Motivation

It's about fitness and health. I'm up at ten-to-six each AM to go get sweaty in order to avoid an untimely heart attack. It's about boosting my mind, or biceps size. Or reducing my waistline. And it is, one hundred percent.

Okay, maybe 99 percent ...

I'm doing biceps curls when I get cross-eyed trying to avoid staring at her in the mirrored wall. She's curvy and compact, with a face like a Chicana Tinkerbell. I try not to stare, yes I do, really. I may be rude, crude, and socially awkward, but I am not entirely unreconstructed.

Besides, who likes being stared at--'specially in a gym? People stare at my sweating, lard-gutted carcass all the time. If I hadn't learned as a bowl-cut, horn-rimmed, polyester-shirt-clad child not to give a $#!7 I might be intimidated. Most women seem to arrive, exercise like fiends, and depart. I do something similar myself. Probably for similar reasons.

But having seen her catch my eye in the mirror no less than three times, I give up and allow myself ten seconds of uninterrupted ogleing. As I return to the machine she flashes me a smile that suggests she lives to make dopey guys drop heavy weights on our toes.

She wants to be stared at, it seems clear. I'm not shopping for anything--I love my wife and I'm reasonably sure the sentiment is reciprocal. I'm certain she isn't shopping for something, and if she was, well we're in a gym--it might safely be described as a "target-rich environment". So what's the harm? Aside from crushed toes? As I move the pin to select a stack of plates, she's flickering in my peripheral vision, looking my way. I ignore her with dignity.

Almost.

Fhat the wuck, I think, and throw on another ten kilos.