Content notice:
The following story contains depictions of negative body image and weight stigma.
I've done my best to portray these issues with empathy and sensitivity. Beauty comes in every size, and a joyous, fulfilling sex life is the privilege of anyone who wants one.
That said, if you're someone who prefers to avoid such content altogether, you might try one of my other stories instead.
The Author
*
"Fuck you, asshole," is what he wished he would have said.
Rod Robinson was surrounded by people in the gym, and nevertheless by himself. The stranger, a musclebound man half his age and half his size, had already receded into the forest of weights and machines.
Rod wouldn't have been there at all except for the guilt that he could no longer ignore. The guilt of money wasted on a membership he'd paid for on an impulse, which he had gone five months without using.
Empty nest, new lease on life, get in shape. New year, new me. That's what he'd told himself. It had been so difficult to summon the motivation to come, and now it was taken so easily, so violently.
The stranger had said, "You're doing great, buddy! Keep going and you'll get there." The words could not have been more cutting if the man had simply called him a fat ass and been done with it.
Rod stepped off the treadmill, grabbed his things, and wove through the cold machines and the warm bodies towards the locker rooms.
There were enormous mirrors along one wall, where men could take joy in the sight of their own bulging muscles. He did his best to ignore the round body and oversized clothes reflected back to him.
He had been slim in his 20s. His 30s brought love handles. His 40s, a beer gut, the beginnings of tits. Now, at 50, he had to ignore how his fist brushed the underside of his jutting belly when he masturbated.
In the locker room, he vowed to herself to disrobe and shower quickly, to be out of this place, away from big men and beautiful women whose eyes he could feel upon his skin even if they weren't saying anything.
He found his locker, wrestled his way out of the sticky folds of his gym clothes, wrapped himself in his towel, and went for the shower room.
He was alone. He picked a shower at random and turned it on, keeping his back turned to the large, steaming room and trying to let the feeling of hot water on his sweaty skin crowd out his thoughts.
He turned off the shower and covered his body, still dripping, tightly in his towel. He could hear voices coming in from the pool area. Chattering, joking. He moved quickly for his locker.
On the way, he took a look inside the sauna. No one there. He went in, deciding he would dry faster and be out sooner.
Against his furious wishing, the door opened almost as soon as he'd sat down. A group of four men came in, joking, laughing. Mostly young and thin, although one of them was about his age and also fat.
They were all clad in towels, which they wore unself-consciously. Rod instinctively tried to shrink into his own towel as soon as they appeared. They sat all around him, ornamenting the small wooden room.
The fat man took the spot next to him. He was loud, animated, full of laughter. He did not try to hide the shaking of his belly and his tits when he laughed. He seemed to be the leader of the small pack of men.
Rod felt out of place, as though he'd picked the worst place to sit. The fat man was the focus of everyone's attention. Even sitting at the edge of his spotlight gave Rod an uncomfortable and scary feeling.
The men gossiped about sex. Things they'd done, unrecognizable names of people who had been their partners. Their boastful, pornographic storytelling reminded Rod of his own sexless existence.
He dreaded the prospect of the conversation turning towards him, of being inducted into this circle and having to reveal himself as ugly and boring, but he felt he couldn't leave without raising attention.
There was something about the fat man. His name, Rod had gathered, was Von. He behaved like the other men, who were young and thin, whose muscles still stood out, for whom sex likely still grew on trees.
The way Von jiggled when he laughed, the way his towel strained to hold his hips and stomach, the way he traded sex stories of his own, as if there could be any comparison. Rod felt embarrassed for him.
It was especially appalling when one of the younger men poured water from his water bottle on the hot rocks and Von scolded him and, in defense from the plume of hot steam, took off and set aside his towel.
Though he tried not to be, Rod was transfixed by the nakedness at the edge of his vision, all large round parts that laid upon one another and shined wetly in the pale lighting and translucent steam.
One by one, all the other men followed suit, dropping their own towels and baring their hard, masculine bodies as if on silent orders, but Rod hardly noticed.
Von droned on, how pouring water on the stones would leave a layer of minerals that would have to be meticulously cleaned, how the steam might feel hot but would not actually raise the room temperature.
Von, it turned out, was the son of the owner, an older man who was not himself a gymgoer but had bought the business as an investment. Von handled the "day to day," and so he knew these things.
Rod felt discomfort of a different sort. Von was right. The steam did feel hot, hotter than he was used to. The towel had become suffocating, yet the thought of being seen without it mortified him.
But right next to him was Von, with a wide, deep body so similar to his own, who had dropped his own towel without caring, had even prompted the dropping of towels by his coterie of apparent hangers-on.
Von, heedless of the way his shining tits stood out from his chest, the way his belly laid upon his lap, hiding his penis and his pubic hair from sight, the way his thighs spread wide upon the bench.
Rod, who could have left, or remained in his towel, sweating profusely, rolls of flesh slipping and sticking uncomfortably with one another. Who, in a moment he could not explain, chose to do neither.
Rod removed his own towel, awkwardly bunching it up in a pile on the bench next to him. The rest of the men, he felt, did not notice. But Von, who said nothing to him, gave him a cursory look.
Rod felt that his body must not have looked too different from Von's, though Von was relaxed and reclined and without tension. Rod was bent, slumped, pulled into himself, with no idea how to fix it.
The round robin conversation went on. Rod did not speak and didn't know what he would say if he were called upon.
But the energy of the gathering soon dwindled. People left one by one. When it was down to him, Von, and just one of the younger men, Rod excused himself, mumbling. He tried not to scurry as he exited.
As he toweled off and stumbled in a hurry into his clothes, he couldn't keep the thought from his mind that he'd been attracted to Von. Not sexually, but an inexplicable sense of affinity. A closeness.
Von had strode into that sauna and hadn't given a shit if anyone saw him in his towel, or out of it. Not even the younger, thinner men, whose tight, athletic bodies were the ultimate criticism of his own.
Von would have looked at himself in that mirror with admiration. Von would have said something to the guy, wouldn't have taken his shit. Von would have stayed, instead of running like an upset child.
Rod drove home in a fog. He could not stop himself from imagining scenarios in which he had stayed, in which he and Von were the last ones left. He could have impressed Von, been admired by Von.
*
Months passed. Rod had become a regular at the gym.
In some ways, it was worse than not going at all. His frequent trips would elicit well-meaning comments from family and friends, intended as encouragement, that reminded him that he was disgusting to them.
If they had taken more of an interest, he might have admitted that he felt stronger, more capable, the good tired of vigorous physical activity. But his appearance had not changed, so they did not ask.
He was not at the gym to change his body, or even to feel better.
It was Von. The phantom version of himself. The frustrating spectre that would not leave his mind.
It was not so much that he wanted to meet him, to talk to him. That was not something he had thought through, or that he would know how to go about doing if he had. That was not a component of his obsession.
Instead, he would try to recreate the conditions of that moment in the sauna, when he'd first encountered him. Each visit, he would hit the showers, then sit there in the unforgiving dry heat, waiting.
He would imagine the door swinging open, the chatter, the laughter, the parade of men, the lewd storytelling, water on the rocks, steam filling the tiny, enclosed space. The communal baring of naked bodies.
It was as though there were a closed room in his mind where rogue thoughts cavorted just barely out of his control. In his more conscious, intentional thoughts, he still felt embarrassed for Von.
There had been one night, later than usual, when he had finished his workout, committed his sauna ritual with the usual results, and checked out at the front counter, when he finally saw Von.
He was all the way across the gym floor, through the layers of weights and pulleys and treadmills, dressed in slim-fitting gym clothes that did nothing to disguise the prominent, fleshy parts of his body.
He was having a discussion with a man with a clipboard--still somehow managing to laugh. Loud, boisterous, fat-shaking, unmistakable. Rod lingered as long as he dared before reluctantly turning away.
That night, Rod laid awake in bed, watching phantom shapes appear and disappear in the whorls of paint on the darkened ceiling. His wife laid on her side, facing away, soothing him with her gentle snoring.
Aside from showering together or the occasional playful touch, they had not been seriously intimate in years. It was not something there was a good explanation for. Her interest in sex had simply dried up.
There was a time when he had been trying valiantly. He would wait for her to wake up in the morning and they would fool around in bed. Clothes might come off. She might even let him pleasure her.
Time wore on. Their intimacy waned in both frequency and flavor. She would tell him that it was the presence of children in their house, and she would immediately feel horrible for having had the thought.
Now the children were grown and gone, and the only reason left was his wife's preference and his own body. No woman could want him, and it only pained him when his wife told him that he still looked good.
