two notables were in yesterday. one, the crazy crossfit bragger with the empty blue eyes like a little orphan annie cartoon . . . she was in there. ms. let-me-load-you-up-with-95-pounds-for-the-squat? that one. kept a wide berth around her, but at one point i was setting up for deadlift and i felt/sensed this sort of rush of multicoloured motion behind me, and then she went past with the resistance bands round her ankles and sort of loping along sideways in prayer/yoga-squat-type position.

other notables were my first true 'couple'. part of me sincerely doesn't want to be uncharitable because (and also but) . . . well, pretty much this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_k9mslBS0A

so anyway, there were donald and lydia everywhere i seemed to look at last night. she was too short to reach the pulldown bar he put her on. he was tall enough to bring it down for her, but appallingly thin, and with NO idea, just none. he was wandering around giving himself brutal weights on things like the cable crossovers and straining so hard at them right in front of me it was scary and upsetting. and then he'd get discouraged in two reps, look sad for a bit and then try something else. i didn't see him doing the ribs thing, but he didn't have to. they were doing this stuff in front of me while i rowed/deadlifted, and then she left for a while and came back right past me in a big waft of locoweed scent . . . and the next i saw them was when they were making out up against the padded yoga platform when i went into that zone to stretch. pretty much no pretense or pretexts there.

CHFay wrote: »

As an aside: I get hungry enough after lifting, why add weed to the mix?????

heh. these two weren't lifting though. to borrow a phrase from all the frustrated baseball coaches trying to inspire uncommitted little leaguers throughout the years: "you're just waving at it! SWING THE BAT!"

that's what they were both doing. they weren't lifting those weights, they were just waving at them.

Fittreelol wrote: »

At that point I couldn't even.

they say lifting raises testosterone . . . but you don't have to lift the actual bits to get the effect.

i laughed all over my keyboard about your girl-wedgie. that hasn't happened to me in the gym but not all underpants styles are a good choice for cycling in.

there were two guys in the gym yesterday . . . i was listening to them as hard as i could and trying to take mental notes, but the discourse was so vapid - and strangely, so LOUD - that a lot of it has totally died from my mind in spite of all i could do. i guess these are what you actually get in some of the mainstream/broculture gyms and if they are then all i can say is, 'thank GOD for the rec centres then.'

the distinguishing feature of one of them was that he didn't have any. he looked like the kind of slacker/stoner/loser dude who vaguely hopes to get told that he looks like seth rogan because he has roughly the same kind of hair. beard and thick glasses and he was lifting in a pair of those offensive cargo-pant baggies that come down to the knees and are made of some shiny false canvas that would melt if you held a lighter to them. full of zippers and snaps and such stuff, and i'm pretty sure i saw a giant dog-chain leading from his belt to the place where his oh-so-precious wallet was kept.

it was pretty quiet, pretty much just me and them and this other far more sane-seeming young guy. who was also wearing slacker pants and had a skateboarder's type ponytail to keep his hair out of his face, but he looked as if he had a brain. oh, and my bucktoothed buddy who took such delight in my big deadlift a few months ago. beard-guy was doing a don't-do-this-you-fool form of squats in the smith for at least half an hour by himself, and all i did at that point was make a slight snicker and record his baby-bird-needs-to-be-fed facial configuration for @crabada's benefit. eyes screwed tight shut and mouth screwed wide open to show off his pain, and face tipped up to the ceiling and all while he prayed for deliverance under this terrible load. but then his loud lapdog showed up, and they moved into the actual rack and things hit a new gear. i guess they work out downtown. or something. some loud, obnoxious, aggressive place where everyone is a ufc cage-match fanatic when they're not in clubs.

weird thing was, beardy guy was the alpha dude of the pair. the other guy who showed up was a whole lot younger, head and shoulders taller, and just generally a much more preposessing type guy. at least physically. but as soon as he opened his mouth he branded himself from top to bottom as one of the most slavish 'follower' types that i've ever seen. it was bizarre. i overheard him whether i wanted to or not for at least 60 unceasing minutes, and he didn't seem to have a muscle anywhere in his entire psyche. and for some reason he'd attached all his devotion to this totally nondescript twit, and was just following him everywhere actively feeding him alpha-dog lines. mr beard didn't even have to do or say much, it was more like the groupie was hoisting him onto some pedestal all by himself. they did squats unfortunately too near the bench while i was benching, and they spent the whole time telling each other the entire time various back-stabbing gossip stories about various lowlifes in 'their' own gym. when mr submissive wasn't putting his own thoughts into the mouth of the other guy and then waiting with audible anxiety to hear them approved.

it was so boring, oh god help me. it really was. i'd forgotten how awful men like this are because i ahven't had to even be around any of them for so long. every story was designed to show someone at a contrived disadvantage that wasn't even an original one. and then they'd both pretend to find the target person's stupidity completely hilarious, which honestly couldn't have been real because you could hear the pause after each punchline while both of them searched hard for something to mock in whatever the target had done. the time x got showed up as a total *kitten* by some chick who was benching y weight. the total asininity of beardy-guy's mom for bringing beardy-guy's niece to some family thing, when beardy-guy's mom 'obviously' should have known there wasn't room in beardy-guy's mother's car for both beardy guy and his awesome physique and a child of, say, three.

interspersed with exchanges of pre-workout and post-workout and who knows what brand names, of course. and form tips to make the groupie as awesome at squats as his great hero was. 'don't go so low. stop there. no, higher. look up.' and some bragging, of course. beardy guy and his chiropractor who won't even work on his neck because beardy-guys' traps are so huge that his bones can't be reached. no word of a lie, and the lapdog crowed 'dude!' like it was a mental orgasm just hearing the tale. and so and and so on and so on and so forth. and so on. oh my groke. the only good part was, both of them were such losers they didn't even have any of the anti-'chick' stories i was just bracing my whole body for. they were such losers that in a weird sort of way they were kind of harmless. like eunuchs, almost. they seemed to have removed themselves from the whole reproductive chain by sheer brainlessness.

or other more physical means. because went off to stretch they were in the stretching zone too. not stretching of course . . . still lifting but now into the real specialized technical stuff. beardy dude was showing off some new kind of fancypants idek, some triple-gainer landmine row with a toeloop and a reverse russian halftwist - almost literally, actually. i was determined not to give them the oxygen of looking at them, but i did see that he was straddling the barbell, but kind of sideways, and he seemed to be corkscrewed around so he was using only his opposite hand torow with, behind his own bum. or something, while his groupie stood by with his hands on his hips and loudly watched and admired and yapped about how he wanted to learn to do that as well.

and then came the glorious moment. the beard guy said 'OW.' oh how it gladdened my heart. i had my back turned at the time. strongest discipline of my whole life but i didn't whip round to look. there's a moment silence and then the groupie says 'what?' beard guy says something all mumbly, and starts up again, and then a moment later he gives off a REAL ow and some good ol' swear words, and throws the bar down. groupie's all what? what? where does it hurt? and the beardy-guy starts in not so much telling him as - well, by the sounds of his voice he was showing him too. the groupie's beside himself with excitement and joy. 'there? right there? dude! that's so awesome, me too! that's where it hurts me as well!'

well, i mean, what would you do? i turned around. and i almost caught them at it. showing each other their prostate glands, or at least something right in that zone.

rec centres. where all the normal folks lift.