dolphin fitness

besides our persnickety trash men, who lately have been accusing us of "not sorting our recyclables," and have therefore been "refusing to take our garbage for three weeks in a row," one of the very few things i dislike about new york is my gym. i shouldn't really say that i dislike it. it's a fine gym; the people who run it (a truly astoria-like bunch, since every one of them is a person of color and from different parts of the world) are friendly and shake my hand when i go in. it's fairly clean (especially now that it's been renovated; when i joined it was in the process of converting from a boxing-heavy dude's dude gym to a, um, normal gym) except for the suspicious smell in the men's locker room. they have all the weights i need, usually plenty of benches and machines to go around. but, dear readers, it's no baltimore gay workout station.

most of the time i was in baltimore i worked out at hopkins with, in this order, hilary, ben park, and kel. and it was good--brand-spanking new, individual tv's on every piece of cardio equipment (not that i do cardio, since i'm only going to the gym for vanity weight lifting). let's not forget, also, the 19-year-old hopkins lacrosse eye candy. to this day they're some of the hottest guys i've seen in real life, and that's saying something. just like at depauw, though, they could afford to be hot. when you're not worrying about where your next meal's coming from, you have all the time in the world to think about diet and exercise. kinda like when everybody's so amazed that oprah's lost weight again: like, DUH she's lost weight, she has a personal trainer, personal chef, personal makeup artist...she should look like fucking claudia schiffer by this point.

for my last few months in baltimore, i abandoned hopkins gym (when kel was too busy to work out, which he often since he works two jobs) for the downtown athletic club, the gay gym. it wasn't all gay, of course, but most of us were. and damn, was it nice. not because i was checking people out (obviously i was, but that's not the only reason) but because i didn't feel as much like i had to be a tough-guy beefcake. i am not, clearly, a tough-guy beefcake, try as i might. it was fun, too, because i had friends there. i had hilary, ron, scott, eliza, nakia, leslie, gay abs. it was more than a little like going to the bar, albeit a bar where you pick up heavy things and put them down again while listening to your ipod.

my current gym is definitely meathead-ish. it's about, um, 60% latino meatheads, one of whom has the longest, most crystal gale-like hair i've ever seen on a man. the rest are middle-eastern and greek meatheads, one black guy (who's always there and always insists on blaring rap music through the stereo. BLARING.), and me. there might be an italian in there since a few of them have that horrible up-swept gotti-child guido hairdo. apparently all of the singers and actors and students that live in astoria go to new york sports clubs, because they sure don't go to my gym. it's a little intimidating, my gym, and i find myself posturing like i imagine a straight guy would. stiffening my walk, making sure i'm not flailing my arms around (think nathan lane in the birdcage) when i put down the weights. i'm just short of spitting onto the gym floor. wait, that was a joke but i've actually seen that happen. and i kept making grossed-out faces.

anyway, bottom line is this: i love paying $30 a month for the gym, and i couldn't afford to pay the $86 that NYSC charges. and so i'll work on looking like one of them; a few of the meatheads (the big black guy in particular) have started counting me as a regular and started talking to me. just call me the hulk.