I have been a member of various gyms for years. With the exception of the Y, they are generally known as health clubs. Frankly, this strikes me as an oxymoron. What is healthy about these places? All I read about is how one can all too easily acquire MRSA, other staph infections, pseudomonas, urinary tract infections and worse from whirlpools plus all manner of fungi from athlete’s foot and jock itch to other more esoteric varieties that lurk in gyms everywhere.
As to it being clubby, I don’t think so. No one is really clubby at Majorly Fit, known to its members as MF’s. People want to show up, exercise and leave. Is there socializing? Well, yes, there is. I’m a swimmer, and by necessity, swimmers must socialize in that we are sharing a physical space. Some are good at sharing. Some never learned this lesson as in the guy who insists, “You’re in my lane.” If you don’t move, he tries to bully you by kicking water in your face. He’d kick sand in your face, but this is not the beach.
So, anyway, one day, I’m at MF’s. It’s late on a Friday afternoon, and I’m thinking that people who have real lives are getting ready to go out on dates, go out with their friends, or just hang out somewhere, anywhere. I don’t have a life and don’t feel particularly motivated to have one. Wait, let me correct that. I have a brilliant internal life where I am the heroine of each story, but real life is another subject entirely.
OK, I get into the pool, and I’m swimming my laps as usual. My ear plugs, the highest decibel I could find in the CVS, are barely blocking MF’s own bad music. They play a continuous loop of the top ten most annoying songs on the face of the earth. And, just recently, to add an additional insult, they’ve started playing videos on brilliantly clear flat screen TV’s, so that when you’re doing your crunches, each time you bob upward, well, if your eyes are open, you’ll be greeted by the video of some white person -- no offense meant, none taken, I’m sure -- who has no sense of rhythm, either angsting over some lost love, throwing things around, or pounding out guitar chords in a 3rd-grade kind of air guitar bravado. Given the state of current TV music videos, Michael Jackson truly is dead, and he didn’t die at MF’s, as we all know. RIP, Jacko.
Well, I’m in the pool. And, I have often wondered, why, why have music in a pool area? Isn’t water supposed to be about tranquility, calm, inner peace? If I had a rifle, I’d shoot out the speaker that hovers above the pool. I sometimes fantasize about this when the music gets beyond bad into ear-shatteringly obnoxious.
If someone is seeking tranquility, they should not swim at MF’s. If the pool is open and not being shut down by the health inspector for a violation that occurred 3 months ago, then I’ve been swimming in this slop nearly daily. Even if it’s so cold it’s almost freezing and people are buying neoprene jackets to survive the temps, as long as it’s open, I’m swimming. I have to swim, so there I am like a captive, thin-skinned, baby whale at Sea World.
I get into the pool which is in the same large, enclosed, glassed-in space, kind of like a very cheap aquarium for humans, that includes both a sauna and a whirlpool. A man enters the pool area, a man I’ve seen many times before. Why do I know who he is even though I’m horribly near-sighted and swim sans glasses? I know because he has skinny arms and legs, but a massive, white belly that looks as though he had bad fertility treatments and is about to pop multiples. This is the beer belly record for MF’s. How can I be sure? I’m sure because I have kept an unofficial tally of the beer bellies of MF’s for years. These are the sorts of things I do when I’m bored. Plus, I think that men should start being charged extra on their health insurance by simply measuring their girth. A man like that is a heart attack risk, a stroke risk, just a risk. Besides, it’s so unattractive, not that I’m a great beauty here, but really. We don’t want to see your enormous belly, guys. It’s not cute. It’s not teddy-bear-cuddly. It’s offensive.
So, he gets into the whirlpool just as he always does. I can’t stand it when people get into the whirlpool where I know they either have high blood pressure, are on statins for heart disease, or they have a massive healed incision indicating heart surgery of some unsavory sort. I mean, are these people stupid? Why am I asking this question? And, no, they don’t dip in and out, which I could accept. They get into the whirlpool and stay there. Some of them ought to pay MF’s rent for the time they spend in there nearly boiling their skin off.
This guy always freaks me out. It’s the belly fat. It’s the momentum of the omentum, if you want to get technical. He gets in there when I get into the pool. I get out of the pool 35 minutes later, and he’s still in the whirlpool. Now, I used to be one of those “do-gooders” who would have stopped and oh, so politely pointed out that the sign, in both English and Spanish, says that no one should be in there who has heart disease, is on blood pressure meds, etc. But, now, I figure, hey, like they’re always telling me, “it’s a democracy. Mind your own business. Why do you care?” Or, my fave — “f-you, bitch.” I’ve heard them all, which is why I’ve given up trying to rescue people. Well, no, that wouldn’t be accurate, but that’s another blog.
So, I take my long shower as usual because every single time MF’s saves money by lowering the pool temperature, the swimmers take much longer showers thereby saving them exactly nothing.
I get dressed and go out to the main gym where I need to stretch before doing weights. I know, most people shower at the end, but I need to loosen up my joints first, so I swim, shower, stretch, do weights and stretch again. Works for me.
MF’s has a very nice physical therapy table that was donated, years ago, by a man who wanted to help his paraplegic wife. She is long-gone, but the table remains. As I approach the table, I stare through the glass into the pool area, and what do I see? A male trainer is bent over Mr. Belly Fat, and he’s giving him CPR. I mean, he’s doing mouth-to-mouth, which, honestly, I’m relieved to read you don’t really need to do because I have this thing about teeth and mouths in general, but that’s another blog, too. Basically, I’m shocked. I’m transfixed. Here is the man I’ve been complaining, to anyone who would listen, “One day, that man, I swear, he’s going to have a heart attack and die in that whirlpool. He stays in there way too long. And, with that belly, I mean, all that deep fat is going to start heating up and squeeze his poor heart to death.”
When I get sententious, people tune me out. I don’t blame them, but really, wasn’t this just a catastrophe waiting to happen? Believe me, I don’t enjoy being right when someone’s life is at stake. I’m thinking how long can that trainer, who is in ridiculously great physical shape, but how long can he keep doing CPR? A long time, in case you’re wondering.
By this point, an ER nurse has shown up to exercise, but seeing the situation in the pool area, goes directly to the victim. I can see the guy’s feet are turning purple, and I’m thinking, the poor man is dead. Dead. He died at Majorly Fit. He had a heart attack, it was probably only a few seconds of severe pain, and then, plunk, face down in the whirlpool when they dragged him out and laid him down on the cold, hard tile decking where he should have been pronounced dead. But, no one dies at MF’s. Why? Because it’s a health club. Isn’t that where we started?
Eventually, the firemen come. Then, the ambulance shows up. They shock the guy. They inject the guy. They shock the guy again. I mean, he’s turning purple. He is dead. However, remember, no one dies at MF’s. Then, they put him on the stretcher, wheel him out the front door, and it’s business as usual. And, no, in case you’re wondering, they never drained the whirlpool after the incident. It’s kind of like a memorial pond now.
The problem is that no one knows who the guy is. So, they announce that every male member should report to the locker room and stand in front of his locker. After a search, they discover the man’s locker. Someone recalls his first name, which we’ll omit here. When they break his lock, they find out that he’s been sneaking into MF’s by using someone else’s card. Yes, borrowing a friend’s card so he can come in, walk around the track a few times and then slowly kill himself in the whirlpool. Some say what goes around, comes around, or karma is a bitch, but really, just because he used his friend’s card doesn’t mean he deserves to make the ultimate sacrifice, does it?
So, the guy is a loser, and now he’s dead. But, no, as I said at the beginning, no one dies at Majorly Fit. The following Monday, the young woman at the front desk tells me, yes, she actually looks me right in the eye, and she tells me the man was taken to the hospital where he recovered. Mirabile dictu! Yes, he recovered, and now, he’s in a rehab hospital.
Really? Where I come from, dead is dead. I’m from NYC, so this is a lesson one learns early in life. But, this is not NYC. OK, really? By this point, I’m incredulous because the poor guy was turning purple. They never got a pulse even after all of the heroic CPR, shocking, injecting. But, the people at MF’s can really tell a story in a convincing way, and for a few dumb seconds, I’m wondering if my eyes deceived me. I mean, by the time I got into the main gym area last Friday, I was wearing my glasses. I was staring straight into the pool area, and I saw what I saw. Now, I, the eye witness to the death of the loser at Majorly Fit am starting to doubt myself. Could I have been deceived?
Within the next few days, rumors are swirling. Most of the members are “sorry they missed it.” What? They are that jaded, that bored that they’d rather “change up their workout” by having someone die right before their very eyes rather than just try the elliptical machines or pay for a package with a personal trainer?
Well, then I spot the ER nurse in the locker room. So, I approach her and tell her I was here when the man died in the whirlpool. I say, “He was dead, wasn’t he?” See looks at me as though I’m a moron. “Of course he was dead,” she says as she changes into her sports bra.
I tell her what they’re saying at the desk. She rolls here eyes. “He’s dead. It’s a good way to die. I’ve seen a lot worse.” I nod my head, but my eyes betray my confusion. “They never got a pulse. He was dead,” she pronounces. “Would you rather die in a diaper in a nursing home, or die in the whirlpool at Majorly Fit?”
“Majorly Fit,” I say, but frankly this is the very sort of philosophical question I haven’t asked myself lately. Well, honestly, that isn’t true. But, that’s another OMT for another blog.
However, this particular issue is settled. The guy is dead; God rest his soul. But, at the desk, everyone is being assured that the guy is recovering nicely. Majorly Fit, where losers go to die—literally. Next?
