Confessions of a Gym Girlie – The One About the Crush

There is something about liking someone, or as we tend to funkify it, crushing on someone. It’s when you sneak looks at someone, get fixated on that someone, notice everything they do, mark down their routine. Study the curves of their lips and the creases of their brows. Know the way their nose gives in to sudden quivers in the fit of excitement. The way you scan the room for them in crowded places, and the way you somersault internally with joy when they speak to you. Nothing is more satisfying than when the feeling turns out to be mutual. In that moment of mutual confession, you get a fleeting feeling of euphoria in this babablu called life.

I liked someone in my gym. Yeaaahh, surprise surprise. But the like is not a like-like thing. It is a like that is kinda… likey-like. Typing this much “like” is making the word look weird in my eyes, but I digress.

So I was sprung on this dude. Average height, not excessively bulky. He is bespectacled, so because of that I will refer to him as Mr. Spectacles for the duration of this write-up. He has a little fuzz of moustache that often makes me imagine licking off coffee foam or ice cream stains from them. His eyes were hazel. One time, I saw him working out near the weights, and the way my gym is set up, the sun rays sometimes flicker through the window beams at the top. The way the sun reflected on his eyes. The way the lights danced off them. If I were in a rom-com, that would be the moment the music starts playing out of nowhere, everything slows down, and his lifting becomes slow motion.

Now, my trainer noticed I was sprung, but he kept it profesh by not mentioning it.

Every day in the gym, I tried to look out for him and single him out from the other people working out. Once, he came towards the machine where I was working on my legs, mumbling something I didn’t hear, to which I responded in a language I didn’t understand.

Yesterday, I got to the gym as usual, but I was low on energy. However, I needed to be there to get my momentum back up and ensure my money wasn’t wasted. He strode in barely fifteen minutes after I did, and my routine of secretly smiling to myself and unabashedly having an eyeful of this specimen resumed. His simple grey top and shorts became extraordinary. I tried to give a poetic explanation for why he wore grey that day when he usually wore blue. Insanity, I know, but I am well versed in the art of tottering on the edge of insanity and pulling myself back.

So, as I worked through lunges and cursed whoever invented that torture of an exercise, Mr. Spectacles’ head was thrown back laughing. Jealousy erupted in me like a hydra-headed monster. I stomped through the rest of my set as I tried to hold back the battle that was about to start in my head. The mental tug and pull.

“But you are not dating him.”

“But you haven’t even told him you like him.”

“This is not normal.”

Mr. Spectacles sauntered towards the room where the evening classes are held, and my eyes followed him, curious and trying to see who it was that might have been laughing with him.

“Maybe he has a girlfriend,” the sane part of me that doesn’t want me to fully descend into insanity cautioned.

I didn’t listen. I needed to know. I needed to dead it once and for all.

“But if he had a girlfriend, why didn’t she follow him to the gym all this while?”

Is it too bad that I just wanted him to be in my point of view as I pushed through tough leg days and backbreaking weights? A woman hovering around him and giggling would jeopardize my crazy fantasy.

Minutes later, as I was on my second set of RDLs with my trainer breathing down my leg and ensuring my form was right, Mr. Spectacles walked towards where I was. I could hear him, and I could hear another high-pitched voice joking with him as well. They walked by, and I rose up to get a full view of who it was. My stomach clenched a bit — again, another symptom of insanity — but I had to get my eyeful now or never.

Mr. Spectacles murmured something like “You’re so naughty,” and he strolled by, his perfume clouding my senses. The voice followed him… it was some guy in my gym. Also light-skinned, slim, and often the magnet for weird stares in the gym.

He is the object of fascination and hushed conversations. He is gay. Out and proud. Everybody with eyes in the gym knows this. He doesn’t hide it, which is good for him.

What was bad for me, however, was that he and my crush seemed to have a thing going on. This is deeper than friendship. They are actually both gay. It’s like a scene from Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe.

There. I did it. I went on to have a crush on someone whose orientation is different from mine.

Mr. Spectacles, in that moment, held the other guy’s hand and eventually his weight as he tried to push through his workouts. It was cute. It was tender. And whatever it was that was shared between them was real. And I felt like an intruder. A voyeur, having an eyeful of what is clearly a private moment shared between them. So I looked away.

Just as I will do today when I see Mr. Spectacles.

I will look away.

Even in my imagination, he can never be mine.