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.

Don't try this at home, kids

Since my slowly healing wrist wound is now starting its FOURTH DAMN WEEK of preventing me from going to the gym, I’m wearing all my weird clothes that would normally get me beaten up by all the gymbrodudes.

To wit:

• My fancy-gay clingy plunging-V-neck shirt that says—in dramatic lettering—Provincetown, which is the High Nirvana Holy Land for vacationing gays who ride things called ferries without irony

• My jackass-plaid Bermuda shorts that I won in a game of Zima Pong against a frat boy named Blaine
• My Squared Moc Toe Exaggerated Profile Driving Shoes of Beyond Forgiveness
• Please don’t hit me

SACRED GYMBRO CODE:

You won’t acknowledge in any way seeing me take a secret gym selfie and I won’t acknowledge in any way seeing you trip over a workout bench like a drunken three-legged camel learning to fly.

Though I can’t guarantee the entire rest of the gym won’t acknowledge it.

Stealth gym selfie! (Gym stealthfie? Could that become a thing? Could it make me rich?)

I still really love my new gym: good vibe, lots of equipment, headbanger-lite music, chlorine smell (for authentic gymminess), just enough people to keep me motivated and focused without everyone getting in each other’s way. There’s an unusually large stand-around-and-brotalk contingent here today, but the populations seem to be migratory as they take turns using all the equipment improperly, so nobody’s bottleneckimg anywhere.

Also: I just did a 60-second plank (with 0:02:39 for starting and stopping the stopwatch)!

Second day. More advanced.

When Rob and I met Monday morning for our first-ever chest workout together at my new (but his old) gym, we quickly managed—despite our Don’t-Strain-Yourself Barbie(R) weights—to savagely rip our moobs from their moorings, force them mercilessly into a wood chipper, and spend the next 48 hours woefully unable to punch Nazis. Which is gymbro talk for “we had a good workout.”

I came back tonight fired up to show the same unholy cruelty to my back, biceps and babdominals (alliteration runs rampant!), and now that the carnage is over I’m typing this as fast as I can before the rigor sets in.

The good news: I’m pretty sure I’ll be unable to roll over in my sleep tonight.

The other good news: Nobody will be able to steal my wallet from my locker.

The reason for this jarring non sequitur: I discovered that I didn’t have it with me at Target on my way to the gym tonight. As an impatient line of people waited behind me and the cashier had to call for help canceling all the purchases she’d rung up and I sweated bullets mentally retracing my every step over the last 17 years to see if I could remember where I might have lost it.

The good news: I called my folks and they found it on my bedroom floor.

The bad news: I didn’t get to buy those super-cute track pants I’d found.

The second non sequitur in this rambling post: WHY ARE ALL THE GUYS AT THIS GYM SO HOT? And why won’t any of them volunteer to come roll me over in my sleep tonight after the rigor sets in?

#GymTales: Pipes And Tats Edition

There’s a guy at my gym who looks like this photo except he doesn’t totally look like this photo because he has a head and one of those ridiculous disgusting long Millennial goatherder beards but anyway he has massive pipes that are covered in tattoos which is total catnip to me but he always wears a hat and earphones and stares at the floor which are all international gymbro code for leave me alone so I always leave him alone because I’m a total gymbro but I still totally want to be his boyfriend just so I don’t have to be secretly subversive about using the mirrors to stare at his arms when he walks by me staring intently at the floor as if he’s fascinated by a sprinting ant or something but since I clearly will never be his it’s-not-creepy-to-stare-at-his-arms boyfriend I’ve always been at least hoping to get one of those imperceptible gymbro nods from him where your eyes accidentally meet so you do that a tiny spasm in the back of your neck that lifts your face one degree as if to say hey gymbro I acknowledge your existence gymbro and I guess I don’t totally secretly want you to die gymbro so here’s a perfunctory hey gymbro and now get the hell out of my way and never lock eyes with me again gymbro but my muscle tattoo pipes gymbro dude here never even gives me that polite gymbro courtesy so I assume I’m totally invisible to him so anyway I was minding my own beeswax doing deadlifts today while he was doing chest things halfway across the room and I was on my fifth rep when I heard someone shout hey from his general area and it had to be him because the only other person in the gym was a woman who clearly had done her hair up fancy and nice just to get it all sweaty on the treadmill which isn’t my problem but seriously what’s the point of going to all that trouble to fix your hair up nice in the morning only to ruin it a few hours later in a deluge of head sweat but like I said not my problem and anyway that big bellowing manly hey clearly wasn’t from her so oh my god my muscle tattoo pipes gymbro dude not only noticed me but he was actually heying me which made me panic and do a quick mental inventory of how my butt and lats might look in the gym clothes I was wearing because that was the view he had and if I had on my especially cool gymbro shoes which I did so thank goodness for that small miracle but anyway he was actually heying me and play it cool Jake play it cool because he probably wants a date so don’t look too eager or excited and even though it was technically rude and distracting and uncool and even kind of dangerous to hey me in the middle of a set of deadlifts he gets a pass because I mean just look at him and then he said hey again and I knew here comes the marriage proposal because he’s totally impressed with my butt and my lats and my especially cool gymbro shoes and my form which is especially hard to maintain when you’re doing deadlifts and he clearly thinks I’m a rockstar at it and play it cool Jake play it cool because at this point he’s all yours and there’s no way he’ll ever say anything bad or critical about you and here comes the marriage proposal here it comes here it comes but instead he yells pull your shoulders back you’re gonna hurt yourself in a voice that had the subtext of you’re a stupid idiot and stop it with your stupid idiotness and that’s pretty much the opposite of a marriage proposal and even though technically this meant he’d noticed me I was crushed and well shit.

Day 8 of hunting the elusive Alluring Calfed Dudebro

My frequent visits to his occasional gym habitat have paid off in rich abundance; he made his third appearance in just over a week this morning. My attempts to engage him via traditional tribal Gym Dudebro greeting rituals — faux-offhand-doesn’t-mean-anything-I-just-happened-to-be-looking-in-your-direction sub-second eye contact and near imperceptible head twitches of human acknowledgement — have not been returned, so my camouflage game is either totally on fleek or my presence is non-alarming or we-all-know-it’s-not-true-but-I-still-have-to-say-it-in-my-report-in-the-name-of-accurate-anthropology not interesting enough to notice.

Sigh.

Aside from his aloof courting rituals, he exhibits a sophisticated system of characteristics and behaviors for attracting and selecting a suitable mate. His ‘90s-small-town-high-school-wrestler-crenellated-bowl-cut bangs keep potential suitors cautiously at bay, while his habit of wiping his brow with the hem of his shirt reveals a corrugated curtain of abs that are as impossible to tear yourself away from as a Siren’s fabled song.

At this writing, he has retreated into the fogs of the storied Brigadoon from whence he came, but not without a final, beguiling presentation of his eponymous alluring calves to the sparse early-morning population of his occasional gym habitat.

I shall keep vigilant watch — always in super-cute shoes, just in case — for his next appearance.

Let’s hear it for the Rainbow Tour!

I was up way past my bedtime at callbacks last night so I didn't go to the gym this morning so I have no new chapter to report in the penny-dreadful saga of The Mystery Secret Gym Boyfriend With The Beguilingly Handsome Calves(C).

[Private note to The Mystery Secret Gym Boyfriend With The Beguilingly Handsome Calves(C) so don't any of you snoopy, gossipy Facebook friends read this because as I just clearly said it's private and I've decided I'm even going to whisper-type it so you won't even know I'm saying it so mind your own beeswax: I SHOULD BE AT THE GYM TOMORROW AT 1:00 IN CASE YOU HAPPEN TO MAYBE WANT TO PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PERHAPS ADJUST YOUR SATURDAY SCHEDULE AND BE THERE AT THE SAME TIME I PROMISE NOT TO MENTION BREAD. OOPS.]

So here's an interim gym-related news item that I am selflessly providing for you until I have a chapter three to report about The Mystery Secret Gym Boyfriend With The Beguilingly Handsome Calves(C): As you know, I'm still on my Top 14 Most Active Gym Members From The Week Of November 3, 2015, Worldwide Victory Tour (see chart above). But Facebook tells me today's my two-year anniversary of earning my scepter and tiara, and I wanted to take a moment to remember the humble beginnings from a more innocent time where it all began. So a moment of silence, please.

I SAID SILENCE. Shut up already. Jeez.

Now. I'm heading back out on my Top 14 Most Active Gym Members From The Week Of November 3, 2015, Worldwide Victory Tour with stops this weekend in Wahoo, NE, and What Cheer, IA, but -- as just a casual, means-nothing, there's-really-no-useful-reason-to-even-mention-it closing thought -- I SHOULD BE AT THE GYM TOMORROW AT 1:00. Ahem. Bread. Oops.

Second day. More advanced.

So Mystery Secret Gym Boyfriend was at the gym again today with his Beguiling Masculine CalvesTM. I was with my trainer so it would have been weird to just walk away from my workout and abruptly introduce myself by saying something mortifying like “My name’s Jake. Are those your calves? I like bread.” Just like yesterday, he kept totally to himself during his workout, but my trainer had me doing legs and while I was on the quad extension machine he yelled from across the gym to ask if I was using the squat rack, which tells me three things: 1) He noticed I was doing legs. 2) He’s considerate and polite. 3) We should have a June wedding.

But there are three more things that have left me in a ponder: 1) I hadn’t been anywhere near the squat rack, which is so far from where I was doing quads that you need a passport and a Silkwood scrubdown to get to it. 2) There are two squat racks right next to each other and neither had weights loaded so his question had only one transparent purpose and that purpose was to ask me how many cats we should get when we move in together. 3) Maybe the wedding should be earlier than June. Like this Saturday.

Anyway, he was doing planks as I left the gym, and don’t nobody wanna have a conversation with a stranger while counting seconds during planks. So I’ll just have to wear a different marathon shirt to the gym tomorrow to impress him with my Total Jock JocknessTM. Which I totally didn’t spend time picking out this morning for that very purpose. That would just be bread.

FIND. HIM. FOR. ME. After my chin heals, of course.

When you’re late for work because you had to wait in the hallway for a bathroom with a shower at the gym — which is literally the first time that’s happened in the three years you’ve belonged there — and when a room finally opens up, out walks the impossibly handsome, impossibly-maybe-he'd-insist-on-being-boyfriends-if-he-knew-how-well-I-could-tap, impossibly-OH-MY-GOD mystery stranger who’d kept totally to himself all during his workout and since your gym is unfailingly Totally Mega HeterosexualTM you don’t make eye contact because you don’t want to seem clueless and creepy but he stares right at you with a huge smile and asks you how you’re doing and you squeakily say fine and ask him how he’s doing and his smile gets even bigger and he says — and you quote, even though you don’t know why you’re still clumsily talking in the second person at this point — “I’m having a great morning NOW ...” and then he disappears as magically as he’d appeared and you go to take your shower and because you’re totally distracted from scheduling your wedding cake tasting in your head you slice nine pounds of flesh off your chin while you’re shaving and then you post a picture of your massive chin scab and the inside of your nose on your blog but you don’t care because WHAT THE HELL DID HE MEAN BY THAT?

Guns and man-buns

My finally-humanoid haircut's first trip to the gym didn't land me a husband or a physique modeling contract or even a secret Putin meeting that's all Obama's fault. But my secret gym boyfriend was there after a months-long disappearance, though he was sporting a man-bun and haircuts and man-buns are not a mutually exclusive zero-sum equation and are therefore immutably incompatible so I am once again seeking qualified applicants for the position of secret gym boyfriend.

I have to note, though, that losing 40 lbs of hair makes your head cool faster and your body sweat less, and when your internal temperature-regulating system is working at optimal performance, you can give yourself a really swole workout. Even though your deal-breaker-man-bunned secret gym boyfriend never even looks up to notice.