The ‘Sweaty Guy’

There I was again, punching helplessly at the console of the Stairmaster. Weight:180, Level:11, Time: 30, Workout: Steady Pace. The machine sprung into action forcing me to match its pace. WHIZZ WHURR WHIZZ WHURR, my legs began to pump like an oil rig in the middle of a wind swept Texas plain, sage brush adrift, blood orange sun slowly disappearing over the brim of another dry day. I gave a glance at the mirror to my left stretched out along the length of the wall, not allowing my gaze to linger for too long. Don’t want to look like one of those self-involved ass holes down in the weight room. The brightly illuminated numbers on the slim console in front of me glow red flickering from MILES .54 to .55 to .56 in what seems like a staggering amount of time. Great, just over a half a mile down. In another five minutes (.5 miles) it will inevitably start. And I always look forward to it. The cold feeling of weakness begins to leave my body only to be replaced by a slowly growing fire that spreads until it oozes out of my skin in the form of tiny drops of sweat beading my arms and forehead. WHIZ WHURR WHIZ WHURR. I take a look around the small room almost crowded with aerobic equipment. Four stationary bikes, three elliptical machines, three tread mills, and two stair masters. A small door in the middle of the far right wall opens into an even smaller room housing a seldom used heavy bag that looks as if it has seen better days. The top corner of it ripped open and bleeding dingy yellow foam, its spongy innards sprawled beneath it in a small pool as if to say ‘Look! Look! I was useful, once…’. Pieces to a story of some angry boxer who had finally HAD it and exploded his rage into the helpless dangling sack.

I’m not the only one working my frustrations out tonight. I can hear the hiccupped pace of a jogger start a ‘going nowhere’ journey on the treadmill behind me. I catch a glimpse of the silhouetted jogger in the lower corner of the mirror and make out a woman’s shape, her long pony tail whips back and forth as each shoulder turns in and out, in and out. I straighten up now, try to look the part. No one can see my weakness, my slumping shoulders or burning thighs. There are two more girls side by side on the elliptical machines in front of me and to my right. All of the machines in the room are faced the same direction, as if they are at attention, their lifeless machinery frozen in a trance, overlooking the large Doug Firs and Cedars that live outside the full length windows that make up the front of this little room. None of it can be seen now. The brightly lit room creates a mirrored reflection of the contents of the room against the unyielding blackness that has enveloped the outside world. It creates another exercise room staring back at us, its exercise equipment inhabited by our looking glass souls, translucent, but there, staring back at us, mimicking our every move, our every step, walk, run, pedal. WHIZ WHURR WHIZ WHURR WHIZ WHURR.

The glowing red digital numbers on my console have changed to 1.23 now, and I’m suddenly conscious of how warm I feel. I pull my head down in a half nod and feel lines of sweat race down my temples, forehead and cheeks. Large droplets pregnant with sweat form on my chin and nose now and quickly morph into each other before giving into gravity and raining down onto the flat black rubber mat beneath me. The same process is repeated on my elbows and it has begun. A salty torrential downpour. My bodies own weather system. The flat black rubber mat beneath my arms is beginning to turn from a non-reflective rubbery surface to an almost shiny plastic, as microscopic sweat pools emerge and form together to create one large sweat pool. They start as microcosms, then tiny islands, larger continents, and then finally form one large land mass that seeps and slowly creeps towards the brim of the rubber mat. My grip on the thick stationary handles, protruding from the Stairmaster like antennae, begins to slip and I have to keep readjusting their position near the top of the curvature in the plastic bars. I start to suck in breath as if each one might be my last and let it out in short spurts, hee-hee-hooo. I’m giving birth to my own fitness. For a split second I feel like giving up, going home, cracking a beer and forgetting all about this nonsense but I wipe that notion away like the never-ending streams of secreted sweat that I keep dabbing at, my shirt tail grasped helplessly in the fist of my right hand. 1.97, the tiny numbers read, glowing red hot. Almost two miles. I suck it up, whatever ‘it’ is and start to feel my muscles relax slightly. My breath comes in a more controlled rhythm and I feel my second wind kicking in. My pace is a comfortable one and I just keep pumping my legs up and down, up and down.

I slip in and out of concentrating on what I’m doing and in those moments of separating my metaphysical self from my physical self I think about all kinds of things. The approach to Little si. Game nights. What should I fix for dinner? I want to start running around Capitol Lake. Did I forget to turn off the light in my room? E-mail your reader! Jobs. Sweet potato fries. OW! My EYE! A large droplet of sweat has accumulated on my eyebrow and immediately made its presence known by invading the smooth membranous envelope of my optical lens. I squint with my right eye trying to free a hand so that I can wipe the salty contents away without further interruption. The temporary pain has brought me right back to focusing on the burning sensation in my thighs and calves. I lean over again providing a short break for the major muscle groups in my legs trying to co-opt most of the work load into my lower back. I feel like Quasimoto doing this maneuver, my shoulders hunched, butt sticking out, and suddenly remember the woman directly behind me getting a nice soggy eye full. I straighten up again to the regret of my acid filled leg muscles. The console numbers give a digital read of 2.39, wait, 2.40 and it breathes new life into me. I realize I have only a little over half a mile to go before I can break. I retighten my slacked pace and continue on, WHIZ WHURR WHIZ WHURR. I notice a slender looking blonde girl setting up shop on the stationary bike one Stairmaster over from where my unbridled precipitation event is taking place. Her soft features and pallid skin form a delicate and pretty face and I’m thrown off pace a bit by trying to catch glimpses of her in the mirror without her noticing, too much. I can only hope she doesn’t regret choosing a bike in such close proximity to the growing pools of effort accumulating beneath my left and right arms; however I do resemble a melting wax statue at this point. She seems uninterested in both me and working out as she nonchalantly pumps her legs in a circular motion while burying her gaze in a book with ZEN written on the cover in large letters followed by something I couldn’t quite make out through my shy fifth grade glances. I hear the approach of a new-comer and utilize this opportunity to turn my head in the direction of the door in order to get another full view of the ZEN blonde. She looks up as well, but not in the direction of the door. Our eyes meet, but I quickly jerk my head back to the accepted frontal position and remain cool as a cucumber, pretending I was looking at the time. The time. The time, the time. What is the time?! I dab quickly at the ‘time’ button on the console just in time to see the red hot glow of the numbers counting down, 5…4…3…2…1. A fading !BEEP! lurches from my machine and the pedals lock in place. YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR GOAL! The glowing digital words read across the slim console and I am temporarily relieved of duty. I step down with a sigh, and begin to pant a little. I avoid stepping to the right or left of the machine, for good reason and make my way to the half tube shaped plastic housing for the sanitary wipes hanging on the wall. My best friends. I return with a fistful and wipe the handlebars, reminded of a time when I worked in a restaurant called The Yankee Diner. Dante, a waiter who worked the evening shift there was told to clean something because it was slow. He picked up a chair, positioning it so that one of the legs was protruding from his groin area and began polishing it in a masturbatory motion. I had just happened to be walking by as he pointed his wooden erection at me and said “Hey Micah, Derek said it was slow so I should clean something.”, with a devilish grin stretching the length of his goateed face. Wiping my sweat off the handlebars always reminds me of this memory for some reason. I wad up the sanitary wipes and make a basketball shot at the garbage, fading away. The wad overshoots its target but hits the wall with a moist squelching sound and drops impotently into the dark gray plastic bag.