Coverup

There aren't many places in the city where I'm surrounded by naked men. Most are nervously shielding themselves with towels and assume their kit as quickly as possible, fearful that any hesitation in regaining modesty could be misconstrued. Others discreetly flaunt their muscles or exhibit garish tattoos. 

As a scrawny teenager seeking to outwit the school bully, I endured judo classes at the now demolished Green Man in a cheerless basement room, the floor iced with white rubber mats. Afterwards we would catch tantalising glimpses of the cosy pub.  Rows of inverted bottles perched on their optics glittered in front of bevelled mirrors behind a mahogany bar.  Locals supped beer and chatted, a manifestation of community conviviality whose benefits to health and happiness probably outweighed the detrimental effect of pervasive tobacco smoke and liberal alcohol.

Nowadays companies reward successful employees with comfortable cars, compensating for the resultant loss of exercise with subsidised gym membership whose use is monitored by smart cards.  This year's must-have Christmas present was the hoverboard, which eliminates the minimal effort associated with getting to school or walking the dog.  The city is complicit in tempting its inhabitants to sloth.  Nowhere is more than a few minutes' walk from the strangulating network of public transport; elevators hoist office workers between floors; shopping malls ensure customers conserve their energies for consumption by providing moving walkways.

So to combat atrophy, a bizarre paradox is embraced: we take the tube home to save time that can then be spent in an expensive gym. Here, the rancid reek of the subterranean pub changing room is replaced by the spice of complementary unguents, conjuring the ambience of a gentleman's club or the better class of business hotel. 

The floor is crowded but nobody speaks. Insulated by earphones, each hears a different drummer; although it is a communal activity, this is not a community.  Heath Robinson contraptions festooned with pulleys, belts and levers, gleam like sculptures in a gallery but are calibrated to stretch skin and sinew to their limits as efficiently as medieval racks. There are stern injunctions not to use the machinery without instruction; if unpropitiated these catalysts of health will morph into the instruments of torture they resemble.  

I mount a treadmill, its insistent whine adds to the cacophony of pounding music and clanking weights. On the climbing wall opposite, coloured handholds fleck the brown surface. One is twisted into a wry smile; inebriated by exhaustion I smile back foolishly. The speed moves up a gear, sweat tickles my face and the rocks dissolve into exotic cupcakes, dusted with talc for icing sugar. Caged in a side room, inmates hunched over stationary cycles gasp and groan. This is a ritual, a homage to Escher’s picture where the 'adherents of some unknown sect' pointlessly climb an endless staircase. The energy voluntarily expended and the pain endured in this temple of self flagellation would delight the Victorian industrialist squeezing profits from his satanic mill. 

Buoyed by endorphins I relax in the lobby, read a newspaper article about the obesity epidemic and watch the turnstiles grind out a parade of newcomers.  They have left their vehicles in the car park, ascended in the lift and are now ready to take their clothes off and get fit.

© David Thompson 2016