When I turned forty, I turned bitter-angry. The gym is where I unleashed my frustrations into workouts. Also I pushed myself with angry taunts about how fat and old I was getting. If I were to have any hope of capturing a prince handsome, I had to cling onto attractive youthfulness. Flubbery sprouted so easily in my triceps and that belly if I didn't vigorously deny my body any fat and punished any fat that snuck into my body anyway with hard spinning, heavy weights, and no mercy.
The job didn't help either. The cavernous halls housed a riffraff of mostly Asian and Indian boys that were getting increasingly pressed together in the open office layout by desks that shrunk every year by a few square inches. In between the crowded, standing, chattering, noisy throng of people like on a busy train platform where bean bags, their personal belongings, and random crap like lego boxes and dinosaur blowup dolls. The management wasn't much better - still boys but vile, reactionary, and old as well. I was pressed in between my team of boys giving me shit for making them work hard and punishing senior management forcing unrealistic, random deadlines on us. They'd never let me rise into their ranks. They'd never fire me to keep the diversity quota. Pure, fucking, and utter frustration!
At the end of the day, when I could escape that prison, I'd stand in the employee parking lot. My car was boxed in by the line of cars waiting to leave the parking lot but couldn't because there was a traffic jam out there. The gridlocks spread all the way through the Bay and up to SF. There was no getting anywhere but being stuck in this fucked up overpriced suburban hell with nothing to do.
Well, the exception is the gym. I went there seven days a week. When you walk in, the lobby is paneled with walnut wood. The staff wear white sneakers and white clothing that immediately tells you that they are here to serve you. Their clothing sets them apart as a different class, very fancy, but your servants with those polo shirts and the gold logo. Their posture is always erect, always their hands held ready in some way to wave you to a direction or hand you something. They were always silent, held their faces with a placid expression, looking straight ahead but internally numb. Their eyes and the slight shiver in the tone of their voice spoke of a constant fear of a member complaining to management about them.
"Welcome, Ms. Donovan! It is a pleasure to see you," said Lissie. She had model looks and stage quality make-up. Every line of make-up was applied perfectly where it needed to be sharp and blended where it needed to be blended. Her nose and nearby cheek skin had copious freckles that would have made the average person ugly, but hers were over the top and had an artistic quality to them that made them a museum piece to marvel at. It's those characteristics that photographers cherish for covershots.
"Welcome, Mr. Ranganathan. I'll have your usual orange juice with three drops of pomegranate and a straw brought to you right at the locker room exit," said Lissie to the next person behind me. She pronounced his last name with such perfect, precision, and intonation as if a voice couch was teaching her all the exotic foreign names. The first time she welcomed me, my heart made jumps because her voice was so upbeat and happy. I thought that finally someone recognized me in the anonymity of this place. But when she welcomed the person behind me with the exact same happy, warm tonality, I realized that she simply had a great voice coach. Each greeting was probably an audition for her to get whisked away by who walked into the gym... discovered as a movie star? Found worthy to be arm candy on a yacht?
The atmosphere in the gym is very shy and distant. The moment you walk into a weight area, all eyes turn on the newcomer. They try to look discreetly, but the eyes are latched onto the newcomer from behind the cable tower, from under a chest press, and from a stretch. The eyes gap like the open mouths of koi fish at a Japanese garden begging for a crumb of bread. These eyes are begging for an escape: Please, take us away from this exercise. We have to do it, but we are bored. It's an effort. Have mercy!
That's my crappy life! But one day, I found something that would free me from it for just a moment. Follow me to the pool area. I always wear a two piece with a white bottom that barely comes between my cheeks and shows my butt. There are usually only boys. They are not boys by age. They don't allow anyone under eighteen into the exclusive club. They are tech workers in their mid to late twenties that are immature and clueless. And me showing off my body torments them. They are too shy to talk to me. They would have to be men to do that. But being the rare female, I must drive them nuts. My abs have a six pack. My legs are sculpted. Everything is sculpted and trim from brutal workouts every day. Yet, there is also a hardness. When you are a young woman, you don't have to work out to have a pretty and slim body. When you are old, you can maintain that figure only with hard workouts, but they also leave your body contours hard - not sweet, sexy, and lustrous.
The pool has six lanes, neatly divided by the steel cables with blue and white plastic rings. The big, continuous windows on the wall and ceiling allow plenty of California sun in to paint everything with a golden feel. A single palm tree planter is supposed to evoke the feeling of a beach vacation, but is mostly lost in the sterile hyper clean environment that the lifeguard scrubs every hour to keep a surreal pristine feel. All the lanes are taken by a pairing of one, two, or three swimmers. Two people means splitting the lane. Each person takes one side and stays there. Three people means swimming in a circle out on the right and back on the left.
I slipped into a lane with a tall, dark haired man. He seemed like an average swimmer churning through laps with passable form. He used a catch up style for his freestyle. That means, he'd leave a hand in front, while they other one pulled, and only when the pulling hand returned to the front, he'd pull with the resting hand. A decade or so, a swimmer had figured out that the long and lean shape, like a hull carved to cut through the water, was more efficient and faster than pulling non-stop. That's exactly what I had been looking for.
I bent a little forward and splashed water over my titties. Yep, you heard that right! I told you how everyone stares at you when you enter. And I love tormenting those guys. So I love drawing their eyes to my breasts by innocently pretending to sprinkle myself with water to acclimate myself to the temperature. Then I slip down to the neck into the water. My boobs get a lift from the fat tissue and silicone filling to float up a bit. And I wait, like a panther in hiding for the gazelle.
The man was unaware that I entered his lane. His stroke was steady. His leading hand cut the still water. The pulling hand would dive in next to it so that they could switch places. With even and rhythmic pulls, there was always one hand leading in front like a happy duckling leading the way. Right as he thought, he was getting to the wall, he reached a little farther with the right hand. Boom, his fingers landed square on my left boob. With quick reflexes of shock, his hand flicked back. I could barely feel the grace. The tactile sense of swimming makes one very receptive. Yet, I held onto the imprint of his fingerprints on my boob.
His eyes shot out of the water. They held the terror of a gazelle. I savor that abject panic. "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!" he stammered. That helplessness is like honey to me. The quivering voice speaks of such self-torment how he's beating himself up for being a terrible person, inconsiderate, a groping villain, inexcusable womanizer. I know how those MIT educated men think from the office. I simply snuff and pull off.
I've found the quiet treatment to be the most effective to prolong the suffering. Keeping the resolution away from them keeps them in that tormented state. Every time, our eyes met randomly during a turn or pause between intervals, their torment is still in his eyes. It's like all that underwater time leaves him to his own thoughts to repeat the moment in all its glorious details with a mix of lusty desire and embarrassed penance. For me, I could put my face underwater and smile as big as I can. For the feeling of inflicting pain in somebody else is the only thing that provides me a little relief from the pain of my existence.
The first time, it happened by pure accident. However, with all the silence and distance in my gym, it left me with plenty of undistracted time to think about it. And I started doing it on purpose. I got good at it. There are plenty of innocent touches under the water as two athletic swimmers plow the same lane together. They are usually quick, fleeting brushes. Yet, I figured out the timing so that my swim compadre's hand would land squarely on my butt. I figured out how to slip my fingers inside of the swim compadre's speedoes to slip them a couple inches down his groin. Those shy, geeky man-boys universally reacted the same with tormenting shame at the belief that they touched me misappropriately.
I loved their faces: Puppy-left-in-the-rain-face, red-cheeked-I'm-about-to-cry-face, whimpering-panic-of-disbelieve-face. It's not simply the enjoyment of pranking people that drives me to it. It's the visceral empathetic sensation that I get when I feel that I shook them to their core, when there is a little break of everyday composure that lets me see down into their deepest fault line - just that same suffering that I feel in the deepest, darkest part of the night. Oh fuck, I'm so addicted to it! To see that little mouth open because their little brain is racing so hard to come to terms with the shocking experience that they don't even notice their open mouth.
For three years, I worked out at this country club like gym like a normal person. However, over the last year, I've discovered these wonderful games. Another one randomly came to me as well by coincidence. I had spent an entire weekend - day and night - in the office to make a certain deadline. It was disgusting to sit with a team of male engineers who hadn't showered in days. But I got it done. When we finally delivered it Sunday, ten minutes before midnight, this fucking piece of a shit manager, who came to us from a European consulting company, had realized that Americans and Europeans have the date and month switched. He explained to us that we couldn't get the crunchtime bonus because in fact we had another five months to finish the project.
So after my Monday workout, I went into the sauna for a long time. I closed my eyes to shut the world out. I had to let go. I was exhausted and pissed. That's why I didn't pay much attention to what I was actually doing. I noticed with surprise that my feet had been resting on the shoulders of the woman sitting at the rung below me. Strange that she didn't complain. But I was going to do the right thing. I grabbed my towel and stepped town the cascading benches to the floor. I turned to look at her and apologize, but I got a feeling that made me hesitate.
She had a docile puppy face. Her eyes were big. Her pupils were big. Yet, she was very calm. She seemed like she was in a haze, some kind of trance that made her transfixed. She clearly looked at me. Yet, she didn't seem able to act, like she was deeply drawn into herself in some kind of hypnosis. Her body was so relaxed like she was in some kind of euphoric state. People do like the hot treatments, but she was deeper into that relaxed bliss than the others. And then that apology got stuck in my throat. I let my eyes leave her and walked out.
