Some Like It Hot

The gym was infested with festering phonies and drooling-on-dullards—these otherwise daunting dames. Television screens high above near the exposed ceiling displayed a myriad of mesmerizing shows for the huffing-and-puffing mare and minion. I had my headphones, as I pushed mildly on the elliptical machine, and listened to one of my favorite albums: And Still Wanting by an artist who calls himself “Prurient.” The cleaning ladies appeared with their ghostbuster back packs and began to suck silently with their bending grey hoses and tried not the bother the brutes.

A young Caucasian man in a hot green muscle shirt kept staring at me from across the building and smiled whilst widening his eyes. He lifted his dumbbells and with the back of his right thumb, wiped away the sweat from his eyebrows. Maybe he thought I was a fruit, due to me checking from time to time to see if he was still eye-fucking me.

A young lady walked by, who reminded me of Mansfield, also wearing headphones, and smiled at me as she shook her moneymaker from side to side and tiptoed to the contraption right in front of me; It was some kind of stair climbing station and she worked and worked and would peripherally pucker up those pretty pink lips of hers.

An overweight person with curly brown hair and red sneakers, who could have been a man or woman, quite easily, winked at me from a few treadmills over to my left. It adjusted its headband and hissed something to me I couldn’t make out.

Now I know why women are annoyed at the gym.

 

I am not one of those assholes, you know the type, that vibes off waves of I’m-here-to-work-out-don’t-bother-me messages in the subtle sway of the chilling cold shoulder and the upward pointing chin. Always open to new faces and good conversation, but nothing more. For I know what most mortals want.

 

They want to be wanted. They want to be reminded. Reminded each morning that someone cares. That someone is interested. To be wished a great day. That someone, maybe me someone, will be someone who loves them, someone who believes in them, someone who will allow themselves to be their property.

They want to belong to someone, these cow-eyed cowards who follow the crowd. I understand them, they don’t want to be alone. They want someone to wake them in the morning and say, “ Good morning, my love. My only love. You are the one and only person I think about. All through my day, your face is all I see. Your voice is my favorite song and can’t wait to hear it throughout my day. When I make love to you, I don’t think of the neighbor and her double D jugs. I don’t think of the man who lives next door who works for the Fire Department and comes home all sweaty and ripping through that ever so tight cotton shirt.”

 

But I won’t. I won’t say that. Because It wouldn’t be true.

I live life as a free man—understanding in my old age the true meaning of Liberty.

I don’t feel the pressure to live as you do, to have the need of someone tell you all the shit you know can’t possible be true.

My solitude is my solace—my Fortress Of Solitude.

 

 

Yes, I want to love. Yes, I want to look in your eyes. Yes, I want to tell you I love you…but then ask you how your date was last night..

 

 

…with the Fireman next door.

∞