A foul wind

Yesterday I went to the gym. Nothing heroic there, I grant you. It was, however, the first day of a 15 minute incremental increase in the time I spend on the elliptical or step machine. This was a difficult psychological threshold to cross, as I find the part of my workout spent moving my legs whilst staying in place very boring. TV and ipod provide welcome distraction, but - hell, it's boring. And the complete lack of respect for my sensitivities displayed by other club members does not help matters. I admit that top amongst these sensitivities is that there are other folks in the gym at all. I am not misanthropic; I simply don't like other people. I have always felt a strong kinship with Sartre - hell is other people. Especially when the people in question variously wear clothing that is too tight, too expensive, too cheap, too colorful or too drab. Mostly, they also smell bad. Or look as if they might smell bad, if (heavens forbid), I ever got close enough to find out. They also use too many towels, spread out in the sauna, and occupy the shower stall next to mine when they have a perfectly good bathroom at home. Am I making my feelings clear? So yesterday, I take up position on the elliptical, turn on the television, crank up my ipod, and get striding. About ten minutes in to my 65 minute ordeal, I start to smell urine. At first, I thought it was some odor drifting by from the area where a new locker room is being constructed. But no, the stink grew and persisted. I glared at the man next to me, assuming he had failing kidneys and had skipped dialysis to come sweat uric acid next to me for my sins. Once he had left, I relaxed, under the impression that the odoriferous crisis had passed. It had not. I began looking around for another sweating heathen on whom to heap scorn, but the machines next to me were inexplicably unoccupied. Strange. These are the newest, most desirable Precor combination step/stride machines. You have to be lucky to get time on them. Yet here they were, empty. A terrible realization started to dawn on me. Tentatively, I sniffed my right shoulder and armpit. Aside from your standard fresh sweat smell, it was fine. I turned to my left, and before I had completely inhaled, my head snapped back. Holy dog urine, Batman! It would seem that one of our dogs, filthy beast that she is, had decided to use my pile of T-shirts - the pile I keep conveniently on the floor of my closet so I can grab one for the gym - as a makeshift canine port-a-potty. The full range of this olfactory WMD was only released when the shirt became moist from my own sweat. In short, I stank like an incontinent homeless wino. People were making an arc around my elliptical to avoid my stench. I looked down at the timer on the machine: 45 minutes to go. What to do? Well, I stuck it out. After all, who was more affected by the situation than I? If I could stand it, so could everybody else. I stared ahead, resolutely avoiding eye contact with the despicable, if somewhat less smelly, general population. And to make a point about being accepting of other members, regardless of their personal hygiene, I went through my usual weights training, as well.

It's not like any of these folks were going to be inviting me over for dinner, anyway. Not that I would have accepted the invitation.