Working Out Issues: Not as Easy as I Thought

This morning I had my free trail with Jonathan, who, to my dismay, is a little more covered up when he's training potential clients than when he's working out by himself. Same black shorts, same metrosexual Pumas, but a Lycra-infused T-shirt in lieu of the tank top.

As we walked from the front desk toward the free weights, he asked what muscle groups I wanted to train that day. Wanting to get my six pack in shape for summer, I told him abs.

"Thirty minutes, just doing abs?" he asked. If his slightly incredulous you're-freaking-insane-because-you-surely-will-not-last-thirty-minutes-on-my-ab-routine tone hadn't convinced me to change my mind, his pearly whites would have.

"Uhhhh, abs, back, and....shoulders?"


Note to self: stop being such a sucker for hot guys with killer smiles. You are in for a lifetime of hurt and exploitation if you don't learn to say "no" to these pretty boys.

I'm not the Governator in this T-2 days, but I'm in pretty good shape. I almost always take the stairs instead of the elevator. I hit the gym five times a week. My BMI is 22.4, which the National Institutes of Health identifies as clearly being in the center of the "normal weight" category. Not even near the underweight- or overweight- borders of the normal weight category--right in the center of normal. My doctor says I have the blood pressure of a healthy teenager. Which I should, because I hit the gym five times a week, and my BMI is in the center of the normal weight group, and I almost always choose the stairs over the elevator.

But Jonathan's workout disabused me of whatever fitness-based arrogance I might have had. Ten minutes into the regimen, I was gasping for breath like I was being waterboarded. I desperately wanted to get a sip from the fountain, but couldn't summon the strength to crawl over to it. My "abs, back, and...shoulders?" all felt like they had melted under my skin and turned to acid that was slowly digesting my body. My biceps, triceps, hamstrings, and quads were non-functional, and we weren't even training those muscles.

* * * *

Back in Jonathan's office, my body collapsed in a heap onto a mauve chair on rollers.

Releasing nervous energy by tapped a pen on his desk, he asked, "So, what'd you think? Do you want to sign up for more sessions?" Then out came the teeth, white, symmetrical, and straight. Straight, as unfortunately, he probably is.

This was the time to 'seal the deal', but instead of getting some nice anal sex from a gorgeous trainer, I'd just end up getting ass-raped by the crazy fees.

Afterward, I realized what must have been apparent to the reader since the last entry: I wasn't interested (so much) in getting more fit; I wanted to spend alone time with Jonathan. Then wasn't this a kind of prostitution? Well, not in the traditional or legal sense, but I had signed a contract exchanging my money for his attention, because I had a sexual attraction to him. And didn't that demean him, objectify him, reduce him from a certified personal trainer to a mass of muscle and beautiful teeth?

And beyond being totally vulgar from a humanistic standpoint, what did this say about my character from a Christian worldview?

In the book of Ezekiel, God tells his people, "I bathed you with water, washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I also clothed you with embroidered cloth and put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet; and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk."

But his people are unfaithful: "Men give gifts to all harlots, but you give your gifts to all your lovers to bribe them to come to you from every direction for your harlotries. Thus you are different from those women in your harlotries, in that no one plays the harlot as you do, because you give money and no money is given you; thus you are different."

And sure enough, there I was giving my money to feast my eyes on Jonathan, bribing him, as it were. Agenbite of Inwit...

But all this occurred to me too late. I'll be seeing Jonathan once a week for the next three months.