Change or die

I’d been away for three weeks and when I came back the lockers had been moved. I was directed to a space on the gym floor between the drinking fountain and the rowing machines. On the rowing machine nearest to the lockers was a woman with the face of Gina Lollobrigida and the body of Silvia Saint. She was rowing slowly, almost voluptuously. I’d seen her — you couldn’t really miss her — several times before, working out with her strongman husband. She is a sort of cartoon version of my teenage fantasy of the perfectly proportioned woman. It’s a ludicrous fantasy which has unfortunately lost little of its power over me and the sight of this woman thoroughly intimidates me. As well as their sculpted bodies and their ‘his ’n’ hers’ red-tasselled boxing boots, the thing that stood out about her and her strongman husband was their togetherness.

The repositioning of the lockers had thrown me into such mental disarray that instead of pretending not to notice her, as I would normally, I found myself openly feasting my eyes on this woman, not caring whether this goddess of the chromium dumb-bells found the attention of an aged reptile flattering or not.