Nine congested days later, I'm feeling nearly human again. Nine days of starch-heavy meals is also making me feel a bit flabby. My niece recommends the gym at the Trumbull County Campus of Kent State University, my collegiate alma mater.
It looks reasonably equipped on the website, and, for $5 (about GBP2.50) is practically free to use. If I were going to be here for a month and could prove I graduated from Kent State (which I can't - my diploma is in London and I've no tattoo or bar code imprint), I could come back every day for a one-off nominal fee of $10.
I gulp down a huge bowl of oats, oat bran, dried fruit, nuts, seeds and peanut butter and pack a bag for the gym. My mother lets me borrow her car and I'm off.
The gym is full of young men. I have, of course, no issue with this. Okay, when I say 'full,' I mean there are eight of them. And this will be my only visit to the KSU Trumbull gym: they're shut from 22 December to 1 January. I give a fiver to the shy boy on the desk and ask where to change.
"There's a men's bathroom out the door and to the left. There are lockers and a shower in there." I find everything but being a post-locker twat with a membership to a posh gym in the shadow of the London Eye, I didn't even consider bringing a padlock. My Tuscan leather overnight bag and I will both be working the gym floor today. I tuck it under a shelf behind shy boy and go to it.
My spectacles are in the rich-bitch bag, and I can't see very much. I'm constantly squinting, which must come across as leering, trying to see the kids in the gym better. They're fit as fiddles, tattooed and slim-waisted with huge biceps, triceps, deltoids and lats. HUGE. Were these farmboys cum Schwarzeneggers always lurking about northeastern Ohio, or have they sprung up with this media-saturated age of commercial materialism? And who cares, really?
Mind you, I'm not complaining. Having them around was such a brilliant distraction that my workout passed in what seemed like seconds. I got on a treadmill and walked fast (I have too many wonky body parts to run anymore) for probably 20 minutes to round out the session. I turned around and no one was there at all. Even shy boy's shift must have ended, for a young woman had taken his place.
But best of all, my bag was just where I left it, unsecured, unguarded and untouched.
There is a lot of cynicism in my family, much of it misanthropism disguised as wisdom. People are mean. People are bad. People are idiots. People suck. People have done awful things to me, and I will never forgive them for it. People cannot be trusted to do anything right.
I suspect this is why there are so many animals about. You can control them to some extent. They're grateful for your attention and care. They don't talk back and have no dissenting opinion. I like animals, and sometimes I think having a pet would be nice. But if you ask me, I'd say all these passive qualities make animals much less interesting than people.
And we are people: some of us just won't get used to it is all.
My bag is where I left it, and everything is in it. In the bathroom/locker room, there's one boy just finishing getting dressed. Then the whole place is mine. I shower long and leisurely. In the car park, which is surrounded by acres of flat, open grass fields covered in snow, suddenly the world looks beautiful, even this fallen world in which I grew up. I stand and stare into the distance until I become self-conscious. I'm relaxed and momentarily at peace.
It's been a lovely break.
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