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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
When you join a new gym -- as I recently did, thanks for your athletic support -- you find yourself thinking about all sorts of new things.
You might wonder whether you're sweating more than anyone else in the room. You may worry that you pedal like a girl on the stationary bike. You could spend an afternoon trying to determine the least 'dirty old man-like' spot to take in a yoga class.
(These are merely examples.
No, you shut up.)
Mostly, though, you'll think about your underpants.
I'm serious. I've belonged to this gym for three weeks. And I've given my undergarments more consideration in the last twenty days than I have in twenty years. It's like I don't even know me any more.
Here's the thing. Most places you go in life, you don't much care about the state of your underwear. If they're on, clean -- or for some people, clean-ish -- and flipped around the right way, that's all you need to know. Most of our unmentionables don't get seen, felt or mentioned throughout the course of our daily lives. Not on the bus. Not at work. And not in the coffee line at Starbucks. We're too civilized for that.
But the gym, now -- the gym is a different animal. There's a locker room there, so you can change into your sweat-stained T-shirt and prissy-pedal your way through a workout. And you're also changing pants, which means exposing your underpants. And that leads to choices. Choices you never thought you'd need to make.
That's what's happened to me. I'm no fashion hound. I get out of bed in the morning, and put on the first pair of jeans and striped rugby I find in the closet -- the way Nature intended. What goes underneath -- boxers, briefs or a ballerina gown -- is usually of little consequence to me, or anyone else.
(Though for the record? It's boxers. Made the move from tighty whities back in college, and never looked back.
To be fair, I actually can't look back, mostly. If I turn around too fast, I could spin out a testicle. These things are unsafe at any speed.)
These days, however, I find myself standing over my dresser with undies drawer drawn, musing my strategy. I miss the good old days -- the straight-shootin', grip-it-and-rip-it times -- when I could grab any old hunk of fabric out of there, toss it around my waist, and get on with the morning. But now? Now that I've joined a gym?
Not so much.
"Everyone in the locker room will laugh and point. Or recoil in horror, and refer me to a good urologist."
Now I have to consider the options. That pair's no good; it's got a hole in the leg. People will think I'm non-ironically ghetto. And those with the weird stain -- which should teach me not to drink chai tea on my couch pantsless on a hot summer night -- those won't do. Everyone in the locker room will laugh and point. Or recoil in horror, and refer me to a good urologist. I don't want any part of that.
Of course, some of the issues are not so cut-and-dried. Or spilled-and-dried, as the case may be. Take my sailboat underpants. I have a pair of boxers, and they're adorned with little sailboats all over. The pants are otherwise fine -- structurally sound, free of blemishes, of approximate size to fulfill their duties -- but there are cute little sailboats tucked all over the print. And I've ruled them out on gym days. I've made the decision that if I wouldn't wear something on my chest at the office, then it's not seeing the light of day on my crotch at the gym, either. That's the rule. I've drawn the line.
Sadly, much of my undercarriage covering wardrobe falls on the other side of that line. Joining 'sailboat boxers' are, in no particular order, 'puppy dog heads', 'smiley faces', 'Professor Utonium action poses' and 'silk Valentine hearts'. And those are just the easy ones.
The ones that keep me up at night -- or rather, standing at my dresser with uncovered junk at seven thirty in the morning -- are the toughies. Like 'football referee calls'. This one pair of boxers is black with little referees all over it making hand signals, and the name of each call -- like 'Offsides' or 'Pass Interference' -- written underneath. It's sports-related. Not too kiddish. So are they gym-worthy?
I look at it this way. Would I want to be in the locker room, mid-change, and have some random guy look at my ass and think 'Illegal Procedure' or 'Roughing the Passer'?
No. No, I emphatically would not. So football motif notwithstanding, these boxers are not in the gym day rotation.
What is in the rotation is the plainest, boringest, most fifties-grandpa-argyle-sock nondescript bunch of plains, plaids and gently paisleyed that you've ever laid eyes on. Because they might actually have eyes laid on them, and that seems like the path of least mortified embarrassment. As usual in life, if it makes me smile, chuckle, or swell with joy, then I'm not bringing it out in public.
And so, I spend more time per week mulling underpants than one man should in a lifetime. But so far, no one's kicked me out of the gym, run my boxers up a flagpole or flicked holy water at my privates to make the horror go away. So I suppose it's going well, for now. At least until I stop in for an impromptu workout on a My Little Pony day.
That's gonna be hawkward.
Sometimes the key to being a husband is realizing that you can't win.
Not to say that you never win. It's just that some situations, maritally speaking, are entirely impossible to navigate. Like, most of the ones that occur while you're conscious and within loud shouting distance of your wife.
Take tomorrow, for instance. Tomorrow, I was scheduled to accompany my lovely wife to a classical music concert in the afternoon. She asked if I'd attend, and I said I would. Most of these concerts, she goes to with a friend of hers -- they make it into a "girls' afternoon out" with dinner or tea or cucumber sandwiches or lingerie pillow fights, or whatever the hell girls do when they're out together.
"Of course, I'd be happy to accompany you to the concert / ballet / formal ball / family reunion / proctology exam, honey -- why, what sort of husband would I be if I weren't thrilled to pink little bits about this electrifying event?"
(Besides brainstorming up ways to make sure the husbands never win. Clearly, that's agenda item number one.)
This time, though, the missus gave me the opportunity to do the right thing -- which involves snoozing next to her in a stuffy concert hall filled with octogenarian viola buffs, apparently -- so I did. Of course, I'd be happy to accompany you to the concert/ballet/formal ball/family reunion/proctology exam, honey -- why, what sort of husband would I be if I weren't thrilled to pink little bits about this electrifying event?
(It's possible I lay it on a little thick sometimes. Just possible.)
Also, I chose my moment wisely. Tomorrow's concert features Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which I don't hate.
(Not like one of those Haydn nightmares -- am I right, fellas? Hoo boy, am I right?)
So I was all prepared -- read: 'steeled' or 'resigned', if you like, married dudes -- to slap on a pair of khakis and a socially acceptable shirt and schlep downtown for a musical tour through the calendar, courtesy of some ginger Italian dude from the 18th century. Because that's how you spend a Sunday afternoon, kids.
Except.
That's not how you spend a Sunday afternoon when your buddy has tickets to the AFC Championship game, one of which has your name on it.
(Provided you have a check to cover the ticket that has his name on it, of course. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Or a comp playoff ticket.)
And so, as the schedule turned, I'll be attending Foxboro Stadium tomorrow afternoon, and not Symphony Hall downtown. There'll still be music, but otherwise the two events are pretty dissimilar. There'll be only one season in effect at the game -- low-down ass-cold winter. I'll trade my khakis for two pairs of pants and thermal undercarriage warmers. And while the intermission wine selection is probably better at the concert hall -- who serves shiraz after the wildcard round these days, anyway? -- I'm happy enough to stick with beer, pretzels and the occasional ballpark hoagie.
I should point out here that my invitation to the game was not a surprise, nor an eleventh-hour occurrence. My friend had clearly stated -- and I'd relayed along to the wifely authorities -- that if the Patriots made the AFC title game, my ticket was stamped to watch it. Weeks ago, the possibility was there. Just like weeks ago -- and who can remember which came first, really? -- the Vivaldi plan was established. These were separate events, with separate timelines. None of us realized the schedules would collide as they did; it just happened that way. Pure chance. Circumstance. Dumb luck.
My wife understands this. She doesn't blame me for going to the game. But does that mean I win -- that I get full, or even partial, marriage points for innocently agreeing to go in the first place, though the tempestuous winds of fate cruelly drove me away?
No. I emphatically do not get points -- I'm told, in no uncertain terms -- for this whole debacle, because I secretly didn't want to go to the concert in the first place.
But honey, I did want to go. Honest.
"Oh, suuuuuuure."
Hey, I was planning to go. I can't help the schedule.
"Right. Reeeeeeal lucky for you."
Well, it's Vivaldi. I like Vivaldi. Comparatively.
"Oh, you wouldn't know Vivaldi from a vivisection. Bah!"
But... but...
"Humph."
That's when I know I'm cooked. You get the 'humph', you're done. So I said I was sorry, salvaged what I could, forfeited ALL the points I thought I was earning by agreeing to go... and started picking out Belichick homage hoodies to wear for tomorrow.
Hey, I'm not getting any points this weekend. I can at least stay warm out there.
So my wife will be humming to Vivaldi tomorrow with her usual concert friend, and I'll be cheering in the frigid cold down at Foxboro. That's not how I planned it to happen. It's not how I thought it would happen. But there it is. Football up. Concert down. Points unceremoniously subtracted from the marriage total.
And no winning. Here's hoping that's the only loss I have to sit through in the next twenty-four hours. The very last thing a married guy wants is to find himself wishing he were at the thing that he was getting points for, but got out of for something else that seemed better, and lost all the points in the process. That's the worst.
And if you didn't understand that last bit, go find yourself a sweetheart and tie the knot. It'll clear up soon enough.
(Another week [in January], another plug for you to come see The Ruckus Proves It! over at ImprovBoston. This Saturday, 10:30pm. Come for the comedy. Stay for.. uh, more comedy. Or something. There's beer. You'll like it.
While we're pimping, there's also the latest Zolton Does Amazon piece over at ZuG,com, Black Tie and Fails. It's as gussied up as I get. And that's plenty gussy.)
I mentioned a few days back that my new office building has a gym inside. Like, right there. So scandalously close by that if you don't join the gym and show up to sweat at least twice a week, then people on the street are legally obligated to shake their heads sadly at you and 'tsk' in your sloppy, husky-pantsed direction.
(Seriously. It was in the employee agreement. These people are serious, I'm telling you.)
So I'm going to the gym. And the real draw for me is the racquetball courts. For some reason, it's interminably difficult to find racquetball facilities in the greater Boston area. Squash, you can find. Handball, I'm sure is around. Tennis, for sure. Even ping pong. But racquetball has somehow become the lonely bastard outcast of the New England racquet set, shunned by all but a few brave gyms and underground blue-ball speakeasies.
(Why is that? I have no idea. Maybe the Redcoats enjoyed a nice game of racquetball back in the 'all tax, no represent' days. Or the Salem witches were caught with a court behind their houses. Does Eli Manning play racquetball in his spare time between football games and Opie Griffith impressions? Could be.)
Me, I'm a racquetball fan. I played for years -- in high school, in college, for a couple of years afterward, even. And not just a little, either. I got out there two or three days a week, sometimes for two or three hours straight. At some point work got in the way, and the gyms weren't so close by, and eventually I moved to Boston -- where racquetball is whispered about in hushed tones only, like people are talking about the color of Whitey Bulger's underpants. Frankly, I thought my racquetball days were behind me.
And now, not so much. I joined this gym, bought a racquet, sprung for some balls, and on Monday this week, stormed onto the court to bask in the glory of the sport once more.
"Any game that requires you to warm up your balls before playing had better come with a glass of Courvoisier and a candlelight dinner, is all I'm saying."
Mind you, I've been bask-free in this regard for, oh, on the order of fifteen years. Those racquetball muscles I once had -- toned and trained and twitching to go -- are long gone now. Shrunk. Atrophied. Layered over with a decade-and-a-half of wrong living, bad eating and racquet-free existence.
(Oh sure, I tried squash a couple of times. That was an unmitigated disaster.
Any game that requires you to warm up your balls before playing had better come with a glass of Courvoisier and a candlelight dinner, is all I'm saying.)
Anyway, back to racquetball. And my triumphant return to, thereof.
On Mondays, the gym has a 'round robin' tournament, which basically means that people show up sometime between six and seven in the evening, and play when their respective turns are up. There's no keeping track of who beat whom, who taunted whom, or who smacked whom with a ball 'on accident-purpose' after some smug comment.
Which is good. No paper trail. I like it.
We play our games on the two courts designated for racquetball -- except that one court designated for racquetball has recently been re-designated for some sweaty nonsense called 'Boot Camp', and the word is that we're never going to whack our bouncy balls in there again. It hardly seems fair.
On the other hand, those 'Boot Camp' do-rags keep a lot of awfully heavy equipment in there -- which includes a few of the participants themselves. We probably can't take them in a fight, and even if we sneak in when they're gone, all their shit is in the way. And I'm not moving that junk -- what, am I in the gym to exercise now? Please.
So we play on our one good court, and that's how it is. When I made my first racquetball session on Monday, there were a half dozen of us waiting to play. And I was kind of bummed, because that seemed like an awful lot of waiting between games.
Then I got onto the court -- picked for the first game, no less. And after roughly three-and-a-half points, I was seriously considering barfing the full contents of my chest cavity onto the wall and finding a nice comfy spot to die. Somewhere near the service line, preferably -- well-lit, and open spaces.
I made it through that game, and crawled off the court to a water fountain. Four hundred sips and a head soak later, and I was up again. I didn't quite run myself as ragged in the second game -- mostly because I'd lost most of the use of my left leg by that point -- but I did find myself panting, pained and positively peaked when it was over.
By the end of the night, I'd played four games -- a nice warmup back in the day, perhaps -- and I was ready to quit. Playing, standing, breathing -- you name it, and I wanted badly to stop. Several dozen body parts were screaming at once; it was like some sort of anatomic Parliamentary bitch session, and nobody ceded the floor without a fight. A stabbing, seizing, "forgot that muscle even existed, didn't ya, pally?" sort of fight.
Right at the end, as I made ready to hurl my broken flabby old carcass toward the locker room, the guy running the thing -- he's the "racquet sports guy" for the club -- gave me an especially helpful piece of advice:
'Oh yeah, I meant to say to you earlier -- it's really a good idea to warm up and stretch before playing.'
Uh-huh. Thanks, there, Jack LaLanne. That'll come in super handy while I'm collapsed and drowning in the sink downstairs because I can't move my arms, neck or legs any more. Pip, pip, old boy.
Luckily for me, the real pain didn't kick in until the next day, after all those dormant muscles had gone back to sleep and found that they didn't fit in the same body holes any more. That's a good time. And it led me to formulate a bit of advice of my own, for all of you within reading-shot of my agony:
Don't go there. Just don't. Look -- if you're young and healthy, or one of those insufferable assbags who jogs at four thirty in the morning in the middle of a blizzard, then fine. Congratulations. Join a gym, work out every day, eat your microgreens and broccoli shakes and live to be a thousand. And bully for you, Adonis. We're all very impressed.
But if you're not one of those -- if you've been sitting on the couch for the last umpteen years, and last worked out wearing non-ironic thigh-high leg warmers during the Reagan administration -- then don't do it. It hurts. A lot. And where's the payoff, really? You're likely to gank a hip or have something important fall off before you see any real health improvements. Go back to your living room, wait for a Seinfeld rerun, crack open a bag of Funyuns and enjoy the ride. You may not live as long as those health nuts -- or to finish reading this sentence, for that matter -- but at least your pain will be in the future, probably fleeting, and only centered on the chest region.
Is a longer life span, more energy and better-fitting jeans really worth the effort? Big Bang Theory is on for three hours a night now. Come to the dark side. I'm just saying.
Ah, who am I kidding? Assuming I can feel both legs again by then, I'm signing up for racquetball next Monday, too. I think I caught the fever -- probably while I was collapsed on the floor, with my tongue scraping the lines on the court. All I know is, life was a lot easier when I was just a 'glutton', and not a glutton for punishment.
Easier. And a whole lot less painful. I'm beginning to see why nobody's playing this goddamned sport around here, anyway.
(A quick and friendly reminder that if you're reading this before 10:30pm tonight and live in the Boston area -- or, come to think of it, you're reading this before, say, 3pm and have lots of airline miles just sitting there idling -- you're in time to come see The Ruckus Proves It! [Again!] over at ImprovBoston in Cambridge.
And remember, if you're reading this after 10:30pm on Saturday -- or those pesky airlines black you out from an immediate flight, who do they think they are? -- you can always catch our Ruckusing next week -- same time, same place, same misleadingly-named theater.
And don't worry. I'll remind you. Obviously.)
It's not my intention to make this into an 'all-office, all-the-time' blog, To be fair, that's mostly what I've talked about for the last two weeks -- but it's been sort of a big transition. When I started this site eight-and-a-half years ago -- no, I'm not kidding; see for yourself if you like -- I was in a tough employmentary situation. The company I worked for had 'hinted' at a large set of layoffs. Then they strongly hinted, then nudged us, poked us with sticks, and sent out memos essentially telling twenty percent or so of us to 'get our affairs in order'.
(Frankly, I wasn't sure whether they were going to let us go or just kill us and dump us in the basement. When a car backfired during my exit interview, I used the HR lady as a human shield.)
Anyway, in mid-June 2003, I started up this site. Eight days later, I was out of a job.
(I've always maintained the two have nothing to do with each other.
Now that I reread those first dozen or so posts? Not so sure. I might've fired me, too.)
It took four months or so -- and one wildly uncomfortable interview -- to land a new job. Which I kept, right up until the calendar turned two weeks ago. The point being, it's been a while since I dealt with such matters. And I've been a little surprised at the changes.
Take sleeping, for instance.
At the old job, I had a pretty flexible schedule. Being a nighttime sort of guy, I decided to go in late and stay late most days. I'd get the same eight hours of crying under my desk in; just in a slightly different window than some of the other folks there.
"At new job, there are things that encourage one to hit the decks early. Excitement. Enthusiasm. Free little bags of Doritos in the lunch room."
New job is different. At new job, there are things that encourage one to hit the decks early. Excitement. Enthusiasm. Free little bags of Doritos in the lunch room. So one goes in early, and one often stays late. And one is happy to do so.
With this injection of early-and-often stimulation, though, comes a price. In the old days -- waaaaay back in 2011 -- I'd stay up into the wee hours of the morning on a regular basis. Most of the posts here were probably finished after midnight, on some dubious whim or another.
I've tried keeping a similar schedule lately, and it hasn't worked out so well. Here's how it typically goes;
11pm: Start a post. Wax (relatively) poetic for six or eight paragraphs, floating zingers and asides and bazingas as best I can. Figure I can wrap things up by midnight and get a solid night's sleep.
11:30pm: Nod off at the keyboard. Realize that I've only made it through the setup and there's two-thirds of what I'd planned left to go. Shake myself awake and resolve to burn through it.
11:38pm: Nod off again after writing three sentences. Realize I'm in trouble. Slap myself, hard, on the cheek. Super-secret resolve to make it to the end.
11:51pm: Discover, again, that I have the willpower of a kitchen sponge, as I jerk awake. Get up and get a glass of water to get the blood flowing. Smart thinking, kid.
12:05am: Wake up slumped on the keyboard. Find that I've written exactly "jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj" in the last fourteen minutes. Sip the water. Soldier on like a boss.
12:17am: Knock over the water. Snore like a banshee.
12:33am:"iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii"
12:43am:Finish the post with the perfect, hilarious ending and slip off to bed for a well-deserved and restful sleep.
12:44am: Discover that last bit was itself just a dream, and now I can't remember what I'd planned to write in the first place.
12:51am: Drift back to sleep, hoping it comes back to me.
1:03am: Dream of falling off a cliff. Repeatedly. Wake up in a puddle. Hope it's the water.
1:14am: Shake awake, sit up straight and change strategy. Hastily slap together words, some of which might possibly be in English, to bring the aborted train wreck to a screeching halt and get the hell to bed.
1:23am: Fall forward onto keyboard. Remember why sitting up straight is a bad idea.
1:48am: Finish post. Submit. Drag groggy butt to bed.
1:52am: Lie awake, worrying whether I spelled 'asstastical' the way I'd wanted.
2:02am: Get up to check so I can get some damned sleep.
2:05am: Find typo. Fall asleep on keyboard before I can change it. Spend rest of night dozing on top of desk.
So the next time you see a post from me, you'll know exactly how it got onto the page. If it's coherent in any way, you'll know that I've figured out the dilemma. And if it's filled with 'llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll', then you'll know I spent another night drooling on my space bar. Because sometimes the hardest part of a new job is what happens outside the office.
Things are going well at my new job. "Going well", if you just count the work, that is. Every other aspect of settling into a new office is going about as devastatingly awkwardly as you'd probably expect, if you've read anything at all on this site.
Or know me in real life. Or ever called me up as a telemarketer. It doesn't take long to figure me out, see. I pretty much telegraph the weird.
I mentioned last time that I get a parking pass at NewJob -- and that said parking happens in a lot under a local mall. One of my least favorite places in the world. Malls bring back memories of trying on husky jeans at Sears, bad cafeteria meals on sleepy Sundays and deluding myself in so, so many ways at the local Chess King.
(Yes, I'm dating myself badly here. Just another reason to hate even talking about the mall, dammit.)
I was just starting to reconcile myself to the screaming willy nightmare of parking, and walking through, a shopping mall every single work day of the week when the unreconcilable happened. On Friday, I used a different entrance to get into the parking lot. At this one, there was no place to swipe my parking card, so I took a ticket like everyone else. When it came time to leave, I cruised over to the 'Monthly Passholders' lane, swiped my card, and... nothing. No beep. No raising little bar doohickey. Bupkis.
I swiped again. Nada.
Another swipe. And another fat bunch of nothing. And then it began to wash over me, a tsunami of fear and nausea and sickly sweet Cinnabon funk -- because I knew. I saw what they were doing, what was about to happen. I just parked in a mall -- and they were never going to let me out.
I think I fainted at the wheel. An attendant came over eventually -- mostly to see who was holding up all the johns who'd just been validated at the hotel next door and were lining up behind me -- and pulled me together. Mostly by telling me that I could get out of the garage just by forking over the exorbitant all-day parking fee.
That was a bargain, given the state I was in. I was about to offer the guy my pants, the car and one of my kidneys, if I could just escape from that hellish cave. Instead, it cost twenty-two bucks. Maybe somebody up there likes me, after all.
Nah. But someone's definitely telling me to use the right stupid entrance so I can swipe my card on the way to work. Message received, big fella. Stand down the locusts and plagues of boils.
"Pretty soon, you feel like you're trying to pedal Refrigerator Perry up a waterfall made of molasses. In slow motion. While he's eating a bucket of chicken. And molasses."
It's not just the parking that gets me, though. It's everything. Take the gym, for instance. NewJob lives in a big office complex, and right there, in the very same building, is a full-scale, honest-to-Jack-Lalanne gym. You might think that would be a straightforward 'win' for someone like me.
(Might you? Really? Who are you, and what the hell have you been reading? Because it sure as hell isn't this.)
Here's the thing: a gym next door is good. A gym down the block, also okay. Those are distances that are close enough to be convenient, but not so close as to taunt you. Right in the same building you work in? Taunt city, baby. This gym is literally -- literally -- seventeen steps out of my way to attend. No excuse short of full dismemberment -- and I don't mean some hokey doctor's note claiming 'temporary invisible unmemberment', either -- will get me out of hitting the gym. I'm lazy -- but it's seventeen fricking steps. Nobody's that lazy.
And this newfound rededication to gymming it up comes with a cost. Naturally. I'm an old guy, and haven't belonged to a gym since the Clinton administration. Or maybe it was Carter. One of those grinny Southern guys.
the point is, it's been a while. I'm out of shape, and happy to try to get back into some semblance of it. But -- big, overstuffed but here -- it's best for everyone if I do it in private. Nobody wants to see me sweat. Or gasp. Or fall off a rowing machine and flop on the linoleum like a wounded Shamu. So while I can't not go to the gym -- seventeen steps! -- I also spend most of my time there desperately hoping that I won't be seen.
Did I mention that the gym's in my office's building? And that people in this company are really healthy? Probably because they all go to this freaking close-by gym?
Pick up the story this evening, and you can pretty well guess what happened. I waddled into the gym, decided to do a little exercise bike work -- because who doesn't want to get healthier sitting down? -- and hopped on a machine. Sure, I was beside some guy -- it was a pretty crowded night in the cardio lounge -- but I didn't even glance at him. Some random gym rat, probably. Face forward, kiddo. Eyes on the prize.
So it was quite a surprise when, in the middle of my workout, this person finished, toweled down a bit, and said: 'Oh -- hi, Charlie.'
Crapcicles.
It was one of the guys pretty high up in our company -- someone I'd interviewed with back in the meet, greet 'n' grovel process. Really nice guy, and someone I'd be more than happy to have a conversation with... but there was just one thing. At the moment, I was strapped to some demented cardio-blasting pedal demon, and it was juuuust about to crank the pitchfork into high gear.
As a quick aside, I'll relay how I've figured out this particular machine works. You sit on it, and it asks you what sort of workout you want. You tell it 'Cardio'. It asks if you want to ride for a half hour, and you reply, 'Hell, no, twenty minutes, chief. What do you want, I should pop an aneurysm on top of you?'
Then it asks for your age. You round a little. And it asks for your weight. You round, a lot. Then it calculates what target heart rate it thinks you should shoot for. And you knock ten or fifteen off that ridiculous number, too.
Finally, it starts you off on a gentle, breezy ride. For two minutes, and if you haven't reached your target rate, it makes things harder. Another two, and more resistance. Another two minutes, another more pain. Pretty soon, you feel like you're trying to pedal Refrigerator Perry up a waterfall made of molasses. In slow motion. While he's eating a bucket of chicken. That's "level 4", and it kicks in six minutes into the ride.
(Before it kicks the hell back out soon after, when the bike detects that you are, in fact, hanging on by three fingers and a foot, rotating fully up and under the bike with each rotation. Level 4 sucks. It's hard as hell, painful, shaming, and honestly, I think the machine only displays levels 5-9 to scare small children at night. They can't possibly be unleashed on human beings at will. The Geneva Convention wouldn't allow it.
So, of course, this guy from my office wraps up and wants to chat at approximately the fife minute and fifty-three second point of my course. As soon as I said 'Hi!', it was on. Gears grinding. Calves burning. Teeth gritting, and all the while trying to have a light, appropriate, intelligent conversation with this person who probably counts as my boss' boss' boss' boss' boss. Or something.
Meanwhile, I looked -- and sounded -- like a constipated parrot with a bad case of vertigo. If I focused on him, I lurched to one side. If I looked at the bike, I repeated everything he said because all the blood from my brain was running into my shattered calves. I parrot-babbled something at him for a couple of exchanges, and soon enough he looked worried, crossed himself, and moved on. Just about the time the bike straightened up, and I could pedal again without a medicine ball bouncing on each knee.
So that's going to be awkward, the next time I see this guy. And I'm guessing this same scenario -- or scenes infinitely more mortifying -- will be playing out in the gym for many, many months to come.
Because that's how it happens, kids. Work is fine. But work-ing is never easy. And you're usually left stammering, wiping down your own equipment, and stranded in a mall parking lot.
Jesus. It's a wonder any of us make it to work, now that I think about it. Kudos to us, I guess. Yay?
(For those in the Boston area, come by and see me -- if you dare! -- during ImprovBoston's SketchHaus, Saturday nights in January. I'll be performing with the high-larious sketch group The Ruckus; shows are just ten bucks and start at 10:30pm. Come see. There's beer. Good times.
While I'm at it, the latest Zolton Does Amazon piece is up over at ZuG.com. Stop on over to Kiss Your Career Hello, If you're into that sort of thing.)
I've just finished my first week of work at a new office, and things are going generally peachily. In fact, if there's any teensy, weensy, tiny little horrific nightmare involved in the deal, it has to do with one of the perks the new company provides.
Parking.
The office building is -- like ninety-nine percent of everything else of any value, utility or interest in the Boston area -- in a neighborhood where parking comes at a premium. Minimal street spots, exorbitant garage fees, and parking cops who'll ticket your chrome-bumpered ass fourteen seconds after the meter expires. It's brutal.
But wait! New company will subsidize parking in a nearby lot. A perk available to all employees, including me. So to avoid tickets, boots, tows and the inevitable impound lot breakout adventure, I signed up for a parking pass. And got one. And since Tuesday, I've been nestling my car snugly in a lot, as planned. There's just one thing I didn't know:
It's a parking lot for a shopping mall.
Now, for some people that would be a godsend. Roll into the lot at eight, shop on the way to work, shop at lunch, work some more, shop shop shop, work work work, call it a day and head to the car. While shopping. I know people who'd consider that heaven.
"I hate shopping. I avoid malls like most people avoid playing Twister with a bunch of lepers."
None of those people are me. I hate shopping. I avoid malls like most people avoid playing Twister with a bunch of lepers. Until this week, that is. Because now, every day is Mall Day. Not only do I park there, but the only way out of the garage is through the mall. And the shoppers. And the kiosks. And?
The horror.
So far, every trip to and from work has brought back screaming willy flashbacks of trying on clothes, waiting in lines and haggling over return receipts. Some people see those as just the cost of shopping for things. I decided a long time ago that frankly, I just dont like things that much. If I have to not own things to avoid shopping for things, then so be it. I'm guessing this is how most monasteries get started. Think about it.
The disgusting irony of it is, I just finished getting out of going to a mall. I usually only see the inside of one in late December, when Christmas looms and I've neglected to buy the requisite baubles and trinkets online. My wife usually gets a mall-bought gift or two, as does my family. The mall for me is a place for panic, guilt and deep remorse -- and I somehow miraculously managed to miss it this year. I planned ahead, ordered some gifts on the internet -- and the missus and I made a pact not to trade anything big. And I navigated the holiday Scylla and Charybdes without experiencing the interior of an Old Navy or Toddler Gap. I was quite proud of myself.
And now I'm practically living in a mall. Partly because I have to park there, but mostly because I haven't yet figured out how the hell to get in and out of the stupid place through the same door twice in a row. On Wednesday, I played Marco Polo for a while before someone showed me the exit. Yesterday, I set my car alarm off from halfway across the garage, to get a vague notion of which direction to wander. And today, I spent half the day trying to navigate my way out.
(I'm serious here. I left the house at a quarter past eight. It's a twenty minute drive. I finally got to my desk at half past lunchtime. It was nightmarish; if not for the Cinnabon on level three, I could've collapsed and keeled over in that godforsaken place.
And who'd save me then, eh? Abercrombie? Fitch? Jesus Christ Penney? Honky, please.)
Anyway, other than that, things are pretty good. If I could just beg, blubber or breadcrumb my way out of that hellhole mall a little quicker, I'd be just peachy.
In the meantime, if there's anything you need from Victoria's Secret, let me know. I'll be there on Monday. And Tuesday. And possibly forever. Yaaa-aaaa-aaaaay.
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