Gym Rat

Things were slow at the gym and when I say slow I mean grapes turning into wine slow. I had three new clients that had signed up to take advantage of their free training sessions-- which are given to each new member that joins the gym--and they hadn’t shown up. This was common. The word free somehow fixed in their minds that punctuality and even showing up were optional. They didn’t for one moment consider that I might have better things to do than wait for them to get up the gumption to clean the Cheeto dust off the fronts of their shirts and make their way into the gym.

And so I was forced to walk the floor and mingle with the members; offer advice on lifting technique, pull weights off the top of those that attempted to lift too much weight and just generally shoot the shit. This wasn’t the worst job but on a slow night, with no one to talk to except my reflection in one of the mirrors that lined the wall, I sound found myself on the verge of going mad. Each tic of the clock sounded like a hillbilly beating on an oil drum with the butt of a 12 gauge shotgun. I knew that if I stood still for too long that I just might fall asleep on my feet so the only thing left to do was to walk.

I headed towards the rear of the building where the machines were housed. This area is generally used by women and men that have slightly more testosterone than a field mouse.

As I entered the back room I was surprised attacked by the blinding visual of an extremely large woman’s ass. She was lying on an exercise ball and flailing around like a haddock on a sheet of sandpaper. The ass was so big I was sure a certified pilot could land a helicopter on it.

“Horrifying,” I said under my breath.

Deep inside I felt violated, forced to gander at a ghastly human monument the constructs of which were a testament to the whoopee pie and soda diet of the average American citizen. I tried to force myself to look away but the same phenomenon of morbid curiosity one encounters when passing a car wreck wouldn’t allow me to do so. Quite frankly I’d never seen an ass quite that big.

I bent down to pick a towel up off the ground and without warning the woman did a one-eighty on top of the ball and was suddenly staring me straight in the eyes.

“You were getting off on my junk,” she said.

“No, I was merely observing your technique on the exercise ball. It was very good. Carry on.”

She leaped up off the ball with surprising agility. “That’s bullshit. I saw that look in your eyes.”

“I assure you that any “look” you might have perceived was of a strictly professional nature.”

She took a step towards me and extended her index finger. “That’s bullshit.”

“Damn it you have a huge fat ASS!” I said. “I wasn’t looking at it because it was good looking. I was looking at it because it was the biggest ass I’ve ever seen in my life. You could take a team photo of the Pittsburgh Steelers sitting on that thing.”

Now she was really mad. I saw her fist close into a fist and she swung. Luckily she was as slow as she looked and I easily dodged the punch. I got behind the exercise ball so that she couldn’t attack me again.

“You need to calm down. You’re out of control,” I said.

“I’m going to get my man,” she said and stormed out of the room.

I figured this was as good a time as any to check out the catwalk in the ceiling that Trevor the night desk attendant had told me about. The gym was housed in the building that was once a department store.

I went to the janitor’s closet and climbed the ladder to the catwalk. Once up in the ceiling I hit a light switch and the entire space lit up. As I ventured out onto the catwalk I noticed that the orbs in the ceiling which I had thought were decorative light fixtures were actually two way mirrors that a person could use for surveillance. I could see the woman with the huge ass storming around and ranting to some guy sitting on a bench press. I smiled and lay back on the catwalk. A nap seemed just about right…