Shame is a powerful motivator, as I am discovering. I am discovering this because where once my preternaturally rapid metabolism allowed me to eat with wanton and indiscriminate abandon while maintaining a not-obviously-expanding-yet-mildly-doughy physique, I have now begun hanging over the waistbands of pants and occupying more and more of chairs.
The reasons are many, but lets boil them down to essentials: grad school and laziness. I say grad school because I was insanely busy all the time and had no time to work out, plus I was feeding myself--much in the manner of one who has never really had to feed himself before (college was a prelude to this, but there wasn't hot pizza within walking distance of my apartment in college). And I say laziness because I am astonishingly lazy when given reasonable opportunities to be so.
So! We arrive at the end of grad school: burned out, cynical, full of pizza and peanut butter, and decidedly single. We can blame that last one on any or all of the previous three, but lets concentrate on the pizza and peanut butter. I am now almost 25, rapidly approaching the latest society-approved-made-up-milestone-for-measuring-my-relative-failure-at-life. This is also known as a quarter-life crisis, a term coined because in this modern world, we get more done in less time, and so are apparently able to live more than one unsatisfactory lifetime before we get to mid-life. But it has a snarky name, so at least we can read the signposts on our express train to unhappiness and eventual death (note: it is not as bad as all that--at least for me--we are engaging in literary hyperbole here). In any event, there is too much of me approaching my quarter-life crisis.
Enter shame. First, I bought a pair of expensive sneakers (expensive to me). Shame will not allow me to own them without having some useful thing to do with them. Second, I joined a gym. Again, I can't have paid that much for something without using it. So, as the apotheosis of my silent inner shame, I actually went to the gym.
I went with Sarah, who, as faithful readers of this blog will know, is one of my two little sisters (which I explain even knowing that the faithful readers are Rebecca and Sarah). Literary Delusions of Grandeur, or of Readers. This is great, because otherwise I would have wandered around the gym, nodding wisely at the machines, surveying with frank good humor and a mordant eye for detail all of the sweaty humanity perfecting itself in the midst of a mirror enclosed sweatbox, and then left, well pleased and un-exercised. This is also a bad thing. Sarah, being a girl, is all about hip abductors, I discover. But lets not get ahead of ourselves.
We arrive at the gym, me in shiny new sneakers, vaguely athletic shorts, and a t-shirt for Relay for Life, to indicate that hey: I may be flabby, but darnit, there's a good heart in here. Please stop judging my quivering upper body as I attempt to exercise both my triceps and my ability not to cry in public. We decided to go at the perfect time: busy time.
Now, lets get this right out in the open: nobody really gives a shit. I mean, really. If you are not either muscle-bound in an obscene, bulgy way, or an attractive female, nobody notices you in any way other than to register your presence as: that guy doing hip abduction exercises. But again, lets not jump too far ahead. So we arrive in a claustrophobically small room wherein there are upwards of a thousand people stepping and jogging and cycling and ellipticalling in an infinite pursuit of what 95% of the people at a gym are looking for: the door out, which leads eventually to Wendy's. Some are earnest in their pursuit, others, in a sisyphean resignation that is instantly endearing to me, are content to meander through purgatory (a literary mixing of both Greek and Dantean afterworlds and a conflation of hell and purgatory. My metaphors are as incisive as my midsection is rock-hard). Count me among the would-be meanderers.
But again, I am here with Sarah, whose preternatural metabolism is even preternaturaler than naturally preternatural metabolisms are, and who therefore enjoys working out. This super-fast metabolism that never slow down is a freak of genetics that I am convinced precedes any actual working out and allows those who possess it to enjoy the prospect of moving heavy objects in unnatural manners. Its like if sugar were infinitely good for diabetics. Sarah has a plan. Sarah has a spreadsheet. Sarah has been here before. I follow obediently, nearly bumping into her every time she turns around, as if, at a good foot taller, I can somehow remain inconspicuous if attached to a seasoned gym-veteran, subsumed under her expertise and therefore neither obviously new nor obviously interesting in an unintentional comedy sort of way. I am going to record my exercises: how many sets of how many reps of how much weight. This will be encouraging when the numbers go up, I am made to understand.
So we begin. A circuit-training regimen encompassing the whole body. Did I mention that it was busy time? Me in my comical tennis shorts and slightly inward-splayed stance. I attempt some sort of upward lifting motion with a freeweight whose weight-size is generously disproportionate to its actual weight-weight. I am doing well. I appear to be attempting a recalcitrant standing bowel movement, right out there for all to see, even though no one is watching. Sarah offers sage advice on form and technique, all good things to know. She is speaking low, in kind deference to my instantly shattered sense of self-worth. Its very busy. Muscles with heads are making confident beelines to machines with clinically cold white steel and doubtfully greasy pads. We also are now among that number, Sarah scouting machines in advance, working us in. We (read: I) are apologetic in our reps, sorry to not be lifting more, taking up space, causing other, scarier and buffer gym goers to wait while we rattle and shake in silent desperate effort. In infantile delusion, I believe that if I concentrate on my meager stack of weigh-plates herking up and down, so as to avoid seeing anyone else, they will not see me either. A great big peek-a-boo, where no one peeks, and I don't boo(-hoo). Again, no one is actually watching. A big victory though: I outweigh Sarah by more than a hundred pounds, and so am able to lift at least ten pounds more than she can on our first exercise. This is like bragging about being smarter than someone fifteen years younger than you are. As the night wears on, I will discover that most of that extra hundred pounds cannot actually be put to the service of manipulating heavy things, and will lose what little self-pride I had left.
Sarah's husband is in the army, in the midst of boot camp. She apparently believes in the army's creed of tearing you down before they build you back up, because we move from an ab machine worthy of the Inquisition to machines intended solely to remind you of just how uniquely visible you are, there in the center of the room with mirrors all around. The hip-machines. For those who don't know, let me explain: the hip-abductor and hip-(inductor? I forget) machines are obstetric chairs plus weight plates. The instructions include: spread your legs as widely as possible. I offered my first and what would turn out to be only meek objection of the evening, squeaking a feeble protest at this outrage. Sarah calmly shot me down, explaining that it was an important machine and that lots of guys did it. Now, I know that lots of guys do bench presses and curls and calf-raises, and gut-busting crunches etc., because I have seen them doing it. I can look in any direction and see them doing it. Not so with the OB station. I formally resign my Y chromosome, and sit down.
We will pull the veil of charity over most of the rest of the workout, except to note that I was nearly unable to pull myself up after finishing a final set of oblique exercises on an incline bench, leaving me shaking with silent panic and abdominal will at the prospect of having to lie back, then roll over on to the floor and my stomach, and then slowly pull myself back to a standing position. I mean, I made it. But just barely.
So this is where things stand. It took us so long to get through the exercises that we had to leave out some of the upper-body stuff: bench press, curls, etc. This is probably good. I am going to come back at a better time, like when its closed, and get my reps then. And we're back to shame. Shame is now working on me in two directions. One is the residual shame from my exorbitant purchases that will keep me utilizing them. The new, and infinitely more public shame is of my just complete and total lack of physical fitness, and it is calling like a siren song to retreat back to Wendy's, where I am practically Mr. Universe in comparison. I have therefore decided to engage in that special prerogative of the blogosphere: which is to humiliate myself, and invite others to watch. This will hopefully add to the good shame, and get me over the hump towards not caring that the whole entire gym is watching me all the time in everything I do and they are all fantastically fit. You will be getting regular (read: occasional) updates on my trials and travails, in the hopes that if they should cease to be posted you will take me sternly to task for abandoning my quest of getting back to the halcyon days of vaguely doughy, but not visibly squishy. But I mean, those nuggets are all white meat. So, you know, thats got to be like at least a little good for you right?
Tomorrow we begin 'cardio' (from the Latin for: motion without progress, pain without reward) which will be fraught with peril. Ever see a coltishly awkward six and a half foot tall man-shaped object attempt to fit onto a treadmill whose bed-length is designed for someone with the stride of a six-foot tall person, tops? You and everyone in the entire world will, I'm sure, tomorrow.
