Colombian Culture 299: Physical Education

So I decided to go to the gym the other day, you know, tone the abs and work on my pectoral cleavage, that type of thing. I was told by my numerous housemates that there was a gym right around the corner on the next street over, so I decided to check it out.

I walked about 3 minutes, literally right around the corner, and found the place they were referring to. It was smack dab in the middle of our residential neighborhood and actually seemed quite out of place, a tall three-story building with large windows casting its harsh fluorescent lighting on the sleepy houses that surrounded it.

I talked to the owner, Christian, a meaty chunk of muscle whose biceps were bigger around than my torso, and figured out the price and hours of operation. I liked what I saw and decided to pay a month in advance as a sly method of motivating myself, despite numerous past experiences indicating that this is totally ineffective.

The gym was nearly empty, with just a few guys working the free weights on the ground floor and not a soul on the second floor, where the cardio exercises were. This is just the way I like it: no distractions, no waiting for machines, and no jealous glances from guys wishing they had the massive girth of my Spartan-like shoulders.

I climb the stairs to the second floor and, with a sinking feeling, I realize that this gym doesn't have treadmills, the single most important exercise for me and practically the sole reason I actually go to the gym, seeing as how I am able to maintain my Hulk-esque figure through sheer force of will. The only comparable thing they have is an elliptical, a machine I have avoided like the plague due to its undeniably gay low-impact nature. And now I've paid a month in advance and have no way to back out. Great.

I get up on the machine and start my workout, but within seconds I realize that the elliptical machines are lined up in front of a huge bay window that opens out onto the street below, a street where large groups of people are currently sitting outside their houses, in full gossip target acquisition mode, just brainstorming new and juicy tidbits to discuss to death in their post-work ritual.

Next thing I know I'm chugging away on my machine to the rhythm of the techno remix of "Listen to Your Heart," the fluorescent lights illuminating me from behind like floodlights as a small crowd gathers beneath my window in utter amazement at this spiky-haired, pasty white Chinese dude in blue boardshorts sweating profusely on his elliptical. By sheer coincidence there seems to also be a meeting of the Prettiest Girls in the Neighborhood Club at that very moment and at that very spot, as they all suddenly appear beneath my makeshift stage to gawk with the others. Groups of conspicuously masculine men, the kind that would never think of using an elliptical, sit in groups up and down the street drinking beers and communicating in grunts and farts, as such men do. All in all, I pretty much succeeded in entertaining the whole neighborhood for a good half-hour, not to mention providing a topic of lively speculation for a few days after that.

When I got home an hour later I discovered that, in an amazing coincidence I suspected was not really a coincidence, the large bay windows where I had just gained infamy were in a direct line of sight from the back windows of my house, which at two stories provides a nice view over the tops of the adjoining houses. I was informed by my housemates, through the gasping laughter and tearful chuckles of course, that they had also witnessed my "performance."

You know, I've realized there is a point, beyond embarrassment and also beyond shame, where you really just don't care. I am becoming very familiar with this place.