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.
His plan was to grab a shower, wash faster than anyone in the world, and then leave before anyone else came in.
Sure enough, the change rooms were empty – however in his cubicle the ancient pipes (issuing water he assumed was usually heated by an old bonfire) merely shuddered and protested, and he was left standing awkwardly to the side as a freezing cold flow cascaded around his feet.
If he’d been braver, he would have simply plunged into the cold water, but even overheated and sweaty from his workout Jeremy couldn’t manage that and instead waited interminable minutes for it to reach scalding.
Consequently, when he left the shower wrapped in his gym towel, he found the main change area populated. His locker, where his backpack and clothes were, was across the room, and standing next to it, chatting idly to someone else from the class, was Sam, also wrapped in a towel, already showered.
As the only gay guy in his grade in high school, Jeremy had long held a fight or flight response to the idea of a change room.
So much could go wrong; so much scrutiny could be levelled.
Regardless of that, he had no real desire to chat amiably while his dick and balls were out, and the general conversation going on baffled him on a fundamental level.
His original speed-changing plan was now ruined, so he focused on being unobtrusive and distant – no eye contact, no sudden movements.
The other men in this room were the T-rex from Jurassic Park , and he was that stupid goat.
He walked across the room, past benches and towels on hooks, sliding through the thick condensation from the showers.
Sam was still standing next to Jeremy’s locker, with his own open, revealing a bag spilling gear.
He’d taken a break from talking to the guy Jeremy referred to as ‘Beard Guy’ in his head, for obvious beard-related reasons, and was facing away, holding his towel at his waist and rummaging through his clothes.
As Jeremy drew nearer, he watched somewhat breathlessly through the mist as Sam casually dropped the towel and used it to rough his hair wildly.
The curve of Sam’s butt, the thick slab of his right cheek, startlingly white compared to the tan of the rest of his body, peachlike with a hint of down, floated in the fog like a moon.
Jeremy took a breath and fumbled with his own locker, opening it while Sam continued to dry his hair and face with casual abandon.
The locker door clanged open and put up a tiny, but still appreciated, barrier between them.
It was probably just the exertion of exercise, and then the hot shower, but Jeremy felt his cheeks flame.
He started to pull out his shirt and pants, and, breathing heavily, managed to tug so hard that his shirt flew out of the locker and onto the frankly swamp-like floor.
Yelping, Jeremy knelt down quickly, only to see the shirt snatched by a hand descending from above, like that painting on the ceiling of that big church in Europe.
Jeremy looked up, his eyes following the T-shirt and the hand that had grabbed it, up into the sky, and he swallowed. Sam, haloed by the bright neon lights in the ceiling, was standing over him casually. Jeremy’s gaze tracked up two legs, two sets of large thighs, leading up to …
He choked, quickly standing up – and smashing his head into the door of his open locker.
‘Ow. Crap. Ow,’ he muttered, grabbing his head.