March 8
I met with the trainer last night for the first time. This wasn't the horrible pinch and poke I'd anticipated (I was going to make a dirty joke there about poking, but decided that I'm too mature for such obvious humor. The moral highroad? That's me!), it was just the "Hi, let's meet and talk about money and goals!" The money part was me deciding how many sessions I want and how I wanted to pay for them. No shit, every time I sign a paper at Ballys, I get a little shiver, like I've just sold part of my soul to the devil. He whipped out (heh, again, MORAL HIGHROAD) a chart of some kind of math stuff, with how many sessions by how much each cost and I just pointed and said "24." He looked sort of surprised at my immediate assertion, but goddammit, I hate HATE when people sell me stuff. Quick and painless (HIGHROAD!), that's what Dana's all about.
I'd shown up a few minutes before the time I was supposed to meet with Stephen (I was calling him something last night, when describing him to people on IM, but I think I'll hold off on sharing it with you for now.) thinking that maybe we'd be able to do more stuff, since he'd already blown me off twice (last Thursday, this Tuesday). This was not to be. I wound up sitting in the Personal Training Office with the club's Personal Training Coordinator, Kevin, who, no shit, looks sort of like a mafia hitman. Sort of good looking, muscular Italian guy [note: of course, this is not to say that I associate all good looking Italian guys with mafia. Everyone knows that the mafia is SICILIAN. Geez.] and two other trainers. One of the two, I've seen around the club. You kind of can't miss him. He's young, maybe 23 or 24, and he's RIPPED. Like ripped enough that he scares me and I was praying to the gym gods that he was not Stephen. I was fairly confident he wasn't, because I couldn't, in my mind, match the voice I'd heard on the phone with this little boy with the popeye arms. When it turned out NOT to be him, I felt like I dodged a gigantic bullet: I sensed that training with him would be like, me dangling with my spandex pants caught on a machine while he flexed in the mirror and high fived his powerlifter friends. I am a shitty person to make such a gross assumption about this kid, but whatever. There you have it.
Finally, Stephen comes in. We eye one another the way you eye someone, say, you've only met on the internet, that "I think I know who you are, but maybe you're someone else, and I don't want to be retarded and blurt out your name" dance. (Writing that reminded me of something I haven't thought of in quite some time: years and years ago, I'd 'met' a guy on IRC. He was from Connecticut [I can't imagine how I wound up meeting two guys from Connecticut on the internet in the same year, the state isn't that big]. We talked for a while, you know, on the phone, on the net, whatever, and finally we decided to meet in person. He asked me "How will I know you when I see you?!" I replied, "I'll be the one with the carrot in my ear!" I did not, in reality, stand in Grand Central Station with a carrot in my ear, though I DID bring a carrot. We managed to recognize eachother, and after the inital "I'm so happy you aren't a troll" hug (at least for me, I have no way of acertaining whether or not he thought I was a troll, other than he didn't run screaming back on the train), he pushed away and said "Where's the carrot?!" I held it out to him, and all was cool with us from that moment on.) Eventually, he (meaning the TRAINER, see, I've switched back to talking about the gym) asked me if I was waiting for someone and I replied "Yes, I believe I'm waiting for YOU", and we went from there.
Often, subtlety is not my strong point. You might all have kind of gotten that gist from reading me for all this time. I say this just to prepare you for what happened next. Okay. We shake hands, he says "hold on, let me get a mint", retrieves a mint from a drawer, and starts making this noise through his nose. I've attempted description before, it's the noise wherein you are blowing backwards, snorting the snot back IN, and then clearing your throat. He does that. He blinks a few times. He does this thing with his mouth, and then, he sits. I say, in what turns out to be sort of critical lack of judgement "You alright, there?!"
Yes, Dana. He was allright. He was FINE. He has a TIC. No, I take that back, he has like 14 tics. All at the same time. He has an EYE tic, a nose tic, a throat tic, a mouth tic. He is a twitching, snorting, blinking, grimacing mountain of movement, but only from the neck up! Neck down, he's a normal person. Sure, a normal person wearing 4 gold rings (which is, you have to admit, a high ring-to-finger ratio for a guy), but a normal person nonetheless.
I think what I liked best about him was that he has a potbelly. Ahhh. My people.
We set up meetings on Mondays and Wednesdays, (I'm under the impression that Karma bitch has sent me spazzing twitchfest of a trainer to test me. Oh yes. She's testing me to see whether or not I'm going to be able to take it. And I will, you horrible slut, so bring it on. Twitching? Yeah! Does he have a, um, neck jerk?! Will he spit on me when he talks?! IT DOESN'T PHASE ME, no NOT ONE BIT) this Monday being the oft mentioned pinch and poke. He's also going to try and sell me supplements, which I could not possibly be less interested in purchasing. He printed out some kind of coupon for me and jabbered about getting 20 percent off the supplements and nutritional shakes he was going to hawk. Gah. I've already spent all of my free money on his twitchy ass, how am I supposed to afford fake food?
That was the end of my meeting. I wobbled out of the office (note: he weighed me. Oh, man) and onto an eliptical machine--the eliptical machine NEXT TO THE ALBINO GIRL. Again, Karma? Hah, very funny. An albino! Good one...
the other day - home - email - tomorrow