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It only took me 24 minutes to decide not to attend a 24-hour Fitness Center ever, ever again. This is an organization that advertises never-ending -- also known as eternal – a.k.a. infinite, as in from before the beginning of time beyond the ends of time, as in not ever stopping, exercise. A shelter that boasts of the availability of upper deltoid pumping iron machinery at 2:30 in the morning, also known as in the middle of the night.
The fact that I was even drawn to joining such an organization, which by its very name is suggestive of all my deepest fears and nightmares, is clearly indicative of its intrinsic evil. But one day I stopped thinking altogether and accepted on faith that committing to an automatic monthly checking account deduction of $60 was a guarantee that I would regularly show up at this place. When I called up about their services, an appointment was scheduled for me to tour the facilities – 11:00 in the morning on a weekday. This is a very good strategy to lure prospective buffed up wanna-bes because, hey, who’s at the gym at this time? It looks like it’s all for you. What you experience is this vast chrome wonderland of mirrors, treadmills, happy music and a few lone muscled men in tight shorts breezily chatting with each other as their biceps inflate by the minute. Since everyone else is at work, I suspect that they are actors (“Hi, I’m not really a member, but I play one at 24-hour Fitness Center”). Either that or they are the most well built homeless people I’ve ever seen.
As you take in the sites, bobbing your head to that happy beat, you find yourself smiling hypnotically. Your host is like Mr. Rourk from Fantasy Island; he is charming and easy-going and he regales you with success stories of fat, lazy, depressed people who came to this beautiful place where it turned out to be so easy to become thin and energetic. It’s not a dungeon where they whip you into shape and make you eat gruel. It’s like the Playboy Mansion. Why, it’s better than sex. I mean, you want to do it all the time! It’s the best drug in the world and you will be addicted to it and, yeah, you will get high!
Along with all this sheer ecstasy comes a really, really nice personal trainer who is at your disposal any time you want. These personal trainers are walking all over the place, smiling, nodding at you, concerned for you. They are a constant, benevolent presence who would never let you make a fool of yourself as you, say, fumble around a weight machine, squinting as you squat down to interpret the 20 step instructions on how to adjust it to your height, weight, age, boob size, and IQ. There are also four people at the front desk to greet you and help you in any way they can. They embody customer service and would never, say, spend all their time chatting to each other and ignoring you while you try to ask for a refund on the $1.50 you lost in the soda machine.
This is great, you say to Mr. Rourk. Sign me up! What transpires after that is a whirlwind of activity -- smiles and laughter, claps on the back, signing of contracts, money changing hands, finalized with a grand feeling of accomplishment. I’m improving myself, you think. You call your mother who thinks that you drink too much. You let her know that you have just traded your beer bar in for a barbell. She is so proud of you!
Then comes the day, perhaps the very following day, when you go to the gym. You don’t just go to the gym. You spend two hours the night before rummaging through your closet, searching for an “outfit” – one that says: “I work out. I have always worked out. I belong here.” Unfortunately, your butt suggests otherwise. Nothing looks right. And you don’t own the right sneakers. You only have a pair of 15-year-old muddy Converse high tops. What all this translates to is that you won’t make it to the gym right away. It will have to wait until you go shopping for all the right gear. Three months and $280 of membership fees later, you have some clothes. The initial excitement has worn off. Another three months goes by.
One day, you are totally disgusted with yourself. You throw those nice new clothes in a bag and you go to work. Then work is over and it’s time to get moving! After work: the most available, normal time for exercising. You think so. When you get to 24-Hour Fitness Center, you realize that everyone else in the world thinks so too. How marvelous for a lonely, single woman, such as myself to find a place with wall-to-wall people. Or make that, treadmill-to-treadmill people. How titillating it was for me how, after 30 minutes of waiting for just one machine to be available, to finally be able to use the thigh machine – the one where you sit up and spread your legs wide open, then close, then open, then close, then open…..then find a nice man leaning on the front of the machine, watching, waiting. Some people wait around their whole lives for this kind of subtly erotic interlude. I guess the excitement of it all was too much for me to bear. I left.
I went about four more times after that, each time experiencing a new brand of customer service. I decided that I would stir up some good karma by repaying 24-Hour Fitness Center with the same generosity it had shown me. Because of the organization’s generous nature, it had obviously oversold its facilities to thousands of people who would never actually be able to use them. I gracefully bowed out, allotting my space to all those other suckers, I mean, athletes , so that one day, they may too get to see what it’s like to actually use a treadmill. I’m sure 24-hour Fitness Centers have enough people signed up. I’m sure they won’t replace me. They don’t need the money.
