When I turned forty, I turned bitter-angry. The gym is where I unleashed my frustrations into workouts. Also I pushed myself with angry taunts about how fat and old I was getting. If I were to have any hope of capturing a prince handsome, I had to cling onto attractive youthfulness. Flubbery sprouted so easily in my triceps and that belly if I didn't vigorously deny my body any fat and punished any fat that snuck into my body anyway with hard spinning, heavy weights, and no mercy.
The job didn't help either. The cavernous halls housed a riffraff of mostly Asian and Indian boys that were getting increasingly pressed together in the open office layout by desks that shrunk every year by a few square inches. In between the crowded, standing, chattering, noisy throng of people like on a busy train platform where bean bags, their personal belongings, and random crap like lego boxes and dinosaur blowup dolls. The management wasn't much better - still boys but vile, reactionary, and old as well. I was pressed in between my team of boys giving me shit for making them work hard and punishing senior management forcing unrealistic, random deadlines on us. They'd never let me rise into their ranks. They'd never fire me to keep the diversity quota. Pure, fucking, and utter frustration!
At the end of the day, when I could escape that prison, I'd stand in the employee parking lot. My car was boxed in by the line of cars waiting to leave the parking lot but couldn't because there was a traffic jam out there. The gridlocks spread all the way through the Bay and up to SF. There was no getting anywhere but being stuck in this fucked up overpriced suburban hell with nothing to do.
Well, the exception is the gym. I went there seven days a week. When you walk in, the lobby is paneled with walnut wood. The staff wear white sneakers and white clothing that immediately tells you that they are here to serve you. Their clothing sets them apart as a different class, very fancy, but your servants with those polo shirts and the gold logo. Their posture is always erect, always their hands held ready in some way to wave you to a direction or hand you something. They were always silent, held their faces with a placid expression, looking straight ahead but internally numb. Their eyes and the slight shiver in the tone of their voice spoke of a constant fear of a member complaining to management about them.
"Welcome, Ms. Donovan! It is a pleasure to see you," said Lissie. She had model looks and stage quality make-up. Every line of make-up was applied perfectly where it needed to be sharp and blended where it needed to be blended. Her nose and nearby cheek skin had copious freckles that would have made the average person ugly, but hers were over the top and had an artistic quality to them that made them a museum piece to marvel at. It's those characteristics that photographers cherish for covershots.
"Welcome, Mr. Ranganathan. I'll have your usual orange juice with three drops of pomegranate and a straw brought to you right at the locker room exit," said Lissie to the next person behind me. She pronounced his last name with such perfect, precision, and intonation as if a voice couch was teaching her all the exotic foreign names. The first time she welcomed me, my heart made jumps because her voice was so upbeat and happy. I thought that finally someone recognized me in the anonymity of this place. But when she welcomed the person behind me with the exact same happy, warm tonality, I realized that she simply had a great voice coach. Each greeting was probably an audition for her to get whisked away by who walked into the gym... discovered as a movie star? Found worthy to be arm candy on a yacht?
The atmosphere in the gym is very shy and distant. The moment you walk into a weight area, all eyes turn on the newcomer. They try to look discreetly, but the eyes are latched onto the newcomer from behind the cable tower, from under a chest press, and from a stretch. The eyes gap like the open mouths of koi fish at a Japanese garden begging for a crumb of bread. These eyes are begging for an escape: Please, take us away from this exercise. We have to do it, but we are bored. It's an effort. Have mercy!
That's my crappy life! But one day, I found something that would free me from it for just a moment. Follow me to the pool area. I always wear a two piece with a white bottom that barely comes between my cheeks and shows my butt. There are usually only boys. They are not boys by age. They don't allow anyone under eighteen into the exclusive club. They are tech workers in their mid to late twenties that are immature and clueless. And me showing off my body torments them. They are too shy to talk to me. They would have to be men to do that. But being the rare female, I must drive them nuts. My abs have a six pack. My legs are sculpted. Everything is sculpted and trim from brutal workouts every day. Yet, there is also a hardness. When you are a young woman, you don't have to work out to have a pretty and slim body. When you are old, you can maintain that figure only with hard workouts, but they also leave your body contours hard - not sweet, sexy, and lustrous.
The pool has six lanes, neatly divided by the steel cables with blue and white plastic rings. The big, continuous windows on the wall and ceiling allow plenty of California sun in to paint everything with a golden feel. A single palm tree planter is supposed to evoke the feeling of a beach vacation, but is mostly lost in the sterile hyper clean environment that the lifeguard scrubs every hour to keep a surreal pristine feel. All the lanes are taken by a pairing of one, two, or three swimmers. Two people means splitting the lane. Each person takes one side and stays there. Three people means swimming in a circle out on the right and back on the left.
I slipped into a lane with a tall, dark haired man. He seemed like an average swimmer churning through laps with passable form. He used a catch up style for his freestyle. That means, he'd leave a hand in front, while they other one pulled, and only when the pulling hand returned to the front, he'd pull with the resting hand. A decade or so, a swimmer had figured out that the long and lean shape, like a hull carved to cut through the water, was more efficient and faster than pulling non-stop. That's exactly what I had been looking for.
I bent a little forward and splashed water over my titties. Yep, you heard that right! I told you how everyone stares at you when you enter. And I love tormenting those guys. So I love drawing their eyes to my breasts by innocently pretending to sprinkle myself with water to acclimate myself to the temperature. Then I slip down to the neck into the water. My boobs get a lift from the fat tissue and silicone filling to float up a bit. And I wait, like a panther in hiding for the gazelle.
The man was unaware that I entered his lane. His stroke was steady. His leading hand cut the still water. The pulling hand would dive in next to it so that they could switch places. With even and rhythmic pulls, there was always one hand leading in front like a happy duckling leading the way. Right as he thought, he was getting to the wall, he reached a little farther with the right hand. Boom, his fingers landed square on my left boob. With quick reflexes of shock, his hand flicked back. I could barely feel the grace. The tactile sense of swimming makes one very receptive. Yet, I held onto the imprint of his fingerprints on my boob.
