I belong to the gym around the corner from my apartment. I go to this gym because is the closest one to my apartment, therefore removing even the possibility I could avoid going by saying it’s too cold/snowing/dangerous to get there. I could actually hop over the fence of my apartment building and be in the backyard of the gym.

The gym isn’t Equinox, but its works; there’s a weight room and a room with treadmills and machines and a big basketball court that’s usually empty when I go on my day off and I can shoot hoops like I did as a kid and pretend, for an hour, that I’m Jeremy Lin. 

More importantly there’s a pool. A big, Olympic-sized pool that’s usually not very full. I’ve sometimes had the whole thing to myself (which has made me want to do cannonballs but the lifeguard always looks so judgmental.) Now I don’t swim, really, but I like to pretend and try and I’m told that the more you swim the better you get, so every time I put on my Speedo and my swim cap and my goggles I pretend to be Michael Phelps. I stretch that wide-armed stretch he does, and then jump into the water. It takes me about 30 seconds for the panic to sink in (hahaha sink), because being in water above my head is one of the most frightening things to me.

When I can’t touch the pool bottom I freak the fuck out but I still force myself to continue my “swim” (called the “approach stroke” because I still am scared to put my face underwater while swimming; imagine the freestyle with a head above water.) I think it’s important that I do this as much as I can. To scare myself into completing 10 laps regardless of how hard it is. I should have forced myself to do this years ago, but I was even more scared of things like this than I am now.

After the pool I usually go to the sauna to relax and tonight, Valentine’s Day Night, I walked in to find three guys having some sort of heated (hehehehehhe heated) debate while sitting on the wooden planks. They seemed uncomfortable when I walked in but they kept talking. It took me a little bit to realize they were talking about how homosexuality was ruining this country and how the gay agenda was going to make the human race extinct and how it’s only a matter of time before there’s a gay president and don’t you know what they’re doing in California? They want to make pot legal! Which somehow was, to them, connected to the gay agenda. 

I sat, breathing in the hot steam, looking at these three guys sitting in tiny shorts very close together. And I realized they were actually rubbing hot oil on their bodies, for some reason. Maybe to ease their muscles? I’m not sure.

So here’s three guys half-naked on Valentine’s Day in a hot, steamy room rubbing hot oil on their bodies talking about the immorality of homosexuality. 

And I just started laughing. Because that was the gayest thing I’d ever seen and these guys didn’t seem to notice. I mean, Jesus Christ, why weren’t with their wives? Why were they rubbing oil on their bodies?