today: 4.26.99
every day

i made a point of joining a gym in my neighborhood today. i have put this off for a really long time -- about as long as i thought i could without being hospitalized for atrophy. i used to have my designs set on taking kung fu classes. kung-fu classes seemed like a productive way of re-engineering my body. get in shape and learn a lethal skill! needless to say, i changed my mind about that really quickly.

here's what kept me out of kung fu classes (besides mortal fear): do i really need to create another public success/failure experiment for myself? i suffer an enormous amount of anxiety involving some variety of failure each day -- things like "will this editor think he could have written this much better himself?" or "did i try hard enough this time?" or "why won't my therapist return my calls?" kung fu would mean volunteering for a lot more of that. i may never find out if i'm the last dragon, but that's the price i'm paying.

the problem with joining a gym is that it means indulging in the excrutiating monotony of repitition, which most of us get enough of daily (in our jobs, our smalltalk, our commutes, and our web browsing). while that was the thing that kept me out of the gym for this long (that, plus all the physical activity that i think really stigmatizes the workout experience), it's also the thing that's making me finally join one after all. that hour of nothing mentally demanding, where my brain has to share time with my body. no interruptions. an hour of headphone music. (i listen to music all the time but i never really hear it at all until i mainline it between headphones. car stereos provided a similarly unfiltered listening experience for me, but i gave that up when i moved to nyc. i hated driving, anyway. i regarded my car as a mobile stereo that i could sit inside.) something to get my mind off those success/failure questions that dominate the rest of my day.

ok. that's not entirely accurate. one of the things that almost sent me running to the gym ( i would have run, too, if i was sure running wouldn't induce cardiac seizures) was a conversation i had with a cab driver this past weekend. he spoke of loneliness, he spoke of nice tits (his words, my artistic license), and he spoke of the difficulty of getting himself motivated to join a gym. my cab driver was a healthy 450 pounds, i'd say, and had one of those buttermilky, smoky voices that sounded like he was choking on a Charleston Chew. my cab driver told me that all he ever wanted was to have his own place (me too!!) and make his own rules for his life (me too!!) and maybe someday have a la-z-boy chair made of cured pork that he could nibble on while he was watching the rangers games on his rear projection, large screen television (um, me too, actually -- except substitute sour patch kids for the cured pork and substitute California Dreamin for the rangers games). then he said something really foreboding: "careful what you wish for." i nearly asked him to drop me off at a 24-hour step aerobics facility. the experience was that powerful. i remember later that night, a tear in my eye, alone, eating chocolate pudding out of a mop bucket with my bare hands, thinking, "this has got to stop. i didn't wish for this -- except for the pudding."

so i'm joining a gym. been thinking that i might just work out my neck, since it requires the least amount of work with the most visible results. it would be interesting to subject my physique to a grossly enlarged neck.

unable to completely extricate myself from toploading everything in my life with room for failure, i have set up some (reasonable) goals for my new attention to the physical:

please let this lead to other physical activities, such as tennis, frisbee, and giving hickeys to relative strangers.

make that dusty old drawer full of midriff tops and daisy dukes count this summer!

get a literary agent and book deal (i realize my physical condition has absolutely no bearing on this goal, but i thought it would be nice to consolidate and economize my goals).

fight and destroy Bigfoot once and for all.

become the most feared rollerball player in the united corporate states of america.

have a folk song written about my feats of super-human strength, and let it be a grassroots lesson for the alienated workers of the industrial revolution.

to be honest, i will be pleased with myself if i can just turn the soft earth of my body into miles and miles of sleek, murderous terrain. actually, to be really honest, i will be pleased if i'm still working out next week.

prequel | sequel