STORY: Elliptical Machines

The sun wasn’t even a thought. It was too damn early. And it was December, pushing up heavy on Christmas, so the sun's appearance wasn’t something you could bank on, like estrangement in a marriage, for instance. I got to the gym early, before anyone else would even consider something barbaric like exercise. You have to get there early, because the gym’s in a community centre. It’s basically free. So space and machines are limited. You have to be flexible with time. I’d been going to the elliptical machine for therapy. It helped. [...]

A word about the machine itself. I loved it. I couldn’t get enough of that cross-country ski movement to nowhere, staring out the window at Pape Avenue and the post-war bungalows behind dirty snow banks. Their front yard trees looking like a cripple’s forearms. I liked the view. I was up to level 8 on the machine. Getting good at pumping circles is about all I could stomach in the way of personal development in those days after the break up. You could say the elliptical machine was a crutch of mine. You could certainly say that. 

I was looking forward to my solitary work out, getting out of my head and putting it on auto-pilot for thirty-five minutes. I always surprised me to feel my heart thumping in my chest like mad. I guess it was therapeutic to remind myself that I was still alive in a biological way. This is to say that my workouts were a private affair.  

So I was pissed to find people there. Specifically, there were two women there. More specifically still, two foreign kinds of women. They were wearing fancy athletic gear. You know the kind I’m referring to. Space age fabrics that turn your sweat into an angel’s fart or something translucent. But these aerobics queens were wearing veils over their hair. They were having a loud conversation and didn’t play it down even after I cleared my throat about twenty-odd times. I guess they assumed I wouldn’t understand their ancient tongue. They assumed right. All I gathered was a lot of throat clearing. 

Anyhow, there were three elliptical machines in the community centre. And these two women were on the end ones, leaving the middle machine vacant. I thought, “Great. This will shut them up a little,” looking down at the basketball I call my stomach. I climbed up onto the machine between them. They didn’t pause. They kept on shouting and bobbing their heads foreword to talk around me. I didn’t know what I was interrupting. But the whole thing seemed pretty ugly to me. I mean, there was no need to talk through me, was there? I still existed, didn’t I?   

I couldn’t even put on my Ipod. The ex took that too, to listen to her Ricky Martin tracks. The thought of my ex lusting after a Latin homosexual made me angrier still. I wasn’t going to let these unknown women walk all over me too. 

Like I said, I’ve got a gut. Too much bar food. Too many bars. I am not an easy man to ignore when I’m up close. I made it my business to obstruct them, to break up any eye contact. 

It must have been something to see. An empty community centre gym with two Arab ladies shouting something important and a overweight recently divorced snow-plough driver all making the same movements together, peddles spinning in time, mirroring postures and gestures. It might have looked like a battle of will. I’d say it was a kind of dance. I don’t know. 

Strange thing is, after about a kilometer of this obstruction mission, I kind of forgot what I was doing and that they were even talking. We just kind of moved together. Their conversation wrapped around me like I was a rock in a river and that river flowed into larger seas and larger seas still. I glanced over at them. They weren’t pretty. They kind of looked the same to me. Like twins. But not the kind you fantasize about. I don’t mean to sound like a prick. But they were middle aged women from the Middle East with moles on their faces and pear-shaped bodies that probably won no big acclaim in the bedroom. Under the florescent lights I could make out the faint outline of two goatees. It didn’t matter though. I closed my eyes and let these wonders of the east speak. In a fight between water and rock, water wins. Geological fact, boy. I felt some excess mineral being scrubbed away from my mind. It felt good. About fifteen minutes later, they both got off their elliptical machines and walked over to the treadmills. They kept on up with the shouting conversation. 

It took everything I had not to follow them, to find an island between their full red mouths, to see if their words might carve a new man altogether.