Did I ever tell you that Frank Thomas was in my high school physical education class? Yes, that Frank Thomas, the major league first baseman known as “The Big Hurt”. Every time we’d play baseball in fourth period and Frank would come up to bat, everybody in the outfield would start walking backwards, because when Frank hit the ball, it was always going over the fence and into the parking lot of the housing projects next to the school.

At 14, of course, none of us had any idea that we were sharing the diamond with a future Chicago White Sox player. And I – freshly out of the closet, not athletic, typically five to 10 minutes late changing for gym class because it took so long to take off all my bracelets and other jewelry – just thought that I must be a washout athletically, uncoordinated, effete and pale as milk.

Other boys – although I should note that Frank never joined in the bullying – were ruthless with me, calling me names, chucking basketballs and volleyballs at my head and face, tripping me or punching me when the coach turned his back. And don’t think I didn’t notice that the coach seemed to turn his back an awful lot where I was concerned.

The bullying I got from other boys combined with the humiliations of fourth period PE made me wildly averse to going anywhere that had that “gym smell” for decades afterwards. To me, it smelled like trauma and humiliation.

Then I turned 40 and my metabolism began to slow down. My waistline began to expand, my once razor-sharp lead-singer hipbones vanished into the mush, my face was getting doughy, and I found myself getting winded by routine tasks like climbing the stairs in the parking garage to get to my car at the end of the workday.

I knew I needed to get some kind of fitness program in my life, but I was still terrified of going to the gym. What if I was terrible at it? What if people pointed and laughed? What if the deadlifting bros were homophobes who corner me in the locker room for some kind of public shaming? How would I handle that?

I soon found out. My first go at introducing physical activity into my life was swimming, inspired by watching Michael Phelps compete in the 2008 Olympics. I remember seeing him on his starting block and thinking, “I don’t need for my body to look like that, but I just want to feel strong.”

I bought a day pass to the nearby university pool and decided to swim some laps. In a pair of Old Navy board shorts I lowered myself into the heavily chlorinated water and started to do a kind of modified breast-stroke because I’d forgotten my goggles.

After about 20 minutes, I got that unmistakable sinking feeling that comes from hearing someone laugh and realizing that they’re laughing at you. A pair of young women were floating in the next swim lane, laughing and pointing at my awkward progress through the water.

I swam a couple more laps, noting that a face burning with embarrassment can still be felt underwater. I wrote a short speech in my head and when I drew abreast of them, I said, “I can hear you, you know. I may swim funny, but I’m not deaf. You’re rude, horrible people and I would like to remind you that you won’t be young and beautiful forever.”

They rolled their eyes at me and went back to minding their own business, but I realized that the Worst Possible Thing had just happened. People made fun of me. It was embarrassing, but it wasn’t fatal.

That Monday, I bought a gym membership, signed up for sessions with a personal trainer and decided to go for it. To my surprise, not everybody at the gym was a ’roided-out bodybuilder or a hardcore Crossfitter. And there was a surprising lack of judgment from fellow gym-goers.

It turns out that the rule of the gym is a lot like the rule of the dance floor. If you’re paying more attention to how someone else is doing it than how you’re doing it, you’re doing it wrong.

And that whole thing I was feeling about being called out as gay in the locker room and shamed? I had nothing to fear there: it turns out everybody’s a little gay in the men’s locker room.

Men check each other out. I remember telling my trainer that I felt bad for straight men who don’t get to end their workout with their own locker room equivalent, hanging out in a room full of naked women.

“That’s like dinner with no dessert,” I told him

“I never thought of that, but you’re right. It’s totally unfair,” he said.

So now the gym doesn’t scare me; I have just as much of a right to be there as anyone else does. I still don’t look like Michael Phelps, and I’m pretty sure that I will never get back into my 32-inch waist rock star jeans. But I’m happy with my body, on the whole. It’s serving me pretty well, and I’ve learned to not compare my fitness level and athletic prowess with Major League baseball players. We all do the best we can with what we have. And for me, that’s good enough.

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