They Put Me on the Rack....

Medieval torture wasn't like this. O.K. Maybe Cutbert Simson had it worse, but not by much. No, my day of painful comeuppance, well, it's coming. At full speed, and louder than a Tony Kushner play hollering for painful retributions not yet arrived.

To wit; my body is going to be going through a formerly unimagined spate of pain and aching muscles in the coming weeks. Yup. I've succumbed to the inevitable; after years of stubbornly insisting that my (bellowed loudly a la Kay Thompson in Funny Face) "INEFFABLE CHARM" was all I needed to get me a boyfriend/husband/or simply laid, and only ending up with a well used copy of Crockpot Cooking For One to show for it, I typically realized (a good twenty years too late) that perhaps physical allure might also play a factor in landing some poor unsuspecting worm.

Ergo, I caved; and another gay boy goes to the gym.

Ho ho, I can hear you laughing, and clapping your grubby mitts with glee from here. "Trev sweating, Trev complaining, Trev struggling with five pound weights a sturdy four year old could lift." Oh yes, I can hear all the commentary as if I'd written it myself. Oh wait, I just did. Nevertheless....my friends were delighted with my newfound excursion into (physical) masochism, err....fitness.

My straight friend Steven smiled sweetly and said he was so happy I was getting in touch with my demographic. I snarled and called him a metrosexual throwback, and just because he was dating a hipster Audrey Hepburn, was no reason to call me a demographic.

He just kept smiling. Fink.

At any rate, it wasn't only just getting laid that propelled me back to the land of barbells and ab crunches. Mortality was blinking at me from the (fairly) far distant horizon. I mean, I AM turning forty darlings, in sixteen months mes cheres, and as God as my witness, I'll be damned if I'm going to see that day show up without me having my 28 inch waist back again. (O.K. In a pinch, I'll settle for thirty.) Plus I imagine that this exercise thing is good for ye olde mortal coil, to quote the melancholy Dane. (I wonder if Hamlet would have been any happier with a steady exercise regimen and perhaps a little more radiant sunlight).

My friends David (workout wiz and training sadist extraordinnaire) and Robert (karate expert, he has something like a zillion blackbelts and still reminds me of Fosse with all of his kicks) go with me every day to the gym at 6:00 a.m. (yes, I know, SIX! Pick your jaws up off the floor kids, its rude to stare...) to partake in this ritual of unalloyed frivolity and glee.

Today I did triceps (tricky little devils, I didn't even know they were there) and after myriad attempts at trying to figure out exactly how to hold the end of the dumbell for a (get this) "BEHIND THE HEAD STRETCH", in which David almost lost his mind, hollering, "No!No!No! You hold it like THIS!"

"HOW? Like THIS?"

"NOOOO!" (repeat the above exchanges seventeen times until completely mad)

I finally got the knack of it, but its interesting how ISOLATED the body has to be in order to be able to work out the proper muscle, and in the process, not injure oneself. You really have to be very precise. It reminded me of acting on camera, and as anyone who knows me knows, coordination and physical precision is not a plaudit I am noted for having.

Oy gevalt.

I have a fitness assessment test tomorrow, to see just how badly out of shape I really am. Hopefully they (the gym folk) won't feel completely defeated and take up selling auto insurance in despair. After all, not everyone who ended up on the rack, died. Some of them actually got a little taller.