can i get a spot

So I'm at lunch with some law school friends a few days ago. In between discussing theories about professors sleeping with students and just generally speaking venomously about every single person in the law school, the subject of my voluminous eating arose.

Specifically, my penchant for the double-meat footlong meatball sandwich from Subway. 16 meatballs. It truly is a work of sandwich art. On a few ocassions, the person taking my order has had to get managerial approval to create this behemoth. As I said, the conversation turned towards the disturbing regularity with which I eat said sandwiches, a term which really doesn't do justice to an entree roughly the size of an elephant femur.

That's when the female to my right asked a truly humbling question:

"How can you eat like that? Do you work out?"

Let's backtrack for a moment. Yes, I do work out. Quite regularly. I have training splits and supplements and the whole kaboodle. Now, I don't have any lofty goals of being the world's first hairy underwear model or anything like that, but when one works out with such frequency, one would at least like that fact to be somewhat apparent. So this question was humbling because apparently, it is not apparent.

Now of course we all know from television that asking a guy if he works out is just a girl's way of saying, "you should come to my house and kiss me deeply and often." But that wasn't really the tone that she used to ask the question. It was the more the tone someone might use to ask something like, "do you know the exchange rate between francs and rubles?" A question that is posed despite the asker having full expection of a negative response.

So I respond meekly: "Yeah." Then it got more humbling to the point of being demoralizing.

The female to my left replies: "You do?!"

So I respond more meekly: "Yeah."

A puzzled look comes across the female's face. The hits just keep on comin'.

"Like... how often?"

". . . Apparently not often enough."

As I said, it's humbling enough to have it not readily obvious that I work out. But when it seems that the fruits of my labor are so glaringly not-obvious that my claims to working out promote a communal sense of shock and disbelief... well, maybe it's time to try yoga.

And while we're on the subject of gyms, something weird is going on at the gym that I (allegedly do not) go to.

Here in L-town, we've had a series of cold spells, sometimes hitting the low 20's. Despite this persistent cold weather, people at my gym have decided to wear less clothing. Billy* wears his wife-beaters, and all the skinny blonde girls have decided to wear sports bras and... well I'm not sure what to call the garments they use (in a vein attempt) to cover their nether-regions because to call them shorts would tarnish the classy reputation of shorts the world over. All this despite the fact that it's icy death outside.

I guess, that as a male, I'm supposed to be impressed by nearly-naked and in-shape females.

I suppose it's an issue of context. I don't care how beautiful you are, this isn't the swim wear competition. You're perspiring and covered in bacteria. Oh yeah, I'm real impressed by your cleavage, back tattoo, and make-up job, so now how 'bout you Lysol that incline bench you just bathed in your sweaty, germ-infested self? Why you don't go strut for the Pike pledges high-fiving each other by the bench press? I'm sure they'd love to spread their tail plumage for you.

Ugh.

*Billy is a derogatory term for any male trying so hard to impress people that he just comes across looking stupid.