Safe Suicide

Gym Jerks

138 safe suicide Gym Jerks A jerk is that hirsute, slouchy, 175 pound, thirty-five-something man, black, scraggly beard, black hair and bald spot, hairy back, neck, arms, undershirt, baggy shorts, tennis sneakers, who lets us all know how furiously he is working out, gasping loudly with effort on the exercise bike, then whistling to himself, as if he were alone, the way he must sing in the shower. A trim red-headed woman, whom I know from an overheard conversation between her and another girl the other day on the stair climber, is twenty-eight, unmarried, Irish, and if not a barmaid, then a regular at local pubs, is intensely biking in her Nike warm-ups near him to the left, a Redbook magazine open on her console, and she glances at him in the mirror as he whistles, grunts and makes his other noises, then glances directly at him a couple of times. “Whatsa matter, don’t you like it?” he asks loudly, pointedly to her. Keeps on, all the more loudly. She catches my eye, reddens and grimaces. “You got a problem?” he demands again. I’m tempted to intrude as I continue to step in my row of stair-climbing machines behind and facing their row of exercise bikes and then the row of treadmills along the mirrored wall opposite. I think this is his way of coming on to the woman, and of breaking the pretense of silence; or perhaps of revenging himself on the pretense. She is reading his contact as harassment. I don’t intrude, but we all three continue, the man whistling and grunting louder than ever, as if he’s won a point; the girl grimly ignoring him and absorbed now in her reading and biking; and me intent again on my stair climbing and pondering the unwritten mores of gyms. R When I first saw this gym, Superfitness, in Watertown, near the Arsenal Mall, I was fifty-five and had been living the lifestyle of a would-be marathon runner for seven years, had trained at fifty to seventy-mile weeks somehow, spending two and three hours on runs around the Charles River bike path. The total loop from my house into Boston and back was twenty-five miles. 138 Winters were the challenge, once snow closed the paths. Running on plowed roads with slush and traffic was desperate. Even then I would go over to Heartbreak Hill, where Commonwealth Avenue was plowed and had an access road, out of the traffic. I ran in temperatures under ten degrees. From January on, the training intensified, with the Boston Marathon coming in the third week of April. I finished five Boston Marathons as a bandit, never as a qualifying runner for my age group. Only jerks, I believed then, joined gyms. Not real athletes. Just cosmetic wannabes. All that useless muscle. Lifters. Boxers. Martial artists. Hard bodies. Real runners ran their distances on land. But then each of the past two Januaries I had gotten walking pneumonia that lingered and not only spoiled my training, but threatened my teaching. It was time to train inside, at least for the worst of the snow and frigid weather. I would keep fit through the winter for the next Boston Marathon. This was my dream. I rationalized the membership fee of $149 per year with the idea that my running shoes would last longer. Instead of four pairs a year at $70 per, I would need only two. R The layout, as the salesperson routinely explains, constantly showing around prospects, includes two floors. To the right, as you enter and check in at the desk, is the “cardio club”—in its first stage of evolution, when I joined originally, it featured five or six sky walker machines (arms and legs swinging against resistance for low impact) off on one side, along with a row of abdominal exercising machines (sit and bend, sit and swing left to right, lie down for sit-ups and crunches) and then perhaps a long space, perhaps one hundred feet or more, with treadmills facing both walls, which were all mirrors, and two rows of exercise bikes facing each other in the middle. New equipment came and went every six months or so, upgraded treadmills; different varieties of exercise bikes; stair climbers; two rowing machines. Off in another area were various weight machines, arranged in stations, each machine specializing in a different exercise and muscle group. Straight ahead as...