In Spite of You, page 3
The thought of seeing that monster, that beautiful, vicious, manipulative heartbreaker, made Jeremy feel so many emotions at once that they all blended together into hopelessness. And Jeremy, for all his many faults, did not count hopelessness as one of his vices.
And that was how he ended up at the local gym at seven am getting told by an extremely peppy and muscular man wearing a lanyard how gyms worked.
‘Really depends on what you’re looking for, you know? Like, hectic gains? Trimming down for next summer? Cardio?’
Jeremy blearily looked at this tiny muscle boy who had repeatedly called him ‘dude’ and decided to be honest. ‘I guess you could say I need to look really hot as part of a plan to get revenge on someone.’
‘Yeah, tight, dude. We get a lot of revenge bodies in here, lot of divorced women who want to be hot in the lawyer’s office. That’s cool. I reckon just keep in mind that hotness is subjective. Nothing hotter than someone who is healthy and happy in themselves. In fact, a “revenge body” at heart is a pretty toxic term, but I guess we’re allowed to have fun with fitness, however we find our way to it. Anyway, this is the rowing machine.’
Jeremy really didn’t want this level of idealism this early in the morning. He wanted to be enabled, or maybe put out of his misery and shot.
After signing pages of extremely official-looking documents that would later worry him on a legal level, it was decided he would attempt the upcoming Body Fury class as his first gym moment. The tight ball of muscles, who by this point had introduced himself as Carlo, deposited him in a large room featuring a little raised dais and what looked like all sorts of genuine gym accoutrement – mats and weights and a smell almost undefinable in its low-lying potency.
‘Have fun. Stay safe, dude. Peace out.’
Jeremy remembered the heady days of the night before – now like another life, a utopian era – when he hadn’t yet experienced the horror of waking up early in the morning and putting on shorts voluntarily, when Liz had firmly recommended this gym because it was one of the last independent businesses in the city. It had also been queer friendly for decades and, according to Liz, actively ‘not weird’ about trans people like some of the big chains still were.
But, standing in the group exercise room, Jeremy judged from the water-stained ceilings, the tattered corners of the carpet, the clunking and straining of the elevator as it travelled from the street up to the gym, and the woman currently collecting herself off the floor after being shot across the room by a rogue treadmill that the business’s independent nature perhaps came at a cost. Looking in the full-length mirrors that surrounded the room, Jeremy felt like he fit in perfectly – he too was a messy wreck who had seen better days.
Jeremy was vain enough to know he used to be quite pretty. Painfully tall, with sharp cheekbones, bee-stung lips and a mass of untidy black hair, he’d spent his early twenties living the skinny, effortless, bony twink fantasy. Now, like the gym, years of neglect and the inevitable pull of the grave had turned his body just a bit shabbier. Yet, perversely, his little gym shorts and T-shirt, his stick-like arms and legs, all bones and angles, and his (somewhat wrinkled) baby face made him look like a very tired and sad teen.
But that’s what he was there to fix, Jeremy told himself, trying to imagine how he would look with a new, hot body, muscles overlying the leagues of bone and skin he was currently working with.
The room was filling with exercisers, and Jeremy realised that people were sticking to vague squares laid out on the floor, so he quickly nabbed one towards the back. He smiled politely at a sinewy older woman, who looked fit in that way old people get – like gristle.
She stared back impassively.
‘It’s my first time.’ Jeremy chuckled.
The old lady nodded once and then pointed to the carpeted floor. ‘Stick to your side,’ she ordered.
He nodded and broke eye contact, but he could feel the intensity of her glare on him like hot sun through a window.
There was a smattering of other older people, including an ancient, withered man in an equally old pride T-shirt, but most of the class looked to be women in their late forties. The few other younger people congregated near the front. Everyone seemed to be on friendly terms with each other, exchanging greetings – except for the grandmother next to Jeremy, who scowled broadly. On his other side, a woman wearing a sling and a long-suffering look limped into her square. Jeremy tried once again to make eye contact and smile, then quickly wished he hadn’t when she began shuffling towards him, already somehow mid-monologue.
‘The doctor said it was the worst break he’d ever seen – that the bone shattered like old biscuits thrown off the top of a skyscraper. But what can you do? You still have to live your life, you know?’
‘Ha ha,’ answered Jeremy. ‘Well … look after yourself.’
‘My daughter called me for the first time in three years, and you know what she asked me? She asked me what blood type she is. Kids these days.’
‘I can never remember mine,’ said Jeremy inanely. ‘Ha ha.’
‘Okay, I am here now, sorry I am late. It is me, Davina. I am your teacher this morning: do not cry,’ said a woman striding purposefully across the floor. She had that physical denseness gym instructors had – layers of muscle and stubbornness – a classic no-nonsense nineties-era Ellen haircut and thin lips.
‘Where’s Rod?’ cried out one woman in dismay.
‘How am I meant to know where precious Rod is?’ Davina sneered, dumping her bag and pulling out microphones and other equipment. ‘I am not married to Rod. We do not all live together in one room beneath the gym, sleeping on bunk beds. I get a call saying, “Rod cannot work, can you do it?” and I say yes, because I need money to go on another lesbian cruise this year.’
The disappointment was palpable in the class.
‘Aww, boohoo, you miss your funny Rod. Normally people don’t cry in my classes until at least halfway through. Oh well. Brighten up. We are here to work out, not braid each other’s hair. This is not Davina’s Best Friend Club – this is Body Fury.’
There was a leaden silence as people shuffled around and Davina got her things ready, attaching her microphone to her head. ‘Oh yes, I apparently have to ask: is anyone new here? Anyone new to Body Fury?’
Jeremy tentatively raised his hand.
‘Okay, stick-figure man, if you feel like you are having a heart attack, take a rest. Otherwise, just copy everything I am doing. It’s so easy. I don’t know why people keep having heart attacks in my classes. It’s so embarrassing for them.’
Just as the session started, someone ran in and took up the position directly in front of Jeremy. The class, vaguely subdued in response to finding out Davina was their teacher, seemed to light up like a bunch of children seeing Santa Claus.
‘Sam!’ cried out one girl, throwing her hands up in the air.
‘So sorry I’m late,’ Sam apologised. ‘There was a lost dog and I had to take it home. All ended well though – but wow it sure did lick me a lot.’
All the older mother-types cackled delightedly, and even Davina let something approximate to a smile cross her lips.
Jeremy looked around, trying to find someone who shared the immediate dislike he was feeling, an almost instinctive scowl coming to his face – but even the grumpy woman next to him stared at this Sam like he was some kind of evil-old-lady messiah. Was she crooning slightly?
Sam stood in front of Jeremy and the class began.
As Jeremy struggled to do an adequate number of star jumps, as he sweated through a round of ever-dreaded burpees, as his arms shook with his attempt at a single push-up, his gaze bored into the back of Sam’s head. This man was annoyingly energetic, while Jeremy felt as if he were emerging from a bog.
‘Okay, class, I have been told that you must “woo” now,’ crackled the harsh voice of the instructor over the microphone. ‘So, what are you waiting for? Woo in unison. No? Okay, suit yourselves. Twenty more star jumps.’
Sam, of course, was the lone voice to ‘woo’, segueing from the punishing set of burpees they were doing into the ordered jumps with a joyful yell. He even clapped his hands once to the beat of the rights-free Ariana Grande knock-off Davina’s tinny speaker was blaring.
Jeremy took a tiny amount of joy in the fact that Sam’s clap was incredibly off-beat. He knew it was too soon to say this with certainty, but he was starting to suspect he hated this Sam character. If looks could kill, his would have at least been causing an uncomfortable prickling sensation on the back of Sam’s neck.
Jeremy had never really needed to physically exert himself before and, as the class progressed, his breath became more ragged, sweat flowed into his eyes making them sting, and his mouth tasted like blood.
Sam, in comparison, looked to be thriving. His buttocks in his tight little gym shorts practically quivered with enthusiasm, his tuck jumps and marching soldiers were done not only with energy but with flair. As he kicked into another series of movements (which Jeremy stumbled blindly through, several beats behind the rest of the class) he had the gall to add a little hand flourish. Sam didn’t come across as particularly gay, but with that one hand movement, Jeremy had to wonder if he was.
Jeremy wanted to scream, but he could barely breathe. The class passed through a painful forty-five minutes that somehow simultaneously slowed to each aching second of physical pain and sped by like no time had passed. While all other participants cooled down with gentle stretches, Jeremy lay flat on his back, panting, worried his heart was going to burst out of his chest, his legs and arms boneless and limp. As he looked up from his position on the cheap, upsettingly aromatic carpet, a face passed over him slowly, like an eclipse.
‘Hey, well done. You survived your first Davina class,’ said the face. Jeremy blinked rapidly, trying to focus, and, with something like panic, he realised he was looking at Sam’s face from the front for the first time. The front was one of the more intimate ways you could look at someone, he decided in a daze.
Jeremy noticed his eyes first – they were currently crinkled with humour, surrounded by well-worn laughter lines and thick eyebrows, and were instantly mischievous, green like deep forest pools. They locked with Jeremy’s easily, casually. Sam had waves of brown hair pushed back from his face by a sweatband that showed off his forehead and the strong angles of his face. It wasn’t a classically pretty visage, although some of his features – his eyes – were pretty. But the stubble, the eyebrows like stretched wings, and the proud nose all gave his face a wild, masculine look. It was an interesting face. Jeremy couldn’t quite make an instant judgement – and Jeremy loved instant judgements. Was it handsome or pretty? It was definitely a lot.
‘Umm.’ Jeremy blinked, dazed. ‘I actually died halfway through but she looked at me and my heart started up again on its own out of fear.’
Sam smiled, huge and welcoming and spontaneous, and perhaps it was the endorphins coursing through his body after his first physical activity in decades, or the blood pooling in his feet, or sheer exhaustion, but the sight of that smile hit Jeremy like a wave, a fizzing feeling that swept over him like that one surge that splashes over sunbathers, cold and refreshing and utterly unexpected.
Jeremy’s breath stuttered in surprise. Those eyes and that huge smile transformed Sam’s face from an eclipse into something more like the sun turning towards him.
Then Sam held out a hand, clearly offering to help Jeremy get up.
‘Oh, thanks,’ Jeremy blurted, scissoring himself into a sitting position, and then jumping to his feet unassisted. ‘Sweaty hands,’ he explained.
‘That’s super weird,’ said Sam, gesturing to his own incredibly sweaty face. ‘You should see a doctor.’
It was Jeremy’s turn to smile a little, readying his response, but before he could manage it, the guy in the pride T-shirt had grabbed Sam’s arm, and those eyes and that smile turned away from him.
Jeremy watched them chat for a second before picking up his towel and his water bottle and beginning to limp away. What an asshole, he thought. What a show-off. What a piece of shit.
CHAPTER 4
Jeremy was feeling good, he was feeling pumped, he was feeling motivated. He was busy. Everything hurt and he was tired all the time, but it was in a good way – the way he imagined farmers felt after a day of honest labour. There must be a lot of satisfaction in spending all day pulling turnips off a tree and then coming home and having a shower. He felt similar, except instead of picking piles of beets he was jumping around to bad Britney Spears covers. His knees made weird grinding noises every time he stood up, and he had what he assumed was a sweat rash on a weird part of his torso, but he kind of enjoyed the pain as it signified success and motivation and revenge.
‘All articles need to be done by five today,’ Jeremy announced in the office. ‘I have to run to the gym after work.’
‘Jeremy, you know that article I’m writing about taking mushrooms and watching the entire classic teen dance franchise “Step Up”?’ said Sarah Jessica, bustling over to him as he picked up his gym bag.
‘Reluctantly, yes.’
‘Will PopBuzz reimburse me for the mushrooms?’
‘Will PopBuzz buy you drugs?’ asked Jeremy slowly. ‘That’s a question for management.’
‘Okay!’ she said happily.
A message pinged on his phone as he exited the building.
Who keeps having long showers at night and using all the hot water? wrote one of his housemates in the group chat.
That’s me, responded Jeremy proudly. I am going to the gym.
At the gym, he was getting less clumsy at classes – starting to understand when to pivot left, when to segue seamlessly from tuck jump into fast Snoopy feet, and even found himself, swept up in the sweat and endorphins, clapping and wooing with the rest of the class.
He hadn’t spoken to Sam again, although he always got a hearty smile, perhaps a hello and a big wave from him when he inevitably ran in late. Jeremy usually left immediately when the class was done, making sure not to get caught up in socialising. He also didn’t want to get changed at the gym; the first time he’d tried, he’d walked into the change rooms right as Sam was pulling off his shirt, giving Jeremy a panoramic tracking shot that started at the top of his gym shorts, following the trail of hair that went up his stomach before blooming into ringlets on his chest, still sparkling with sweat.
On a juxtapositional level, Jeremy, who didn’t have much in the way of body hair and tended to sleep only with extremely smooth, waxed and buffed men, was surprised at how interested he was in this torso: the light brown body hair accentuated the swell of Sam’s not insignificant pecs, swirled around each nipple like the trail of a finger, and plunged down over his tanned stomach like a welcome mat.
Jeremy had stopped, presented with a whole lot of Sam he hadn’t expected to see, and while Sam was struggling to pull the shirt over his head, he quickly turned around and walked away. He wasn’t being prudish, he insisted to himself: it was just that at the same time there’d been a fully naked old guy sitting in the corner, seemingly having stripped off, sat down and given up on life.
Not only had Jeremy settled into the routine of Body Fury over the past month: he was still buzzing with his whole ‘becoming a better person’ scam. He was taking a lot of classes – he was currently juggling a pasta-making class with an introduction-to-speaking-French lesson, and had a season pass to the local arthouse cinema, where he’d already watched one four-hour-long subtitled Swedish drama about an old, cold man who was trying to make a chair. It didn’t really matter that he hadn’t understood the film at all, his French was unintelligible and his pasta texturally reminiscent of that glue you got in primary school – it all felt like progress, like momentum, like change.
‘Jimmapell le new improved Jeremy,’ he muttered to himself on the way to the gym again, leaving the office with his gear slung over his shoulder. Today he had sent an email to Gina asking for a meeting to discuss his ‘future’. His palms had literally sweated when he sent it off, but he felt like he was on a roll. No more quietly doing all the work – it was time he was acknowledged for it.
‘Bonjour … hotness.’
Jeremy’s scam had even manifested in his own house – last weekend he’d vacuumed his room (including under the bed), changed his sheets and bought several delicious-smelling candles. He’d spent the weekend reading Moby Dick and cleaning, rather than his usual routine of watching Netflix and making a mess. He’d washed his clothes and even ironed some of his pants, although not particularly well.
I don’t like this, Liz had complained in the group chat. We never get to see you any more and when we do you apparently ‘can’t drink too much’ because you have early-morning French classes or whatever. I’m not saying you have to remain a hot mess forever, but I do kind of rely on it.
Anna, who was renowned for having thousands of hobbies and activities herself, was taking the opposite stance, sending him invites to amateur choirs and LARPing groups and pottery-making classes. It was hard to explain to her that he was trying to make himself into an objectively better person and not a massive nerd.
Jeremy set himself up in his usual Body Fury spot, noticing again with irritation how everyone left Sam’s square open, waiting for him. He considered taking it himself but was too scared of being noticed by Davina. In the three weeks since he’d started going to the gym, to everyone’s overt disappointment she still ruled the class with an iron fist and a perpetually depressed face, the famous Rod having yet to return.
‘Well, another week has passed,’ Davina said with a sigh into the microphone, ‘and here we are again, like little hamsters on a wheel, thinking we are going somewhere because we are running so fast. Pathetic, pathetic and sad. Okay, let’s get started.’
After class, Jeremy took a deep breath and strode towards the change rooms. Despite his previous commitment to never set foot in the moist, dingy, toe-jam-smelling room again, he had to shower and change here if he wanted to make it to his Italian cooking class – no wait, tonight was his French class, tomorrow was Italian. Now that he could make pasta by hand (he couldn’t), he figured he had to learn what to put on it.
