Stupid Whiteboys at the Gym
and Scream 6 making it all better
Well, I didn’t think I’d be right back with you after yesterday’s deluge, but I was finally able to go to the gym for the hardcore one-hour training sessions that are my lifeblood, now that I’m through my COVID recovery period (followed immediately by epic menstruation) that seemed to last forever. For a bit there, being in my body? Not fun. But it got fun again yesterday because I am never happier than when I’m rowing. (As a sidenote, my trainer who’s been continuing his own body-building practices now has the shoulders of an actual god, and that’s fun too. When he laments about a personal trial and ends with a self-cheering, “But I look good, I look better than ever,” it takes a bit of restraint on my part not to ask, “How emphatically am I allowed to agree with you? Like…what do you want me to say?” I usually go with, “Yes you do,” and I haven’t been accused of harrassment so far.)
My gym is 3 floors: locker rooms + sauna + hot tub + pool on the basement floor, entrance/exit/cardio/personal training section on the second floor, all the machines that make you feel like you’re prepping for world domination on the third floor. The elevator was out of service yesterday, which meant that after my session I had to use the stairs to go up to the Atlas-making machines. No big deal, did set after set of ab-work to make up for lost time and was in a decidedly good mood by the time I finished: I’m back, bitches, etc.
So I’m going down the stairs and I feel this finger on my shoulder and I turn around and it’s this white dude, who stands out because the number of white dudes at my gym are relatively few. “Don’t touch me,” I say to him.
“What?” he says defensively. “I saw the elevator was broken.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to touch me,” I say. “Don’t treat disabled people any differently than you would treat anyone else.”
“I was JUST trying to HELP,” he says. (Yes, can’t you tell that’s the case.)
“Then listen to me, the disabled person you’re trying to help,” I say.
After this interaction I’m shaking, but it’s nothing that 25 minutes of hard cardio and Real McCoy doing “Come and Get You’re Love” can’t fix. As I’m getting up to leave, I see him, and he avoids my eyes until suddenly he doesm’t, at which point I say, “So next time you want to help someone, ask them what they need instead of assuming.”
“Whatever!” he says. “Have a great day.”
“It’s harder for me to have a great day after what you did.”
“Whatever!” he says, showing me how deep that fucking empathy goes. “Whatever!”
Of course, I’m the one getting stares throughout this interaction because on the West Coast, the shit-starter is always, no matter what, the one without the chill. I no longer abide this cultural bigotry; chill ain’t a part of New Orleans and it’s never been. I don’t see serenity when I look at a room full of dedicated chill-people, I see half-deadness. Fire is life.
I call Ian and stand outside of the gym telling him how it all ended, and he advises me, next time, to emphasize the fact that he’s a man touching a woman without consent, make it full theater so that everybody knows who the villian is in this scenerio. As I’m talking, people are staring at me, “WHICH IS VERY RUDE,” I say to Ian on the phone. “Tell them that,” he says.
“They’re elderly,” I say, “so I’m not supposed to.”
“You’re worried about propriety now? Don’t.”
Don’t get me wrong, Ian and I experience endless moments of laughter and brightness and related states together, but the moments I feel truly in love with my life partner are when we become this New Yorker/New Orleanian duo of “We don’t do your chill, motherfuckers.” The main social weapon of San Francisco is a mass glare, and the power of not giving a fuck when They’re hurling it in your direction is immense. Yes, I get it, you’re shunning me. But I was on the outside to begin with. And I don’t even want in anymore.
After all this, I saw Scream 6, which cracked open my soul. I can’t believe how badly I needed that movie. I looked away at a lot of the gore, but it is everything that makes the Scream francheise great, and because I hadn’t seen an installment since the second one premiered at the theater, I had forgotten. High on the movie itself, the brilliance of the actors, the unpredictible hilarity, the absolute shock of the killer reveal, the top-of-the-roller-coaster fear throughout, I was also high on the suddenly-vivid memory of seeing the first Scream, and never having experienced anything like it: terrifying, hilarious, sexy, and unrelentingly meta, all at the same time? What?! How?!
Now it’s funnier, and more intelligent, and incomprably hotter, and way scarier. With a banger of a soundtrack. As I was leaving, which I only did after the last of the credits, the guys cleaning the theater asked if it was everything I’d expected. I let out a primal roar of ecstasy followed by a highly undignified, “IT WAS SO MUCH BETTER THAN I EXPECTED!”
I’ll end this here. Trust that I can go on about Scream 6.
