loves it

say what you will about the downtown athletic club. it's a little dirty. it's a little, um, old-looking, especially for its $86/month cover charge, er, i mean membership fee. the weight area's always crowded, the machinery's clearly from 1972, and there are never enough cardio machines to go around. but i love going to this gym. why? because i love anything queer-centric. i'll watch an indie movie that cost sixteen dollars to make because it's gay. i'll go to any number of small, scary start-up clubs because they started a gay night. i read gay books, fiction and nonfiction.

sure, not everyone at the dac is a homo. there are a few overly-pumped muscle heads with horrid tribal armband tattoos. they do things like high-five or hit fists when they see each other. they grunt. and all the faggots, all of us, look at them with disdain, superior in our coordinated sleevelessshortworkoutfits. you'd think that going to the gym with this many gays would be intimidating, distracting. like a big, sober (i hope) version of the gay bar. but it's not. there's some like strange homo camaraderie that goes on. and hilary, eliza, nakia, leslie go there. so it's often like a big peabody reunion and for once i get to act like a singer again.

i have to share with you a great gym story from yesterday's weight room playtime:

i'm in the weight area with ron and scott (and, incidentally, a guy named britt, who you might remember from my phenomenal "twelve men of mount vernon calendar to benefit baltimore pride" spread) and this older guy is doing abs on a decline bench. every time he comes up for a crunch--every single time--he makes this noise that sounds like he is getting fucked in the ass bareback with no lube except for some louisiana brand hot sauce and a prayer. one crunch -moan- two crunches -groan- three crunches -AAHHH!- and so on. i'm not even kidding. i had my new headphones on--the ones that are supposed to block out sound--and i could hear it loud and clear. if he'd been saying something like, "yeah, gimme that hot piss" between groans it would've been a full-on titan feature. i was trying not to laugh. i'm lifting weights, which we all know is completely somber business (at least if you're one of those over muscled armband tattoo guys), but as soon as i made eye contact with some girl we both lost it. and then i look over at ron and scott and they're dying.

i walked over to them and said, "there's only one thing i know that sounds like that, and it ain't an ab workout." scott said, "it sounds like he's auditioning."

gay gym. loves it.