"If you're looking for rock hard, welcome to the quarry," read the poster. I wasn't, but here I stood on the weight training side of the gym with diminuitively terrifying Kim, ready for induction part two.
Having confidently stated that I knew what I was doing when it came to cardio machines - run, cycle, row... how hard can it be? - she suggested that designing a weight-training regime would be in my best interests.
At induction #1 I'd had to pick a target date, and went for my birthday as suitably far away (and I didn't specify which year). "I can whip my top off at my party," I told her with a nervous, uncomfortable chuckle. "You can, and you'll look good!" Kim responded, showing how incorrect two people can be within one conversation.
She went on to tell me I could "afford to gain some muscle" on my arms and chest, so I was now sitting on some kind of torture machine while Kim punished me, repeatedly, for unknown crimes.
I had to grab these handles and pull them back, keeping my elbows down, until I felt it in my shoulders. Did 30lbs sound about right, she asked.
Was this a trick question? Was she quietly judging my inadequacies? What's the etiquette? Would I sound more masculine asking for a heavier weight, only to be humiliated when I couldn't lift it and have to ask for it to be lightened?
And so it went while I was introduced to contraption after contraption, each designed to hurt me in a different way. "Can you feel it?" was Kim's constant question. Yes, yes I can.
Even the sanctuary of the spa, where my captor released me after 45 minutes, was shattered by having hundreds of people in it. Still, I asserted my personal space by floating naked on my back in a star shape in the hot tub, and people quickly left me alone.
"Using this spa under the influence of drugs or alcohol can have serious consequences," I read on the sign as I drifted. Serious party consequences, maybe, but I'm learning quickly it's not that kind of club.
