Nurse the Hate: Hate the Gym

I work out at the Cleveland State Rec Center. I am not under the impression I am in anything approaching good physical condition, but I am being vigilant to try and at least not lose any further ground. One of my greatest fears is becoming the “soft in the middle sweater vest guy” you see walking around Bed, Bath, and Beyond on a Saturday afternoon. I don't want to be that guy holding a new shower curtain and being browbeaten by his wife. He is usually wearing big plastic glasses, comfortable Buster Brown style brown shoes, and jeans that may or may not have pleats. There is also a certain defeated slouch in his posture. If I work out every now and then, at least I won’t have the slouch, right? I can’t make any promises on those pleated jeans, but theoretically my back will be strong enough to stop my head from hanging like a whipped dog.

The CSU Rec Center is primarily filled with guys playing bad basketball and speaking worse English. (Last week I actually heard an alleged college student say regarding Phoenix Sun Steve Nash, “He are the point guard.” Cleveland State, while an accredited school, is not Dartmouth. ) The next group in the gym are the ubiquitous “girls on cardio machines”. They are all wearing tight shorts, large t shirts, and have their hair pulled back in ponytails. Their eyes usually scan the peripheral to either side to see if they are about to be stalked by any sleazy guy. I am fairly certain that all of these women look at me and say “creep” under their breath whenever I walk by. I never give them the "Up, Down, Up" look that guys like to give girls at dance clubs, but I think I am guilty by association. I am always wearing my iPod and never speaking, but still I always get the vibe that they think I am about to make a sexually suggestive comment at any moment. I would like to point out I have made three or four innocent attempts at conversation in a gym with a woman in the last 10 years, and each of these has ended poorly. Example:

Me noticing a sudden storm: Wow, look how hard it’s snowing out there!

Woman: No, I don’t want to fuck you! Get lost creep!


The men's locker room is especially brutal. At any one time there are two (2) guys shitting something out of their systems that I would think would make them seek immediate medical attention. Usually one of these guys is barefoot and grunting, his feet on the damp tile floor. Seriously, if I was having that kind of gastrointestinal crisis, I would want to keep it very private. Like, "Fly to Switzerland" private... It's a giant room, yet a stench of human waste always hangs in the air like an evil fog.

Meanwhile, the shower will have one guy that is loudly snorting up whatever mucous there is in his sinuses and expelling it onto the shower floor with great ceremony. Unperturbed in the stall next door, another guy will be whistling off key to Lynryd Skynyrd's "Ramblin' Man" playing on the intercom above our heads. As far as I know, the last stall has a guy furiously jacking off like a jackrabbit. At various places around the locker room are wet paper towels bunched up and discarded underneath benches or by the sinks. Why they are on the floor, I don't know. There must be 22 different trash cans available in the general area. Still, there they fester on the floor. I feel bad for whoever has to clean these up. I would only touch one of these paper towel clumps with a long stick, or maybe with an industrial arm length rubber glove.

I always walk around the entire locker room with my toes curled slightly upward, as if this will protect me from the various scary discolorations on the tile floor. This appears to be effective so far as I have yet to contract the Ebola virus or a tapeworm. Yet, how much longer can my luck possibly hold?

I can't imagine the women's locker room is this bad. In my mind, the entrance to the women's locker room has an angelic blonde playing a harp while a slight breeze that smells of wild flowers wafts past. Women in thick robes sashay past, while an attendant hands long tall glasses of ice water with cucumber twists to those leaving the rich marble shower area. Crisp fresh towels sit on a stack by the showers, which are silently fetched after use by yet another attendant in a crisp white uniform. The floors are spotless, there are no bad tattoos, and there are no toilets as no one ever has to deal with something as unsavory as human waste product.

At a certain point I will have to completely give up. When that day comes, I will cancel my membership, drive out to Kohls, and buy some pleated jeans with an expandable waistband. I will take that monthly membership money and head on out to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to buy myself a new shower curtain. I may be soft in the middle then, but you'll be pretty jealous of my shower. The curtain will smell new, and there won't be any slick shiny blobs on the shower floor that I don't know the origin of...