Romantical Interactions at the Gym

Some days are more interesting than others for people-watching at the gym.

Last time out, there was a typically skinny young Eastern-European-looking chick faffing around on the elliptical in front of the treadmill I was trying to destrominate with the awesome power of my finely-honed gluteus maximus. It was pretty quiet in there; we were the only two in the whole section. She had her headphones on and was messing around with her iPod and retying her ponytail about fifty million times.

A while ago they announced we were getting new lockers at the gym, like so:

Thanks for the heads up.

Turns out the new lockers just have small silver keys as opposed to the old ones, which had a large plastic strap you tied around your wrist. Although it beats me why you would want something that has festered in a gym locker room for years without coming into contact with, say, some disinfectant, pressed closely to your skin while you sweat. The new keys are slippery little bastards and undoubtedly I will lose mine at some point. This will be no loss because my locker generally contains assorted differently-sized tampax (ranging from ‘bleeding like a stuck pig’ to ‘it’s ok to talk to me again, the worst has passed’) and 50 random hair products I tried and didn’t like for home.

So there blondie was, starting to glow somewhat from her tepid exertions when a rather buff looking guy who had been down in the weights room walks between her elliptical and another, and ‘ping’, her little silver key suddenly clatters to the floor.

She keeps her headphones in and looks back to check what’s happening, clearly annoyed at the interruption. He scoops the key up off the floor and goes to hand it to her, but just as she goes to take it, he sweeps it out of her reach, all the while making direct eye contact and smiling. He does this several more times, and unable to help herself, she gives up her pretence at outrage and loses the bitchy look. She’s aware all of a sudden that this guy is flirting with her, even though he hasn’t said a word. She hasn’t yet realized he knocked her key off the machine on purpose because she hasn’t had time to consider it, but if she’s not a total idiot, later it will occur to her because he has captured her attention and she’ll definitely be thinking about him.

She takes out her headphones, pauses her music. They start chatting and she’s very shy. He has this little cocky pose going like “heeeeeey girl” and he isn’t worried at all. They chat back and forth. I see her throw her head back laughing at one point. He has handed over the key at this stage and she is in no hurry to end the convo. After, he goes off to do more gym stuff but they keep glancing over at each other, eye-fucking, smoke not literally coming off the two of them, but still. She doesn’t look at anyone else and she does that shy person glance, like if their eyes meet she goes beet red and looks straight down. He, however, grins shamelessly right at her as if to say: “You are cute and I would like to make sex on you get to know you and I’m not afraid to ask”.

Moral of the story? Don’t ask, don’t get. I will keep you posted on their wedding plans.

Meanwhile I caught this fucking hilarious ‘guide to picking up chicks’ this morning over on Spoonful of Suga and it really tickled me: