A Writer Goes to the Gym

The sun is rising, my dog starts to stir and stare at me, I open my eyes.

I take a trip to the bathroom and then let the dog out for his turn because I believe whole-heartedly in the directive to put on your oxygen mask before helping others and also I really have to pee, so.

I let the dog back inside and quietly berate myself for not having written anything yet, what with my eyes open and one basic need met and all.

My partner asks if I want to go to the gym and I do not, because I’ve never wanted to go to the gym in my life, but then I remember that three weeks ago I went and felt much calmer and my bones were less crunchy and my creativity was brighter and more accessible and my self critic was delightfully quieter.

So I say yes, I would love to go to the gym.

I pack my bag with a water bottle and the noise cancelling headphones that I like to wear and sometimes even turn on. That is, if I can decide on a music playlist that transports me into a very specific zone, does not annoy me, and uses the words “hoe” and “bish” with purpose and not just because they are one-syllable words that fit in the empty spaces that the artist is not artistic enough to fill any other way.

I usually land on Mr. Mathers because he is a wizard of rap prose even though he makes an incredibly upsetting loogie hocking noise in too many songs and also used to hit his girlfriend.

I arrive at the gym, lock my baggage in a locker (wishing I could lock away all of it), put my headphones in, and walk out of the locker room, doing my best to ignore the woman stretching her hammies on the sink counter. The counter of sinks. For hand washing.

I inhale and exhale and try to quiet the voice in my head that is yelling in angst, people are idiots, and scroll through Apple Music until I select a playlist that looks good, but turns out I don’t like that one, so I choose another.

I walk to the center turf area of the gym for itchy stretching because I guess if you are too comfortable, you will not burn any calories on all the muscle-specific equipment they prefer you to use? I choose a third playlist because I don’t know who is Lil Durk or Lil Baby or XL Chamonoix which yes, I made up, because if I can’t picture my 15 year-old self grinding to a song then it isn’t a jam enough to motivate me to want to sweat.

I catch a glimpse of Jorts Guy out of the corner of my eye and feel a surge of annoyance that his apparel choice was not a one-off incident in which he forgot his actual exercise shorts that one time. No, this man has worn jorts every time I’ve been at the gym (over or under twice a month thank you very much) which is too frequent for this behavior.

I lean forward into my seated butterfly stretch and try to avoid eye contact with the man doing crunches at me 10 feet away.

In my scan for neutral gazing territory, I land on a man in a brown toupee that is so distinctly brown, it looks as if it has been glued to his head and lacquered with spray paint*. (*See also: Am I an asshole? Yes, it appears that I am.) This man is wearing actual gym clothes, kudos to him, but is at serious risk of a Giuliani dye drip at any moment.

Is there no peace???

I decide to “do legs,” because I know how to use my legs as well as the machines that work them and as a miraculous bonus, these machines are unoccupied.

I do the leg extension machine first, skip three meh songs by tapping the tiniest arrow icon on my watch and feel winded after two sets. I check my heart rate by tapping another elvishly tiny heart icon on my watch, and see that it is 141 bpm. I curse my body for being so dramatic even when I skip the morning coffee that brings me joy.

I then move to the leg curl machine, which is next to the one I was just using, so the commute is blessedly short. I set all the doodads to my height and strength ability and take a seat. My eyes glance ahead and catch a glimpse of a man using an abdominal machine incorrectly, another man barefoot but with socks on (to make it worse? Better?), and a woman in full makeup with her hair down.

I consider using my machine with my eyes closed, but remember that my homeostasis is delicate and I get dizzy under almost any circumstance and also do not want to look like I am in distress to give any of these winners an excuse to even think about talking to me.

I get through a set with my eyes regrettably open, and my partner takes a seat on the machine next to me and asks me how it’s going. I raise my eyebrows and give a thumbs up in response, shoving down the urge to gesture around wildly because is he kidding???

I finish another set, dismount, then make my way to the treadmills to walk on an incline like the lazy, easily distracted homebody that I am. I consider getting off the treadmill nearly the second I’m on it so that I don’t have to be subjected to the TV screens on the row of bikes in front of me that are all on a news channel, many of them Fox “News.” I decide I’d rather be a little bit fat than exposed to the hell that is current events at all hours of the day, so I walk for five minutes on my treadmill and head back to the turf area to do pushups and crunches like I’m back in middle school gym class.

I take a break from crunches and look up to see that a Zumba class has begun in the studio just past the turf (enclosed by glass because why would it have normal doors?) I see the full make-up lady in the front row shimmying away, and several women in the back half jiving in semi-suppressed motion which seems to say, “I’m here but I’m not here please don’t look at me.”

I see a woman who appears to be one of my coworkers in the middle of the group, stepping and dancing away as if she were a weekly attendee or enthusiastically leading the Cha Cha slide at her best friend’s wedding. She looks happy and in her element. I want desperately to know what it feels like.

My boyfriend sends me a text to let me know he is almost done and I send a thank-you prayer up to the heavens in response. We pack up our things to head home. He asks me how my workout was and I say, “Good!” as if I had a plan in the first place and enjoyed myself the whole time.

I sip my water on the way home and try to imagine how rich I’d have to be to buy equipment for a home gym so that I don’t have to subject myself to this experience again when he asks me to join him eleven days from now. Then I sigh and know in my bones that any Peloton I purchase would transition slowly into a drying rack within three weeks and I’d still be soft and easily annoyed and prefer to live in my head anyway.

It’s way more fun up here than in this flimsy-limbed meat escort for my brain and soul that runs exclusively on caffeine and Advil and gummy vitamins.

But then again, I could use another drying rack.

Yours,

Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia