Time Fries! (5 page)
Authors: Fay Jacobs
It's getting to be bathing suit season, so I'm pumping iron. Again.
Up to now, I've been the kind of customer gyms like as I eagerly join and fork over my money. Now there's irony for you. If there hadn't been so many forks over I wouldn't have to do this at all. But my modus operandi is to pump iron for the first few weeks and thereafter get most of my exercise just writing a check for the monthly dues. Now, with online bill pay, even my wrist is flabby.
Once, back in the day, I bought a life-time gym membership, meaning I could drop out that year, the next year, and every year in perpetuity. As it turned out, the deal was for the gym's lifetime, and it was cut down in its prime.
Then, at a place called Spa Lady, I signed up for water aerobics.
“Ladies,” said the instructor, “leap out of the water onto the side of the pool and using your arms pretend you are a seal. Honk and balance a ball on your nose.” I felt like a walrus not a seal and almost drowned when I realized that the mirror was actually a picture window to the gym lobby. Orca the exhibitionist never went back.
Next, I joined a snazzy urban club, with high-tech apparatus. The hybrid rowing machine/video game talked. “Keep up, keep your back straight, pull through the entire stroke,” droned a snarky robot while I struggled to keep up with the digital pace boat. “You are two boats behind,” it warned. Stroke, stroke, I'm rowing awayâ¦and the news got worse “You are four boats behind.” I kept rowing, ignoring the mounting tally of phantom vessels whizzing past.
“You are twenty-seven boats behind” the voice smirked, registering Calories Spent: 31. That's one bite of a Hostess Snowball. On my last stroke, praying I wasn't having one, I had
an itch and removed a hand from the grab bar to scratch, capsizing myself onto the floor like a tanker in a squall. Getting my behind off the gym mat should have counted as my requisite squats.
One time, I was intercepted by a fitness counselor.
“Do you take your heart rate after rowing?” she asked.
“No.”
“Don't you want to know if you've reached the cardio rate for burning fat?”
“No. Whatever my heart is doing while I'm losing the regatta is better than what my heart is doing when I'm watching Jeopardy and eating cheese doodles.” She left me alone.
Then I tackled the weights. On my first day I could lift the equivalent of a box of Kleenex. In four weeks I worked my way up to the bulk of a bag of Dunkin' Donuts. It occurred to me I could just as easily do this for free at home.
Then my pal the fitness counselor walked by.
“Are you making progress?”
“I bought a work-out outfit.” She left me alone.
So there I was, in my new Nike Just Do It T-shirt and evil elastic pants cut for Cher, not me, tackling a machine called the Gravitron. Invented by rocket scientists, the machine jacked me up like an old Studebaker and propelled me to do far more chin-ups than was wise.
As I was flung toward the ceiling, pumping myself up and down in a frenzy, I worried I'd sprout biceps like Conan the Barbarian. I also realized that the waif who installed me on the machine didn't discuss disengagement. I got off before becoming Popeye, but I should have had them foam the runway.
A week later, my progress mentor spied me again.
“How are we doing?” she asked.
“I bought an iPod.” She left me alone.
And before I could go back the following week and show off my new finger-tip-less work-out gloves, this gym, too, expired.
Better it than me, I said. And by this time I was living at the beach and starting to realize the value of exercise. Wanting to get in shape and, come bathing suit season, not frighten the tourists, I had a fleeting flirtation with yoga and did some power walking.
I've tried boardwalking (early morning, before funnel cakes and fries are born), peddling my home exercycle/towel rack, mornings at Curves, evenings at aerobics and all manner of other ultimately unsuccessful work-out regimens. I'd attempt running but I know my only strength in that arena is running my mouth.
But just when I feared that last season's clothes were thrift shop bound, I heard of a group of my peers working out three mornings a week. I up and joined them. No fancy video machines, no Disney rides, no trendy exercise accessories but a small room with recumbent bikes, weights, and a versatile machine for crunches and leg presses.
Oh, and on that piece of equipment I can stretch my legs out, pull at a bar tied to an upright and be on the rowing crew again. I'm actually having fun. It's amazing how much better I do without a digital jerk warning there's a coxswain creeping up my butt.
And I certainly don't miss orbiting on a Gravitron, chins flapping from the G-force or doing pool tricks like Shamu the Whale.
I'm lifting weights, stretching, laughing a lot and checking my heart rate. No lifetime membership needed. Is happy a heart rate? Pumping irony. I think I finally feel the burn.
I feel it's only fair to let all my readers know exactly how clueless, unbutch, and ignorant I am when it comes to motor vehicles.
Perhaps it was the poster I once saw on New York's Christopher Street that said, “If it has tires or balls, you're going to have trouble with it.”
Maybe that sentiment steered me away from cars and toward the lavender brick road, who knows. But in any case, this story involves a donut, and not the jelly kind. The donut in question is the kind nestled in the trunk of your car in case of a flat tire. I learned the term some time ago as we suffered a blowout in the boonies of Delaware. Smyrna. Where it happened is not germane to this story but I love the name Smyrna.
Anyway, I learned of my donut ownership from my spouse who was cursing a blue streak and heading to the trunk for the aforementioned cute-looking little mini-tire for use just as far as the nearest gas station. But I guess that you, unlike me, already knew that.
So, one morning a couple of weeks ago I came out to the garageâ¦let me rephrase thatâ¦I went out to the garage. I didn't need to come out to the garage. It already knows I'm a lesbian who doesn't know my carburetor from a frou-frou valve.
So I went out to the garage and found a flat tire. At this point I will tell you I had a friend with me, whose name I shall not mention lest everybody know that she didn't fare so well in donut 101 either. You see, I opened the trunk, lifted the protective mat and saw what looked to me like a donut hole without a donut in it.
“My donut is missing! Somebody stole my donut!” I sputtered, accusing some poor mechanic or desperate donut-less
schnook of pilfering my baby spare. “What do I do, put out an APB on my donut?”
To her discredit, my pal looked into the trunk and, said, “Oh my gosh,” alluding to the fact that she, too, didn't see any damn donut.
By my second, “Somebody stole my donut,” we both started to giggle because that statement sounded so stupid. Little did we know exactly how stupid. Mistake one. I did not call my spouse. I handled the mechanical crisis myselfânever a good move. I called roadside assistance which immediately sent a tow truck. They should have just sent me a real lesbian.
Dumb and dumber show up with their tow truck and when I tell them my donut us missing, they peek in my trunk and verify that fact. I think they just took my word for it so they could wrap this up and go get an actual donut.
“No problem,” said one of the brain trust mechanics, further validating my conclusion about the errant donut. “Let's pump up the tire, see if it holds the air, and we will follow you to the tire store.”
Which is exactly what happened. Whereupon they waved bye-bye, I learned that the tire valve stem thingie, was leaking, I bought a new one for $15âclearly the cheapest repair ever, and went on my merry way. Oh, except for feeling quite violated and telling everybody who would listen that somebody had pilfered my donut.
Then, like a schmuck, I put the tale on Facebook. Ha-ha funny story, ha-ha somebody stole my donut. By the next day, one of my pals came by with a donut spare she got at a yard sale, another showed up with a rusty but serviceable donut, and a third generous but snarky friend brought me an actual dozen Krispy Kremes.
Enter my friend, the gayboy car guru. He stops by my house, gets out of his truck, wordlessly goes over to my car, pops the trunk and unscrews the wing nut in the donut hole, opens the plastic cover and reveals, ta-da, my donut.
Who feels like a wing nut now?
I had to issue a mass mea culpa for the false accusations of a donut heist. Repercussions resulted.
FB friend: “Hey, Fay, make sure you put “summer” air in those tiresâ¦you don't want to be driving around with “winter” air in them now.
FB friend: Check your muffler bearings, too”
FB friend: “Don't forget to change your turn signal fluid.”
Me: “Go ahead, have your little fun, I deserve this.”
Gayboy car guru: “I out butched Fay Jacobs.”
Me: “That's not hard.”
FB friend: “How can a gay man know more about cars than a lesbian?”
Gayboy car guru: “I know my way around a car, truck or any other vehicle! I also know every isle of Home Depot, Lowes and I have power tools! I like sports and I can fix things too!”
FB friend: “That's not the issue. Why doesn't Fay know these things?
Gayboy car guru: “That part of Fay's brain is filled with show tunes. This is all part of our own diversity. Oh by the way, not a show tune fan here and get ready to take my card away; I hated Rent!”
Me: “So much for stereotypes. I wouldn't know what to do with a jumper cable if you put a revolver to my head.”
Gayboy car guru: “Okay, sung like Ethel Murmon, âThere's no business like the car business likeâ¦'”
Me: “Oy, it's spelled Merman. Hand over your gay boy card please and I'll give up my lesbian cred.”
So I'm outed as a mechanically ignorant gay girl and he's outed as a musical comedy dunce. Diversity is alive and well in the gay community and l love it. But with donuts on my mind, I now crave some Boston Cremes, If it's got tires or balls or carbohydrates I'm going to have trouble with it.