Familiar Faces

It’s a Wednesday night and I’m at the gym at the same time I’m normally at the gym on a weekday night. The same people as usual are doing the same workouts they normally do. The hulk with tree-trunk legs and a wispy goatee, known only as RTA on account of his endless stream of injuries, is huffing and heaving on the bench press. The guy in the cargo pants and the anorak with the hood up is rearranging his Tesco carrier bags around the squat rack. The dashing middle-aged chap with the perfect skin and the eye-wateringly expensive shorts who always looks at me as if he wants me to be the one to initiate the conversation is doing bicep curls in front of the mirror. And the lad in the maroon Nike tracksuit who dances mindlessly in his own silent disco in between sets is bopping his way towards the shoulder press machine. The legion of personal trainers, all familiar faces – the French rugby player, the super fit one with the annoying voice, the sun-kissed boy who looks Australian but is actually from Bolton, the blondie who looks like the guy from Bolton, the severe Italian who’s always on the phone, and the gay guy with the bald head and the pointy beard – are all hard at work. Everything is normal, and everyone is accounted for. 

The only things that’s significantly different this Wednesday evening is that I don’t have my airpods in. They died on the tube on the way here. So, probably for only the second time ever in all the years I’ve been coming to this gym, I can hear the music, the clanking of metal on metal and the egregious strain of mid-week exercise. It is not unpleasant, but I feel a bit adrift without the music in my ears.

I’ve just loaded another 20kg on the incline bench press. I’m engrossed in something on my phone for a while and when I look up, the fit PT with the annoying voice is standing parallel with the edge of the bench but perpendicular to me. I’m facing out towards him, he’s facing out towards the other side of the room. He never seems to do any work. He just talks all the time. He’s got this monotonous voice, a slight accent that could be from Brighton or something, that grinds on and on like the sound of somebody winding a winch that never runs out of line. Like the blade of a blunt bread knife, it cuts through the air. Aside from that he’s pretty hot: he’s short, a bit taller than me, with thick black hair swept back and dark, deep eyes, olive skin and bulging muscles everywhere where there could and should be muscles. 

He’s just standing there staring into the distance. I try to look through him, but really I’m wondering what it would be like to rest my head on his pecs. He must be half my age, I think, as I look him up and down again. I go back to my phone. He’s still standing there, and I don’t know why. I do another set and he shouts something across the room to somebody I can’t see, but he still doesn’t move. As I’m doing my set – which is much harder with the extra 20kg and much harder still with him standing there – I lose count because I’m thinking about what he looks like naked. This is nothing new. I do this every time I see him, which is nearly every time I’m at the gym because its nearly as ways the same people there. I don’t fancy him or anything, but it’s obvious that he has a perfect body by any objective measure and, well, I guess I just want to see what a perfect body, objectively speaking, looks like without clothes. 

I’m thinking all this when he pipes up, ‘Alright mate’. He’s talking to me, but he’s not looking at me. This confirms my suspicion that he is half my age – give or take five years, I reckon – since young people these days, as I know from teaching, categorically do not look at you when they are talking to you. ‘What’s your goal, mate?’. His voice is somehow weak and sharp at the same time, as if he has a sore throat that never gets better. He scans every part of my body, and before I can answer he says, ‘You want to get bigger, yeah. Add lean muscle?’. 

I don’t know what to say. The smirk on his face suggests he thinks I can’t achieve that alone, which I quickly realise is the point of his intervention. I still don’t know what to say, even though I know where he’s going. 

‘Yeah’, I say, ‘it’s hard work’. That, I realise, is my “I carried a watermelon” line in this scenario. 

‘It is hard work’, he affirms with another smirk. He places his hands behind his back and takes a step backwards, as if to open the space for the negotiation to take place. For the first time, he turns his head to face me. ‘I was wondering if you wanted a free session’. He says it without emotion, but with a smile that seems genuine enough. He’s got a cute smile.

‘Ah, no thanks. I’m ok, thanks’, I blurted out. 

‘Okay…’. He chews it over for a second and all he comes up with is a slight nod and a ‘Cool, man’, but he doesn’t move. Then, after a pause in which I rest my hands on the barbell as if to suggest I might just get on with my workout, he asks, ‘How long have you been coming here?’. He says it in the kind of quizzical tone I imagine he uses with girls when he’s asking them about things he’s not interested in, such as themselves. I guess straight boys think aloofness is sexy. 

‘About four years’, I lie. It’s actually closer to six. I don’t know why I lied at that point, but I’m glad I did. 

‘Oh, really?’. His eyes narrow and he bites his bottom lip as if performing a calculation. He looks me up and down again, lingering on my disproportionately spindly arms. ‘Are you sure?’

I shrug my shoulders and pout. He looks me in the eye for the first time. Damnit, I think, he’s got really beautiful eyes. I peer into their endless hazel. This will get him, I think, he’ll either think I’m staring him out or flirting with him, then I’ll win either way. His cheeks fill with air and he sighs, defeat written all over his face.

Then, he says something I am not expecting: ‘I’ve never seen you here before’. 

In my head, I’m screaming, ‘How? How have you never seen me? I’ve seen you three times a week every single week for the last six years! How can you not have seen me here before? It’s literally the same people every single day!’. 

In reality, I’m sinking into the bench, praying for it to swallow me into the guts of the earth. ‘Oh, ok’, is all I can muster. And then, while he’s already taking a step forward, I – for reasons unknown to me – decide it would be charitable to let him down gently. After all, I think, he’s touting for business and he must be disappointed: he clearly thinks I’m in desperate need of his services and I’ve not offered him one good reason to refuse. By now, he’s walking away but I call after him, ‘Thanks, mate, but I’ve got Julian’. That’s the French rugby player. He’s not my PT because I can’t afford him, but I did have a couple of sessions with him six years ago when I felt rich one Christmas. 

He stops dead in his tracks and swivels round. He looks as if he’s just remembered that his keys are in his coat pocket after all. He smiles and says, nodding to himself, ‘I see. Yeah, I see’.