Suggestions from gym members are posted periodically on a board in the locker room. From November 2nd:

Suggestion: In the 9am to 10am hours, please release us of the disco beat in the weight room. Many of us are 50+ at those hours and it is distracting.

Response: We will try. Please feel free to let a trainer or front desk attendant know if you would like a music change.

I particularly like the choice to use the words "release" and "distracting" in the suggestion. The "disco beat" to which the complainer is referring is Duran Duran.

What was I? Late? Hardly a truth for me. So I was. I had a lunch appointment, and work-related obligations: I postponed the workout for today until the afternoon. I promised myself I would lift three times this week, so I had to make time for it even if it meant leaving out the extra cardio and going later in the day.

It was a good decision. By afternoon, after lots of food and coke and dessert, I was ready to work hard. Time was of the essence, as I hear people say sometimes, so I set the level of the Gauntlet up a notch and rushed between sets of lifting exercises. My heart rate soared, putting it right up there with the good mood I've been experiencing the last day or two. The downside to becoming fit is that I have to keep working harder to see results: I can't remember the last time my heart pounded like that.

The crowd in the afternoon is considerably younger. The music is better too. I decided that working out in the morning is better for my self-image because the afternoon bunch consists of more than a few perfect-looking young people. One woman in particular, a latina, embodied fitness perfection. How much more work do I have to do, how many desserts denied before I can look like that?

Then gone. The workout just what I needed to clear my system of the earlier nutrients/pollutants and there I was in the car rushing off to buy a Fran's triple mousse parfait cake for the party by women for women: Everyone must bring chocolate to share; wine, cheese, and massages are complimentary. (Now, if only the masseuse were a man.)

Driving, rushing, I've got the energy, the cake too on the floor in front of the passenger seat. I'm not taking that clogged artery heading south. Instead a four-laner, a big wide road through the area so many whitefolk fear just because they want to feel like they live in a big scary city. Communities pass by of auto repair and beauty shops, hardware stores and groceries, gas stations and Vietnamese restaurants. Weaving and switching lanes. This is the apex folks, this is me in such a fucking good mood, heading toward some kind of dionysian event through the twilight, and I am capable of nothing but perfection. But this car, this car… it disappoints me and I make it suffer for its deficiency.

I've got her now, picked her up at work and now she's driving, she's rushing, and I've been relieved of my duties for the first leg and now, now I will crash and want to sleep and want to eat and feel content to lean back into fantasy when we finally put on The Crystal Method and are silent. The bass seems to begin in my heart and ripple out through my skin into the space between me and her and the car and the other cars stopping and going and not moving in the darkness.

I ate chocolate in the forms of triple mousse, muffins, brownies, and cookies for dinner. Later, small hands could not begin to tackle the fatigued musculature of my overworked back. I enjoyed it nevertheless.