So... I've started working out. I feel terrible to admit it, like I'm betraying a kind of queer politics that resisted the way beauty (ugliness) gets mapped onto fit (unfit) bodies in the 21st century. But the skinniness that came naturally in my teens gradually gave way to a growing softness in my midsection that made me deeply uncomfortable. Actually, I wasn't just uncomfortable: I was terrified.
What happens to twinks when they hit 25?
Just about every day, I throw on my gym clothes, and drive a few minutes north to the North Campus Recreational Building (NCRB). Like most giant campuses, UM has many gyms. The main campus gym -- the CCRB -- is most popular with skinny blondes running for their lives, and buff 20 year olds flexing their muscles. That is way too intense for me. The NCRB is where all the misfits go: graduate students, international students, fatties, old folks, and everyone else for whom the CCRB is terrifying.
I was on the elliptical today in the cardio room that's adjacent to the main rec room, where badminton courts were set up today. They were filled with Indian and Chinese international students, flipping that shuttlecock back and forth with precision. It made for a nice distraction as I wound my way through 45 minutes of the not-quite-running motions of modern exercise machinery. And volleyball on Fridays is just delectable. I wonder if all those hot, perfectly average men know I'm watching through the slivery, basketball-proof windows?
My body is already starting to change, love handles contracting in unison with my stomach. Am I doing this because I want to get laid? Because I'm afraid of what happens to academics who turn into cave men during graduate school, slaving away over the eerie glow of their laptops while scarfing down Jimmy John's "Turkey Toms" and Wendy's 99-cent "Double Stacks"? In the frenzied sweat of cardio-madness, am I selling out the last remaining bit of queer politics left in my veins?
What happens to twinks when they hit 25?
How do I do this ethically? It's not like I'm sweating for my health -- though I suppose it might prove to have beneficial consequences in that area. No, I'm pursuing a much less noble goal: a body I can look at in the mirror without cringing. I've always hated my body -- even when I was a sliver of a boy back in college. I see photos of me back in 2003 and think, "If I thought I was fat then, there is no hope!" There were curves that I always found unseemly, distasteful. Curves I was reminded of when a trick would grab my hips. They could feel me tense up, resisting their touch. Ugh.
I hate the boys online who claim that they "take care of their bodies" and demand that I should do the same. They know as well as I do that it's not well-being that they're after in their athletic pursuits. Please, God, don't let me become a self-righteous gym queen. If there is anything I loathe more in life, it is being condescended and judged by headless torsos. "Masc for masc, bro." Is there space for a sissy in the gym? Do sissy twinks turn into creatine-chugging muscle boys on their 26th birthday?
And perhaps the most dangerous of questions: After the sweat has dried and my body hardened, will I look in the mirror and like what I see? Or does my body hatred come without an expiration date? Ask me in six months.
.... On second thought, make that a year. Maybe two. Ugh.
Insightful as always usual, dearie. I began my tortured relationship with 'the gym' back in my late 20's. Or maybe early 30's. I don't remember. I do remember why - my mother told me I had gotten fat, a fact that had completely escaped my notice, and that my friends were too kind to point out. I hadn't weighed myself in years, and was shocked to see that I'd gone up from an emaciated 170 in college to 210 or so.
At first I slinked in, ran out as fast as I could, and wore clothes that I thought would attract the least attention possible. I felt like I was abandoning something natural and wholesome in favor of a television aesthetic.
Gradually, I loosened up about it, and got more comfortable with the contradictions of the gym and body image.
I discovered that a lot of the guys who I thought had absolutely magnificent bodies were even less comfortable in theirs than I was in mine, which blew my mind.
I also found that when I let my sissiness show most, waving limp-wristed at friends, chatting and flirting, stretching in provocative poses, etc. that the whole mood of the room seemed to lighten up. Maybe it just allowed me to feel more comfortable being me, and that changed my outlook, but I think it had a wider beneficial effect as well.
I also found that as I got more into it, my self-conception didn't really change. I got to the point where I was squatting as much as anyone at the gym (it was wonderful having these strapping boys ask me how to lift that much).
So I quit for a while, and found myself slowing getting more at ease with my body image.
I've been back and forth, and I did get hooked on creatine (and loved it). I'd still be doing it now if it hadn't contributed to me getting a leg clot (the doctors swear it had nothing to do with it, but I don't believe them).
In the final throes of my thesis writing, I balooned up to 250, but figured I could deal with it later. It has taken a while, but I'm finally back down to 205, and that feels OK. Well, not really, but I don't think losing more will make me any happier, so I'm not trying to any more.
Now, I just go and play badminton. The boys are hot. And almost all gay. And most of them are tops. Yay!
OK, a final bit of workout advice - take it or leave it - if your main goal is to lose weight, then skip the weights completely, or at least don't focus on them much. Run. Ideally not on a machine. Just run. It doesn't matter if you can only run a 1/4 mile at first, it doesn't matter if you can't ever run more than a mile and a half, just run. That will tone you up faster and more completely than any weight lifting program. So do the weights for fun, to chat with guys, etc. But run to lose the weight.
This is such an honest post, pal! I have not hit the gym yet but would want to do so some day! Or did I say, will have to do so some day? Anyways, weighing (fortunately) all of 140 pounds (only??!!!) I think I can stay clear of the machine for some more time. What works for me perhaps is that I am not a foodie and I often run or do brisk walking. Helps tremendously. But then the other day, when I saw a pic of Jonathan Rhys Meyers, I was like - Hmm! May be its time to tone some of my less toned muscles.
"What happens to twinks when they hit 25?"
They become cubs?