LOVE AND HATE AND NEW YORK SPORTS CLUB
I have decided that when August comes, and my manuscript is completed, and all else is well with the world, I will return to the gym. Oh, sure, I know you probably find my unique combination of Adrien Brody biceps, Alec Baldwin abs, and Anna Nicole thighs to be sexy and attractive, but, well… maybe I just have body-image issues.

For the past few years, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with New York Sports Club. Sometimes, I think I can’t live without my gym, and that we’ll be together forever. It whispers softly in my ear how impressed it is with the weight I’m lifting… it smiles approvingly as I add another mile to my run on the treadmill… and it always makes sure to compliment my calves.

But at other times, it turns into an evil bitch, shrieking that I’ll never have washboard abs, my arms will always be scrawny, and I’m a big girlie girl because I’m terrified of free weights. Although even when it’s an evil bitch, it compliments my calves.

I was a latecomer to gym membership, almost f— f— thirty-five years old before a friend convinced me to join NYSC. Even then, it took a few more years before I started a regular routine. What it took, really, was a sudden divorce, and the realization that I was on the market again for the first time in a decade, because gay dating in Manhattan is a competitive sport.

So I pumped and ran and squatted and cross-trained, and every now and then I’d slack off a bit. And then I’d start over again. I wasn’t turning into Schwarzenegger, but that was never my goal. My goal was to not turn into… whatever I’m turning into.

My last great love affair with NYSC was last fall, when the then-boyfriend and I worked out together on a fairly regular basis. We were both preparing for summer preening on the beaches of Fire Island. But when that relationship ended as suddenly as it had started, fizzling out immediately and inexplicably, so did my relationship with the gym.

But that was then.

Time moves on. Wounds heal. Now I’m in a new relationship… a stable relationship. And now, just as I let romance back into my heart, it’s time for me to let New York Sports Club back into my heart, too.

But it better continue to compliment my calves, or there will be hell to pay.