You See Some Weird Shit at the Gym

You see some weird shit at the gym. Having recently re-started my exercise routine in an effort to not look like something resembling a bloated hippopotamus, I had almost forgotten the zany crap that goes on -- quite freely -- inside the four walls of a fitness center. I was bobbing away on the elliptical to Ciara's "Get Up", happily daydreaming about the days of a smaller ass, when something caught my attention. It broke with the natural rhythm of the room. Rather then the steady back and forth, fluid motion you would expect on a elliptical, the man on the machine next to me decided to place both of his feet on one pedal, pumping his arms so that his body oddly went round about like he was straddling a deranged pogo stick.

But then I had this thought - who's to say he isn't some trained expert at this, and not some loose cannon show off? Looking around, I noticed other men and women, their bodies contorted into positions that would rival the raunchiest kama sutra manual. And yet, because we're in a gym, nothing is questioned. "They must have some sort of insider knowledge or work with a trainer to know how to do that," we tell ourselves. That, or the gym just became one more place for people to fly their freak flags - proudly.