A Temporary Return To Hell

Did you know that there’s a gym in Dante’s Inferno? Yup, I think it’s located on the eighth Ring Of Suffering.

The other day I was at the gym, running on a treadmill. I dislike gyms for many reasons, the main one being that if there’s only one naked dude in the locker room, it’s guaranteed that he’ll be toweling off right in front of my locker. That’s happened way too often to be merely chance. But I’m getting one of those bellies that looks like someone superglued another person’s butt to my stomach. Viewed from my front you’ll see two distinct, rounded halves that arc down to my belly button. It looks like a sprinter slammed into me and then sunk into my body, but only up to his butt.

I roll with most things, but not the butt-belly.

The woman on the machine next to me was running at a full-fledged sprint with sweat pouring down her face. It looked miserable. That’s another reason I was here — I need to defeat this belly now because I don’t want to have to work that hard in the future. Life is way too short to have a real exercise routine. Have you ever noticed a person in great shape at a gym and thought “Why are you here? You don’t need to be. You’re done.” It’s like getting your new plates at the DMV and then sticking around.

So I’m doing this for a month and (hopefully) returning to one-butt status.

The flatscreen in front of me was playing a Viagra ad. I laughed when I saw the words “Viagra doesn’t prevent sexually transmitted diseases.” I pictured the salt-and-pepper haired guy in the ad sitting in a Thai hospital and discovering that Viagra doesn’t stop some brain-melting tropical sex-disease. Intelligent looking but also earthy/rugged, he stood in front of his mailbox nodding his head. He had his little package of pills. Yes, the evening’s candlelight dinner date wouldn’t be a wash like last time.

What a joke. My theory is that sex is like speed limits. The 60 to 65 range should be enough. Beyond that you’re just being greedy. Funniest of all is how we’re getting the physical human challenges resolved before the mental side is figured out. Pretty soon we’ll have an army of 85 year old dudes who are total porn stars. But they won’t know it because we failed to solve Alzheimer’s first.

Only 29 days to go. I can do this.