n o w p l a y i n g - s c r i p t b i n - f a n c l u b - s t u d i o

make love to the camera



October 11, 2002 - 9:26 am

Los Angeles Loves Love

In a perfect world, this would be the last time we talk about this for a while:

Sally and I seem to have settled nicely into some kind of Attempted Friendship. It's a long time coming, and it's about time, too. I mean, what else are we going to do? There aren't very many options, and, at this point, I'm more than happy to engage in activities that aren't related to 1) thinking about our relationship or 2) talking about our relationship.

And thank God, really, because I'm becoming bored half to death with all of it. If you've ever turned an issue around in your head again and again until it really just becomes silly, you know what I'm talking about. Inside me, the whole "oh, my aching love life" angst-shtick has been done to death, and I, for one, am thrilled to just do this friendship thing and let the future happen as it will.

Or, as Sally's friend Lindsay put it to her recently: "So, what are you guys now? Friends with a possibility of marriage?"

That, my friends, is pretty much that. Let's all give Morose Bill and Angst Bill a nice round of applause for spending the summer with us. Ideally, we will not see them again until Midlife Crisis Bill stops by.

So.

I did manage to make it to my gym the other night.

I'm not much of a gym guy. In fact, the last time I was anything like a gym member was when I was 15 years old. Welles Park, my local park district, had a small gym that was open to people who were 16 or older and had five bucks in their pockets.

For some reason, I had the 15 year old boy delusion that I would join this gym, buff myself up, and subsequently take over my high school. Not being 16, however, I wasn't allowed membership.

So that's why I had my mom help me forge myself a new birth certificate.

It was quite easy, actually. We just photocopied the original and changed the 1975 to a 1974. My mom seemed to really relish this task.

In the following years, she asked me to write papers for my little brothers, sign my dead father's name on credit cards, and, most recently, asked if I could scan a document and change it using my computer.

In a parallel universe, my bingo playing mother is a master documents forger.

So, my last gym experience was over a decade ago. I didn't know my way around any of the machines, so I was hoping I'd be alone when I got over there. Naturally, there were five or six people already there, and the gym was so small that there was nowhere to hide until I figured anything out.

I stood in the corner, stretching, and considered my options and my fellow gym-mates. A couple of muscle bound jocks grunting loudly as they hefted their dumb bells. The requisite hot chick using the stairmaster. Finally, my favorite: The inexplicable guy in jeans and a button up, collared shirt using the bench press.

I decide to use the treadmill and do a little running. After all, I know how to run, and maybe if I did that for a bit, some of these people would clear out. Of the three treadmills available, two were in use. I took the one in the middle.

Treadmills seem pretty straightforward. You step up onto the little track, you press a little button, and a few moments later you are proudly running along. You fixate on the television in front of you and before you know it, you've given your heart something nice and healthy to do for 20 minutes.

Not quite.

Now, I wouldn't say I slipped off the treadmill so much as I was catapulted into the wall behind me like a large measure of bricks. I got back on, and proceeded to do a bad imitation of that old 'Roger Rabbit' dance as I tried to find a speed that was compatible with the pace at which I wanted to run. Finally, I did manage to get 18 minutes and 37 seconds of not so traumatizing exercise in, but it wasn't long after my display that the guys on either side of me abandoned their own treadmills and headed for regions of the gym where there was less reflected embarassment shining on them.

Bastards.

I felt emboldened after that, so I headed over to other machines. Most of them, I managed to use without incident. Using some kind of sit up contraption, though, I earned myself many strange looks from my partners in muscle building. I figured that I was doing it incorrectly, as I wasn't exactly sure if my head and feet were in their proper positions.

I later learned it was the pop machine.

The gym will see me again, I assure you.

I'm off to endure twelve hours of showbusiness.

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