CHAPTER 3
Jeremy’s first mistake was waking up. It was something of a shock when his alarm started blarting ferociously at the obscenely early hour of six am.
It was dark, and while he flailed around trying to mash the phone with his fingers, he truly believed there was some kind of mistake at play: that he’d accidentally keyed in the wrong alarm time.
But after a second of lying in blissful silence, another alarm went off – and this one read: Go to the gym and fix your broken life, you ugly fuck.
Jeremy groaned, first silently and then audibly, as he remembered setting those alarms only a few brief hours earlier, all hopped up on misguided purpose and too many beers.
This was something he had truly believed he would want to do in the early hours of the morning, before the sun was even up – put on some old clothes that could perhaps pass as workout gear and walk up the cold street and exercise? Unlikely.
Another alarm went off. This one said: If you are not hot and successful and don’t have a perfect life in six months, Miles wins. DON’T LET MILES WIN.
Jeremy sat up in bed, a hot flush of rage and shame coursing through him.
He was torn between the lingering warmth beneath the covers, the blissful temptation of more sleep, and the sticky heat of mortification that occurred whenever he let himself think of his ex-boyfriend.
He could see him now – crisp blue eyes behind scholarly wire-framed glasses, a sardonic twist of his perfect pink lips as he said something funny and inevitably a little cruel, the heartbreaking tumble of ash-blond hair across his forehead that always drove Jeremy wild.
He hadn’t seen Miles since the break-up – but a combination of wild anger and pain kept his image fresh in Jeremy’s mind.
The occasional newspaper article, television appearance and even that one time he was on a billboard hadn’t helped either, as much as Jeremy had tried to ignore them.
The thought of seeing that monster, that beautiful, vicious, manipulative heartbreaker, made Jeremy feel so many emotions at once that they all blended together into hopelessness. And Jeremy, for all his many faults, did not count hopelessness as one of his vices.
And that was how he ended up at the local gym at seven am getting told by an extremely peppy and muscular man wearing a lanyard how gyms worked.
‘Really depends on what you’re looking for, you know? Like, hectic gains? Trimming down for next summer? Cardio?’
Jeremy blearily looked at this tiny muscle boy who had repeatedly called him ‘dude’ and decided to be honest. ‘I guess you could say I need to look really hot as part of a plan to get revenge on someone.’
‘Yeah, tight, dude. We get a lot of revenge bodies in here, lot of divorced women who want to be hot in the lawyer’s office.
That’s cool. I reckon just keep in mind that hotness is subjective.
Nothing hotter than someone who is healthy and happy in themselves.
In fact, a “revenge body” at heart is a pretty toxic term, but I guess we’re allowed to have fun with fitness, however we find our way to it. Anyway, this is the rowing machine.’
Jeremy really didn’t want this level of idealism this early in the morning. He wanted to be enabled, or maybe put out of his misery and shot.
After signing pages of extremely official-looking documents that would later worry him on a legal level, it was decided he would attempt the upcoming Body Fury class as his first gym moment.
The tight ball of muscles, who by this point had introduced himself as Carlo, deposited him in a large room featuring a little raised dais and what looked like all sorts of genuine gym accoutrement – mats and weights and a smell almost undefinable in its low-lying potency.
‘Have fun. Stay safe, dude. Peace out.’
Jeremy remembered the heady days of the night before – now like another life, a utopian era – when he hadn’t yet experienced the horror of waking up early in the morning and putting on shorts voluntarily, when Liz had firmly recommended this gym because it was one of the last independent businesses in the city.
It had also been queer friendly for decades and, according to Liz, actively ‘not weird’ about trans people like some of the big chains still were.
But, standing in the group exercise room, Jeremy judged from the water-stained ceilings, the tattered corners of the carpet, the clunking and straining of the elevator as it travelled from the street up to the gym, and the woman currently collecting herself off the floor after being shot across the room by a rogue treadmill that the business’s independent nature perhaps came at a cost. Looking in the full-length mirrors that surrounded the room, Jeremy felt like he fit in perfectly – he too was a messy wreck who had seen better days.
Jeremy was vain enough to know he used to be quite pretty.
Painfully tall, with sharp cheekbones, bee-stung lips and a mass of untidy black hair, he’d spent his early twenties living the skinny, effortless, bony twink fantasy.
Now, like the gym, years of neglect and the inevitable pull of the grave had turned his body just a bit shabbier.
Yet, perversely, his little gym shorts and T-shirt, his stick-like arms and legs, all bones and angles, and his (somewhat wrinkled) baby face made him look like a very tired and sad teen.
But that’s what he was there to fix, Jeremy told himself, trying to imagine how he would look with a new, hot body, muscles overlying the leagues of bone and skin he was currently working with.
The room was filling with exercisers, and Jeremy realised that people were sticking to vague squares laid out on the floor, so he quickly nabbed one towards the back. He smiled politely at a sinewy older woman, who looked fit in that way old people get – like gristle.
She stared back impassively.
‘It’s my first time.’ Jeremy chuckled.
The old lady nodded once and then pointed to the carpeted floor. ‘Stick to your side,’ she ordered.
He nodded and broke eye contact, but he could feel the intensity of her glare on him like hot sun through a window.
There was a smattering of other older people, including an ancient, withered man in an equally old pride T-shirt, but most of the class looked to be women in their late forties.
The few other younger people congregated near the front.
Everyone seemed to be on friendly terms with each other, exchanging greetings – except for the grandmother next to Jeremy, who scowled broadly.
On his other side, a woman wearing a sling and a long-suffering look limped into her square.
Jeremy tried once again to make eye contact and smile, then quickly wished he hadn’t when she began shuffling towards him, already somehow mid-monologue.
‘The doctor said it was the worst break he’d ever seen – that the bone shattered like old biscuits thrown off the top of a skyscraper. But what can you do? You still have to live your life, you know?’
‘Ha ha,’ answered Jeremy. ‘Well … look after yourself.’
‘My daughter called me for the first time in three years, and you know what she asked me? She asked me what blood type she is. Kids these days.’
‘I can never remember mine,’ said Jeremy inanely. ‘Ha ha.’
‘Okay, I am here now, sorry I am late. It is me, Davina. I am your teacher this morning: do not cry,’ said a woman striding purposefully across the floor.
She had that physical denseness gym instructors had – layers of muscle and stubbornness – a classic no-nonsense nineties-era Ellen haircut and thin lips.
‘Where’s Rod?’ cried out one woman in dismay.
‘How am I meant to know where precious Rod is?’ Davina sneered, dumping her bag and pulling out microphones and other equipment.
‘I am not married to Rod. We do not all live together in one room beneath the gym, sleeping on bunk beds. I get a call saying, “Rod cannot work, can you do it?” and I say yes, because I need money to go on another lesbian cruise this year.’
The disappointment was palpable in the class.
‘Aww, boohoo, you miss your funny Rod. Normally people don’t cry in my classes until at least halfway through. Oh well. Brighten up. We are here to work out, not braid each other’s hair. This is not Davina’s Best Friend Club – this is Body Fury.’
There was a leaden silence as people shuffled around and Davina got her things ready, attaching her microphone to her head. ‘Oh yes, I apparently have to ask: is anyone new here? Anyone new to Body Fury?’
Jeremy tentatively raised his hand.
‘Okay, stick-figure man, if you feel like you are having a heart attack, take a rest. Otherwise, just copy everything I am doing. It’s so easy. I don’t know why people keep having heart attacks in my classes. It’s so embarrassing for them.’
Just as the session started, someone ran in and took up the position directly in front of Jeremy. The class, vaguely subdued in response to finding out Davina was their teacher, seemed to light up like a bunch of children seeing Santa Claus.
‘Sam!’ cried out one girl, throwing her hands up in the air.
‘So sorry I’m late,’ Sam apologised. ‘There was a lost dog and I had to take it home. All ended well though – but wow it sure did lick me a lot.’
All the older mother-types cackled delightedly, and even Davina let something approximate to a smile cross her lips.
Jeremy looked around, trying to find someone who shared the immediate dislike he was feeling, an almost instinctive scowl coming to his face – but even the grumpy woman next to him stared at this Sam like he was some kind of evil-old-lady messiah. Was she crooning slightly?
Sam stood in front of Jeremy and the class began.