MUSCLE BOUND
A few years ago Jules gave me a membership to Trapezoid Fitness for Christmas. Now before you go eeww, please keep in mind this was my request. It solved the problem of his annual whine, “What would you like for Christmas?” Actually, just like a kid, every year I ask for a puppy, but that isn’t going to happen so I suggested a treadmill but he said we don’t have room for one. If you are married or have a male significant other I am sure you are aware that men like to give practical gifts. Oh, they’ll give you jewelry or flowers but they really prefer to give vacuum cleaners, tools or new tires--things that give them a bang for their buck.
Back to Trapezoid Fitness. I had two months after Christmas to think about how much I loved this gift. We go to Mexico in February, so I couldn’t activate the membership until March. We got home March first and Jules said, “When are you going to sign up? Didn’t you like your gift?” So the next day I took my voucher and went down to “the club”. I prefer to call it “the club” rather than the gym or fitness center. It gives the illusion of going out to a refined, quiet little place for lunch with The Girls. Calling it the gym or fitness center conjures up visions of sweat and bottles of ibuprofen.
In order to get Jules’s money’s worth I hired, at my own expense, one of those queens of torture, a personal trainer. We agreed on three sessions (the usual, apparently) so that the routine would be tailored just for me. The first one-hour session was invigorating. I thought I did pretty well for someone who hadn’t moved since high school. The next day I had trouble getting out of bed even after a double dose of Aleve. I called the trainer and told her that I couldn’t even squat to use the toilet without screaming. She said, “It happens to a lot of people. Take something and I’ll see you on Friday.” By Friday I had been to the cardiologist with second-degree heart block which dropped my pulse rate to forty. I know that exercise is supposed to strengthen your cardiovascular system and slow your heart rate, but this was ridiculous. I canceled Friday, sent her a check and said I would resume when the doctor okayed exercise. After many expensive tests he said that as long as I didn’t pass out I could do whatever I wanted, but I shouldn’t do anything that took me more than a couple of feet off the floor, just in case. I left a message on Mistress Roberta’s answering machine but she never got back to me. I don’t blame her. It’s not good for business if your client drops dead during a workout. Not to mention the detrimental effects of people seeing an ambulance, or worse, a hearse parked at the Fitness Center’s front door. So I do my own routine of the exercises she showed me. Actually just the ones I like, and then a mile on the treadmill, which is all I wanted to do in the first place. The object being, when I have my stroke, which is inevitable with my family history, the rehab won’t kill me.
There’s not much to do during that twenty minutes on the treadmill except observe what is going on in “the club”. This is a place for people who are serious about fitness. No fancy-schmancy saunas or hot tubs. Just lots of exercise equipment. My trainer, Mistress Roberta, eschewed the machines. “Make your body do the work,” said she. I watch others with envy as they choose five pound weights and run through the machines like they are taking a stroll in the park. I figure it must work though because the vast majority of them look great. Or maybe these people are lucky and don’t need to workout at all. Maybe they just like to hang around fat people so they look even better.
Along with the people who don’t look as if they should be here are a few people who make me ashamed of my bitching and are a real inspiration. The old guy who is recovering from a stroke and works so hard he grunts like André Agassi swatting a backhand from the foul line. And the young guy who is in a wheel chair and spends his whole morning doing a circuit. He moves in slow motion–out of the chair, onto the machine, back into the chair. Then he takes the bus home. When you abuse your body like I have you deserve what you get. Some people just have bad luck.
The time you go to “the club” is very important. The working class go early in the morning for classes and their workout. Step classes, spinning classes and Pilates are offered, at an extra fee of course. I haven’t been there in the evening because I usually collapse in a heap after dinner and an earthquake couldn’t get me to move. My friend Shirley told me that lunch time is the time to go. I would have thought the anorexic types would use the machines rather than eat, but apparently not. There are very few members in attendance after eleven and the soaps don’t start until one. Daytime TV suddenly becomes very important when you have twenty minutes to kill. I always thought Ellen DeGeneres was funny until I watched her in closed caption. In humor, timing is everything. The predominant genre on the televisions is sports. Right now it’s women’s billiards and the final four. Easy to watch and you know what’s going on because they have the score in the corner of the screen, and the sportscaster’s banter, as with most jocks, is not Harold Pinter.
The clientele seems to change with the seasons. In the winter and spring I see the diehard jocks and mothers whose children are in school. Around about two thirty or three the high school kids arrive. During the ‘season’ there are a lot of trophy wives who wouldn’t even consider sweating without their own personal trainer, and middle-aged men who refuse to let themselves go. There are also plenty of t-shirts that shout ‘staff’. These are the working kids that need exercise after sitting on a life guard stand or dishing ice cream all day.
Jules said if I go three times a week he will continue to pay for the membership. This must be some kind of reverse psychology, like telling a child never to eat green vegetables. If I don’t go, he won’t pay and I won’t have to go any more. But I go, three times a week, every week. I’ll show him!
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