 |
| ID: an arm holding up a yellow dumbbell against a turquoise background |
Ooh, okay, all gender-neutral cubicles. Maybe this is a more queer-friendly gym option. At least I shouldn’t get gassed by Lynx Africa or whatever. More noise from the spinning room: “Those starships were meant to fly!” Maybe not, then.
Right, at some point I’m going to have to go in. Soon. Just maybe not right now. I am at least glad I went for the Dundee council gym (£15 a month because as an under-24 I’m still a “youth”). Everything looks the same as in the sports centres and swimming pools I would go to as a child. Speckled vinyl floors, signs in the sort of font that only councils and hospitals use – I can almost smell that pink gel soap from oval-shaped dispensers. You get the feeling, too, that the people who use the centre rely on its being kept open – really it’s a swimming pool with a gym section upstairs. So if I do decide never to go back, at least my £15 has gone to something sort of useful. And I won’t have wasted any money on fancy gym attire either. I have my one pair of (really quite short) sports shorts on and my one sporty-ish top; my slightly beaten-looking Converse will have to pass for trainers. How long before I get eaten alive in there…
Well, a bit longer anyway, cause that’s the wrong door. But that must mean the one beside it is the right one, and that a push of the handle is going to land me in the place they call “the gym.” You’ll pray for me, won’t you?
***
Somehow, I’ve made it across the floor to a thing they call a “cross trainer.” I do know how you use this. I find a programme which is meant to resemble a hike through the German forests; they play you a kind of Google-Maps-style video so it feels like you’re actually there, hiking in Germany. Except of course that it doesn’t. I resort to counting how many windows there are in the wall, asking myself why I signed up for 25 minutes of this… I wonder if anyone’s watching me, scowling or laughing, or both. That really puts me off places like this, just being on show while moving around, (I think) looking silly, getting sweaty, making funny faces trying to “control your breathing” and so on. I’m someone who can’t dance if I’m being watched. I can only enjoy a club if it is absolutely packed and the lights are off and everyone is too lost in themselves to take notice of me. Whereas this gym is bright and airy and surrounded by glass, anyone who wants to can watch me, and I’ve just lost count of the windows, but so far I’ve been on this machine for a whole four minutes so I’m going to have to go back to window number one and start again. Of course I had to choose a machine in such a visible area. It shouldn’t even matter, really. You’re meant to be there to exercise, and that’s not going to look pretty. Plus, it’s the Dundee council gym. I don’t imagine anyone’s on steroids. The only disadvantage of the council gym is that they obviously allow teenagers in, and of course today there is a big group of teenage boys on the weights machines. Four years after leaving school, big groups of teenage boys still give me the fear. And I can’t get away from the feeling that everyone here is looking at me and shaking their heads, and although I’m realising how much less likely I am to be targeted here than many other people, I still can’t seem to relax. The window thing didn’t work either. I got to 42 or something and gave up.
You know what, though, I am feeling the effect of the exercise. I can feel myself sweating (and thanking Fussy deodorant that I can only feel it). But there’s something else. Some kind of energy going through my body. As if I’ve located some extra length of electrical cable in me and it’s just been wired up to the grid. It really does feel good. So much so that when I finish with the cross trainer I find myself on a rowing machine round the corner (albeit playing a 2-minute game where you try and catch pixelated fish), and after that on the exercise bike beside it. This time I put my earphones in and find a playlist I made when I was going cycling a while ago, with ’70s/’80s rock and a bit of 2000s pop, and, as much as I hate this expression, I really am “pushing myself” to do more – helped by the little lightbulb in the corner of the screen telling me I’m making kinetic energy, and that really does make me feel good (spoiler: I went again a couple of days later and put the earphones in on the cross trainer from the start, and this time went straight for "Real Gone Kid". And that was amazing).
To get back to the rest of the equipment, I have to go back round the corner and down the little stairs to the main bit. This time I’m not imagining it: people really are looking at me. It’s not like Glee with flashing lights and applause and so on, but they’re sitting in their machines and the stairs I’m coming down are directly in front of them, so they have to look at me and I have to let myself, sweaty mess that I’ve become, be looked at by them. Wait, a- am I- am I enjoying this? Actually, yeah :)) I am dripping in sweat, the hair that I usually fix every three and a half seconds wouldn’t look out of place on a dog that’s just come out the sea, and I can see a good four pairs of eyes looking right at it, at me, and, you know what, I am absolutely loving it. Like, look at me! Look what I’ve just done!
Okay, I shouldn’t pretend that I’m not still a little bit nervous when I go to use the weights machines that I’m doing them a bit wrong – I notice I’m the only one who needs a minute or two to read the pictogram thing showing you what to do – but, somehow, being seen figuring it out is so much less daunting than it was an hour ago. And I am managing it. I am using them. When I get up – look away now if you’re eating – I can see the sweat all over the chair. Normally this would have me running home to shower and be sick. But now – again, somehow – when I get up, part of me is saying, “I did that!”, and this really is confusing, but it feels good (rest assured, I cleaned them all afterwards). I think it’s maybe because I’m not apologising for it. Not trying to “excuse” my hair or my face or my clothes like I usually am. But, actually, it’s more than that. When I’m using a machine or lifting a weight, I’m not standing still – I’m moving my body. In front of people. And for all I’m not grunting and so on, my movements on the machine are making sound. Sound that other users are going to hear. I’m going to catch people’s attention. I’m being visible and audible and actively there and for once the thought of that isn’t making me just quite so horrified. Physically, using the machines felt good, definitely, but this unashamedness has been the highlight of the day.
***
Gosh. This all feels a bit "Outro" by M83. Adversity overcome, life changed, a whole new future beckons. Well…
For a start, that was by no means my first time in a gym – just my first in a long time. It will be ten years ago soon that I, just turned 12, had my first all-exciting “induction course” at my then-local sports centre – a day I’d been looking forward to for months, because, looking back, I wanted muscles. What I still can’t work out is whether I wanted them for their own sake, for strength, or so that I, as the feminine, nerdy teacher’s pet (who definitely wasn’t gay!), had something “manly” to my name. Approaching the eve of high school, being a bit muscular certainly did give me a bit more confidence – confidence in impressing (or at least not completely disgusting) people who I really had no business trying to impress. But then, I really did love how I looked. I loved how I felt.
And looking around this gym in Dundee, I can’t stop thinking about that time, the summer of 2016, when I was going to the gym every other day, wearing ridiculously tight lycra sports tops, drinking Greek yoghurt NutriBullet shakes and watching men inject steroids into their bottoms on YouTube. Partly because everything looks so similar – the cross trainer, the weights machines, the floor, the posters on the wall, the blue roll and spray bottle, even the people look the same. Okay, the songs on the radio are different, and the cardio machines don’t have TV anymore, so you can no longer thunder along on the treadmill while watching A Place in the Sun: Home or Away?, but everything else is the same.
Except of course, for me. A lot changes from age 12 to age 21. Right? Well, yes, except, I can’t help but worry that the reasons aren’t all that different. I worry it’s no coincidence that I’ve tried the gym again at this point of an ongoing gender discovery where I’m attempting to reengage with the masculine angles of my body – as if men need to be fit or fit people must be men. I worry it’s been influenced by standards on social media, where gay men of all persuasions have some kind of muscular physique. I worry about the influence of a certain well-known gay (ahem) “dating” app, where so-called “straight-acting” men seem to have become so highly sought-after, “straight acting for fem/twink”, “fem/twink – masc lads to the front”, as if, for some reason, we’re on some desperate quest to reproduce straightness in what was meant to be a queer space. I, too, confess to having posted (deceivingly) masc-looking pictures and attempting to savour the hollow, fleeting satisfaction of the stream of new messages they provoked.
I worry, actually, about body (and personality) standards for straight men too, and how that impacts the rest of us; I worry you can draw lines between muscle culture and backwards ideas of gender, social conservatism, Andrew Tate, the manosphere, #skinnytok, the glorification of so-called “self-made” men, a lack of empathy for all those who are struggling in the world, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, Nicki Minaj. And I can’t stop thinking about a hoodie I saw in the library a while ago, the back of which read “Jesus and the gym”. Which is partly why I keep wincing every time I say “the gym”. The idea that it could be placed at the centre of some hideous disciplinarian vision of society under the rule of a conjured-up, patriarchal, stocks-and-shares-trading “Jesus”, who would have probably told the 5000 to work harder if they wanted food, and kept his two fish and five rice-cakes for himself.
If you’re now completely confused as to what this article was about, I’m sorry – for what it’s worth, I’m quite confused too (and don’t worry, I won’t bang on for much longer). For my part, I have been back at the gym twice since, and I want to keep going. I am enjoying it, and although it’s a bit early to feel fitter, the way I feel mentally after going is enough to keep me going again. And at the end of the day, exercise is not some kind of cultural property of one gender or sex or identity or personality or whatever else, however some people or groups may try and hijack it.
On that note, there’s one last comparison, which, I believe, really does make a difference. Back in 2016, as I was getting to the end of primary school, nothing boosted my ego quite like carrying a bench on my own, when my classmates had to do it in twos (and if social media is anything to go by, I don’t think I was the only one). At the time I must have thought that I deserved some kind of special respect. Now of course I know that’s nonsense. It’d have taken me ages to move a whole gym-hall-full of benches on my own. As a class we had it done in a few minutes. So, if I do keep going to this "gym" place, and if I do get a bit stronger, mentally or physically, I don’t want to just lift things in the air for show. I want to use that strength to lighten the load of my neighbours and siblings. Certainly, in the current climate, a bit of extra support in the queer community shouldn’t go amiss.