Feel The Burn

I fell asleep once while getting a massage from a 6’2 Nordic frost maiden named Inga. 

There's more to the story than that, but I just wanted to brag about how relaxed I was one time.

I was never a massage guy. Sure, they sounded good on paper but at the same time the very concept felt designed to waltz you right up to the edge of foreplay within the bounds of polite society, titillating, teasing, but never committing, like a genteel stripclub. 

While I’m no prude, no matter what you’ve heard, the idea seemed too intimate to me. I was afraid that I might, I don’t know, fall in love with someone who was willing to manipulate my weird bare form with oils for an hour while a CD compilation called Silken Rhythms Vol 3 played. Is that really so crazy? Humans fall in love, or lust, for much less. Regardless, as I aged I became less concerned with the intimacy and more concerned with my stiff musculature. 

See, I’m not a fitness expert by any means. I played some sports growing up; little league baseball, high school basketball, full-contact stalking, then nothing because I was an adult and didn’t have to get yelled at by other adults unless it was part of my job. That’s probably why so many of us just switch from playing sports to watching them exclusively. We like to feel like the boss who knows everything and gets to yell at genetic freaks from the safety of our own couch, with wing sauce around our mouths, while they’re hundreds or thousands of miles away. Though, on a personal note, like college sports, the amount of money in professional full-contact stalking has tainted its appeal a little these days. 

At a certain point, I’d reached an age where my muscles started to retain a state of consistent tightness. It happens. I don't blame my body for something it can't control. By my late 30s, I’d gained a new ability; the ability to pull muscles while sleeping. As impressive as it sounds to be able to pull or strain a muscle at rest, it isn’t the type of uncanny ability that would get you a room at the X-Mansion. 

From my past experience with athletics, I knew that I needed to get moving again. An object in motion, stays in motion, an object at night, a sailor’s delight, or however that saying goes. The point is, I needed to get active again. I was approaching 40 and I was not genetically disposed toward resembling anything fit or healthy if I didn’t do something. Some people, a hated few, win the opposite in the genetic lottery. They can coast through their 40s and still be thin and healthy without lifting a finger to push a button on a treadmill. I think we used to burn them at the stake back in the day, but I might be confusing that with something else. Regardless, I needed to join a gym.

In my hometown, a college town on the banks of the Mississippi River in Missouri, there are a few gym options assuming one doesn’t simply want to go outside and run, but that leaves you vulnerable to the many Missouri predators; black bears, bobcats, rabies-riddled deer, and your common copper pipe wielding meth addict, bless their hearts. Everyone has their own fitness motivation, and if running from nature gets you moving, more power to you. While fearing for your life can get your heart rate up, I preferred the traditional method.

The cost of the available gyms varied and I, being a cheapskate, tried out a place called The Sweat Shop first. This gym with a questionable name was in a large nondescript building in a shopping plaza next to a donut shop, which seemed equal parts cruel and motivating. A local theory went that the donut shop capitalized off of the gym opening up by blowing the fresh baked scent across the parking lot to tempt those with a weakness to carbs. 

The problem was that when you go for cheap, you get cheap. The equipment was outdated and repairs took forever, there were one too many gators in the lap pool, and the surface of the track was made of asbestos. I know they say “No pain, no gain” but I decided that maybe The Sweat Shop was too much pain for too little gain, and looked for something with a higher quality of sweat. 

On the other end of the spectrum you have health clubs. Health clubs are like gyms but usually bigger, more expensive, cleaner, and offer more services like massages. If I wanted to avoid gators and asbestos, a health club seemed to be my best choice. The one I chose was a nice place that was run out of a Catholic hospital which means there were crucifixes at every turn to remind you of sacrifice while you looked as humiliating as possible lifting heavy things in front of women who, if they were single, and that was a big if, were interested in getting married as soon as possible, ideally that afternoon, preferably to a man who didn’t look humiliating. To protect its identity, we’ll call it Our Lady of Sacred Cardio.

When you enter the sliding doors of Sacred Cardio under a blast of heat from a vent above like you're walking through a decontamination chamber, you know it's different from your average gym. For one, it has automatic doors which are still the height of luxury. I mean, they have them on the Enterprise for Q's sake. Regardless, compare automatic doors to how you get into The Sweat Shop which was having a burlap sack thrown over your head and your body thrown into the trunk of a car that looked like it was driven by the Russian mafia, and then your body thrown in front of the doors like a stack of newspapers hot off the presses with a headline that says ‘Fat Slob Tries To Better Himself’. Every time. Leaving was different. You just take a bus or something.

Aesthetically, compared to The Sweat Shop, Our Lady of Sacred Cardio might as well have been one of Dante’s twelve and a half circles of Heaven. I know that’s from one of Dante’s lesser known works, but I wanted to show off how well-read I am. The upper floor of Sacred Cardio was so clean and well-maintained, lined with big windows for actual sunlight that it probably could’ve fit somewhere between the circle of Heaven where you always won bingo and the one where you always got a good deal on a car as long as you complimented the salesman’s mustache. 

But as well-maintained as that papal-led health club was, you could still see hints of lawlessness. Hand washing seemed to be avoided as if the very act of cleaning one’s hands would bring more germs. Wiping sweat off the machines seemed to be avoided as if it added seasoning to everyone else's workout like a cast iron pan. I’d seen people take full naps during their rest periods while sitting at a shoulder press machine. Human beings want to do anything except follow a rule. I had this feeling that the order there was held together with old duct tape and a hail Mary. 

“It’s a delicate ecosystem here,” said the front desk worker, Benny, who was supposed to be in his twenties, but looked like he was just recently birthed, swatted and given a black polo. 

We don’t live in an 80s movie, all types go to gyms, and an even more diverse crowd go to health clubs because of how nice they are. You’ll see the overly-muscled guys who lift cartoonishly large weights on barbells and ‘accidentally’ drop them a little louder sometimes despite it being against the rules because it gets people to turn and look at how much weight they’re lifting. There are overly-tanned housewives who use gym time to powerwalk and socialize with friends at full volume, no matter how scandalous the news of the day is. There are the guys who wear button-down work shirts and jeans—every day, to the point that at first you think they just forgot their gym clothes, then it happens so often you realize it’s on purpose, and if it’s on purpose, then those guys have to be clinically insane, and therefore are to be avoided. Students of all ages show up after school to remind you that your body is hurdling toward the grave faster than you can learn the voodoo spells to stop it. And then there are a random collection of oddball personalities like the old lady in overalls I once saw Fireman’s Carry a weighted sandbag around the track for about an hour which I had to assume helped her train to carry her soon to be former husband’s corpse into the woods to bury.

All of these types make up the wonderful, quirky world of paid gyms. You just don’t get that many human beings together in one place and have them not act weird. Most gyms have helpful employees who would gladly assist members in figuring out how to use machines or tips for workouts, but the human spirit is inspirationally independent, stubborn as an ox and trying to be as strong as one too. I, for one, do not have that issue. I’m as humble as an ox beetle, and as smart as one too. I have no issue asking for help. 

“You have massages?” I asked Lil Baby Benny or whatever his name was. I’d noticed a brochure that gave a rundown of their services on the front desk.

“Yeah, we offer a number of different types depending on your needs,” he said, then stopped and got rude with me. “Oh, and we don’t do that type of massage, sir” His eyes narrowed, but not in a mean way, but I didn’t like that his look implied I was the type of creep who would ask about that. Besides I KNOW where that stuff happens because it’s where all the owners of NFL teams get busted. 

“Easy there, Benny, I don’t come to your place of work and ask for inappropriate things now do I?” I snapped back, but I realized it didn’t make any sense. Still, you have to stand your ground when you say something stupid. He looked at me, as confused as the newborn baby that he was. 

I pushed on. “Never mind, I wasn’t asking for that. I’ve just never gotten a massage and was always a little curious.”

“Oh, well, in that case go ahead and take a look at one of those brochures,” he said, gesturing toward the stand on the desk.

I didn't realize how many different types of massages there were, just in general, not that the health club offered Shiatsu or Thai massages. There were deep tissue massages, Swedish massages, hot stone massages, cyberpunk hand massages, one where they let a goat walk on your back, and a million other specific approaches to the art of moving another person’s muscles around. 

I was most curious about Swedish since it was the one I’d heard referenced in my life and it involved fewer foreign objects, if you don’t count a Swede but to be fair, the masseuse doesn’t actually have to be Swedish to give a Swedish massage apparently. 

Benny, the 20-year-old toddler wunderkind who could work a job, told me that if I could wait about half an hour, Inga, one of their massage therapists, would be available. I was very good at putting off working out, despite all the effort I put into finding a gym, and agreed. I figured I’d go change and have time to get mentally prepared for a massage. I entered the men’s locker room passing a sign that said ‘No photography or videos.’ This was an easy and courteous rule to follow. People would be naked and we’re all ashamed of our bodies in some way, as we should be. Plus, you just shouldn’t document a stranger's exposed genitalia or buttocks unless, I don’t know, they ask you to for some medical reason, but rarely will this happen like it did to me that one time. 

While I’m much more comfortable with myself now than when I was changing in the locker room in junior high, I’m still not ready for a trip to a nude beach. I found a quiet section of the locker room and shed my layers of shame, replacing them with my gym clothes. This was temporary. I wasn't sure what to wear before disrobing for a massage, so I put on a simple combination of comfortable athletic shorts and a t-shirt I generally like but don’t wear out and about town. Free swag t-shirts make good gym shirts. I wore the free shirt I got from doing a walkathon raising money to end the intestinal distress people get after voluntarily eating a fistful of ghost peppers. It’s comfortable but kind of gaudy, plus the art on the front is a little tasteless. 

Gym clothes can be a place to shine fashion-wise if you so choose. You could spend hundreds of hard-earned dollars on name brand shirts, shorts, leggings, socks, and underwear, match them all up in an aesthetically pleasing way, then sweat in them for an hour while looking terrible as your face turns red and neck muscles bulge in a way that makes it look like you ate a fistful of ghost peppers. It’s much cheaper to do what most people do and cobble together gym attire from the cheap shorts you already own with whatever t-shirts you have. Sure, that rough cotton can feel like it’s trying to flay you alive, but as you’ve heard before ‘no pain, no gain.’

There isn’t much else to be said about gym locker rooms that hasn’t already been said. Health club locker rooms aren’t much different. Old men walk around naked and talk to you about what’s wrong with your generation with a foot up on a bench for some reason, large groups of teens take up entire sections of lockers while planning which slurs they’re going to use while gaming online and leaving wet towels everywhere despite clearly marked laundry baskets, and all manner of men use the fact that they’re in a locker room to be as loud and gross as possible. They emit sounds and substances from every orifice on the body. I know it’s a locker room, but let’s not lose ourselves, okay?

When it was time, I headed back out into the hall and found the room where I was supposed to meet the massage therapist. I didn’t know the difference between a masseuse and a massage therapist, but one sounds like you actually have to get trained for it, as opposed to those guys on street corners downtown who say they're chiropractors but really just try to twist your head off like a bottle cap for $10. 

I knocked on the door and heard a lilting voice say “Come in.”

This was Inga. Inga was tall, sturdy, with fair skin and white gold hair. She had strong features that I could only assume were forged through endless harsh winters, yet soft enough for snowflakes to slide off them to allow better aerodynamics while trudging. Like a femme fatale in a James Bond movie and I was going to be a lucky victim.

She smiled. “Are you my 4 o’clock?” Inga had an accent like a nursery rhyme. 

Her table was there in the center of the room like a shrine to the average person’s flabby body, covered neatly with white towels. There was a ‘face hole’ up top so you could stare at the carpet for an hour if you decided not to close your eyes.

“Yes, ma'am. I’m here to be masseused.”

Inga asked me questions about any problem areas I might have, places she needed to focus on. 

I gestured vaguely behind me, “I guess the lower back, upper back, and neck areas.” 

She smiled and nodded like a person who was just told that the best way to drive a car is using the steering wheel.

“Okay, so you can disrobe to the level you’re comfortable,” she said, quickly adding “There’s no reason for full nudity.” It came out of her mouth both quickly and as if she’d had to say it many times before.

I nodded and reached for the bottom of my t-shirt and she stopped me like someone stopping a person from jumping off a bridge onto a big ‘X’ surrounded by cheering onlookers.  

“There’s a privacy screen right over there,” she pointed four feet away in the corner.

“Right,” I said, and took a towel behind it and swapped my gym clothes for a fresh white towel. And yes, it took me a couple of tries to get that towel-cinching thing right.

I had to remove my glasses, leaving my vision blurry and myself vulnerable to attack, and climbed onto the table, putting my face into the face hole. Inga turned on music from a Bluetooth speaker, something gentle like a breeze with subtle wind chimes, squirted some oil onto her hands and began her Scandinavian magic. 

Let me tell you, I melted into that massage table like a cheap candle. My mind blurred into a wash that would have matched my spectacle-less vision if my eyes were open. Instead all I could see on the dark purple of my eyelids was distant colors trying to form the images being called up from my subconscious. A sheet softly billowing in the warmth of the sun, the ebb and flow of a slow tide, being back in the womb, a Swedish woman softly kneading my shoulders with heated oil. 

The collection of aspects that made up the singular ‘me’ broke apart and seemed to be suspended in a silent void as she worked to reassemble them into something with fewer knots. The massage turned me into an abstract concept. My soul was loosened from its flawed physical cage of poor vision, middle-age softness, and stiffening joints, and it was allowed the privilege of floating around in some shapeless realm where time didn’t exist. 

Within the hour that Inga wrung the stress out of me like a damp washcloth, I sank into a deep sleep that, as a common insomniac, I needed. I was neither in my body, nor my soul, and the doings of the world inside the health club were not my concern. 

I woke up alone and groggy, having forgotten what the concept of muscle tightness even was, and the only sign that Inga was ever there was how good I felt and the music that was still playing. 

I swung my rubbery legs off the table and stood up, a little shaky, but a brief shakiness, in a way that made me chuckle like standing on your own feet after swinging upside down on a swingset for a bit. The scent of citrus clung to my skin like someone had just peeled me from out of an orange peel and I emerged reborn to be eaten after a soccer game or squeezed out into a glass.

Outside of the music playing from the Bluetooth speaker, there was an odd silence. I considered waiting to be dismissed. Dismissed or whatever it is massage therapists do when you’re done, anything besides just walking away, but I checked the time and it was well past the scheduled hour, at least forty minutes past. So all I could assume was I had fallen into such a deep, Sleeping Beauty vs. Rip Van Winkle championship sleep-off type sleep, that Inga, having no other patients, let me indulge in. I'd hoped she'd at least tried poking me with a stick.

I stretched like a masochist on a medieval torture rack, put my clothes back on and opened the door to leave. The state of the hallway was the first indication that something was wrong. Sacred Cardio was a ghost town. 

Towels, clean and used, were strewn across the hall, a clipboard with medical forms was in the middle of the floor, and there was even a rusted-out barrel with a fire in it casting a dancing orange glow against the wall where the hall bent leading toward the pool. Despite these signs that something was amiss, I could still hear the distant sounds of gym activity upstairs.

No one manned the front desk. Benny was nowhere to be found, so I assumed he had to go back to pre-school. But sitting by the stairs that led up to the gym floor was an old man.

Like a beggar in a medieval or fantasy world, he sat with his back against the wall at the foot of the stairs. His long white hair was stringy, his clothes were in tatters, and he was wearing powder blue Crocs. As chilling as the Crocs were, his completely white pupils were even more so.

“Excuse me sir, first of all, are you alright? And second, why is everything all…you know…zombie movie chic down here?” I was polite even though I wanted to criticize his Crocs, mostly as a defense mechanism. They may have come into fashion but that didn’t make them NOT ugly. 

His head turned a little at the sound of my voice but otherwise his gaze held past me. He grabbed my wrist in both of his hands with a strength I could never have imagined him possessing.

“You.” An alarming opening word that dripped with knowing. “You must listen,” he continued through noticeable effort as if he were a conduit for something else. His tone was ghostly.

“Okay, listen to what?” I asked, trying to pull my arm free. The difficulty I was having reinforced how much I needed the gym. 

“You must listen for the bluebird’s song. Not just any bluebird, the Eastern Bluebird.”

“That’s the Missouri state bird,” I grunted, putting my foot against the wall to use it for leverage.

“Yes…and New York apparently.” He said. 

“Weird, why would states share a state bird?” I had both feet on the wall, my back perpendicular to the floor as I pulled. 

“It doesn’t matter, shut up! Listen for the bluebird’s song, within the day you’ll hear it. Follow it. No matter where it takes you. This is a matter of great importance for all of us. You are the only one who-” I got my wrist free and thudded onto the floor. I think he was as surprised as I was that I got loose. He had stopped mid-sentence with his mouth open and collected himself as I climbed to my feet.

“Within the day, the veil will thin, listen for it, list for the-” “Yeah, yeah, the bluebird thing,” I glared at him, rubbing my wrist. 

“The Eastern Bluebird! It’s important to know the difference!” He seemed to be trying to stand up.

I put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. “I’ve got it. I know all the birdsongs or whatever.” I turned to the stairs after being slightly less than honest, and started up, muttering “You Croc-wearing old freak” over my shoulder. 

“You HAVE to do this!  You’re the only one! And they’re comfortable and easy to slip on you, jackass!”

His voice shrunk into the background as I ascended the steps. Look, I’m not usually like that. I don’t insult people who are just trying to deliver a prophetic message, especially an elderly gentleman, but he really hurt my wrist and ego.

With that nonsense behind me, I made my way toward the sounds of the second floor; a playlist of classic rock and top 40 pop songs specifically from the 80s to the late 90s. This is the bread and butter of your health club music playlist. It’s the right balance of popular and safe. Only the further I climbed the more clearly I heard the music warbling as if being played out of damaged speakers. Distorted music was the least of my worries because upstairs on the gym floor was, for reasons I didn’t know yet, humanity unbound.

Columns of sunlight slashed through the wall-sized windows that lined the track warming the dark blues and tans of the corporate architecture. Health clubs are often designed with the same interior design choices of a bank, but with maybe one or two more colors. Of course banks typically don’t have running tracks circling the central floor, that’s one of the main differences between banks and health clubs. That and you can get suckers at the bank. But the biggest difference between a bank and a health club is the gym encircled by the track, only this gym existed in a borderline apocalyptic wasteland. 

I had awakened from my massage and walked upstairs on my first day as a member of the health club only to be greeted by a breakdown in order. Some horrible cataclysmic event must’ve happened to the world while I was asleep, and like a haunting, the members kept working out as if they had unfinished business to get in shape, but they didn't just keep working out, but took the anarchy and shaped it into a society of controlled chaos.

To my right were all the free weights and machines for building muscle. If you’re unfamiliar with gyms, this is where all the guys built like upside-down pyramids hang out. Clanking metal and shouts pierced through a haze of lingering gym chalk hanging in the air like a jungle mist, much of which had been used as face and body markings, possibly indicating ranks in some hierarchy of muscle.

A barrel-chested 1980s action figure bench pressed a few unfortunate souls lacking in the bulk department, and they offered their dead weight voluntarily, at least out of fear of being twisted into pretzels and bowled down the track for sport. Two sizable slabs of meat competed in a grunt-off to see who could sound the manliest after chugging water. A statuesque blonde woman with skin tanned to the color and texture of a catcher’s mitt strode the area like a drill sergeant to make sure everyone was lifting until failure or she’d slap them in the back of the head. 

A man who looked like a pulp novel barbarian was having a chalice of protein shake tipped to his lips and oil rubbed onto his chest by two women who had more muscles in their calves than I had in my entire body. He had the aura of the one who was at the top of the hierarchy whereas the less muscular were at the bottom, used as rep counters, water bottle holders, and human towel racks.

The other side had equipment that was mostly for cardio; your treadmills, stairclimbers, ellipticals and stationary bikes, except the bikes had been pulled out of their mounts and made not-so-stationary for quicker traversal of this indoor wasteland.

The people over there built a religion focused on a spirit of fitness who, as far as I could tell, demanded sweat as a sacrifice. They called themselves Perspitarians and I knew that because of the word spelled out in channel letters stolen from around the offices. Perspitarians all wore towels wrapped around their heads like ceremonial head coverings, mostly white towels. They came over to a man in running shorts and a blue towel head wrap and wrung them out into a bowl which was then offered to an off-putting shrine made from a collection of items like exercise balls, balance boards, thigh masters, resistance bands, and jump ropes. Just imagine something like a snowman with wings and tentacles and you’ll understand why it felt like dark sweat magic aimed toward an unknown cosmic deity concerned more with the burning of calories than of witches. 

Surrounded by lit candles that were set all over the place, one wild-eyed woman with a sinewy physique shaped by marathons satisfied the humming needs of the treadmill gods by forcing panting specimens to run and when they slowed, she'd snap them with a wet towel. Her supportive patter sounded more like Gregorian chanting.

I'd like to say the people who ran this very Catholic health club wouldn't have been happy to see what sort of den of aerobic paganism was taking place, but to my knowledge the world had ended and none of their opinions mattered anymore. But while I wasn’t Catholic, it still gave me the heebie-jeebies.

This feeling was amplified as I accidentally knocked over one of the stationary bikes turned unstationary bikes and the Perspitarians all stopped and looked at me, and so did the lifters. And for a moment my unimpressive life flashed before my eyes. I was an outsider to this probably delicately balanced post-apocalyptic ecosystem and that wasn't allowed. I wasn't strong enough for the lifters and I wasn't pious enough for the Perspitarians, so I figured it was best to take my chances in the greater wasteland outside.

I grabbed the bike just as both sides rushed me and I pedaled onto the track. It's best if you don't ask how they turned a stationary bike into a real working one. There are more important issues I had to worry about.

On my tail were two Perspitarians on the other two bikes, and they were gaining fast being in better shape than me. I was watching them gain on me from over my shoulder, turned back to the front in time to see one of the muscular lifters swinging a barbell at me like a baseball bat.

I ducked and he hit the two riders knocking them off their bikes. 

“Heh, I won't weight up.” I called back like a funny genius, only to be startled by Perspitarians throwing those wooden stretching sticks at me, sharpened like spears.

I swerved and dodged the spears. They thunked deep into the wall as I passed. I reacted in three embarrassing ways. I gasped, I did a cartoonish double-take, and I imagined the wall had been my sensitive skin, probably around the shoulder or meat of my thigh, which made me wince and say “Ick.”

Some of the larger lifters were flinging the muscle-less at me like shot-putters. Sweat dripped off me as I swerved around them but I wasn't sure it was enough to appease their weird deity in hopes he'd stop them. Plus, I was sure the lifters didn’t worship the same god as the Perspitarians and it was probably a big point of conflict. 

Around the oval track I pedaled and panted, not being able to remember where that other exit was. Benny, the tax-paying, voting toddler, wasn't clear during the tour. I had to circle again, and again. Overall I think I rounded the track four times, dodging the same exact attacks from the same people before finding the fire exit.

I leapt off the bike and dashed down the fire exit stairwell that led to the main floor. It wasn't a long stairwell but on the way down all I could think about was how I would survive the wasteland. Were my family and friends still alive? What caused the end of the world? Could I get an awesome muscle car armored with reclaimed steel plating like Mad Max? Was I fired from my job now? I had just earned a free taco from Monty's Tacos reward program. What happens to that? Null and void?

I shoved open the door to the main floor and clumsily stumbled through nearly running into Benny who was coming in the front door carrying textbooks.

“Whoa! Benny! Don't go up-” I gasped, trying to catch my breath. “We need to run.”

Benny looked at me with concern, “Huh?”

I started to explain then my eyes caught the view of the outside from through the front door. The very much not destroyed parking lot and active street past it and the active business park past that. None of them destroyed by atomic fire, or overrun by zombies, or conquered by aliens. All blissfully unaware of the apocalypse in the gym.

“Oh…” I said.

“Sorry, I know it's against the rules but I had to run home and get my books to study,” Benny said. “I was the only one at the desk this evening.”

I blinked as my breathing returned to normal and looked back at the door to the stairwell just as it burst open and a collection of the pursuers from upstairs, with madness in their eyes, flooded out, and they immediately stopped upon seeing the authority figure holding sophomore-level sociology textbooks and car keys with a Pokémon keychain dangling from them. I believe the Pokemon was Gordon, the one with CPA powers. 

“Hey, folks, sorry I left for a minute, but I’m back now,” Benny smiled. “Everyone good? Need anything? Fresh towels?”

As if their heads cleared of some fog, they all just smiled and nodded and dispersed, forgetting they were all dressed absurdly and that barely three minutes ago they all wanted to subjugate me to their own fitness programs of chaos, or murder me, it was unclear from the limited information I had.

As I collected my things and headed for my car, I heard the sound of some kind of bird singing in a redbud tree. I didn’t know what kind of bird it was and if someone asked me, I could easily say something funny like “Do I look like some kind of ornitholo-jerk?” To which they might say something equally funny like “I don’t know,” because no one knows what ornithologists look like. Then I would just leave. Since that conversation didn’t happen, I just left.

No matter how nice, no matter how much you pay to be a member, gyms still teeter on the edge of becoming lawless lands. They’re delicately balanced between being temples of self-improvement and discipline and being post-apocalyptic dystopias. They’re filled with early warning signs of the behavior your fellow man will exhibit when the seas boil, the grass dies, and we all start wearing hockey pads while speaking in Australian accents.

But don’t let that scare you away. A good gym or health club can get you active and keep your heart healthy, assuming it doesn’t kill you.