Gym Slave

Chapter 1: Incident I was sitting outside, in the front patio of a favorite restaurant, when the incident happened. I had been casually regarding two men at a nearby table, thinking how attractive they were. My friend Carmen, seeing my look, had leaned towards me and murmured, “I think they’re straight.” I decided she was probably right, but still held out some hope. “I can still look,” I replied, continuing my evaluation of their physical attributes. I decided that it was their air that made them most attractive—their confidence, strength and easy-going miens, their sense of goodwill, all of which were distinctly masculine. Further, these qualities were not out for display; they merely were there, quiescent—and that made them all the more alluring. One of the men was more or less facing me, but looking along the sidewalk, watching the passing pedestrians. Suddenly, his energy changed. He leaned forward and nudged the elbow of his companion, who turned in his seat with a deliberate casualness to look, and I saw his energy change too. I turned my head, and saw a truly stunning woman walking along the sidewalk towards us. I glanced back at the two men, and saw that they were still entranced. Then I looked at the woman again—and it struck me that there was something the three had in common, though what that was wasn’t immediately evident. The woman was pretty, yes, and attractively proportioned: long legs, an hour-glass figure, and what is called “stacked.” She wasn’t elaborately dressed, but her clothes did emphasize her figure: shoes with a bit of a heel, tight jeans, and a similarly tight sweater. But, more than that, like the men, it was her air that put her, so to speak, over the top attraction-wise. The heels gave her movement a certain elegance, and she moved with a definite bounce and confident air, aware of how good she looked. But she wasn’t arrogant about it; there was a sense of what was, if not playfulness, then an openness and slight willingness to tease, as if she were saying: Okay, boys! Go ahead, take a good look! I looked back at the two men, and saw that the “boys” were definitely doing just that. They were gazing appreciatively and with the same air of openness, but with a definite eagerness too. If they had been dogs, their tongues would have been lolling and their tails wagging fiercely. In fact, the man facing me did have his mouth slightly open. I almost laughed aloud. Nothing further happened. The woman continued walking, came abreast of the patio, and passed on without a pause in her step or so much as a glance at the men, as far as I could tell. And the men, they simply turned as she passed, following her like compass needles, without making any remark. When the woman was gone, they both reached for their drinks and grinned at each other. And that was it. Yet the effect on me was such that it almost broiled my brain. It really opened my eyes to the intense richness of the traditional heterosexual activity that used to be called girl-watching. I saw, or rather felt, as I never had before, just how intensely pleasurable that sort of thing was, for both parties. The woman evidently enjoyed being admired and the men delighted in the act of admiring. It was a stunning example of the great heterosexual dance—from which I, being gay, was excluded. And so, after the initial excitement of witnessing the incident, my thoughts and mood gradually turned to a somewhat somber and even slightly bitter sense of envy. As I gazed at the two men, again taking in their attractiveness, the guy facing me happened to notice my gaze. He looked at me, his expression slightly puzzled. For a second or two he seemed to take me in, then he dismissed me, entirely without hostility or judgment—but also without anything in the way of interest. I felt myself flush at this, and looked back at my friend, who was regarding me through slightly lowered lids—her practice when she was really studying something or someone. “What?” I said, somewhat challengingly. But she only raised an eyebrow defiantly, and shook her head. “Don’t pine after what you can’t have, Marc. You won’t find happiness that way.” I took a sip of my drink, and then asked, “And how will I find happiness?” She studied me for a few seconds. “Well, not by sleeping around the way you do.” I flushed again. “It’s not my fault,” I muttered, taking another sip. “Gay men don’t tend to settle down.” “Some do,” she replied and, reaching out, put her hand over mine on the table. “And you need to.” She gave a slight smile. “You need a husband, Marc.” I frowned, then asked defiantly, “Why’s that?” Carmen looked at the two men and then back at me, considering. “Are you familiar with what the word husband means?” I shrugged. “Male spouse, I guess.” She shook her head. “Not exactly. It means the male head of a household, but it also means manager or steward. It’s like when it’s used as a verb: someone husbands their resources; it means conserve them, use them frugally, like in a flood situation with limited supplies.” “What are you talking about?” I asked, impatient at the moment of Carmen’s descent into her typical micro-lecture style. She leaned forward in her chair. “You need someone to husband you, Marc.” I stared, trying to decide whether to be offended or not. Then, to change the topic, I nodded towards the two men. “You saw that exchange?” I said. “With them and that woman who passed?” Carmen nodded. “Did that sort of thing ever happen to you?” Her eyelids lowered slightly and her lips pursed. “Actually,” she said at last. “It has—not quite like that, but—yes.” I stared in surprise, my mouth actually hanging open slightly. Then I realized what this reaction implied, and I brought myself under control, and looked at my friend objectively. She wasn’t a looker by any means, but still— As if in answer, she told me about an experience she’d had one evening, running into a man on Yonge Street when she had been very drunk. He had been drunk too, and quite taken with her—so much so that they had gone home together. It was a short relationship, lasting only a couple of months. I had met the guy once or twice, but I had never heard how they had met. “Oh,” I said, when she had finished. I didn’t quite see her point. I mean, I had gone home with guys from bars, but that wasn’t quite it. “But that appreciation,” I said, nodding towards the two men. “That’s never happened to me.” Carmen appeared to consider the point, and after several minutes of silence she tapped the table. “It might have, you know. Only you’re too—well, uptight to see it. No, don’t get offended. I guess I mean—what? You’re too defensive. You have walls. That woman passing. She wasn’t like that.” “Oh,” I said quietly. I thought I saw what she meant. I made a grimace. “I guess I hide my light under a bushel, or something.” Carmen laughed and nodded. I sighed. Maybe I was defensive. Being fairly good-looking, as people have told me I was, wasn’t the easiest thing to be in the gay community. I mean, I got hit on, but it never seemed to be the kind of good-natured appreciation I had just witnessed. In fact, quite often it was a bit rude. I remembered one guy whose opening line after approaching me in a bar had been, “Say, you wanna come to my place and f**k?” I still shuddered at the memory. At the time I had been mortified, convinced that I was somehow giving off a sense that that was the sort of come-on I would respond to positively. Thinking on it now, it seemed clear to me that the problem was that I didn’t have the presence, the confidence that woman had had. From there my thoughts continued onto more deleterious thoughts. “I don’t sleep around!” I said, and was startled to realize that I had spoken the thought out loud. Carmen chuckled and I flushed. “Well,” I amended. “If I do, it’s because—” But Carmen smiled gently and put her hand on mine again. “Yes, I know, Marc. You are looking for love. I understand, believe me.” “s*x is the consolation prize,” I murmured unhappily. “And afterwards, I feel—I don’t know, like I never really made contact with the person.” I looked at the two men, then back at Carmen. “Straight men,” I said. “They’re—different.” “How? Better?” Carmen shook her head. “You know about the grass on the other side of the street, right?” I nodded, and sighed. Then I got up. “Washroom,” I said, and went inside the restaurant. As I went past the two men, the one who had glanced at me before did so again, but with minimal curiosity. I found myself stiffening in response to his gaze, and afterwards battled with mortification over this as I continued to the washroom. I was defensive! In the washroom, I thought again about the way that woman had walked, had been. I drew myself up, looking at my reflection, and affected an air of confidence. But, of course, it didn’t look quite right. Don’t look! Don’t judge, I told myself. Just be it! So, I closed my eyes, still standing very erect, and felt what I had seen in the woman. Reassuring myself that it was just being playful, I did my best to maintain this sense of elegance as I left the washroom. I do have long legs, I reminded myself, and am well-proportioned, if a bit slimmer of build that I would have liked. And, I have been told I have a bubble butt—something that up till that moment had always made me slightly uncomfortable. But now, here in this moment, I was fiercely determined not to cringe at any aspect of my assets. I kept the image of that woman in my mind, and deliberately slowed my walk, concentrating on the sensual feeling of my movements, trying for a kind of casual confidence. This time when I passed the two men, I did get a look—from the other man, since he was the one facing me now. I wasn’t sure what his look meant, but at least it wasn’t dismissal. When I sat down across from Carmen, I saw her regarding me with a kind of amused surprise. “What?” I said. “Kind of overdid it, that time, don’t you think?” “Oh.” My face flushed, and I noticed the other man at the table looking at me now, as if he didn’t quite know what he was looking at. It occurred to me that he would have seen my backside after I passed on my return from the washroom, and perhaps my manner of movement had given my assets more—impact. This thought made my heart flutter and my face burn more. I felt confused—and thankful that Carmen was there with me. She generally knew how to deal with any situation. I felt myself sinking into my chair, withdrawing into myself again. I took a sheepish sip of my drink. “I was just trying it out,” I murmured, deliberately not looking over at the men. But part of me was excited: At least I got noticed. The problem was, I wasn’t at that moment certain how much I liked that. When we got up to leave, I saw that the two men had just left too. On the sidewalk, we found ourselves walking half a block behind them. Carmen seemed amused by this. “You want to follow them?” she said. I looked at her, shrugged. “I’m game.” “You’re horny,” she corrected me, and we both laughed. Both men were carrying gym bags, and it turned out they were heading to a local gym. When they were inside, Carmen and I stopped in front of the entrance. “Beer before working out?” I commented, referring to what they had been drinking at the restaurant. Carmen shrugged. At my suggestion, we went inside, to a kind of lobby that on one side had a large picture window looking into a pool area. We lingered, and a staff member came out from behind the counter towards us. “Would you like a tour?” she asked, giving us a salesperson smile. Carmen looked at me, and said, “Sure.” Another staff member took us on the tour, and I was favorably impressed with the number of hot guys. It was a bit like moving through a just slightly erotic dreamland—quite pleasant. On occasion, when the scenery was especially attractive, I tended to linger. We were passing the window that looked onto a weight room—which we were told was for those seriously into bodybuilding, as opposed to the general exercise machine room—and a particular specimen caught my eye. My progress stopped completely and I just plain stared. Time seemed to stop, until I heard Carmen call my name. I turned—and ran straight into somebody, bouncing off his stomach. “Oh!” I said, automatically adding, “Sorry!” It was a shock, but I dismissed it, only getting the briefest of glimpses of the man I had bumped into. The only impression I retained, as I hurried after Carmen, was that he was big and had been wearing the staff uniform. And he had something of a belly. The experience had been a bit of a shock, but not exactly unpleasant; the guy had some padding and I had bounced rather than been buffeted off him. Still, there had been something odd about it. My gaze had been distracted, but why had the guy not seen me and gone round me? I was distracted from such speculations by further sights, and by the time we were returned to the lobby area, I realized that I was totally up for it—joining, I mean. The woman behind the counter looked pleased, and brought out two registration forms, but Carmen didn’t look entirely happy. “Just a minute,” she said to the woman, and took me aside. “What are you doing?” she said challengingly. I looked at her and smiled. I was ready with an answer. “I’m twenty-seven, Carmen,” I said. “In the late twenties, the body starts to need keeping up. I read that somewhere.” She looked unconvinced, so I added, “Look, Carmen! My body is all that I have. I’ve got to keep it in shape.” She looked at me, then over my shoulder at several men who were leaving, accompanied by women. Then she looked back at me. “This gym,” she said quietly. “Didn’t you notice? Marc, it’s not a gay gym!” I stared at her. “So what?” Her face worked for a second in frustration. “Because, if you flirt with straight men—well, they just might beat the s**t out of you!” When I didn’t respond to this, she frowned, staring at me. “You’re in a funny mood.” “Fey?” I said, grinning. It was one of Carmen’s favorite words, meaning courting death or something. She scowled. I pulled my arm from her grasp and drew myself up. “You’re being paranoid. Those things don’t happen, anyway. The world is far more tolerant of gays than it was—” I stopped myself. I had been going to add, “When you were young”—Carmen is ten years older than me. But I realized that would be a bit too bitchy. “You mean they don’t happen to you,” she snapped, adding, “That’s what everyone thinks. Until it does.” I thought of my collision with the staff member, and momentarily felt a trickle of ice go down my back. But it was displaced by a rising defiance, and excitement too. The experience had also put me in touch with my own physicality. I rather liked that—in a way. Plus, that bouncing-off must have been two sided, meaning that part of that fleshy contact must have been the beginnings of my own belly. So, I waved a dismissive hand and said, “Pfff!” “Okay,” she said in a disapproving tone, “you just continue doing what you’re doing. See what happens.” “Yes,” I said defiantly. “I will.” So, I signed up. The woman seemed surprised that Carmen was not signing up. Maybe she thought we were a couple. I could feel her looking at us while I signed the document. It occurred to me that she might have been wondering whether I was gay. When my charge card had been accepted and I received my membership card, she gave me a forced smile and wished me welcome, but it all seemed disingenuous, and the look she gave me as we turned to leave stayed with me. The thing was—it was not a welcoming look.