Tag: The Gym

Posted on

Natural Enemies by Gillian

          Where we live in Lakewood there are several Rec. Centers within a few miles, and through Kaiser’s Silver Sneakers program membership to all of them, including 24 Hour Fitness, is free.

          So I have a stack of membership cards of which I was quite proud until Betsy the physical fitness freak explained patiently to me one day that the cards themselves in fact do very little to improve my fitness.

          I have to go to these godawful places.

          And worse than that, I have to stay there. For an hour, two, or even three.

          And still worse, I have to do unspeakable things while I’m there.

          Ah well, I suspect The Gym and I are simply natural enemies in the way of the fabled snake and mongoose. I will never learn to love it, but if I could simply leave my body there to get on with it and send my mind off elsewhere it wouldn’t really be too bad.

          However, much as The Gym is the epitome of mindless activity, there are pitfalls associated with excusing my brain from attendance.

          I find it necessary to count and/or time my activities, or else I cheat; 100 of this repetition, 50 of that, ten minutes on this machine, fifteen on that.

          I would so much prefer not to think of any of it and free my mind to write about our current week’s topic or listen to a book on CD, but alas I’ve found that when I try this, my workout is miraculously curtailed. Twenty minutes and I’m done!

          Well I thought I did at least 100 leg lifts, and surely I sweated on that machine for half an hour?

          No, I’m not to be trusted, so my mind must remain in the dreaded gym with my body at all times.

          By it’s very nature, the Gym is an unlovely place.

          But those who are in charge seem to go out of their way to add to the awfulness in all possible ways.

          Walls of mirrors, for God’s sake! What’s that about? Whatever nasty activity I’m performing I’m forced to see myself at it from ten different angles with no place to go to get away from myself.

          Now perhaps some of those young svelte creatures, bodies apparently not yet affected by the pull of gravity and clearly created without sweat glands, like nothing better than watching themselves in fluid effortless motion.

          And, I have to admit, why not? Their brightly colored form-fitting Spandex clings to every perfect curve without even a hint of one ounce of excess fat.

          I on the other hand am in little danger of engendering narcissism as I catch glances, no matter how hard I try not to, of this lumbering old body draped in ragged sweats, huffing and puffing amidst rolls of misplaced misshapen flabby flesh.

          It really should be confined to the privacy of it’s on home.

          So, yes, I try not to look at the mirrors which grace every wall, but what other choices are there?

          I can of course simply gaze with longing upon the aforementioned nubile young things, but I’m forced to confess that palls after only a few minutes.

          At my age it’s a bit like a dog chasing a car. Whatever would I do if I caught one??

          What does that leave? Oh God forbid, the TV. Banks of them, high up on the wall beyond the reach of prying hands hoping to change channels.

           Oh no! You will watch what they, whoever they may be, want you to watch or whatever they have decided you should want to watch. That means half a dozen sets tuned to ESPN and the rest of them showing FOX News. The latter is definitely not on my agenda so that leaves endless replays of Sunday’s NFL games or, no, wait a minute, there’s live football…oh, but it’s two local high school teams and the score is 73 to 3 – and it’s still the first half.

          The best, perhaps the only entertainment provided by the TV is the automated translation of the spoken word into printed words on the screen, as of course all the sets are muted.

          The computer programs which perform this function work much better than they did not so long ago but they still fall into frequent misinterpretation.

          President Obama undressed Congress. Now there’s an ugly vision.

          Dozens of thinks roll down the streets of Lybia. In fact a few thinks might be more beneficial than tanks….but..

          Well at least it’s good for a laugh, which is something not widely on offer at the Gym. This is a serious place.

          And that’s just one more reason I don’t like it, and I suspect it doesn’t particularly care for me. I don’t greatly enhance its image after all.

          But, like that snake and mongoose or the wolf and the moose or many other of nature’s natural enemies, The Gym and I need each other and so our fraught relationship continues.

          As it will, with luck, for many years to come.

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

Posted on

The Gym by Donny Kaye

Gym class in 7th grade turned brutal. I attended one of Denver’s roughest junior high schools, which I’m sure was one of the considerations for the set for the filming of West Side Story. I say it was brutal in that it was, brutal!

The 7:00 a.m. class was huge. Mr. Brutal was our teacher of record. Having a last name that began with “S” meant that I was always number 78 or more, in the large gym classes that were basically intended to be a place to keep large numbers of the student body in a holding place so that other classes, such as math and social studies were smaller in numbers of students.

The class itself was more like a free-for-all than a class with objectives and standards. One morning, one of the smallest boys in the class was hoisted to the top of the two story ceiling on the climbing ropes. When his strength finally gave out from physical exhaustion and crying for help, he dropped to the floor breaking his arm and collar bone. The teachers supervising this “class” finally came to his rescue after one of the other students went to the office and asked for help.

Showers were mandatory. When you were handed a towel after showering the gym teacher recorded your gym number, which constituted that day’s grade for the class. I hated it! Eighty to a hundred pre-pubescent and pubescent boys along with the handful or two of older, rougher students (who were always more developed physically) made for the hour from hell. Towels were snapped at bare asses, size and development were always the source of taunting and the occasional erection that seemed to ‘come up’, so to speak, in a shower full of boys, became the focus of teasing and torment. Typically, lunch money was collected by the older, rougher boys in exchange for ‘protection’. Gaud help me on a day when I had to carry a cold lunch. Fried egg sandwiches and a Twinkie were not negotiable and only intensified the harassment. No wonder I missed forty-eight days of school that year!

The experience of gym class continued to be traumatic. By 10th grade, the only option for not taking gym was in exchange for ROTC class. The choice only created more conflict for me. By 12th grade, I finally had settled into a routine of participating in class as I needed, realizing that those days when we were turned loose to run Washington Park for our class period were the best. Running the park served to increase my speed as a runner so that I could get back to the showers before many of the others, shower and be with towel, dressing and “observing” by the time the majority of the guys were back from their run.

In college, classes like fencing, badminton and bowling didn’t require showering and seemed to be more user-friendly, at least as I was concerned. It really wasn’t until my early thirties that I began to realize how fulfilling the experience of a gym could be for a guy like me. Frequently I would fantasize about the gym, especially the showers and the possibility of meeting someone special. The fantasies always unfolded much like porn. You all have seen the story line; I’m headed to the steam room and someone catches my eye, asks to join me and—well you can imagine the rest of the story. Or another favorite is walking into the dressing area and there are two guys getting dressed, well sort of getting dressed! They seem to be having trouble with their undies or, oh my, the breathing is getting intense!!

At my age, one of the benefits of going to the gym, other than keeping my body somewhat in shape is that I now qualify for a “Silver Sneakers” pass. The gym is free, well sort of. It seems my health insurance company has realized the benefits of staying healthy through exercise. Yes, I still enjoy the lockers and the steam room can be intriguing. Depending on the time of day, there can be extremely gorgeous young guys working out. But who’s looking? Right! It causes me to wonder if they might be interested in my lunch money, just as the tormentors in my seventh grade gym class.

Even though my formation around the gym was not positive, I developed some life skills beyond survival, in gym. I enjoy riding my bicycle, running, and I walk most every day and have stayed reasonably fit and healthy.  

About the Author

Posted on

The Gym by Betsy

 

Throughout
my school years, kindergarten through high school, even in college, gym was my
favorite subject.  I loved gym.  I suppose I loved gym class because I always
caught on quickly, I was never behind or bored, I understood the subject matter
perfectly, I easily passed all the tests, I was always happy to be there in
class.  What teacher wouldn’t adore
me?  I loved gym, I really loved
gym.  And I loved my gym teachers
too.  I even started to pursue a career
as a gym teacher at the age of 40 something. 
I enrolled in graduate school.  I
was going to earn a masters degree in gym. 
I would become a master of gym!  I
actually did not finish this pursuit. 
Somehow as a subject of study and reflection, rather than an activity, I
found it un-stimulating and uninteresting. 
I barely got started when I thought better of it and went to work in the
human services field.

There
was a brief period of time during my high school days when gym–at least what I
considered REAL gym—real gym class was absent from my weekly schedule.  I was 15 years old in 1950.  Because of my father’s work my family had to
pack up and leave our home in Mountain Lakes

, New Jersey.  We had to move to a new town, a new state, a
new part of the country. 

“Oh
well.  There’s a high school there.  It can’t be that different from what I have
known,” I thought.  Little did I know. I
was too young and inexperienced even at the advanced age of 15 to realize that
I was in for a culture shock–big time.

I soon
found myself adjusting to life in small town Louisiana, the antithesis of
Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.  They didn’t
even speak the same language there.  I
spoke New Jersey, they spoke Deep South. 
Oh well, things would get better when school started.  There were all those classes to look forward
to and lots of sports, right?  This IS
high school, after all.  

Did I
say I was in for a change in culture?   I
soon learned that this

definitely
was a culture very different from what I had known, for a girl in particular. I
was soon to learn that girls do not do sports in this culture.  Girls do not sweat.  Girls do not exert themselves
physically.  Girls do not “overdo.” Girls
do not overdo especially when it’s the wrong time of the month.  In fact, when it’s the wrong time of the
month, girls are allowed to skip gym. 
Skip gym!  Oh no!  Please don’t make me skip gym!  I love gym. 
Gym keeps me going all day.  Gym
is the high point of the day for me. 
Except, in the new culture, it turned out, gym was not such a high point
because we didn’t do much really.  Gym
was, well, really, really puny.

 I
quickly learned that in many coeducational high schools in the the deep South
in 1950 girls’ participation in sports amounted to watching the boys.  First of all, I did not want to watch the
boys.  I was not interested in the boys
(although I pretended to be), and I was not interested in watching sports.  I wanted to be doing the sport.  But, alas, I lived in the land of southern
BELLEDOM.  I would have to adjust to a
rather passive existence when it came to athletics.

Youth
often facilitates an easier adjustment to new things, and I did adjust to the
southern culture.  I pretended to be
interested in the boys, and I did become involved in the athletic
events……as a CHEERLEADER.   In the
realm of the gym this was as close as a girl could get to being an athlete.

Yes, I
did adjust, but only superficially.  As
soon as high school was over, I returned to the east and attended a women’s
college where I could participate in most sports and not worry about working up
a sweat.  Oh yes, and sure enough, I fell
in love with my college gym teacher too. 
(Incidentally, I do believe I have never met a self-respecting lesbian
who had not fallen in love with at least one of her gym teachers.)

Now in
my dotage, retired and all, now that I am free to spend as much time in the gym
as I want….It’s amazing how easy it is to find a way to avoid the place.  Excuses abound when I’m feeling lazy or
aching.  But then, the next thing I know,
I’m missing that gym.  There goes that
voice in my head again. 

“Time to
go to the gym, Betsy!”

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the
Denver women’s chorus,  OLOC (Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change).  She has
been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years.  Since her retirement her major activities
include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor
with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a
lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three
children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her
greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her
partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.