WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

I left Starbucks over an hour ago because I happened to glance up and see Emily walking by. She was dressed for the gym, so naturally I remembered something or other that I had to do for work at the gym. I quickly packed up my stuff and ran out, hardly holding myself back.

When I got to the gym, I found nothing to do. There was no paperwork on my desk. I made all of my sales calls earlier. I didn’t want to just hang around the front desk, like—khm—someone without a life. So, I took a shower. Sure, why not? I had showered not an hour before, when I left the gym, and that was fun too.

But there’s only so much personal hygiene a man can do; and besides, standing in a shower in the men’s locker room wasn’t going to do shit for me in terms of asking Emily out. So I toweled off, got dressed, and went out on the gym floor, where I had absolutely no reason to be.

She was on an elliptical machine. As she worked out I didn’t approach her. I didn’t even wave a hello from a distance. But, as she finished and she stretched (seemingly in a spot that she knew I’d easily run into her) we had an anomalous conversation.

“I’m glad to make it to the gym tonight. I’ve been feeling tired all day.” She leaned over to stretch her hamstring. A small lock of hair fell across her face.

“Oh? Are you feeling better now?” It took everything in me to resist reaching over to brush back her hair. I could have held back an ocean with the restaint I exercised.

“Yes! And now I’m awake and all energetic and have nothing to do.” She looked away, but only slightly. Out of the corner of her eye I knew that she could still see me. She wanted to observe my reaction. She had set her trap, and now she was in waiting, casually stretching her hamstrings.

But I was terrified. That simple statement came at me with blunt frontal force, and though however harmless it may seem to you reading this right now, for me, right then, it paled any true danger or peril I have ever faced. The sound of her voice swirled around me like the swoosh-swoosh of a bird of prey, waiting for me to make what could only be a fatal move. I proceeded cautiously, anxious that I would be snatched up for the kill.

“Well,” I started, then paused. “Well, you know, it’s Saturday. I’m sure you’ve got something to do or someone to see.”

Dumb ass. But maybe she’ll divulge information about people she may be seeing or, if not, I could pursue it further.

“Actually, no.” She looked up and thought for a moment. “All of my friends are out of town, and one is sick. So I’ve got all this energy and no one to hang out with.”

She could not have more slowly and painfully teased out my guts. I agonized in her gentle application of torment. An occasional glimpse down her shirt at her breasts, when she’d lean towards me to stretch her legs, only heightened my desire to put myself out of my misery. I went for it.

“Well, I’m going to get something to eat soon, and you’re welcome to join me.”

Whew! There! Done! The hardest part was over. She obviously wanted to do something together, and I proffered a suggestion, however trite, and now I had only to hear her gracious acceptance.

“Well…”

Oh shit—did she just do the well-dot-dot-dot thing, and then didn’t say anything more? I paniced, saying, "So, what do you think?"

She looked at the padded floor of the gym for a while, like it was a Rembrandt or something.

Oh my god... Are you going to tell me? How much suspense do you think I can handle before I collapse here, woman?

She looked up a moment later, and said, “Well…it’s tempting, but no.”

AHH, shit!

Had the world stop spinning at that moment, and all the earth fell to chaos, had the oceans lifted into the sky, the ground crumbled into oblivion, and the atmosphere dispersed into the vacuum of cold space, I alone would have noticed none of it. In that total lack of centrifugal force of an entire planet, I was somehow crushed under the gravity of a single, simple word: No.

A “No” is simply what it is, unfortunately: a rejection of something hoped for. Its sting is excruciating, its venom instantaneous. However politely she tried to tell me, using other words to soften my fall, it did not work. She offered me a safety net made of fishing hooks in which I was torn apart.

This was not what I expected. My mind wandered over the recent steps that had brought me to this unexpected end. Emily started saying something, something or other about abba-blabla-blabla-bla and needing to take a shower. Something about her friends. Something about maybe getting up the energy to do something later.

Her voice was like a wind as I stood on an open plain, encompassing and invigorating, but fleeting. I drifted away from her to usher other people out of the gym. It was closing. Emily wandered off to the locker room to change. The night was over.

And yet, before she left the gym, I noticed her hanging around the front desk, alone, seemingly not wanting to leave. At least 5 minutes passed. She had not moved from the area. I was puzzled. Curiosity got the better of me, but a lesson was learned. With our state of affairs clarified, I had no trouble walking to the front desk to stand corrected. She smiled and we exchanged one word: Goodnight.

I honestly don’t know what it all meant: to seem interested, to leave an opening to be asked out so large a barge could have sailed through it, to say no, to change the subject, and then to wait around as if a moment more might prove all the previous to be a big misunderstanding. Was she just being amicable in the end, to ensure that no hard feelings would fester? Or, was she interested but thought that I try to date every woman at the gym? Was the client-trainer relationship a stumbling block for her? Did I smell really bad? I just took two showers. Or, have I just lost my mind and fabricated an episode of delirium?

Come to think of it, though, she did ask in the end if I’d be around the gym tomorrow. I answered that I would be around only in the morning, and she seemed slightly disappointed.


(Months later, after we finally got together, I asked her about this day. She told me that she really did want to get something to eat with me, but she felt really gross from just working out. That hadn't occured to me. Keep in mind that we had only ever seen each other at the gym. We knew how the other sweat, and that was about it.)



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