Saw the gym yesterday

It remind­ed me why I used to go there so much. It was a load of fun.

First I got on the tread­mill and did some­thing real­ly zany: I turned the incline up to 15% and adjust­ed my speed to keep my heartrate from exceed­ing 160 (not always suc­cess­ful­ly). I got 1.6 miles in 25 min­utes, which is super slow, but I was soaked in sweat and if I keep doing that my butt will look great after a cou­ple years.

Then went upstairs and did lots of painful ab things. That’s always the worst part, espe­cial­ly because my abs are so far under a lay­er of fat that hav­ing strong abs will not aid my appear­ance. But what­ev­er. I think I need to watch The Pro­fes­sion­al (Léon) again, because see­ing him swing down over the door­frame to shoot peo­ple has always inspired me to do my sit-ups.

Then i just did a lot of dif­fer­ent stuff. Did­n’t focus on one area too much. Hit my chest, shoul­ders, back. Doing those flys real­ly helped loosen my chest up. it was hurt­ing from a cou­ple days ago. i was just about to give up and go home, doing what was going to be my last area with some shoul­der press­es, when I made eye con­tact with a woman doing some sort of leg exten­sions. This had the nat­ur­al lobot­o­miz­ing effect and I for­got that I was plan­ning to leave. But I went to go do anoth­er machine on the oth­er side of the club – I for­get what it’s called, but it’s basi­cal­ly a fac­ing sligh­ly down row­ing motion. It does­n’t mat­ter. I start­ed to do this, and guess who comes over to the leg sled and starts work­ing out right next to me? Right.

So I watched her for a lit­tle while as I was catch­ing my breath in between by sets, and she got up and went to add weight. She took off the 25lb plates and want­ed to replace them with 45lb plates, but she could­n’t lift the 45lb plates, so she asked me to give her a hand. We talked about the leg sled a lit­tle – I like it because it’s such a psy­cho­log­i­cal boost to be able to push around way more weight than I can nor­mal­ly lift. She invit­ed me to work in a set on the leg sled, but that would have meant mov­ing a lot more of those plates around, so I said I’d wait. I had­n’t been plan­ning to get on the leg sled at all, but I did any­how. and I went to the steam room and then home, where I had what the gro­cery store calls a “San­ta Fe Cae­sar” sal­ad, which was way bet­ter than I thought it would be.

Women just rule my world. I love them! But I have the sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that this one would have real­ly start­ed to annoy me after the sec­ond date. She was very nice, and had this hot nose. Total­ly hot nose. Yeah. I’m not even sure why I think she would start to annoy me. I guess I’m just so com­mit­ment­pho­bic that I can’t deal with any­thing that might lead to future interaction.

This spoiled every­thing for me: it was last Decem­ber I had a talk with a friend of mine who told me that if one does­n’t have sex with a woman on the third date, she thinks one is not inter­est­ed and that the rela­tion­ship is going nowhere. Nor­mal­ly i would have just dis­missed this as bull­shit, but it hap­pened to come imme­di­ate­ly before and after sev­er­al pop­u­lar-cul­ture ref­er­ences to the “third date” as is “you know what hap­pens on the third date, right?” This has TOTALLY RUINED IT ALL FOR ME. I’m not talk­ing about casu­al sex, that’s all well and good (in the­o­ry any­way – I don’t have very much prac­tice). I’m talk­ing about meet­ing some­one for the third time and being ready to jump in bed as the norm of the rela­tion­ship track? And if I don’t it’s con­sid­ered rejec­tion? AAAAAAIIIIIGHHHH!!!!!

Seri­ous­ly. I’m now con­vinced that the only way I’ll ever have a rela­tion­ship is to find some­one I can com­mu­ni­cate with online from far away until I get to know her well enough so that I can start that “three date” count­down from already hav­ing a good rela­tion­ship. But see? not hav­ing sex with some­one on anoth­er con­ti­nent can­not be con­strued as rejec­tion! it’s per­fect! Hooray for the internet!

I had­n’t exact­ly planned this out, but this might explain why I’m attract­ed to women in Europe and the Mid­dle East (OK, most­ly the Mid­dle East – Europe is too close, but there are excep­tions). I real­ly love going out and hav­ing a good time and get­ting to know some­one, but to think I’ll get to know some­one in two din­ner dates or what­ev­er, that’s just too much pres­sure. I’d rather just keep it light and fun and then bail.

Except that I don’t even have a pass­port, so if I won’t get seri­ous with Amer­i­can women, then.… sigh. There’s a flaw in every plan.