gamecoder
Let's face it. This isn't about games anymore.
No point. Just imagery.
It’s 3:00 AM, and I feel the pads of fingertips come to rest between my shoulderblades. I don’t open my eyes, “Want to go swimming?”
Her voice is sluggish and disappointed, “Might as well. We’re both awake.”
So I struggle out of bed, and get dressed. We just recently joined a fitness club, and we’d been looking for an excuse to try out their pool. 3 AM seemed like as good a reason as any.
The place is bright, airy, and silent, like a cathedral. Televisions hang from the roof, mutely vying for attention. The exercycles and weight machines stand in neat lines, like rows of metallic crops (“This season, we’re planting Nautilus on the eastern fields”). The one buff college-age attendant stares intently at the television, afraid he’ll miss some of the closed captioning if he looks away.
My wife and I walk together to the back of the cathedral, a small, quiet, disheveled procession. Then we split in different directions, heading to the locker rooms.
I shower, change into my suit, and lock up my clothes. The pool room is a different kind of quiet, hollow and echoing, and yet thick with humid air. The pool itself is about ten feet wide, and fifty feet long. I’m suddenly reminded of the farmer who bought a field that was ten times as long as it was wide. “I’m going to grow spaghetti,” he would tell people.
I do a couple of laps, relishing in the dull stretching pain that my body reports. I’ve been to this club every day, slowly pushing my body. Every time I go, I enjoy the protesting pain of my muscles.
I could get used to that enjoyment. I wonder if I could be getting addicted to it. My brother gets addicted to things easily, and now he’s a weightlifter. I wonder briefly if he’s an exercise junkie.
We sit in the hot tub after that. As my body gets used to the heat, my head and arms feel colder. I feel more relaxed in there than I did lying in bed, which doesn’t seem right. I briefly wonder if a person could sleep snorkeling in a hot tub.
We chat a bit, but not much, because the noise of the hot tub jet engines drowns out most conversation. When the timer ticks off fifteen minutes, the jet engines stop, and the silence drops heavily like an embarrassing pause at a party. We split up again to shower and change.
We walk back out through the cathedral, seeing one old man at the treadmill. He’s walking slowly, determined, not looking at the televisions. He looks like he’s purposefully headed somewhere, and seeing the intensity in his eyes, I have the irrational hope that he gets there.
We walk past the attendant, who doesn’t look away from the TV, “havaniceday”.
Looking out at the dark parking lot, I’m fishing for my keys as my wife sighs, “I’m going to need some workout clothes. Wanna go to the Walmart? It’s open all night.”
My voice is sluggish and disappointed, “Might as well. We’re both awake.”
Brand Gamblin
gamecoder @ MindSay
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