Bro

I’m man enough to admit that I’m not LIFTING the 95s—the only unoccupied incline bench just happens to be parked in front of them today.

But I AM proud enough to broadcast that I’m back up to incline-dumbbelling 75s after a summer of injury-induced absence from the gym and from the 90s that I’d been incline-dumbbelling last spring.

And yes, incline-dumbbelling is now a valid gerund. I’m a licensed copywriter and I am hereby verbing it so.

Stabby the Cat doesn’t put up with your excuses on back and shoulders day

He does, however, have a benevolent tolerance for your unruly hair.

Guess who’s now parking at the far end of the lot so nobody will ding his precious new baby

Guess who’s now anthropomorphizing his mighty new car as a helpless infant.

Guess who’s been at the gym for half an hour and already fallen in love seven times.

Guess who just took more than 10 gym selfies in an attempt to find one that’s suitable for public display.

Guess whose super-cute Wolverine shirt keeps riding up over his bloated dad belly like he’s a turgid dirigible.

GUESS WHO CLAIMS TURGID DIRIGIBLE AS A BAND NAME.

Hello, ab machine. Hello, long-dormant abs.

Hello, dawning realization that I do indeed have a weird haircut.

Throwback Thursday: Proto-Gay Edition

Things I had discovered in 1984: The stinky-feet defiance of going sockless in cheap canvas shoes from Target. The gender-bending subversiveness of wearing a hand-braided ankle bracelet. The surfer-wannabe failure of black board shorts decorated with gracefully swirling fish in trendy shades of neon. The glee-club weirdness of fake Ray-Bans with little black music notes all over them. Hair mousse.

Things I had not yet discovered in 1984: Going to a gym. Having the good sense not to wear tank tops in public. Having the good sense not to wear white fake Ray-Bans with little black music notes all over them. Having the good sense to make sure I didn't look like I was in a low-rent Flock of Seagulls cover band before I left the house.

HOW TO ADULT:

1. Get an estimate to have the ugly, bubbly rust on your car repaired
2. Contain your flinching instinct when you get the original ballpark number
3. Head from there to get your oil changed
4. Remember to bring your coupon
5. Refrain from awkwardly flirting with the nerdy straight guy with the ugly shoes in the waiting room
6. Refrain from super-embarrassingly giggling and flipping your hair when you talk to the super-cute guy behind the counter
7. Head from there to the gym for the first time in over two months
8. Make up for all that lost time and all those atrophied muscles in one workout*
9. Sign an international supermodel contract*
10. Read the fine print

* delusions may vary

Throwback Thursday: Wachoo

Blerg. I used to get up at 5:00 every weekday to take the train to the Loop and get physically abused by my cruel, brutal trainer at my appallingly expensive gym for an hour before hobbling off to work.

But sometimes I stopped to take pictures of pretty buildings along the way:

Willis Tower peeking between the Federal Reserve Bank Building and the City National Bank and Trust Building. 5:30 am.

Fuck you, Equinox

I usually quietly stop patronizing a business whose politics mortally offend me (but I’m not quiet about shunning a business for appallingly shitty customer service, Best Buy and Dick’s Sporting Goods). While the MAGA ilk furiously destroys its perfectly good Keurig appliances and buys new Nike shoes to burn in sad little YouTube videos, I’ve never destroyed anything for any reason if I could instead give it to someone who might truly need it.

But here’s a loophole.

I went to Equinox gym in the Chicago loop faithfully for seven years. It was expensive as hell, but it was right next to a train line and three blocks from my office and while I was driving myself into abject poverty to look pretty I also hired their most expensive trainer to regularly kick my butt to the point of dry-heaving in the gorgeously appointed showers afterward. And I liked it!

But they were skeevy, lying, borderline cruel dicks to me when I moved home TO BE HOSPITALIZED IN A PSYCH WARD and understandably didn’t have canceling my gym membership high on my list of things to think about before I left town. Every time I called to cancel I got 1) a freakishly long wait time while someone went “to find a manager” and 2) a completely conflicting story by each manager du jour: I had to drive to Chicago to cancel in person, I could fax in a form that they never mailed to me, nobody could have possibly told me I could fax in a form because they don’t even have a fax machine, I could have a friend cancel in person for me if I mailed them a copy of the Illinois driver’s license that I’d forfeited when I got my Iowa one ... all of which was beyond the normal dick-around you get when you try to cancel a gym membership. It literally cost me over $1,000 in auto-pay membership fees (that protesting to my credit card AND EVEN CHANGING MY CREDIT CARD NUMBER couldn’t end) before I called the police and suddenly Equinox located that long-lost competent manager who canceled my membership easy-peasy on the spot, right over the phone.

Fuck you, Equinox.

I recently found the Equinox T-shirt that I was given as a new member. It was shittily made with a collar that was so high in the front that I always felt like I had it on backward, it had been languishing at the bottom of a box in my storage unit until very recently, and I actually thought I’d put it directly in a long-gone giveaway pile when I rediscovered it.

But I just found it again this morning, in the days after mass protests and cancellations have erupted after the discovery that billionaire Stephen Ross, founder of the Equinox/Soulcycle parent company, was hosting a massive trump fundraiser.

So in the wake of Equinox’s 1) shitty longtime-member customer service, 2) shitty owner’s shitty political ties and 3) shitty-fitting member T-shirt, I now have an expensive new set of painting rags. And a list of painting projects that are just SURE to be messy.

Fuck you, Equinox. (Or did I already say that?)

You will be found

There’s only one thing more certain than me taking a selfie when I’m at the gym: me forgetting where I parked my car when I leave the gym. In my defense, EVERYONE at the gym today came in a silver car.

Also: new haircut!

Also: Disney running shirt!

Also: I finally found my car!

The perfect storm:

• I have 90 minutes to do a 45-minute workout
• There’s nobody here to keep me focused, motivated, accountable and working out instead of playing on my phone
• I have a full battery
• And a super-cute T-shirt
• For selfies!
• It’s Friday and I’m not terribly motivated
• And by “not terribly motivated” I mean “Look! A phone!”
• For selfies!
• It’s so hot outside that we started measuring in Celsius so we don’t horrify the Europeans
• Heat makes me hot
• And sweaty
• And glisteny
• For selfies!
• I have to be at rehearsal in half an hour
• So there’s no time to start a new exercise
• But do you know what there IS time for?

Yesterday marked an unholy confluence of events that in the mortal world happen only on a frustratingly mismatched timeframe:

I ran out of pre-workout shake mix and post-workout recovery shake mix ON. THE. SAME. DAY.

Fortunately, I've recently purchased two exciting new products that are just waiting for their turn to jump into the rotation ... though never in their wildest dreams did they think they'd do it together. I took a new-family photo* this morning with an artfully tipped shaker bottle for context and an apple because there was one sitting there and it seemed like a healthy (and shiny!) prop.

Anywho, I'm about to chug my first shaker of Beyond Raw LIT Clinically Dosed Pre-Workout in an exciting flavor called Icy Fireworks, which are two words that separately could be horrible ways to die but together I hope taste like Awesome.

Then I'll chug GNC AMP Wheybolic Clinically Proven Performance Protein to recover from my LIT-fueled workout.

THEN I'LL BE HUUUUUUUUGE! Please enlarge your doorways if you want me to visit.

*Slightly bumpy apple and nicked-up shaker bottle sold separately.

Throwback Wednesday: Old And Dysmorphic Edition

When you’re feeling old and invisible at your Pumped-Up Unabridged Encyclopedia of Hotness Gym, instead of working out, do something actually productive and emotionally healthy: Re-post a pic of yourself and your shirtless shoulders and your saucy instep from a long-ago gay cruise.

A brodude at the gym just tried to engage me in good-natured bro-bonding trash talk over my mega-superior Iowa T-shirt

(For those of you not awesome enough to live here: The University of Iowa is amazeballs and Iowa State has as its ferocious, terror-inducing mascot a precious little lipstick-colored bird that is by Iowa State logic called a Cyclone. So you can see how there is protracted tension and resentment toward people who dominate a room in their amazeballs Iowa shirts.)

Anyway, I couldn’t tell for sure the exact inspiration for this brodude’s good-natured bro-bonding trash talk because he was cool-bro-boy mumbling, but since he was pro-Iowa State I can’t imagine it was about learnin’. Or having cool alumnuses named Jake. Or general amazeballsness. So I choose to believe it was about football. So therefore I JUST ENGAGED IN FOOTBALL TRASH TALK WITH A BRODUDE AT THE GYM, FAM.

That makes me a FOOTBRO. I think.

The good news: I just had what felt like a pretty solid workout—my second since The Marathon HeadacheTM started more than three weeks ago.

The other good news: It didn’t end with my head exploding in messy, screaming pain.

The bad news: Working out definitely made the pain worse.

The other bad news: Now my ears are screaming like a field of cicadas on a miserable summer night.

The worse news: WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH MY HAIR?

My Screamy Headache Man T-Shirt and I are back in the gym for my first time in exactly two weeks

(I didn’t say “the” first time because he may have been here without me in that time. I have more important things to keep track of than the comings and goings of my leisure apparel. Besides, trying to talk to him is a frustrating exercise in unproductivity; as you might surmise from his rather unambiguous name, it’s hard to get anything out of him but blood-curdling screams about his damn headache. Over and over. All over the Internet. And nobody should have to put up with that.)

Anyway, I’d hoped that my energy-chemical-explosion pre-workout shake might have an effect on my headache pain—which is significantly lessened today—but all it’s done is made me have to pee more. I worked out doing things that kept me relatively vertical—mostly back and shoulder stuff—so I’m at least hoping to have crippling workout pain—which is the pain I like—in those areas when I wake up tomorrow. After getting up to pee six times in the night, of course.

This is my last will and testament before I do shoulder presses with only one barbell clip

WHAT KIND OF GYM RUNS OUT OF BARBELL CLIPS?

More importantly, WHAT KIND OF DIPSHIT GYM MEMBERS MISPLACE BARBELL CLIPS IN ODD NUMBERS?

FORTY WHOPPING FIVE DOLLARS

So way back in my old life in Chicago, I was working out with a top-tier (read: exponentially most expensive) trainer at a mega-trendy (read: exponentially most expensive) gym in the Loop (read: a few blocks from my office, which is why I was coughing up exponentially so much money). I met with my trainer at 6:30 am three days a week and worked out on my own at the same time two days a week, which meant I maintained a rigorous schedule of planning ahead, meal prep, gym-bag clothes packing and disciplined sleep every weekday. Plus I kept emergency backup food in my freezer and emergency backup clothes in my gym bag. Just in case.

But.

Despite all my extremely conscientious, extremely disciplined, extremely successful planning and packing over the course of four-plus years, there was one sweaty morning I unpacked my bag at the gym and discovered to my horror that I hadn’t packed any work clothes. Not. A. Stitch. And it was 7:30 am on a weekday in the Loop, which meant there were absolutely no places open to buy clothes anywhere for the next few hours.

But.

My mega-trendy gym DID have a mega-trendy (read: exponentially most expensive) little (read: tiny, shitty selection of merchandise) boutique in its lobby, which also wasn’t going to be open for the next few hours. But the woman at the nearby check-in desk heard my tale of woe and took pity on me and found a key to open up the mega-trendy (read: exponentially most expensive) boutique so I could find something reasonably priced (read: HAHAHA!) that I could buy and wear to work.

The bad news: There was nothing in the entire boutique that said “white-collar desk job.”

The good news: My white-collar desk job had a pretty flexible, non-collar-of-any-color-obligating dress code when we weren’t meeting with clients.

The bad news: There was nothing in the entire boutique that said “less than a mortgage payment.”

The good news: My gym shorts weren’t TOO sweaty and I did have emergency backup clean underwear and I figured could probably get away with spending one day at work dressed like I’d just run a marathon.

Long story short: This T-shirt cost me FORTY WHOPPING FIVE DOLLARS. And while it got me through a mega-casual workday, it actually fits like a cheap-ass five-dollar shirt to this day and I should just get rid of it but IT COST ME FORTY WHOPPING FIVE DOLLARS.

So I feel like I still have to keep it in my shirt rotation. Because FORTY WHOPPING FIVE DOLLARS.

The hottest guy in the gym just dug a Richter-scale booger out of his nose in front of me

Which totally knocks him off the top spot, and if I can score well in the cha-cha I can probably improve my ranking on the leader board.

Also: I just did ten unassisted triceps dips. That technically triples my advantage over Booger Boy.

I managed to wear a pair of gym shorts today that are the exact shade of black polyester to spotlight just how pasty-white-Easter-ham-pink my legs are

Plus I’m wearing a shirt that might as well come with a name tag that says “Hello! My Name is Gay Gayerthanyou!”

Fortunately, there’s all but literally nobody here for me to horrify. Unfortunately, I am NOT in the mood to work out, and being surrounded by tons of other people working out usually keeps me focused and accountable.

So here we are.

I legit just got eye-rolled-at by a dude at the gym I had the not-know-my-place-ity to acknowledge as we passed each other in the hallway

I’ve been fully conditioned to not waste my time trying to make friends here, but I sometimes slip up and I accidentally did the eye-contact-and-imperceptible-bro-nod thing at him as we approached each other and he rolled his eyes so hard at me that he almost fell over and won a free ophthalmologist appointment and a lifetime membership to a bitchy gay gym.

AND!

Not only was he not nearly hot enough to pull off that diva shit, but when he came out of the locker room in his billowy, voluminous gym shorts he was standing on a pair of pasty white stork legs that were more chickenshit than Bill Barr in a roomful of grownups.

Leg day, bro. Less eye roll, more leg day. Then we’ll talk.