The Gym

Going to a strip club can be torture, sure, but going to the gym is way worse. At least when you’re at a strip club you can convince yourself not to fall in love because you wouldn’t want to date a stripper anyway. But at a gym you’re surrounded for the most part by limber, shapely women who live nearby that you already have something in common with. Asking out a girl at the gym could actually lead to something. Asking a stripper out just gets the bouncer called over and a text message sent to her mother back in Russia.

To make matters worse the gym girls also bend their bodies into all sorts of confusing and desirable positions. And just in case one image and angle of her body isn’t enough the gym has conveniently installed 600 mirrors to thoroughly challenge and overwhelm your self restraint.

There’s nothing worse than getting busted checking out a girl through a complicated sequence of mirror angles. You think you’ve got them down so she can’t see you but guess what your perversion is still detectable through three triangulated mirror angles. Front mirror to side mirror to back mirror—“Yep, I see your eyes sweaty man.”

I always like laying down in the mat area set aside for ab workouts. Because that’s really the only place in polite society where you can spot a woman lying down and walk over, spread out a towel, and lie down next to her. Laying down the towel sends her a subtle but clear message that you’re willing to clean up afterward if things get out of hand. That never works at a mattress store or inside her studio apartment. I’m officially adding “laying down a towel on the floor” to the erotic behavior handbook.

Sometimes I wonder if the social barriers we all erect and maintain cause more trouble than comfort. It would be nice to be in a room full of people and have some sort of box pop up above everyone’s heads that explains what you have in common and the likelihood that a friendship or relationship could develop. Which I suppose is the impetus behind online dating. Everyone gets a profile so they can understand more about the other person going into it. But that system hasn’t established a clear path to more effective pairings. So can’t there be some socially normal middle ground? Not the forced calculations of matchmaking services. Rather, a consensus that everyone lets their guard down more in public settings and becomes less averse to interacting. Not the freaks, mind you. The regular people.

I say that but if someone talks to me at the gym I’m not happy about it. The social barriers are there for a reason—so we can get things done and live our lives in peace. In conclusion, hot girls at the gym should strike up conversations with me so that I can channel my leering tendencies into something more productive like complimenting them on still smelling fairly amazing after an hour long workout.