Gym Rat

Last night I slept at the gym. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Wow, she is so cool, I want to be her friend.” 

Don’t we all need that one pal whose life decisions make us feel comparatively sane? In Seinfeld, Jerry’s quirkiness pales in comparison to Kramer’s antics. We all forget that Jerry once robbed an elderly woman of a loaf of marbled rye on a dark block of New York City because we’re too busy recalling that time Kramer tried to free a mental patient from the hospital whom he believed was being held captive for being a “pigman” (half man half pig). 

Perhaps you recently made the mistake of buying an expensive ottoman that you really can’t afford. Yet, as you prop your feet upon that new comfy cushion and push the guilt of your impulsive nature into a closed off corridor in your mind, at least you can close your eyes and remind yourself you’re not sleeping at the gym like your friend.  

We all have our own coping mechanisms that give us the illusion of our sanity; mine happens to be working out and drinking socially. Working out keeps me in my right mind, and I do it almost every day. Working out regularly also takes a considerable amount of discipline, and I happen to be a firm believer in blowing off some steam every now and then in order to prevent my psyche from blowing up into tattered, exhausted fragments. 

It’s simply unfortunate when a fun night out with the party homies and a morning workout with the gym homies present themself aligned as an apocalyptic eclipse. That’s when my endeavors toward sanity turn… a little insane. 

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I’m laying on the floor of my friend Maddie’s city apartment after a night of dancing and frolicking around Whiskey Row. The soft murmurs of my friends’ conversation fade to the background as my eyes close from the weight of seven shots of tequila coursing through my veins. It’s 3:00 in the morning, and the morning workout class I’d signed up for the day before starts in T-minus six hours. 

About eight hours earlier, my sober self planned to sleep at Maddie’s and then get a ride back with our friend Brandon in the morning. I packed gym clothes so I could be dropped off at the gym in time to make class. 

“Hey,” Brandon nudged me. “Don’t fall asleep, I’m gonna drive us back now. I didn’t drink and would rather sleep in my own bed.”

“Okie doke,” I said, eyes still closed. 

Once we piled into his Jeep and hit the highway, I began to take stock of my current situation; if Brandon dropped me off at home I’d have to wake up in four hours and bike up a hill to get to the gym. That hill. That stupid hill. I hated biking up that hill. 

The path forward became clear. 

“Hang a left here,” I said at the next stop light.

“Huh? You live the other way,” he looked at me like I was drunk. 

“Not tonight,” I slurred. 

We pulled into an empty shopping center parking lot.

“What’re we doing here?” Brandon asked.

“I’m gonna sleep in that gym” I pointed at its darkened windows. 

“Okayyyy… why?”

I explained the hill I’d have to bike up if I slept at home. “I must take the road less traveled.”

“You’re crazy,” Brandon said, as I got out of the car. He saluted.

“Thank you, chef.” I returned his salute. 

Looking back, Brandon took this development of the night in stride. I knew him from the restaurant we worked at. He was a bartender, so I suppose he was used to dealing with drunks. 

As Brandon drove off to sleep in a real house and a real bed, I entered my newfound bedroom. I worked at the gym, and knew my way through the front door. 

I’ve decided this will all be a great bit to tell the owner of the gym in about 20 years. I imagine it’ll be like when my mom was cleaning under the bed in my childhood room and found a bottle of cheap vodka I’d stashed down there during high school. She sent me a picture of the pinkish-yellow hued bottle and texted “what’s this?” I simply shuddered at the memory of downing that vile elixir just to see it make a reappearance in a frat house toilet hours later and replied, “that’s vodka, mom.” I was living in Colorado and was 23 years old, what was she going to do, ground me?  There was a sense of power in feeling comfortable telling the truth, unlike when I got caught smoking a joint in the house when I was 17 and only survived to tell the tale because I managed to convince my parents it was “just a cigarette.” 

The gym owner’s a cool cat; I suspect he’s hardly unbeknownst to his own fair share of shenanigans and tomfoolery. However, I also respect that he may not clasp his hands together and reply, “Oh boy! How grand!” if I were to tell him on Monday that I crashed at the gym Friday night for drunken convenience rather than to escape a desperate emergency. Nah, absolutely not. I’ll tell him once I can defend myself with adequate evidence by saying, “but see, I turned out alright!” without feeling full of shit. Gimme 20 years. 

I stepped inside and the door softly shut behind me. Even through my drunken haze, I felt a bit odd and out of place. 

The space was dimly lit; I spun and let my arms fly wildly around me, cutting through the silence and solitude with the teetering edges of my joy and momentary wonder. I was a kid in a playground, I could do anything I wanted! I kicked up into a handstand, and fell into a heap on the floor. I’d forgotten I was inebriated. 

“No turning back now,” I thought, and returned to the lobby to ring the bell emblazoned with a sticker that read “BEEFCAKE” on the front desk before making my bed. 

I used a gymnastics mat as my bed and a yoga mat as my pillow. I dug up a sweatshirt I’d forgotten to take home the week before and declared it my blanket. I was still cold, so I rubbed the wooden mobility sticks from the closet together to build a fire. Just kidding, but imagine if I had.

As I hunkered down I felt like Chris McCandless from Into the Wild, that kid who survived over 100 days camping in the Alaskan wilderness before starving to death. I ticked off the similarities between me and Chris in my head. A Catholic upbringing so suffocating it led us to search for enlightenment and clarity in the wild? Check. 

I set my alarm, and then double and triple checked to make sure I set it for 7:00 IN THE MORNING. Drunk as I was, I was well aware how strange my current situation would seem to an innocent passerby. I didn’t particularly want to open my eyes four hours later to the guy who attends every morning class and arrives early to warm up, shaking me awake. I could see the scene projected upon the dark canvases of the backs of my eyelids; I’m sleeping with my back to the door, and he walks in and mistakes me for a homeless person who snuck in to take shelter. As he shakes me awake, I roll over, and he’s shocked to recognize me through my blood-shot, shame-filled eyes. How would one proceed from there? It would just be awkward.

I imagined myself explaining it simply and logically, “Was very drunk in the city. Had a ride at 4:00 am. Didn’t want to bike up big hill. Love working out with the homies.”

“But Claire,” one may implore. “Why not ask one of those homies for a ride?” To that I say “Nuh, uh, I’m too conscientious of a friend to ask for a last minute ride that’s out of my friend’s way.” Whether it’s conscientiousness, or a lack of self respect, this did contribute to my decision. I don’t have a car, and constantly have to ask for rides.

“But Claire,” you may press on. “Why not skip the gym and sleep in?” This one is easy. Nothing gives me more of a sense of peace and of purpose in life than movement and human connection. The decision to go to class was logical; the way I chose to get to class was the strange part. 

Some people in my life consider my commitment to achieve my athletic goals to be irrational.

“You’re going on a run and then lifting AFTER an hour handstand class?” My friend Lena will frequently sigh as she hears about my daily antics. “I don’t know how you do it.”

I always joke it off, perhaps noting my compulsive “need for speed”, rather than diving into a conglomeration of words in a futile attempt to defend why I need to push my body to its physical limits, and that sometimes physically moving my body is the only way to stand up in the face of a deep-rooted pain that once-a-week therapy can only do so much to fight off. 

It’s hard to casually explain how if you don’t keep getting up to go, you may never get up again. 

“But Claire,” you finally ask the question you’ve been thinking the entire time. “Is the hill you’d have to bike up to the gym really that big?” And to that I’d plead the fifth. 

So call me a good friend, a drunk, a quack, and I’d have to agree.

However, people have to get to know me before they earn the right to that knowledge. I don’t want anyone to stumble in upon it laying out vulnerable on the gym floor. 

It turned out, sleeping through my alarm wasn’t an issue. I tossed and turned for about an hour as a cacophony of creaks emitted from the walls and served as an industrial lullabye. 

There’s the classic scenario in which someone wakes up after a heavy night of drinking in a stranger’s bed and thinks, “what happened last night?” When I woke up an hour and a half later at 6:30 on top of a gymnastics mat, I didn’t experience this sentiment. I knew exactly what had led me to this point in time. 

Sobered up, I wanted to get the hell out of there. I felt like a gym rat, extra emphasis on “rat”.

I dragged the gymnastics mat back to its corner and stuffed the yoga mat into its designated bin. My nighttime venture washed away in the tide of the soft morning light like a castle made of sand. 

After locking up the gym, I headed west and hung a left into Sprouts Grocers. Once inside, I was no longer a fugitive on the run. I was a hungover customer wearing a leather jacket and gym shorts buying a protein shake and a banana. 

I walked to a nearby park and sat in the sun to eat my breakfast. I was so tired that I accidentally fell asleep. 

The perfect ending to this story would be that I slept through class and woke up at 11am sunburnt and confused before walking the ultimate two mile walk of shame back home. The stupidity of my odyssey would be complete. 

Fortunately for me then, but sadly as the author now, I must report that I happened to wake up at 8:45, 15 minutes before class. I took my time walking back to the gym, and got there a minute before class started. 

I’d texted a couple of my friends about my nighttime escapade, and they cracked up as they saw my cracked-out presence stumble through the door.

Blame it on the lack of sleep, or the fact that I was wearing a strange hybrid going out/gym outfit, but I felt paranoid at that moment. 

“Everyone knows,” I hissed to my friend as we stretched across the floor I’d slept on two hours before. 

“You need more sleep,” she said.

My workout wasn’t anything special, but I felt satisfied getting it done and putting some work in the bank. After class, I caught a ride home and slept until 2:00 pm.

Do I regret my decision? No. Not at all. I tried to live the best of both my worlds, and I don’t see the shame in that.

Would I do it again? Absolutely not. I slept terribly.

Insanity is the action of doing something over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Whether we’re aware of it or not, insanity is going back to the same harmful coping mechanism again and again and expecting it to make us feel better. 

Insanity is alcoholism. Insanity is drug addiction. Insanity is self harm. Insanity is disordered eating. Insanity is relying on a partner’s love for self worth. Yet all of these dependencies start out as the rational decision to try to survive, and slowly spiral into a life altering or even life ending reliance upon relief. 

I spent my fair share of years depending upon devils of self-destruction masked as promising phantoms of hope. I’ve since spent years unraveling the knots those years tied, and have found those knots to be tied with the laces of shoes I wore time and time again to run toward safety, any sense of sanity, and ultimately, survival. 

I may be your friend that slept at the gym that one time, but I’m also the friend that decided not to do it again. That would just be insane.