Boys at the gym will always be boys.  There are no men at the gym.  I hate boys at the gym.  They grunt, they talk loud, they take over TV channels, don’t wipe off their grime from the machines, and they sit there, just sit there, occupying a machine in between sets.  It’s all so unnecessary. 

After reading an article about arm rests on airplanes, and how an overwhelming majority of the time a man occupies the armrest over the woman sitting next to him, I always made a point of using the arm rest.  Even if it is just half the armrest, it’s my little success.  But I can’t have successes at the gym.  I don’t know how.  Instead I become the angry chick on the elliptical spinning harder and harder every time the guy behind me screams “YEAH!  USE YOUR SKILL, MAN!” at the basketball game on TV. 

I don’t want to be that chick.  Sometimes I get the urge to rip off my shirt a la Mia Hamm and go up to the guy and say, “dude!  I’m working out!  I’m focusing here!”  And then I remember my body doesn’t look like Mia Hamm’s so that wouldn’t work.

And sometimes, I just don’t go to the gym.  Because it smells like testosterone.  What does that smell like?  Sweaty balls.  And don’t ask me how I know that. 

Sometimes I prefer to do my muscle work at home. 

-written alongside an open jar of, now half-filled, chocolate peanute butter.