I went to the gym yesterday. I've been sick so it was a test to see how well recovered I am. Apparently I am recovered well enough to have returned to my previous pathetic state.
She can't take her eyes off me
The instructor is always looking at me, monitoring me. I'd like to say she's checking me out, but I know that isn't true. She's looking at me in that worried way that people do when they see someone they think is about to keel over and die. She keeps saying "go at your own pace. Rest if you need to. Take a break if you have to." Things like that. And she's usually looking at me when she says it.
The greatest insult of all happened yesterday. I did, in fact, need to rest so I sat my ass down on the floor for a minute while everyone else was doing lunges while pressing weights overhead. The woman in front of me, apparently seeing me in the mirror, turned around and said "are you all right?" Yes, I am fine. I am sitting on the floor because I am tired, but I will be getting up again in a minute.
I'm surrounded
All around me are college volleyball girls. They pump along, never tired, never sweating, never huffing or puffing or blowing anyone's house in. I'm pouring sweat. I always do. I have been this way since I was 11 years old. I sweat waterfalls. And I have bad allergies, so my nose runs during class. Today I thought I'd be smart and bring a handkerchief to blow my nose without having to leave class. Well, it was a particularly bad day for allergies and I soaked that handkerchief on the first blow. It was nasty. And all around me are the young, shiny volleyball girls, all hearing me going "HONK" and eyeing me with their side glances. "Is he REALLY using a handkerchief? Like, I haven't seen anyone use one of those since my grandpa, and he died in the 1980s when I was in diapers."
No eye contact
The college volleyball girls won't ever look at me directly. I know why. They don't want to make eye contact. They fear that if they do I will lock onto them and then smile a goofy grin, like guys do when their brains are drowning in dopamine and oxytocin which is kicked off by a strong physical attraction and makes guys suddenly become retarded. It has an effect similar to cocaine. I know this because I learned it in biology back in college. Hot girls make guys dumb. And then we get that stupid grin on our faces because our brains are suddenly stoned out of existence and all we have to function with is our most basic "lizard" brain which isn't very bright and rarely impresses women. They call this thinking with our dicks, but that's not quite scientifically accurate, although it's close. The stupid grin is a warning to women, especially hot young single women, that trouble is lumbering their way all Frankenstein-like. And they don't want trouble to lumber their way, grinning like an idiot, and trying to make small-talk with grunts and moans. So they won't look at me. And that's just as well, because I can see myself in the mirror, and I look like ass. Even worse, being surrounded by hot young college volleyball girls just makes me look even worse. It accentuates my assness in contrast to their hot young shiny. And it makes me feel rotten. And the feeling rotten then makes me shine less and less, so that my sweaty, honking, snotty assness stands out even more as the light inside of me gets dimmer and dimmer because of seeing my ass-like self in that damn mirror surrounded by shiny glimmering angels.
See how she shines?
Even worse, these volleyball girls, nothing against them, but they aren't anything spectacular. I mean, outside of class I probably wouldn't pay much attention to them any more than they would me. But in this class, where most of the students pumping away are over 30, this random flood of collegiate athlete girls stands out. I don't know what it is about girls who play volleyball, but they have a certain look to them everywhere I have ever encountered them. And this crew is no different. There are three or four of them who look like they have stuffed 2 volleyballs under their shirts, only it isn't volleyballs, it's the real them. So sure, they attract some attention there in the gym. And I'm sure they want to avoid as much of that attention as possible, especially in a class filled with over-30 guys.
Those aren't volleyballs
As for me, I'm too busy trying to keep up with the teacher to stare at the volleyballs under the shirts of the volleyball girls. I'm sweating and huffing and wondering how I could lift weights, play soccer and run distance races all my life and still struggle so much in this damn class. Why won't she just slow down? Why are we doing a zillion squats and lunges? My legs are going to fall off and I may projectile vomit if this continues. I could do a million pushups and dips and overhead presses if she'd just have us do that first and then do the zillion squats and lunges, but when we do them first I can't do jack crap afterwards. By the time we got to the pushups I felt like I was going to suffocate from lack of air. And then the worst possible thing happened - I felt my knees coming down towards the ground. For God's sake, it's just pushups! I am NOT going to put my knees down on the ground to do damn pushups. But down they came and thumped on the ground and there I was with my knees down doing pushups like a girl. But those volleyball girls weren't doing girl pushups. It was just me.
I was the only girl doing these pushups
You'd think I wouldn't go back after such humiliation, doing girl pushups surrounded by college girls who did man pushups while pretending that I wasn't even there, blowing my nose and sweating all over the place, gasping for air while the woman in front of me asked if I was OK or maybe needed an ambulance. But my whole life is one giant humiliation. I am accustomed to humiliation. The fact that I struggled so much just means I'm doing the right workout. My muscles need the shock of something they can't do for a change. Sure, I know this type of workout is tailored towards women more than men. I remember when Cory Everson was Ms Olympia and she created this whole "body pump" workout specifically for women. She used to invite male bodybuilders to try to do her workouts with her and she'd make them squat until they vomited. It's just the way it is. I can load up a bar and squat with a ton of weight, touch my ass to my heels and stand back up again, but ask me to do a million reps with my warm-up weight and I'll run out of gas in a hurry. I can max on bench, do some negatives and partial bench presses, clank the big plates together and feel good about my bench, but ask me to do a hundred thousand pushups after doing squats till I puked and I will drop my knees to the ground and end up shaking out a handful of girl pushups while my sinuses clog with snot because I have allergies and suddenly I can't breathe at all.
Don't talk to me about sinus surgery. I already had it. It made things worse. My doctor was a lunatic and everyone I ever met who had that surgery performed by him regretted it. He didn't know what he was doing. Either that or he's intentionally incompetent. Either way, I had the surgery. It didn't help. I still can't breathe.
When class is over everyone has to mill around putting all their equipment back up. The women all talk to each other. People who have been in the class forever all talk. I am new. I don't know anyone. The volleyball girls don't want to make eye contact. I don't talk. I just sweat and blow my nose and do girl pushups and sometimes I stop and sit down on the floor while women harass me that I might be dying. But I will be back on Wednesday to do it again. And I will be back the next week, too. When it isn't hard for me anymore, then I'll do something else, but until then, this is what I need to be doing - humiliating myself, apparently.
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