I recently started going to the gym. But let me be clear: I’m not going to the gym to better myself.
I won’t deadlift 100kg while listening to a podcast about how to become a CEO by switching to a raw-meat diet. I’m smarter than that. I will jog slowly on a treadmill while misunderstanding a podcast about Marxism.
If anything, I want my trips to the gym to make me a worse person. I want to listen to political philosophy podcasts so contagiously bad that I become unable to get through a single conversation without referencing something that Brad from the FrankFart School pod said about the commodification of dogs.
A dislaimer before I get into this: if you’re an exercise person, I’m happy for you. But you won’t find any praise in this article. You don’t need it. You already enjoy the richness of a human experience where your body and soul are united. I can’t imagine that. My spirit objects to the idea of movement. Take comfort that when I die I will never haunt you. I can’t be arsed.
I finally signed up for the gym because I have a neck injury and have been told that exercise might help to alleviate the pain. This is because when you exercise, it moves the pain to somewhere else in your body. The total amount of pain stored in the body remains the same (loads), but if you’re lucky, you can temporarily redistribute it to non-essential parts - like the big toes, or your hair.
As soon as the membership fee left my account, I realised I was terrified of the gym. I was terrified of being alone amongst Exercise People, with their intimidating athleisurewear and senseofselfworth. Because of this, even leaving the house to go for the first time felt like an enormous achievement. I was taking control of my health. I was an independent woman. I made my boyfriend come with me.
This made sense, because my boyfriend is the kind of leftist who lifts weights. The type of intellectual who’d actually be useful in constructing a glittering new public transport system, or renovating derelict houses, or rescuing trapped women from wells. Of course, the big question is: in a socialist utopia, would women still fall down wells? Or do women only fall down wells today as a result of capitalist patriarchy? Brad from FrankFart School hasn’t covered this yet, so I don’t know.
Weight-lifting Jon didn’t understand why I was scared to be alone in the gym, and claimed that “nobody would be judging” me, even though they obviously would. Despite this, it was cute going together. We took all our stuff in one bag and had matching water bottles.
“People probably hate us because we are so cute,” I thought excitedly. Or maybe they were just annoyed that we were blocking the changing room doors arguing about who got to keep the key to our shared locker.
To get into the gym, we each had to scan a unique QR code on our phones. I presume this is so the owners know when you specifically are in the building, and can watch on CCTV as you spend 20 minutes walking at 3mph on the treadmill because you are genuinely too scared to increase the speed in case you fly off the back. Just as a hypothetical example.
Once I’d got over the initial terror and managed a nervous 5 minutes jogging on the treadmill, I suddenly got into my stride. Jon was right: nobody was staring at me, or shaming me for not owning a Sweaty Betty two-piece. Maybe I did enjoy exercise! Maybe I could become one of those women who carries a yoga mat everywhere for no discernable reason! Maybe life was worth living! Then I started to black out.
I stopped the machine and proudly announced to Jon that I felt “very sick.” I said I’d meet him at a café down the road, where I was planning a healthy breakfast of a brownie. I grabbed our cute loversTM bag and headed out, counting my first trip to the gym as a success.
20 minutes and two brownies later, there was no sign of Jon. I became worried. What if he’d left me for one of the women from the well? I texted him, but got no response. I stomped back to the gym and waited outside for another 10 minutes, listening to the end of the bad podcast. Brad was wrapping up by saying something genuinely incomprehensible about “wokeness”, which retrospectively ruined the entire episode.
Then a woman taps me on the shoulder. She is wearing athleisurewear, which triggers my fight-or-flight, even though - based on the fact she is wearing these clothes, while I am wearing a bleach-stained Tim & Eric t-shirt from 2015 - either response from me will be futile.
“Yes?” I say.
“Your boyfriend says you’ve got his phone?”
“Yeah. We share a bag. Because we love each other. So what?”
“Uhh. He’s trapped at the gates?”
I peer back through the window to see Jon looking incredibly anxious. He needs his phone for the QR code to get out. The phone is in our shared bag, which I have taken. He is pacing back and forth behind the turnstiles like a vegetarian lion. I have locked him in a prison where, like actual prison, the only form of entertainment is lifting weights.
But most importantly: he is trapped in the gym alone, and he is scared. The athleisure people ARE judging him. Yes it’s because he is causing a fire hazard by standing in the door, but nevetheless, I was right. The gym IS a hostile place. Take that, kind boyfriend who only came here to support me!
After I hand over his phone, releasing him on bail, he asks wearily if I’m ready to start going to the gym on my own. “Maybe after the next time,” I say.
A ONE-EYED PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN
I wrote this newsletter before I stabbed myself in the eye, but the eye article felt more urgent. Unless I sustain another comic injury, my next post is going to be about Britishness in We Love Katamari.
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