Hi folks! Welcome back to Sunday Sundries. Sorry it’s been absent for a couple of weeks, I’ve not been feeling so hot. But never mind, I return!
Content Warnings: bit of talk about injuries, one anti-trans thing, being trapped, being guilt tripped.
After Cuddles and I first moved in together, I wanted to join a gym again as, when my choices were between “go see girlfriend” and “go to gym/do workouts at home”, I obviously chose the former. But I wanted to continue, and I wanted a place to go as I was struggling with self-consciousness about doing my usual bodyweight and dumbbell exercises at home (don’t ask me why, my brain is just fucking weird).
On looking around, I found a local boxing gym. Community funded, anyone welcome, there’s boxing obviously but also gym equipment, and they were open regularly in the evenings. So I went.
It was…alright. But it didn’t take long for the awfulness to start showing.
Awful Gym Guy (I’ll call him AGG, cos I can’t even remember his name anyway), started to ask me what it was I wanted from my time there. That’s fair. I told him I wanted to lose some of the weight I’d put on, and just generally get fitter and stronger.
I explained about having smashed my knee up, and how that and my foot (which I’d broken the year before my knee) caused pain when I overdid it.
His response was to basically scoff and tell me how he used to have a bad foot (I think) from something or other, and he’d train until he had to go home and sit in an ice bath, pus running from the swollen foot, blah blah blah.
Instead of being shamed by this, as I think I was supposed to be, I was horrified, and stated point blank that I was not doing that to my body.
He ignored that, but I shrugged it off because in the end, I can choose to stop when I need to stop.
I told him I was trans, as part of this conversation, and he said “what’s that?” so I explained and that seemed to be that.
Then he told me if I wanted to do the things I’d said, I needed to put it first. Before anything else. Even my partner.
It was at this point I began to understand why he was single and only saw his kids a couple of times a month.
I told him right out I wasn’t putting anything above my partner, and he just ignored that so I inwardly shrugged, again, because, again, there was no way he can ever stop me putting Cuddles first and he’d figure that out eventually.
So he set me first onto a treadmill. Which he made into a steep hill, and set for ten minutes, then left me to it.
Now, I’m nothing if not determined and stubborn, so I climbed and climbed until the ten minutes was up, then leaned against the treadmill til I stopped seeing stars, then went back into the main room.
In there they had this set of equipment which worked on compressed air—no plates needed, the machine itself kinda pulled back against you, creating resistance that does the same job of a plate-based machine, but is a bit safer, and way more compact.
My next set of orders were to pull 100 reps on as many of those machines as I could before the end of the session. So I worked that, and I quite enjoyed the compressed air resistance. I managed about 5 machines before it was time to leave.
Now, it was the middle of winter, so I was not walking home wearing my gym clothes, which at that point consisted of shorts and a sleeveless top, plus a binder, and all the sweat I’d just made doing everything. I went to change one evening—might even have been the same one—and by the time I was done, everyone was gone, the lights were out, and the alarm was on.
In hindsight, that whole thing was a warning I really should have heeded.
So I came out of the changing room, to a pitch black building, and the alarm immediately started blaring at me.
But the doors were locked, with a metal roller shutter pulled down in front, and I was trapped.
I called AGG, and I called the other guy whose number I had: nothing. It was too late for anyone to be in elsewhere—like the council who owned the building—so I wound up calling the local police number and explaining the situation.
In all, I was stuck for about an hour. I did manage to get hold of the other guy, who came right back to let me out.
In hindsight, that whole thing was a warning I really should have heeded…
The very next session, AGG told me to join the others, most of whom were youngsters—like early teens and younger. We did some hitting of a bag, and then we did laps.
I went home telling Cuddles (who obviously had always heard everything from me) that I really wasn’t sure about going back there.
Now, this was before I fucked up my back, and before the knee arthritis set in, but my knee was still a problem thanks to the smashy injury, and I knew from previous attempts that trying to run fucked both my knees up. I’d tried the Couch to 5k and wound up just not being able to walk, never mind run, due to intense burning pain at the fibula head in both knees, not just the one where I busted everything up.
Plus, I’m asthmatic and no amount of cardio has ever been able to make my lungs work better. It’s just a thing. The rest of my body can still be good to go, but I get out of breath really quickly, and it’s downhill from there.
So when my lungs and my knee began to complain, I stopped, grabbed my drink, and waited for my breath to come back so I could decide whether I was able to do some more.
While I was doing so, AGG came over to ask why I’d stopped, and I, gasping for oxygen, explained, so he decided to guilt trip me. He told me I’m supposed to be a good example, and that the youngsters will look up to me blah blah blah—all of which really just meant “I don’t care about your pain or if you stop being able to breathe, keep going”.
I did not keep going. And I went home telling Cuddles (who obviously had always heard everything from me) that I really wasn’t sure about going back there.
This decision was then made for me when, in the group text between AGG, the other guy, and a couple of other adults, which they’d invited me to, AGG said that he was going into hospital for some sort of minor surgery under general anesthetic, I don’t recall what. But someone else made a “joke” about him being given a surprise sex change while he was unconscious, and there was much laughter.
So I stared at that for a minute. Decided I wasn’t even gonna try and explain what a fucked up joke that was. Or the fact that clearly they did know what trans was—at least enough of it to make that type of comment, anyway. I just left the group, and I never went back.
And by the time I’d gotten top surgery, and started to think about getting my bravery back up and joining the local community centre, where there was also a gym, I went and fucked up my back, so that all just went to hell.
I’d give an awful lot to be able to work out again because I enjoyed feeling my body get fitter and stronger, and it was something I’d never felt able to do until I came out as trans. So I barely had any time at all with this, really.
I do still retain some of the strength—I got pretty strong, and that never entirely goes away. But I’m mostly flab these days, and I can’t work out. Aside from some painful physio, of course. And no matter how I eat, I have multiple meds that either make me put weight on, or make it hard to lose. So, here I am.
I’m working on embracing being a bear, with the support of Cuddles and others, and that’s actually helping. But I reckon that’s probably a topic for another day.
To finish, I’d just like to say, Awful Gym Guy, wherever you are, fuck you.
That’s all I’ve got for you this week!
But before you go, you could do me a great favour by sharing this post with someone who might enjoy it. And then just hit the like button, maybe leave a comment…
Do you wanna hear about my bearyness? How about more Cuddle stories? More on the chaos menagerie? More trans stories? More something else? Let me know! I write this for you, after all.
See you next time!
Thank you for writing this. I didn’t k is you were once a gym rat! It’s amazing how many lifetimes we live in one life, hey? 💞🏳️⚧️✨