GYM
I sat in the hot tub at the local gym and watched geriatric women exercise in the pool across from me. I thought about all the feelings I assumed came with being old. The woman closest to the entrance of the Olympic sized swimming pool and closest to the hot tub was breathing heavily and hardly following the exercises being shouted by a lady presumably a decade younger than the rest of the women in the pool practicing low impact water aerobics. The woman I was watching appeared to be in her late seventies. I watched her and imagined the day she signed up for her membership. I thought about the American diet. I thought about pastries, burgers, cigarettes, coffee, Zima, Tab, Diet Coke, fast food, annoying anti-fat phobia activists, trans-fats, dying, cancer, cigarettes and sodium. I wondered if any of the elderly in the pool had cancer. I wondered if they ever considered throwing in the towel and giving up completely because they're already old and other people their age are ready to die or dead. I thought about the lady in the middle of all those elderly women-enthusiastically telling them to turn around, move back and forth and jump up and down. Two of them pretended to talk to one another and pat the top of the water with their delicate hands and everyone else continued to try their best to follow the lady celebratory shouting directions in the middle of the pool of geriatrics. I confirmed only a quarter of the ladies in the pool following the exercises correctly. This guy I talk to at the gym told me to wave to them. He said that they would love it if an attractive boy waved to them and that it would probably make their day. I looked at him like he was loony and didn't wave. We sat quietly for a moment. I asked him how he was feeling and he said 'Old.' He said he wanted his bullets back, he said he wanted his energy back. We both looked at the pool-he was sitting above the hot tub, on the cool-deck, by the steam room, on a chair. The water dripped from his bathing suit through the plastic stretchy straps on the chair. I looked at him without him noticing me picking apart his saggy body and imagining him fit and young. He did a lot of drugs when he was younger. He looked over at me and said: “This reminds me of Florida. Florida is geriatrics, white people and jail bait..”
Are there a lot of white people in Florida?
“Oh yeah..”
I thought about two retired elderly people speeding down a Florida freeway in a convertible, still together after all those years. As I was leaving the water area for the showers, he asked me to wave again. He told me that I would like it if young people waved at me if I get that old. I told him to stop acting like a fucking creep and he said: “Where do you think your mind goes when you get old? It stays right here!' and he pointed to his temple. I put my white towel over my head and walked to the showers without waving at the geriatrics and made my way through the disgusting locker room, barefoot, not thinking about mrsa or athletes foot and not making eye-contact with the male bodies around me.
Are there a lot of white people in Florida?
“Oh yeah..”
I thought about two retired elderly people speeding down a Florida freeway in a convertible, still together after all those years. As I was leaving the water area for the showers, he asked me to wave again. He told me that I would like it if young people waved at me if I get that old. I told him to stop acting like a fucking creep and he said: “Where do you think your mind goes when you get old? It stays right here!' and he pointed to his temple. I put my white towel over my head and walked to the showers without waving at the geriatrics and made my way through the disgusting locker room, barefoot, not thinking about mrsa or athletes foot and not making eye-contact with the male bodies around me.