One day, my boyfriend Troy was off somewhere and I was craving late-night munchies, so I headed over to Norms. Norms are those classic California diners you may have seen that are famous for their neon signs, large glass windows, and the slogan, "We never close."
I think Norms is mentioned in a Tom Waits song about burgers and fries and some kind of pie ... a la mode. The food is nothing special, but it is cheap and edible (and they are always open).
No matter what time you go, Norms is always busy. Lots of people get hungry at weird times and they know that they can always get a plate full of food for a few bucks at Norms.
So, I was in Norms waiting for my name to be called and I noticed this contest where you put your name in a box for a chance to win a free gym membership. I always wanted to put some muscles on my skinny arms, so I dropped my name in the box and, a few days later, I got a phone call telling me that I had won a three-month trial membership including a private session with a personal trainer.
I later found out that these aren't really contests—everyone who puts a phone number in the box gets called. The gym is just fishing for customers and hoping that some people who try the trial membership will sign up for a real membership for $29.95 a month.
Once they get that monthly charge on your credit card, you forget about it and stop going to the club. So, you end up paying $29.95 a month for nothing. You hardly notice the small charge, but they appreciate hundreds of people paying $29.95 every month.
Anyway, I didn't know any of this when they called me and I thought I had won a real drawing.
Even better, I could walk to the club from the grove house, which made it super convenient. About an hour after the phone call, I headed on over in some bright blue lycra shorts and a loose t-shirt. I told the lady at the front desk that I won the contest. She gave me a smile and told me that Eric would give me a tour.
I had to admit that it was a pretty nice place. Outside, there is an Olympic pool and a bunch of really nice tennis courts. Inside, there is a cardio room with all sorts of stationary bikes, treadmills, rowing machines, and stair climbers.
The weight room has old-school weights and dozens of space-age machines for working on pretty much every muscle in your body, even some muscles I didn't know I had.
The machines are numbered so that you can go through the same workout every time, starting with machine 1, then 2, and so on.
There are also a dozen racquetball courts and some private rooms for aerobics, yoga, and Zumba (whatever that is). There are rooms for haircuts and massages, too.
The locker rooms are clean (at least the ladies' room is), with private showers. (Why is it that women always have private showers? Are we not supposed to see what normal female bodies look like?)
It's a great club and I might have signed up, but it turned out that it was $150 a month, instead of the $29.95 I was expecting.
I'm thinking the reason the price is so high is that they want to keep out people like me. This way, the lawyers, doctors, and bankers can network with each other without wasting their time talking to somebody who is a nobody.
After the tour, Eric brought me over to Tammy, who was going to be my personal trainer for an hour. The first thing I noticed is that, for a girl, Tammy was totally buff.
She was wearing a black tank top that showed off her arms real well. She didn't have gross, bulging muscles like those guys who work out all the time, but they weren't soft and mushy like most girls' arms (including mine). They were lean and firm and expanded a little bit every time she moved her arms.
Her tits must have been in an industrial sports bra because there was absolutely no wiggle or jiggle when she moved.
The other thing I noticed was that she had a nice shelf for a white girl.
There's this guy Jerry who lives up in Eagle Village and he taught me all about shelves. He used to coach a girls' track team in the San Fernando Valley that went 30-something years without ever losing a track meet.
He said his secret was scouting. He would go to soccer games, basketball games, even city parks, looking for girls who were built for running. One thing he looked for was long achilles tendons. Another was a shelf, which is when a skinny girl's butt sticks out behind her like a shelf you could put a cup of coffee on.
Jerry would sometimes get in a bit of trouble wandering around looking at little girls' butts like he was some kind of pervert. But he was a smooth talker and he had a pocketful of cards that said Falcon Track Club, so he never got arrested or anything and he found a bunch of girls that he turned into track champions.
He even had three or four girls go to the Olympics. But then one of them admitted to taking steroids and Jerry had to quit coaching even though he swore he knew nothing about it. Now, he hangs around Eagle Village yakking about shelf-butts and his glory days.
I don't have a shelf. I barely have a butt, almost like I'm Asian—which I'm not. You mostly find big shelves on black girls but, like I said, Tammy is white and she had a real nice shelf.
I'm happy with my butt the way it is, but I would love to have arms like Tammy. I told her this and she smiled and took me to the weight room.
The first machine she showed me was one where you lie on your back and lift this bar with your arms. Tammy set the weight at 40 pounds and did 10 reps to show me the right form. I couldn't even budge the bar, so we set it at 20 pounds and I was able to do 7 reps while Tammy kept her hands on my thighs. I thought she was trying to keep me from lifting my legs, but I soon started wondering.
For the next machine, you spread your arms and bring two cables together that are carrying weights. This time Tammy stood behind me and put her hands on my chest, supposedly to keep me from using my back instead of my arms to move the weights. Her fingers were really close to my tits and I wondered if she did that on purpose.
Machine after machine, she kept touching me—my back, my shoulders, my tummy, my butt. Most of the time, her fingers were still, but sometimes she would move her fingers around in a light massage. She kept saying, "How does that feel?" and I wasn't sure if she was talking about the weights or her fingers.
I didn't answer and she must have interpreted that as, "I love it!" because she kept getting bolder and bolder.
We got to this one machine where you sit in a chair with cushions that you can either put on the inside or outside of your legs. When the cushions are on the outside, you start with your legs together and spread them, pushing against the cushions. When the cushions are inside your legs, you start with your legs spread and close your legs.
I was having trouble with the one where you are supposed to spread your legs, probably because Tammy set the weight too high. Instead of adjusting the weight, she put her hands between my legs to help me spread them. I swear to god, she rubbed my mound lightly while she spread my legs open and closed, open and closed.
Then she said, "This is a great exercise! Your boyfriend will love it."
At first, I didn't know why she was talking about my boyfriend while she was "accidentally" rubbing my pussy.
Then I figured it out. She was hoping I would say that I don't like boys, and then she and I could take it from there.
It felt nice having my pussy touched, but I wasn't up for anything more than that, so I said, "I'm tired. I need to jump in the pool."
I hopped out of the chair, thanked Tammy, and headed for the locker room to change into my bathing suit. I was real happy she didn't follow me into the locker room.
