, whereas I approach life as a place where what I say and think will never be pretty.
But the gym? I go, and when I do I’m expecting everyone to be harmoniously unattentive as I am to others, struggling to only impress themselves. We can be all shaky and depleted of energy and about to pass out in front of each other, but ultimately can we survive the innerness? For example: Did I run a mile faster than yesterday? Check. Do my work clothes fit better? Check. Am I cool with myself? Checkcheck.
That’s what I’m talking about.
