May 20, 2003 @ 10:42 p.m.
The quest to not be a lard bucket continues...

Oh my poor sad aching head. Hello, end of semester work rush. I am a slave to the deceptively tricky essay question this week, as well as last week. My brain hurts. I think once this is over I'll need a new one (like I didn't already). Although I seem to actually be on top of things this semester, unlike every other semester of my degree so far, where I've sat around twiddling my thumbs for a while, then realised I have two weeks until everything is due, and bust my arse doing sub-standard work. So, hooray for motivation.

Anyway. I didn't come here to bitch about Uni, believe it or not. I came here to talk about...

Something very odd has happened.

I have joined a s/wanky gym.

The fact that I've joined a gym isn't so odd, as I've always enjoyed being fit, and I've been halfheartedly using the Uni gym for most of this year. What's odd is that it's in a somewhat, uh, snobby and pretentious part of town. Not far from where I live, actually, but I don't consider my little suburb to be snobby or pretentious, although I guess some might consider it so.

But anyway. I joined last Tuesday, right out of the blue. I wasn't particularly paying any thought to it, when suddenly BAM! I will join a gym, I thought. I went in for a tour that afternoon and was sold, even after seeing a very scary woman who looked like Barbie's crackwhore mother walking around in skimpy workout gear. Seriously, this chick was terrifying. She was, I would guess, in her early-to-mid forties, and had the kind of deep orange-brown tan that only comes from spending too much time in the solarium. It looked sort of incongruous considering she was also quite wrinkly, but it went well the the bottle blonde hair of the shade I call "peroxide slutface" (you know the one, I'm sure), the starved body, the breast implants, collagen lip injections and the botox I strongly suspected from the short time I got to look at her face.

I went in for the first time on Wednesday to do my hamster impersonation on the treadmill and have a swim. Having a post-treadmill, pre-swim shower, it suddenly occurred to me that it was the first time my bikini had actually gotten wet. I was amused momentarily until I realised that I hadn't done the all important see-though test. Uh oh. I quickly checked myself over in the shower and ensured that nothing I didn't want on public display was in fact on public display.

Although I'm pretty shy about my body in some ways, and not really the type to strut around in minimal clothing (in front of more than a minimal audience, anyway), I was actually feeling good. I'm far from my peak appearance at the moment but I was fairly confident that my appearance at the poolside would not lead to a terrified stampede in the opposite direction. So I was fine, I was good, I was swimming laps in a manner reminiscent of a retarded dugong, when I looked up and saw this girl walking to the sauna. In a g-string bikini. I was shocked and stunned, because I hadn't actually realised people wore those things outside of rap video clips and Rio de Janeiro. My self-confidence mojo shrivelled up like she'd just come over and poured icy water on it. Then I realised that was fucking stupid, and that if the few people around were going to compare my figure unfavourably to hers, that was their fucking problem and nothing to do with me and my arse. Besides, if it came down to it, I could take her in a wrestling match, easy as pie. I might be somewhat chunkier than I would prefer to be, but I've got fast reflexes and thigh muscles that could crush heads.

Feeling somewhat less pathetic, I got out of the pool and went and hung out in the spa for a while. It was very warm and relaxing, and I closed my eyes and just lay back for a while. After maybe ten minutes or so, I became aware of a couple of things. The first was a weird sound, so I opened my eyes and saw a young guy walking towards me to get to the shallow end of the pool, and that he was giving me kind of an odd look, in that way where people stare at you out of the corner of their eyes with their head slightly inclined towards you, so you know they're looking at you but they don't actually want you to know it. Slightly puzzled at this, I looked down and realised what had caught his attention. Not content with being submerged in warm bubbly water, the Bosoms of Doom had decided to grab some air, and were doing the mammarical version of jumping up and down yelling "LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT MEEEEEE!" It was proof that I am not beyond the phase of being embarrassed by my breasts. But also they they most likely get a malicious thrill out of embarrassing me, as I have noted in this journal before.

So that was my first trip. I've been pretty much every day since, and I'm really enjoying it. The atmosphere is good, people seem pretty nice and friendly (when they aren't looking at me funny, anyway), and it's all good and dandy. As of yesterday, I have a personalised workout program, and let me just say that me + barbells = extreme hilarity. I have no upper body strength to speak of. But at least it gives me something to work towards, I suppose.

And besides, now I can wear cute workout gear and not feel like a poser. Not that I was wearing it and posing before, but now I have an excuse, and I bought some gorgeous pants today that I would never have bought otherwise. Cruel as I am, there is something I find intensely funny about overweight people in sports gear. 'Just do it' does not refer to stuffing yourself with doughnuts and thickshakes, people. Duh. Everyone knows it refers to exploiting children in Third World countries.

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