With me the numbers that dominated my youth were my standardized test scores (high = expectation) and my GPAs (low = disappointment). The discrepancy between the two made me an enigma to my mom; she could never figure me out. This deficit had to be explained in terms of character. Or lack of. My dad couldn’t have cared less about my scores, though he shared with Mom the lack-of-character paradigm. Only, for him, it was explained by my sporting failures.
Home was Weymouth, MA, a town swallowed by the Boston sprawl, and part of the South Shore “Irish Riviera.” My younger sister by eighteen months, Jocelyn, was quiet, academic, and hopelessly non-athletic. Dad tried with her, but even he had to concede defeat, so then she pretty much flew under his radar. Instead, he set about training every weakness of sloth and indolence out of me. He made me hate those characteristics in others and fight them tooth and nail in myself. And for that, and that alone, I thank him. Jocelyn, the “sugar” to my “pickle,” became my mom’s pet project. It’s very hard to say who got dealt the worst hand there.
I finish my tea, as a tired yawn rips through me, and get out to my first appointment of the day. It’s quiet now, as I check my mailbox. A card from the MDPD, telling me I can pick up the Caddy from their lot. They had to keep it in to examine the damage to the hood.
I walk up to Bodysculpt, one of the two SoBe clubs I work from. Marge Falconetti appears, a CEO’s wife who is 5’7" and 285 lbs of puffy slug (don’t think tits — waist — ass, just beachball). After some warm-ups, I get her raising a ten-pound kettlebell.
— Full extension, Marge, that’s the way, I cajole the ol’ girl, and I’m just settling into the day, battling the fatigue, and the strange creeping silence in this place. So ungymlike and even worse than normal today. Marge is actually trying, but all the time glancing at me and then past me in sheer awe. Then, horror of horrors, I follow her bug-eyes to one of the myriad television screens we have positioned around the walls. A local news channel, then, on the next screen, another one, are repeating last night’s story, me featuring prominently. Lester, one of the other trainers, lets out a loud cheer, leading off some clapping, as I reappear onscreen, blinking and candy-assed-looking.
— They show this again and again, on the half-hour, he grins.
— You’re so brave, Marge smiles painfully. I respond with a thin leer to let her know there will be no slacking, as I crane my neck back at the screen.
There I am, kicking the gun-toting weakling into submission. It’s a pretty fucking neat front kick, farther up than I thought, the ball of my foot striking him at speed between his shoulder blades. I’m right on his back as the camera moves closer, my ass in my panties where the skirt has ridden up blacked out by digibars. I see myself slam a couple of hooks into his body which I honestly couldn’t remember throwing. His passivity looks spooky, as if I’m sitting on a corpse. I hear a voice screaming, — I phoned this in, as the image shuffles, then I’m in midshot and the tarmac darkens with his urine. Then, a more professional shot of me through the glass of the police car.
Jesus, I’m even keeping pace with the two fifteen-year-old conjoined twins from Arkansas. The girls have had a falling-out as one of them wants to go on a date, meaning that the other, the physically weaker one, will literally be dragged along against her will if she disagrees. I’m thinking of how it might have been to be attached to Jocelyn, have to drag her along to my shit, or, worse, be taken to hers. No fucking way.
All America is enthralled by the so-called morality issue, which really is a degenerate’s wet dream. Reading between the lines, one chick wants to fuck her boyfriend, the other is giving it the religious shit. Those girls have divided the nation. I caught some of it with Miles last night, before we got fractious when he contracted pussy vertebrae. Guys like him think that the would-be beau of Annabel, one of the twins, is one sick but lucky little fuck. I remember those twin chicks at high school, always getting hit on by guys about threesomes, who then genuinely wondered why they were grossing the girls out. Would any of those morons want to fuck their brothers? It’s called, like, empathy, but even that basic emotion is barely part of Miles’s makeup. However, some squeaky-clean kid, Stephen Abbot, who makes Justin Bieber look like the bastard love child of Iggy Pop and Amy Winehouse, is pouting at the screen. — I’ve known the girls awhile and I really like Annabel. It ain’t like I’m some pervert. It’s just about going to a movie and grabbing a soda and maybe some candy. But some folks jus got dirty minds and there’s always some tryin to make it into somethin it ain’t.
As Annabel nods, the other twin, Amy, cuts in and says, — That ain’t all it is. They kiss a lot and it’s gross!
I tear myself away and watch Marge grunt her way through the last set. Then it’s time to load her stout carcass onto the treadmill. I flick it onto 3.5 mph, enough to force her to get with the project, then ramp up to 5 mph, solid trotting speed. — Go, Marge, I shout as she reluctantly lumbers into her stride.
— Jesus H. Lester (5’11", 185 lbs) is looking to the TV and saying to his client, some nice thirtysomething, motivated college professor chick, who strides evenly on the next treadmill. — It’s tough on those girls, that’s for sure.
What-fucking-ever. Let them debate the philosophical issues; I tweak the groaning Marge up to 6 mph, as I start pondering another number: 33. My birthday last week. The age that most real athletes seize up. That’s when you can tell it’s a real sport and not a game: are they finished at 34? They say that 35 is officially middle-aged. I cannot afford to buy into that. Part of me cheers when every gangbanger or lardass, like the sweating Marge, ends up on a slab before their time. Bullets or burgers, I don’t care how they bite, as it sends the stats for those of us who try to avoid either soaring to the heavens. Marge busts out with some pathetic protest as I push her up to 7 mph. — But—
— You’re good, honey, you’re good, I coo.
— Heugh. . heugh. . heugh. .
But I’m at an age when a woman is expected to have certain things: a husband, perhaps a child or two, a home, and plenty of debt. I got the last to the tune of $32,000 in student loans and credit cards. No mortgage, just a thousand bucks rent to make each month on a crappy one-bedroom apartment on the Beach. I look at the row of photographs of us all, the personal trainers: me, Lester, Mona, and Jon Pallota, who opened this place. Jon looks tan, fit, with his wavy hair and easy smile, and how I’ll always remember him, but that was before his accident. Life can change so quickly: if you don’t grab the fucker it’ll slip by you.
— OH. . OH. . OH. . Marge is petrified, her ass swinging like a semi-truck fishtailing back and forth across a three-lane highway.
— Nearly there, honey, and FIVE. . and FOUR. . and THREE. . and TWO. . and ONE, and the machine slides back to 4 mph, for the cool-down, and Marge is gripping the handles now, splattering the belt with sperm-thick sweat. — Well done, girl!
— Oh. . oh my God. .
I slap the red halt button. — Right, climb off and pick up that kettlebell again and gimme a two-handed swing for twenty reps!
Oh, there’s that you-just-ritually-slaughtered-my-firstborn expression.
— Go on!
As Marge sweatingly complies, I think about my other significant numbers. Height: 5’7". Weight: 112 lbs. Number of regular clients: 11. Number of clubs attached to: 2. Parents: 2 (divorced). Siblings: 1, female, playing the fucking saint out in India or Africa or some shithole. Yes, Jocelyn works for a nongovernmental organization, trying to save poor people of color in the Third World; possibly compensating for Dad’s somewhat unreconstructed stance on the issue of race.