Plus Sized Model
He looked like Freddy Krueger with a much better nose and a much worse taste in attire. He was in his forties and in great shape, but wearing an awful pastel T-shirt and blue shorts with gray sweat pants underneath. His shoes were knock-off old style Reeboks. He made me feel good because, aside from his general absence of self-presentation skills, I can always lose weight but he can never lose bald. I also like that he’s one of the very few people in the gym who’s not fat. Only fat people work out at my gym. Some built guys lift weights. But the rest of us on the bikes and stair steppers and elliptical machines all have special angles with which we look at ourselves in the wall of mirrors, using strange expressions that make us feel slimmer. But this bald, in-shape guy doesn’t have to try to look thin. Maybe that’s why he’s doesn’t mind looking like a complete ass; listening to what must be classic rock, punching the air off beat, slapping the handle of the elliptical to make it clear no stupid exercise unit can hold him back from his twin goals of working out and rocking.
With only four elliptical machines available and a decision to commit myself to a consistent workout schedule, I was bound to see this guy often. And the second time I went to the gym he was there again on the machine pounding away. He was fired up like he was climbing a fake mountain, or bungee jumping off a Vegas hotel. I waited hoping that someone would get off soon so I could compete against him, at least mentally. Only thirty minutes is allowed on each machine and everyone around him was nearing his or her limit. I tried to figure out what I would do if someone went over his or her allotment. I decided would watch them with as much chagrin as I could summon. Some serious deep fucked up chagrin. But my bald buddy helped me out. His spastic motions were distracting the fat girl to his left from getting the right visual on her figure. She suddenly jumped off the machine. I don’t think she had even broken a sweat.
I climbed on and visualized the bald guy accidentally slapping my arm while aiming for the machine’s handle. I decided I wouldn’t beat him up because jail is scary, but I was sure that if he did hit me I was going to pull his blue shorts down. He wouldn’t be completely pantsed but it would reveal his gray sweat pant interior that he seemed intent on hiding. Then he may kill me but he’d just be murdering the part of himself he can’t bare to the public. The gray sweat-panted part.
While standing next to him I noticed he was much smaller than I had imagined. I was bigger. He was eight or so minutes into his run. I decided that I not only needed to keep up with him - I needed to burn more calories than he did. I entered my weight and time goal, forty minutes if no one was waiting. I spied the digital read out on his machine and began to push myself to levels that my fat ass had feared since it moved in on top of my old ass. Before many digital seconds had ticked, I realized that the machine had no real way to measure the exertion he was putting into making a scene because he wasn’t burning much. And because I weighed so much more and was working at a smooth pace, I was burning a lot.
Behind me a woman changed the channel on the TV. From the mirror I noticed it was Entertainment Tonight, and Joe Millionaire was talking to someone. In the mirror I noticed that the woman who put the show on had the strangest, most fulfilled smile I’d ever seen on an old woman. A sudden bang on the machine next to mine and I was brought back to the reality of my challenge. The bald guy must have realized that I was checking his stats or the song in his headphone changed because he suddenly stepped up his pace to a frightening rate. He was pounding the air like it was a cheating lover’s door or he was peaking on acid at an Aerosmith laser light show. I retaliated with a steady increase in my pace. I was minutes behind him but my calories were accelerating at twice the rate. He sped up, now slapping his machine every ten seconds. I decided I was the turtle. In would be fast but steady, no slapping, only an occasional brush of sweat away from my brow.
About fifteen minutes in, I noticed in the mirror a crowd forming behind us. For a few ticks I thought they were watching us. I was only forty calories behind and expression on my face spoke to the kind of diligence the corporate bastards who own health clubs fear because they know I’m coming back. I’m not just buying a gym membership and then sitting home while the gym lives off my stupid financial commitment like they count on most bastards doing. I’m for real and I’ll be using the elliptical machine for as much time as possible. Ahhh. That’s when I realized that’s why everyone was behind me. Five gym members were crowding in progressively closer with only ten minutes left. They wanted my machine.
He only had two minutes left and suddenly had pulled way ahead. Contrary to my steady pace wins the race theory, I decided I was going to increase the level of difficulty on my machine and gun it. The people behind me tensed - they were all watching the TV above me. I closed my eyes and just spun my legs. I felt like my fat self had disappeared and my real thin self was taking over. The crowd behind me suddenly burst with a pained glee, "OHHHAAHHH!" By looking in the reflection of a reflection I could make out the TV. A car was crashed into the side of a freeway and a man was fleeing on foot. A helicopter was making the scene. After minutes of running through backyards and mini-malls with him, I realized that I was almost at thirty minutes. That meant that the bald asshole should be done. I looked at his calories. I was four hundred ahead of him. What the fuck? Had I slipped dimensions?
"Excuse me," a large woman said. "It’s been thirty minutes." The footrace on TV was finished. She was the only woman in line and she wanted my machine.
Flushed and tired beyond expectation I tried to explain that the bald fuck had been there longer. I looked at his machine and he had reset it. It said he had only been on for five minutes. Too tired to pants him, I stepped off the machine and tried to walk away when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
"Excuse me. You need to wipe down the machine." It was filthy with my sweat.
I didn’t have a towel, so I had to find the bathroom which I had never been in and grab some paper towels. By the time I was back it felt like the machine was entirely dry but I wiped it anyway. As I wiped I caught my right profile in a strange angle on the mirror between the bald ass fuck’s knee moving up and down. God I was fat. No expression could alter that reality. I looked around and the woman watching Entertainment Tonight still had her awful smile.
I walked toward the exit of the gym with the determination to do something I hadn’t done in years, weigh myself. I asked the gym attendant where the scale was. She wasn’t flirty like a girl who works in the gym should be, or even nice. "It’s right behind you." Meaning, it’s right behind you, fat idiot.
I closed my eyes and stepped on the scale. I won’t say what I weigh but it is seventy-five more pounds than my personal best shape five of six years ago. It is twenty-five pounds more than the last time I weighed myself. It is fifteen pounds more than I had entered on the machine. Basically it’s 251 pounds.
"Jesus, that’s why you burn so many calories," I heard someone say. I turned around and the sweatiest pastel shirt and worst blue shorts and lamest bald head were staring at me. He turned and walked back into the gym. Nodding, I walked out and looked back only to see a worker cleaning off the scale where I had just stood.