I wanted it. I knew I wanted it, and he knew I wanted it. I just couldn't take that step over that threshold—and I kept fooling myself about wanting it.
He owned the exercise facility with another guy. Jake and Ted. I knew they were a couple. I knew that before I signed up for a membership. Jake was the muscle part, the trainer; Ted, a good ten years younger than Jake and maybe three or four years older than I am, was the bookkeeper and the one who saw to it that the gym was kept clean.
Gay guys went to that gym. I knew that before I signed up for a membership. Still, I went there with a little sense of a thrill. I was too frightened to go over that threshold myself, but, still, I could have my thoughts and my fantasies. They didn't hurt anything. I didn't really want to even see them "doing it," I told myself. I just got a little arousal off of watching the guys work out in the gym and knowing that they probably then went off and did it. I could take care of myself, at home, after that little arousal at the gym, on my own bed. No strings, no risks, no decisive changes in life.
There were two types of guys going to Jake and Ted's gym. Young guys, like me, going there to get cut and keep themselves cut and maybe cruising each other a bit—and/or, also like me, fantasizing about what could be if we'd take the chance. These guys worked out hard. And then there was a group of older guys who sort of worked at working out but hovered around the periphery of the hardcore training, sniffing around the younger guys, looking for a hookup. All of these guys were in pretty good shape too. Jake didn't allow any slouches in his place.
I thought the older guys standing around and ogling would be too much for me, would prompt me to stop playing this little game I was into of running up to the edge of the unspeakable and then running back to safety. But after the first night, I found that a little arousing too. I found I liked to be watched and assessed while I was working out.
As I got more comfortable with the scene at Jake and Ted's, the older guys got more comfortable—and forward—with me too. It wasn't more than three weeks before one or two of started asking me if I'd like to come over to their place sometime and watch a game on the television. They asked this after a conversation where they sniffed out what sports and teams I was into, which, amazingly enough, were always the sports and teams they liked as well.
As I got in better and better shape over the weeks, Jake started showing more interest in me to. He started giving me pointers on getting the most, the best definition, out of the equipment. And he increasingly was hands on, keeping in touch with me as he spotted me in an exercise or showed me the proper way to use the equipment.
Jake had to be pushing forty, but it didn't seem to be pushing back too hard. He'd been an actor in a daytime television soap and then had done commercials for a national brand of exercise equipment. The strength of his business was tied up in how well known he was as a exercise guru and how well his body looked—that and, with most of his current clientele, because he was openly gay.
I don't think I ever admitted to myself that this was why I picked out his gym from all the others in town. I didn't even admit to myself that I liked my body the way it was before I started the gym classes; I hadn't really felt the need for better definition, tighter abs, and bulging chest muscles and biceps. That's pretty much what I was getting though. That and the little thrill of standing on the threshold of something and not letting myself topple over.
The not toppling over part got harder, though. The older guys sniffing around the edges of the younger guys didn't stop trying to relate to me, and then Jake was showing direct interest too.
It started with him suggesting that he could give me extra help on the machines in greater demand after hours if I wanted to stay over—which I said I couldn't. Then he tried the "come over sometime and watch the game on television" routine, which I politely turned away as well.
He moved on to getting more direct than that. A night when the crowd was sparse and I was working over in the corner, bench-pressing weights, he came over to spot me. While I had pretty much my limit of weights over my head with one of his hand hovered under the bar in case I faltered, he put the other hand on my basket and copped a good feel.
"Jake! Whatcha doin? Stop that." I was in shock even though I'd thought about this very action for weeks.
"Relax, Stud. I know you want this."
"Shit no, Jake. What makes you think that? Stoppit." He hadn't stopped it; his hand was still on my basket. And I was still on my back on the bench. I did set the barbell down into the stand, but I just kept my hands wrapped around it. Jake lowered his spotting hand to palm my belly and his other hand went down to the hem of my shorts and was dipping under that.
"I know what you come in here for. I see you watchin'. I see the effect it has on you when others are watchin' you. Stop playing your game. You want it."
"Noooo," I said. it was almost a whimper. "I come here to work out. Stop that." The fingers of his hand had reached the edge of my jock cup under my shorts.
