5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
C onfession time: I practically burnt my clit off with how much I used my vibrator this weekend. Ole Reliable, my pet name for the space age looking phallus with the weird, rubbery nubs near its base, had been collecting dust. If I drew a graph of my horniness in relation to how sexy I felt, it'd be two straight lines scraping the bottom of the grid. So, if habit determined behavior, I was practically a nun. And I was pretty sure nuns had masturbated more than I had in the last few years .
But my libido returned with a vengeance. I usually tried to keep the visitors of my reveries fictional—pansexual vampires or a wholesome seven-foot blue alien with a monster dick. If I needed something more human to get me there, I focused on a character from a TV show I found hot. The point is, the tremors Ole Reliable gave me were not to be associated with anything in the non-fiction realm because I had some prurient view of consent. And having to make eye contact with the current object of my fantasies put me in a guilt tailspin.
In fairness, I was dragging Ole Reliable across my nipples, thinking about some green alien with a Scottish accent demanding I initiate him in the ways of human procreation. For the sake of the fantasy, I imagined myself to be in some kind of dirndl that had been expertly untied. I massaged my inner thigh with the vibrating, silicone dick because green Scottish aliens liked to build the tension. And then right as I headed for the sweet spot, my dirndl became an oversized T-shirt saturated in plastisol ink; the green-skinned alien became a certain instructor with boy band hair. The memory of Beau's fingers, barely moving my hips or pressing on the middle of my back sent me over the edge again and again .
At this point, in both my fictional and non-fictional relationships, I’d attempt to leave some mystery—cool off contact, make other plans.
But. I. Prepaid.
So after a weekend of way too much objectification, I dragged myself to the gym, darting my gaze anywhere but the direction of Beau Bishop. Thank goodness for red-tinted sunglasses.
Monday’s session was a change in pace. Beau showed me around the weight room. If my first time cycling drove me to quit and bolt, it didn’t take much imagination to realize when it came to weight lifting, I was about as fearful as a cat with a vacuum cleaner. I’d claw myself onto any solid mass of safety, which happened to be Beau, encouraging me to commit to a leg day with free weights. And as if I had predicted today’s feeling, I wore another original T-shirt design, a high-strung calico cat, clinging to a coffee cup for dear life. I had drawn in squiggly letters, What do you mean coffee gives me anxiety?
“Weight lifting? Won’t that make me look like the Hulk? Lou Ferrigno, not Mark Ruffalo.”
“No. You won’t be lifting heavy enough and if the next words out of your mouth are ‘I want the long and lean look,’ I’m going to tell you, there’s no such thing as lengthening your muscles. They’re attached to your bones. If you want to look lean, you’ll have to work that out in the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?”
“High-protein, low-fat diet.”
“Oh.”
“Strength training is an excellent way to improve balance and prevent osteoporosis.”
“I’m old but not that old.”
“When it comes to health, most of the time, you can never be too early.” He sat on the ground and patted the workout mat. I took that as my cue to sit next to him. He showed me weight-free hip thrusts to “help activate my glutes.”
As I shoved my pelvis into the air, filthy thoughts of me straddling Beau as he demonstrated a hip thrust entered my mind. In fairness, I’d be the added weight helping him strengthen. Yet I wasn’t sure what was more erotic: sitting on Beau’s crotch as he hip thrusted or watching Beau as he studied my ass to make sure I was giving that final squeeze at the top of my thrust?
He stood over me and asked, “What did you do this weekend?”
“This.” I gestured toward my hips humping the air. “Over and over again from Friday to Sunday,” I joked in a bizarre truth-adjacent way.
“So, you stayed in then? ”
“And got groceries, cleaned, bought more workout clothes, read a book.”
He motioned for me to move onto my side. I bent my legs at a perfect ninety degrees. “Put light pressure on your outside knee with your hand and lift your knee against that pressure, keeping your ankles together.”
Clamshells. The move discovered a muscle in my ass I thought never existed and, to reiterate, was strangely sexual to me. With the way Beau’s gaze followed me, the blood flow that I had diverted to my pelvis all weekend was not going to go to my brain. I was on the verge of a self-inflicted lobotomy.
“What book are you reading?” The Mormon-like genuine interest he expressed was as sadly adorable as an ASPCA ad.
My tongue was flexing to say something Oprah recommended but with activating my glutes, I embraced honesty. “ Mating with the Man from Mars .”
The reach of his eyebrows said it all. Sir, you’re a sad, perverted woman .
“It’s a meditation on what it means to be human,” I added.
And I identified my problem. Beau wasn’t a fully fledged human to me. He was a haircut with muscles. If I knew how human he was, maybe he’d stop invading my masturbatory scenarios. “What did you do over the weekend?” I asked.
“Much of the same: errands, laundry. Except I work Saturdays, a cycle boot camp class and a core exercise class.” He no longer watched me and seemed to check the weight rack for dust. “I, too, read a book.”
None of what he said humanized himself to me. I bet he had an impeccable bachelor pad that smelled of fabric softener and aromatherapy. If I saw him at the grocery store, I’d find his cart full of vegetables, chicken breasts, and eggs. I bet his sphincter is so toned, he never farts. I asked him what he read, expecting Hair Architecture for Himbos .
“ The Naughty Mommy ,” he replied.
If I had a mouth full of water, it would’ve wound up all over the rubber floor. Instead, I wobbled out of an easy-going, body-weight squat. This dude confused me. He was Captain America with the occasional James Bond urge to say the raunchiest thing possible. Was he flirting with me? I rolled with the idea. “Interesting. What’s it about?”
“A woman of a certain age realizes she has quite a few things to learn.”
“Yeah? Like what things?”
“It’s in the title. Naughty things. ”
“But like what things?” I was really glad that my dark running shorts and sweat were enough to hide how his coy boy routine soaked my panties. At this point, I’d hand him my credit card and tell him to book me for infinity.
His deep, puppy-dog eyes had a hint of amber when he said, “Oh, you know. Bad, bad, things. Egging, TP-ing, forking. I mean all sorts of depraved shenanigans.”
I bit my lip to fight my case of blue ovaries until his voice lowered to a rasp. “Put the weight in your heels when you lower and keep your hips back.”
The breathy command reminded me I was doing some body-weight squats into a calf raise. The only thing that changed with this conversation was that I’d probably start making unabashed eye contact with him after a session with the Ole Reliable. That’s right. The next time I flicked my bean, it was not going to be with the shame of using some misconstrued helpful hints imprinted into my spank bank.
“You need to flatten your upper back. May I touch you?”
I nodded.
“Hold your squat.”
I paused into the squat, resting my elbows between my knees .
He poked the spot in my middle back again, which rolled my shoulders to attention. With the lightest touch, he pulled my hips back. “Feel the difference?”
I closed my eyes, my breathing shallow. I nodded, unable to vocalize at the moment.
“Good. Now let’s add some weights.”
Adding weights was a shitty idea. My muscles easily pooped out using them. As I struggled through a set of goblet squats, I asked, “What made you become a personal trainer? Were you a total jock in high school or something?”
“I actually played intramurals in high school. Way more fun and less pressure.”
“Why personal training then?” I dropped the weight and took a sip of water during my wait time between sets.
“I wanted to become a physical therapist, and this was the next best thing.”
“Hoping to work on some professional team and get that pro money?”
“No. Not that it would be a bad gig or anything. I wanted to be a physical therapist after my car accident.” He lifted his joggers and revealed scars from his shin to his knee on both legs. Why I hadn’t noticed until then I’d chalk up to novice workout navel gazing. “A distracted driver ran me off the freeway. My legs were crushed. A physical therapist essentially got me to walk again. I thought if I could do what he did for me, I’d be fulfilled.”
My body relived my own painful memories of inside the hospital. The stupid gowns that tied at the back, piercing of needles, the scars, seen and unseen. “How long did it take for you to walk again?”
“Like I do now? A couple of years.”
“I’m sorry. That must’ve been really painful.”
He laughed. “It was.”
“If I stub my toe, I don’t want to get out of bed. Worse pain than that? I couldn’t imagine.”
“There were definitely days I did not get out of bed. Days when I cursed those who I thought were luckier than I was. But I reframed my thoughts and shifted my priorities. That’s why I never want my clients to think they can’t do anything. Because they can. Now let’s try a split squat with weights.”
My quads were going to burst. I never hated a movement more, the dreaded split squat. I was on a descent when Beau hit me with a sucker punch of a question. “Why do you have two last names on your registration form?”
I saw what he was doing there. If I was too distracted trying not to murder my quads and hamstrings, I couldn’t dig too deep in my brain for some feeling-sparing excuse. “Front-desk Fran insisted the name on my form match the ID.”
“What Front-desk Fr—you mean, Margie? Romanian deadlifts. Eight reps. But why?”
“No offense to the last name Garfield. I love lasagna and hate Mondays, but my original last name is so much better.” I switched back to those dreaded split squats again, struggling against my weakness.
“When you say ‘original name,’ what do you mean?”
Back to Romanian deadlifts. “I’m divorced from Mr. Garfield.”
His face twitched as if he was considering something. “Put the weights down, let’s do some lunges.” Once I was in a rhythm with my lunges, he asked, “What happened? If you feel comfortable sharing.”
I was in the midst of a skater lunge, feeling a tightness in my groin, which justified why people bought Hitachi massagers for muscles instead of pleasure. In a front right lunge, I considered how things drifted to feeling more like a roommate situation with Chris a couple years before the inevitable. Holding the back, right lunge, I knew the sexier answer is he left me for someone else, which was the kind of juice that might pique Beau’s interest. Shifting to the right skater lunge, I realized the answer might make me seem bitter. Unlike the cliches that were common in the divorced backwash of suburbia, my husband actually left me for a woman two years older than me. And I wasn’t bitter… at least not anymore. “Eh, we grew apart.” As I said it, it dawned on me I was meeting a boundary I simply did not want to cross. His question was invasive and far too personal for day two of training. He couldn’t get me to forget my quads were ready to riot that easily. “It’s what I’m comfortable saying.”
The switch from the front left lunge to the back one had me joining the pantheon of gym grunters. I might have to go to a confessional after this session. Forgive me, Father. I’m a gym grunter. It had never occurred to me that people grunted from feeling the burn, not simply by being some obnoxious bro. “What about you? Any romantic wounds?”
“No marriages. A few break-ups but currently no romantic attachments.” His sweet eyes twinkled.
And that was when I realized I wasn’t just having a lady boner over Beau Bishop. I was in a full-blown crush.