I was at the gym. My doctor told me that, since I am nearing the dreaded menopause, I'd need to start lifting weights to preserve bone density. I try to go to the gym mid-morning, because that’s when my kids are at school and when it's mostly people like me there. Schlubby. Disheveled. Middle-aged. Working on functional muscles like rotator cuffs and piriformis. In the morning, I can rock, without fear of judgement, my cut-off leggings and that holiday T-shirt from 2018 that shows a menorah with a Santa hat hanging off it. Even in July.
But if I wait too long, if I have to go to the gym after lunch, around 2pm, say, then I have to work out with the Meatheads. The Meatheads, as I mentally call them, are a group of men in their early to mid-twenties. To be clear, I don't call them Meatheads because I think they are dumb. On some level, we're all just idiots. I call them Meatheads because they are typically very muscly. I think they must Google things to do at the gym, or the best way to work certain muscle groups or whatever, because sometimes they do weird things like sit-ups while hanging upside down from a pull-up bar, or a push-up with one hand that's not even resting on the floor, but on a doorknob they brought with them in their duffle bag.
Why is it so hard to work out with the Meatheads? I've thought about this, and I think it boils down to something simple. There are a LOT of them, and they are at the gym to SHOW UP. They spread out their stuff, their protein shakes and gear. They even take up a lot of space when they walk around. I sidle around things when I'm at the gym, just trying to get through the suffering as quickly as possible. I am there because I have to be, or my bones will start clacking together while I walk.
One day, when I was already feeling kind of irritable, my schedule was such that I was forced to hit the gym after lunch. I had to work out in a corner next to a Meathead doing deadlifts. The problem was, he kept dropping the bar. When he did, it made a tremendous sound and the whole floor shook (my gym is old and decrepit. Rusted iron girders; broken tile around the toilets; fluffy things in the corner that look, from the corner of the eye, like feral, roving guinea pigs, but that are, on closer inspection, ancient accretions of dust and fluff not swept up by the wheezing vacuum cleaner a staff member pushes around sometimes). I must have had too much coffee, because every time the bar hit the floor, I pretty much jumped out of my skin. FINALLY, the Meathead finished his set. But as he moved past me to re-rack his weights, the scent of a ripe fart wafted over me. Now I don't mind the scent of B.O. The smell of sautéed sausage and onions makes me think of a breakfast burrito. But a fart, you might agree, is a different story. It might have something to do with the point of egress I don't know.
My fury at this guy was white-hot. I was in the middle of an exercise that makes me pant, meaning I was inhaling his excrement air at a rate of one puff a second. I put my weight down, muttered, "Oh my god" and brought up my T-shirt to cover my nose. The guy glanced at me and then away, as though he had not just crop-dusted the shit out of me. I was so enraged, I wanted to, I wanted to, I just really wanted to…grab his hips, wrestle him to the ground, climb astride him and…WRAP HIM IN A BLANKET. I wanted to SWADDLE THE SHIT out of that fucker. Just like they teach you on The Happiest Baby on the Block, the Bible for parents of newborns. Yes, I would lay him down with his sweaty head at one corner of the blanket, bring over one side and tuck it under him, bring the other part over, bring the bottom up and double wrap him, so his hands couldn't wiggle out in the night while he slept. A giant man-baby.
When I got back to my car after my workout, I played out a different, more intense fantasy. I would scold him thoroughly about dropping weights on the floor. Then I would grab him by the wrist right there in the gym, I would haul him to my car, lecturing him all the while, install him in the backseat and make sure he was firmly buckled in. We would drive to my house and I would make him a meal with a starch, a protein, two whole grains and three servings of fruits and vegetables. Also a tall glass of milk. Then I would run him a bath. I would scrub his hair and behind his ears. Also I would probably lather his chest hair, get that shit sparkly clean even if it left little curly hairs on the bar of soap. I would hand him a soaped-up washcloth and tell him to wash his nethers. After his bath I would put him in jammies. Then I would tuck him into bed and read him a story. That's it. That's the whole fantasy.
Sheepishly, I told my doctor at my next appointment. She asked, “These men in their early to mid-twenties. Do you also want to have sex with them?”
“Ew. No.” I thought of the probable cheesy buildup between their toes. Their unwashed scrotums. The manufactured aura of their deodorant, underlaid with the desperation of youth.
Give me a man with a little sag to his belly. The slouch in the cervical spine from gazing at a computer screen all day. The tired, Atticus Finch-like clearing of the throat he emits when he realizes, while foraging through the grocery bags, that you’ve forgotten to buy that seafood dip he likes from Winco.
“No,” I repeated to the doctor. “I want to put a hooded, terrycloth towel on them and shove a binkie into their mouth.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. Thoughtful.
“Do you think it’s hormones?” I fretted.
She sighed. “Probably. Honestly, there is so little research into women’s bodies around menopause, you would be amazed. Our sex-obsessed society is all about the cougar. But hormones can do lots of crazy things, so who knows?”
(A version of this humorous piece was read at StoryStory Night, Dec. 2023, in Boise, Idaho. It is the second story in the link below.)
