Momentary Distraction

In my attempt at momentary distraction, I find exactly what I’m looking for: hot gym manager. This past May, I “met” hot gym manager on my “dating” website. We spoke for a while and he invited me to the small gym that he manages for an early morning workout. One of my not-so-secret fantasies is having sex at the gym. Something about a sweaty man with a polite post-workout funk gets a certain muscle ready for some exercise. This fantasy excludes the nasty sex that happens in the showers, stalls, and saunas of the most popular gym in New York. No, I want something after hours, where we would be free to use the equipment creatively and without voyeurs feasting their eyes on our newly acquired playground.

Every part of me was up early that Saturday morning I went to go work out with hot gym manager. The gym, not quite as empty as I had hoped, had the sharp smell of freshly cleaned pool. He led me through a total body workout, unabashedly bending in front of me to show me the right pose and eagerly supporting my arms, back, and thighs in various lifting positions. After I spent all my energy on air bicycles, he popped off the mat and urged me to come into the hot tub. I soaked my sore body in the warm jacuzzi and we chatted and played footsie under the bubbles. Again, he popped up, “Let’s go to the sauna.” From hot water to hotter coals, sweat came for a number of reasons as he spread out and relaxed in the wooden jungle. After my body poured out all its toxins, he took me to the shower. The marbled glass of the stalls could not hide my excitement as I watched him shower in the stall next to me. We made eye contact through the glass. He smiled, then turned off the water, and walked back to the locker room. I slowly made the connections in my mind: he wanted to be friends. I walked home slowly, carefully trying not to exacerbate the sudden blueness I felt.

The attention hot gym manager gives me is innocent in spite of my desires, which made him the perfect distraction from birthday boy. I knew nothing was going to happen. “Come, let’s go get some food,” he texted me on a Sunday that had me suffering from a lack of birthday boy attention the night before. Of course, I would go visit him at work; he was safe. He bought me a sandwich and we watched a movie at his desk while the elderly Upper West Siders got their heart rate up for the day. Thoughts of birthday boy fluttered in the margins of my mind as the slightness of sexual tension—never to be fulfilled—stood before me in nylon breakaway pants.