Nonfiction Story Draft 2 - "My Gym"

I’ve called it “my gym” on account of I’ve worked there two and a half years and I’m still the only one there who knows the difference between his ass and the hole in the middle of a 45 pound plate. As cliché as it sounds, It’s also like my little home away from home. Well, I guess it’s really more like a smellier, more dramatic version of a home away from home, but it’s been enough fun for me to hang around this long anyway.
Every day in my gym it’s the same thing. The place has a timeless quality, so much so I’m convinced if I moved half way around the world for decades and returned home I’d walk through the glass doors and hear the same thumping of feet and whirring of treadmill motors. The ventilation system would still be dumping piles of cool air onto the gym floor and the same bar bells would be clanking into their cradles while the smell of rubber flooring hung over the weight pit. Hundreds of hours I’ve spent in the gym, walking the floor during a workout, battling dust with the commercial vacuum cleaner, reclined in the leather office chair. The features of this place have been burned onto my conscious.
Contemporary design elements designed into the gyms décor create a non-threatening environment. This environment attracts what the fitness sales guys affectionately refer to as the “de-conditioned market”. Compiled into that tidy little demographic label are the house moms who have gained a little extra padding hustling junior to soccer practice, living on a diet delivered solely through a drive-through window. Ex-military men whose beer guts march horizontally, as their days of mandatory marching come to an end. Every other average Joe or Josephine with diabetes, heel spurs, arthritis and fifty to one-hundred and fifty extra pounds whose fitness resolutions begin ever year around December 31st and promptly end around January 5th.
Neutral colored green and purple pastel paint covers the walls. Ergonomic, friendly looking machines in powder coated silver stand in rows conceived to direct the human traffic through their routines. Mostly devoid of intimidating meat heads, you won’t hear too much slamming around of weights and frat house conversation in my gym. The weights are all rubberized, big red safety buttons on the wall and white lanyards with little green buttons can be pressed by the disabled or the panicked to alert 911 of emergencies. Members are typically cordial and clean up after themselves as top forty hits crank out low over the radio, pretty mundane stuff.
Leaning back against the reclining springs in the leather office chair I grab the days papers and begin to read them over as I crack open a bottle of water. Sipping off of the top of the bottle I lean back again and again, rocking, relaxing and thinking about how to tackle the day. One of our members, “Big John” as we call him, leans his head into my office, “Hey there old buddy. How’s the weather treating you old Brandt? We got dumped on pretty good uh?” John’s a great big ol’ Aussie and he carries his accent with him like a fifty pound trunk at the airport that he’s afraid to set down. John has wild red, sun bleached hair which makes him look like he’s just returned from spending years on safari in the Great Victoria Desert. John’s about as wide and stout as a compact car and my stereotyping mind pictures him playing rugby with a bunch of other Brits in his heyday, raising hell, chugging one liter cans of Fosters and shooting wallabies pinned in the headlights of chasing Land rovers . “Not too terrible I reply, how’s your car holding up in this awful stuff?” Since I’ve worked here John has single handedly help to raise my game in small talk, somewhat of a lost art in this day of twitter and skype. “Not too bad old boy, just had to dig myself out of an igloo this morning,” John chuckled as he replied. One time I confided in John that I hadn’t been accepted for a second round interview at a large firm which was pretty important to me. He knew I was going through a bummer and he said, “Those bloody human resources bastards are idiots. Worthless as tits on a bull they are, you need to knock down their door or they’ll have their way with you.” Eloquently put. The next day I put in just about a dozen calls and emails to the firms various departments. Two weeks later I had my interview. Crikey good show. John’s “Fosters Keg”, is what he refers to as his mid section, and it hasn’t shrunk an inch since he joined the gym. My friend and co-worker Brandon told me one day that for some people who come to the gym, the aspect of socializing and working out is the highlight of their day and when he first told me I couldn’t believe it. As time went on, I began to know many of these people. I do what I can to make their experience fun for them. Please god let the highlight of my life be retiring on a private beach in the Caribbean or South America, not sweating on some cold piece of steel in the middle of a strip mall.
“Hey, hey, man, how ya doin?” It’s “tall Tom”. He caws as he struts in the entrance, ducking to miss the commercial sized door jam. Literally, the guys like 7 feet even, when he runs on the treadmill he has to constantly crouch down and hit the keypad to change speeds, which makes him look like one of those pecking bird desk ornaments, eternally caught between cawing and pecking. Tall Tom sells his insurance, and I guess he’s pretty good at it too because I became his client after only a year of meeting him.
Jay’s the big man on campus around the gym, every time he walks though the doors he’s strutting like a rooster, making certain not to make eye contact with anyone while throwing sideways glances at the ladies. Jay’s a real estate developer with one hundred plus properties, some of which are in Barbados, so George, a struggling mortgage broker, is always right on Jay’s heels. They’re always batting it back and forth, reliving some old high school sports glories, arguing over ESPN highlights or whispering about some “young honey” that just joined up. My Gym is often the equivalent of one big office water cooler, working here has gotten me some sharp skills shooting the shit.
Next comes Alex the bank manager, then Jacob the loan officer then Julie the real estate broker and then a half dozen more like them that’ve offered me positions once I graduate. Note to self: re-open a gym after you’ve made it just for the networking opportunities. The usual flock of house wives rolls in. Most of them are well reserved, except for Jessica, a Brazilian lady who’s much more flirtatious than the rest. She floats from one man to the other in the gym like a butterfly choosing flowers, most of the men humor her but the novelty of her presence typically wears thin once her motives arise. Desperate housewives, one of the truly sad elements in my gym. She pops into the office, “We all want to know whether or not Bobby and Phil are offering free classes anymore and where we can sign up. Aren’t you here late Mr. Brandt, were you waiting just for me?” I laugh sarcastically, “Yeah I’m here just for you.” We small talk about working out and I listen to her same old story. She is eating bad again and put on weight. In two weeks she is going to a wedding or a reunion or a dinner with the in-laws, to be honest I don’t even keep track anymore. She needs to “look pretty quick.” I’m a gym rat. After these two years I could pass for a shrink.
Every person in my gym comes from a different walk of life, their motivations being vastly different. They have one thing in common, they all have bodies that have whispered to them, “time for change,” and we collect all of those insecurities. I used to think we only collected membership fees, but we collect more than that. We collect dashed and new romances, born again track stars, quitters of vice and winners of competitions. We collect new mothers, the silently determined, the outwardly apathetic and the willingly malleable. We also collect ones like me. And I’ve never been great at saying what my strengths and weaknesses are, so I’ll just tell you how I got here and you can judge for yourself.

“Can you bring me some more ketchup please? Sir! Sir!”
“Sure thing Sir,” I whistle from between clenched teeth and a forced smile. I’m picturing top sizing the plastic ramekin of ketchup upside down on his head so it looks like one of those little hats on the tambourine playing monkey in that Stephen King movie. It’s near the end of my double shift. I’m starting to go snow blind from novelty stained glass lamps and bar lights reflecting off of shellacked wooden dining tables. I hate this job, with passion. Little kids run free from their parents around my feet. They’re flailing forks and knifes like mini-swashbucklers as I try and balance thirty pound trays of double-decker cheese fries and clam chowder. By the end of the night I’m picturing booting these little kids like field goals up into the novelty fish netting hanging from the ceiling. I have no idea how I used to play football and soccer for six to eight hours and be as chipper as a jack rabbit afterwards and now I can’t even pull a double at this little greasy spoon house of horrors without turning into some grouchy old miser who hates people. I hate this job, with fervor. I can’t wait until I cash out, so I can unwind while sitting on my ass, reclined in my car, the summer night’s breeze blowing through my window, zeppelin pouring from the radio. Ten minutes of this treatment and I’m right back to normal.
Two weeks into my waiting career I reach a tipping point. I set down my little lined pad near the order terminal and walk back into the kitchen during another night of poor tips and times. I catch the manager looking at me with a serious expression, “Brandt can I talk to you for a minute?” I oblige and we retire to a spot by the dishwashing station, out of the way from the constant stampede of busboys and waitresses with arms and tubs full of greased up, generic white flatware. “Brandt, there’s an African American couple who complained that you’re not serving them as well as their neighboring table with white guests. Now I’m not trying to imply anything but what’s going on here?” Anger and humor boiled from my depths.
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” I retort, letting out a chuckle of disbelief. “Those two are sitting next to each other in the booth and every time I walk up I’ve got to watch him with his hand up her skirt! You want me kneel down next to the table and take their order? I don’t care what race they are man but I’m not comfortable watching a skin flick while I’m trying to work!”
He looked shocked, “Alright Brandt, I believe you. I just wanted to make sure, you know what kind of area this is.”
“What kind of area this is?” I thought. “I’m the racist?”
I made my way to the bar, leaning on the far side for a time out, to reflect on my situation. For whatever reason I’ve always had an ability to keep jobs merely out of pride, sometimes holding out to the bitter end, even as the wheels fall off, because I don’t want to quit. “I’m getting older,” I thought to myself, “maybe knowing when to fold and quitting aren’t the same things.” I thought about the guys in the history books, the great business men and everyone else I’ve learned about and admired in formal and private studies. I decided no one who always plays it safe every time makes it anywhere in this world, they suffer slowly with tied hands, drowning in monotony. They choose hope over action, and while it is foolish to act on a whim, it’s equally as foolish to stay stagnant because of a lack of faith.
I walked back into the manager’s office and grabbed Steve, the owner. He was a younger, pretty hip guy who I got along with all right. I told him I put in my two weeks. Without batting an eye he thanked me for putting in my time and told me thanks for helping out while I could. The turnover in these places is ridiculous and I didn’t wonder why. I walked back out to the bar.
One of the younger busboys, Erik, was there fooling around with his bus tub pretending to work with a few of his Hispanic buddies. Some nights I’d played soccer with the Hispanic guys and their families out in the parking lot after work. I liked them. They were down to earth, hard working family people who focused on living daily life. It’s good to be around people who know how to enjoy the small things. They reminded me of the year and a half I lived with my first girlfriend, we worked simple jobs and our paramount joy was found in a walk or a plate of steaming wontons. Simple is good. Erik on the other hand, already had one foot in the slammer and he was only 17. Erik was making things complicated. He was talking to his buddies about hustling pot and partying.
“Man, so what if I have to sell a little weed here and there to get by?” he finished up his conversation with them as I entered the scene. “So Brandt, why are you quitting anyway?”
“Have I ever told you how they catch monkeys in the Congo?” I asked him.
“Nah man, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Trappers in the jungle hollow out a coconut and carve a little hole in it just big enough for the monkey to fit his hand in. They screw the coconut to a tree with the hole facing up and put a handful of peanuts in it. The monkey smells the peanuts, reaches into the coconut, grabs the whole handful of peanuts, and tries to pull his hand out, but he can’t because now he’s making a fist and the hole’s too small! Monkeys aren’t stupid, they’re one of the “smarter” animals in the jungle, but he’s mesmerized by the tasty nuts in his hand. For hours he tries to pull his fist out of the hole constantly, but he won’t let go of the nuts. The trapper sneaks up to the monkey, who’s crazy and senseless at this point, and the trapper shoots him. Easy as 1-2-3. The monkey did all of the trapper’s work for him. He made the trapper rich with his blood and sweat. In the end he had nothing to show except a hand that was only full as long as it trapping him.” I shuffled back from foot to foot in my slip resistant Sketchers, trying to aid the aching in my feet.

“Yo, you’re crazy man. So what in the hell does that mean?” the busboy asked after he’s grown impatient with the riddle.
“It means never be afraid to let go of the peanuts.”
My final shift ended in two weeks. As I drove to the gym I pondered the hardships I’d faced thus far in my education. I needed money, but I didn’t want to ask my mom, she had enough to worry about with my other brothers and sisters. Dad was decently well off, but in his first attempt at launching a consulting firm, the venture quickly became unmanageable for him and the IRS was taking him for a ride. There were no other ideas as to where I should go. It was too early in my academic career to have gained the experience to land a descent internship and too late to go taking steps backwards, applying at another burger joint to make ends meet.
I could feel my lungs getting ready to bellow as I laced up my sneakers. First I’d take a lap outdoors, around the shopping center in the night air, to loosen things up before I went inside to finish up on the treadmill. I was finishing my last stretch of the outdoor portion of my workout. Heading back to the main doors I noticed a small, beat up Isuzu Rodeo slowing down as it pulled away from me out of the parking lot. I realized it was John, the owner of the club. He was a multi-millionaire and he drove around that beat-up little SUV everywhere he went, I guess wealthy people stay wealthy for a reason.
He rolled down his window as I jogged up to meet him. He said, “Who’s that?”
“It’s me Brandt. How you doing man?”
“Oh Brandt, what’s up boyyyy.? What are you doing? Running out here?” John is over fifty years old, yet he talks and acts the age of someone half his senior. He’s got an easy way with people and It’s obvious for most to see that the years have been kind to him even though his youthful mannerisms can make him seem somewhat eccentric.
“Yeah man, just trying to get my mile time down,” I wheezed trying to catch my breath.
“What are you doing it in? Like 7:30?” he asked.
“Yeah, like 7:30. More like 6:45 if I didn’t stop to talk,” I ribbed at him a little bit.
“So what have you been up to? How’s school?” John shows a genuine concern for most people that he meets, maybe because he was a minister for about a decade before heading back into the fitness industry. He was a likeable enough guy, so the sales aspect of the job came to him naturally.
“Yeah school is good. Just trying to find a job right now you know.”
Just then he looked like a light bulb went off in his head, then like he was rolling something over in his mind. “I’ll tell you what. My sales girl, you know Emily, just quit to go over to the FAA for a full time thing with benefits and everything. Why don’t you call me tomorrow and we’ll see if we can work something out?”
“Yeah man. I definitely will, that would be great,” I was excited.
“Alright bro I’ll see you tomorrow,” John sped off in his little beater.
I decided to take another lap around the gym.