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Thursday, May 15, 2008

The Buff People in my Neighborhood

There is a guy in my gym who does nothing.

There is also The Woman Bigger Than Me, The Illustrated Man, Beach Ball (I, II and III), The Equipment Bonapartes, Supergirl, The Gray Ox and The Personal Trainer With The Greatest Ass in the World Who Knows It.

I do not want to represent my gym as a microcosm of the world in which we live. It is actually its own separate universe. It’s like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, except the puppets are really big.

Our gym is reasonably nice, but is only so big. From across the parking lot, it is only about the size of a postcard. I’m crushing my gym. There is only room for one of most pieces of equipment, so some things you wait for. There is one particularly glorious confluence where it is possible, but considered poor etiquette, to remove from circulation like eight different exercises so that you can do one. There is a group of four guys, The Equipment Bonapartes, who do this. It takes the four of them, between posturing and jocularity, like three days to do sets of…whatever it is they are doing.

The Beach Balls, sadly, never last. We occasionally get really big people in the gym. You know, round people. People who really need to be in a gym. I think we cheer for these people, admire the fortitude it takes for them to get off the couch. Inertia is a bitch goddess. But they never last. I guess inertia only works one way.

I watched Supergirl do sets of pull-ups in a pike position. My theory is that she is not actually that strong, but that her superpower is being impervious to gravity. I’ve never seen her car, but presume she just flies home.

The Gray Ox is a guy in his sixties who is an absolute beast. Maybe he is 38 and did a lot of drugs, but it is probably more likely that he is 82 and through a combination of care and genetics looks that good. He’s my hero.

The Personal Trainer With The Greatest Ass in the World Who Knows It is pretty self-explanatory. Not a stunning woman, but seriously. Greatest Ass in the World. She appears to never let five minutes go by without checking it out in the mirror, however. Perhaps she is afraid it will run away if she ignores it, or maybe she is overwhelmed at her good fortune. In any case, it speaks ill for her as I only see her when some shlub is paying her sixty bucks an hour to pay some attention to his body.

The Illustrated Man has a shaved head, shaved eyebrows, and ink over every bit of exposed skin. I assume he is a tattoo artist for a living because, frankly, he does not have a lot of choices. He has a son about the same age as my youngest, seems to be an attentive father, is exceedingly polite and pretty friendly. I have not yet gotten around to asking “Why?” because there is no good way to do that.

The Woman Bigger Than Me is actually about 5’3”. She is also very nice. Although she is distractingly muscular, she really came to my attention one day when I noticed she does rows with more weight than I do. Hunh. Those of you who know me know I am not a behemoth, but I am big enough that a 5’3” woman who is outlifting me is remarkable. For those of you who do not know me, I am an awesome specimen of a human being. Rampage Jackson is my bitch.

And then there is the guy who does not do anything. Cue Veggie Tales (like you guys don’t know “Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything” – fake-ass hipsters). Like The Woman Bigger Than Me, I first noticed him because of the weight he was putting up. He is quite a bit smaller than I am and was pushing twice as much weight as I was. Except that he wasn’t. I watched him out of the corner of my eye and he did everything right except ever move the weight. He mops his forehead with his towel and carries around a plastic bottle of pale-colored liquid and walks around with his hands on his hips gasping and looking at the ceiling, but he never lifts. I saw him do it with three different exercises. In fairness, I have never noticed him before or since, but he is the sort of nondescript little white guy who would fly completely below my radar except for his extravagant claims.

What all these people have in common is that I do not know their names. I know a couple of people from the gym. Scott and Landon, both Jayhawks who noticed me flying my colors, which I do regularly and reliably. So literally a couple. And I know the people who work there. They wear name tags, after all. But I always feel among friends at the gym.

These are the buff people in my neighborhood.

Except for the guy who doesn’t do anything.

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