Diary of a Mad Editor

some douchebag muscle-bound meathead gets up in your face and ruins your workout at the gym? That’s what’s been happening to me lately. There’s this guy I see at the gym who bugs the shit out of me. I’m not by nature the most sociable person anyway. In my private life, I’m kind of shy and am not crazy about meeting new people. Add to that the fact that I don’t go to the gym to talk to people or hit on women or flex my muscles. I’m there for my health. To lose weight. Period. End of story. In addition to trying to figure out a healthier diet for myself and my continuing search for the best weight loss supplement ever and taking my daily thyroid pill, I spend between 1-2 hours at the gym nearly every day. Lately there’s been this guy kind of stalking me around the gym. Up until today, he just sort of gawked at me as I worked out, making me uncomfortable. Today, while I was lifting weights, he approached me.

I had just finished a set on the military press and was sipping from my water bottle when he says, "Watcha tryin’ ta do?" I’m like, "Huh? Trying? What?"

Instead of allowing me to do another set, he "demonstrated" what in his mind is the proper way to do the exercise. Now, I’ve been lifting weights off and on since I was about 13 or 14. I don’t think I need a wannabe fake-ass body builder who, as far as I can tell, only seems to work his upper body and does no lower body or aerobic exercises at all ( and doesn’t breathe properly either, which is probably why he gets so winded lifting weights)telling me how to workout. So I just nodded my head, skipped my second set and moved on to another machine in the hopes of escaping this guy. Eventually, my exercise routine took me to the next room and Hercules moved on to another area as well. After I finished lifting weights, I did my time on the treadmill. Hercules was looking for me. I could see him on the main floor from the upper deck. Most of the people I see in my gym are either anorexic young women working hard to keep their flat asses flat and steroid freaks like Hercules. The difference is, the other steroid freaks politely ignore me and allow me to ignore them. Hercules, however, wasn’t done with me. As I weighed myself a half hour later, I noticed him standing behind me breathing heavily.

"You done?" he asked.

I didn’t answer him just shrugged and walked into the locker room. At this point, I was half-convinced that there had to be something wrong with him.  He followed close behind me as I made my way to my locker.   He started flexing his muscles and acting like a full-on retard, mugging in front of the mirror.Hercules made some comments about my weight. I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to be friendly, cruel, showing-off or what. But he made me defensive and I started spouting off about my health problems, trying to explain why I am so heavy at the moment (because these steroid freaks act like the non-steroid freaks at the gym don’t belong there). I realized my mistake immediately.  The moment I mentioned that I was a cancer survivor, Hercules started talking about Jesus and asking me whether I went to church and prayed.  My second mistake was that I answered him. So Hercules decided that it was his job to save my soul. He was blocking my exit and wouldn’t let me by. Started preaching to me.  I did not want a violent confrontation with him, but he kept getting in my face talking about why I needed to go to church. Truth be told, I haven’t been in a real fight since high school and I wasn’t convinced I could take the asshole, so I stood there trying to debate him until I could find an opening to escape. After about ten minutes of his rambling discourse about Jesus,  some else entered the locker room, distracting him just long enough that I managed to slip by him. Unfortunately, he followed me to my car, continuing to bait me. “Look, man,” I said, “I’ve gotta go. I’ve got shit to do.”  He tried to get between me and  car, but this timeI nudged him out of the way  and sped out of that parking lot.  I’m going to have to avoid him from now on or else find another place to workout.