I wear the same gym outfit that I bought while living in New Orleans in 1997: elastic waistband shorts with an unraveling inseam hem, and a short gray T-shirt that doesn’t cling to my hips. When I say I wear the same outfit to the gym, I mean that I wear the same outfit to the gym every time I go, without deviation, except for varying underwear, which I sometimes flash when I wrestle myself into and out of my rubber resistance bands.
Finding shorts that fit me in 1997 was traumatic enough that I don’t plan on doing it again anytime soon. The elastic will fail someday, and the shorts will slip to my ankles while my legs go round and round on a torture device named the Elliptical for the way it makes your brain spin with questions: “How can it only have been 23 seconds since I last looked at Time Elapsed? Couldn’t these absurd machines feed the power grid? Does this ever get any easier? Where does everyone else park? Will I remember my padlock number or be like that other woman who’s been at the lockers, banging her head against the sleek Ikea wood veneer, failing at her combination for the last ten minutes?”
The shorts around my ankles could then double as the resistance bands my physical therapist requires me to use in sexy poses such as Supine Clam Shell.
Straight-no-Chaser Mom 