SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT GYM

January 12, 2004 | 11:52pm

I’m superficial. I admit that, I'll even I love muscular boys with really nice tans. Okay, I’ll also admit that I like my boys to be a little trashy with cute but very small tan lines. When you see the tan lines you know you’re in the zone, so farmer’s tans just don’t cut it for me. And what better way to attract said trashy tanned and toned muscular boys then to become one myself!

On Saturday morning, Merce and I started our search for the perfect gym where we would become the envy of our friends. We’re cute and already in shape, but we need a place to blossom into the physical perfection that will be the new us. Unfortunately, the first gym we arrive at is pretty much closing down but it’s close proximity to ASU scored points despite the fact that it was dark, vacant and desolate.

Gym number two proves to be quite formidable, but not at first…

We walk in immediately see two hot guys. Guy number one is a personal trainer according to the name tag positioned on his gorgeous pectoral, he has unnaturally white teeth, a dark even tan and fake gray eyes (uhhg, contacts). We roll on up to the counter where Lauren is beginning her first day as an employee. She greets us with a ridiculously large smile but she’s flawless nonetheless. "How can I help you?"

"We’re looking for a gym! So, like what makes you different from all the others," I say with the same ridiculously big smile.

"Well, we have … mmm … equipment?" She's obviously dense, but that fits in with today’s theme, so we all laugh, sign in, and then we’re told to sit and wait for a consultant to greet us and begin our tour. We finish the forms and walk up to Lauren, too hyper to sit and wait, but she tells us to sit back down and again: wait for a consultant. But we have too many unanswered questions.

"Do you have tanning? We’re going to need tanning!"

"Is that, like, really important or something?"

"Well, it’s 15% of our pie chart."

"You have a pie chart?"

"Why, yes, we have a pie chart, and tanning is an important part. It’s fifteen percent!"

"Um, a consultant will be with you soon." So we sit, and laugh, and check out some more guys. There seem to be quite a few in a back room called the "activity center."

"Hi! My name is Lauren, how are you today!" The second Lauren to greet us is dressed in black high heels, gray pin-striped slacks, and a matching tight-fitted lambs wool sweater. She wears a turquoise pendant around her neck resting on her very large breasts. It’s very distracting.

But nothing compared to the guy walking out the front door. Merce and I giggle and stare at his amazing calf definition and hot ass. Another guy walks in the door moments later but before he opens the door, he presses one nostral shut and shoots out a disgusting off white hailstorm of snot. We look back to Lauren number two and she begins the selling of her fabulous gym.

She asks about our goals and what kind of things we’re looking for in a gym.

"Well," Merce starts, "I want a gym that’s close to me, has good equipment, isn’t too crowed, is open 24 hours…"

"Yeah, but that’s like only 30% of our pie chart." I chime in.

"You have a pie chart?"

"You have to have tanning. That’s fifteen percent." I say proudly. Tanning was never a big deal for me coming into this but suddenly it’s become an important portion of my pie.

"I can get you a good deal on tanning." She counters.
"But we also need…" Merce stops and we both look at each other. We want to say, "cute boys" but don’t really want to out ourselves a mere three minutes after walking into the first gym of the day. "… we also need aesthetically pleasing people to look at." I nod my head and look down.

"So … I guess I should put some more make up on, then, huh?"
"No, that’s okay." NO THAT’S OKAY? What was I thinking? I just totally slammed Lauren number two. I almost feel bad until she stands up and begins our tour around the gym.

"Um, can we have a discount for seeing that guy’s snot rocket?" I ask.

"I was hoping you didn’t see that! That was SO horrible, I’m sorry." She’s on the offense now, selling the gym.

"Wait, wait, wait. You’re a trainer?" I ask not expecting her to say yes.

"Yes."

"Are you going to wear that?" Again, I slam her but I really didn’t mean it this time either. I’m just saying, oh come on, the girl is wearing high heels for god’s sake.

"I’m not going to work out. You are. Besides, I used to do the ab workout with all my clients until my abs got so tight, I laughed really hard and I broke a rib."

"YOU DID WHAT?"

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?" Merce and I say in unison. She’s bad ass. She nods and walks us along.

There’s masking tape of the floor making these really strange boxes along the walkway between the treadmills and the ab machines.

"Look Merce! We can play suffelboard!"

"That’s not shuffleboard!" We make her laugh, and she comments on it, "It’s hopscotch we use to check for balance and flexibility."

I’m not sure if she’s serious, but I’m feeling flexible and very balanced. I ask to try it, grab her pen, and toss it on the floor. When I finish hopscotching, she gives me the I-can’t-believe-you-just-did-that-and-you’re-totally-not- embarrassed look. Maybe it was the totally self-satisfied look on my face or maybe it was the confidence and cockiness that I radiated, but either way, I knew she liked me. And I became a total snot.

"Here, notice that this machine doesn’t have any weights. It uses pressure and you change the weight by pressing this button." She presses a button on the handle and ask if anyone wants to try it. I volunteer.

The pressure gauge stops reading a number and I say, "It broke. How do you turn it on?" She pumps it for me and tells me to exhale through my mouth when I lift and inhale through my nose on the return.

"There! Did you feel that?" She asks.

I roll my eyes. Um, yeah.

"You didn’t feel anything? It’s all about breath."

"I know about breathing." I sigh, "I do yoga!" By then, my pompous attitude deflates because she shows me the ab machines.

"Oooh, do these ones come with diagrams, too?" Hey, it was a valid question!

Merce points out the conspicuous drawings on the side. "Oh. Nevermind."
Winding down the tour, she shows us the yoga room and of course, the men’s changing room. "Go ahead, go inside!"

I don’t really notice she’s talking because cute guy number three comes out of no where and bends down to take a sip of water.

"Did you see that?" Merce whispers.

"Oh, my god." I squeal. And then I walk into a door frame.

Merce asks about the "Activity Center" and she walks us over to it. Sitting at a table is the most adorable, muscular, brown-haired, brown-eyed boy named Jerry. Again, Merce and I squeal in silence. There’s a dry erase board with dozens of names on it denoting weight training progress.

"I’m going to have to take your measurements. Hey, Jerry, this is Merce and Lonnie." Lauren introduces us.

I look him straight in the eye and with my deepest voice I say, "Hi. Nice to meet you." Merce cackles and Lauren leads me to the scale.

She orders me to step on the blue part of the scale but I’m nervous with Jerry behind me. He reaches over me and writes something on the dry erase board. I lean back away from him, my cheeks turning red.

After a few more minutes of making Lauren number two laugh, she asks us how long we’ve known each other. "Since yesterday!" I spit back.

"What?"

"Just kidding! Um, we’ve played volleyball together…"I start.

"…for about a year." Merce finishes.

We explain that we need to hurry if we’re going to finish, try on swimsuits at Unique, and make it to Merce’s volleyball practice by 2pm. We finish checking weight, body fat, and bicep, thigh, calf, chest, and waist sizes.

"Wait! Can you do that again! I sucked in my gut!" I protest, she laughs, re-measures and gets the same result. She laughs again.

Finally we’re led into her office and where we talk about specific goals and body sizes. Merce goes first. After three minutes I get ansy and start picking at things on her desk to read. I reach for a paper on top of her inbox and she slaps my hand. "DON’T READ THAT! THAT’S THE PRICE SHEET! I’M NOT READY FOR THAT YET!"

I feel stupid for acting like a child, but I got bored, all right. "I need something to read," I wine.

She reaches in her purse and throws a People magazine at me. My eyes glisten and I lick my lips like I’ve just been fed a tasty number six combo from Wendy’s. I tear trough each page completely engrossed. When I turn in again to Merce and Lauren number two, he asks about who’s going to train us.

"Hopefully, I will, you guys are fun. But how about Jerry."

"Jerry’s cute." I say nonchalantly and continue to flip the pages reading various captions and not looking up. At this point, I know they’re both looking at me, aware to the fact that I just outed myself to fact that I’m a raging People-reading-ab-obsessed-Jerry-loving homo. Yet, I read on. Fuck it.

When she reads us the price sheet, it’s actually not that bad. But we say we’re hungry and we need to think about it.

"When will you be back? Can you be back by 1pm?" That gave us an hour.

"Sure, we’re just going across the street to McDonalds." But really, our goal was to check out two more gyms, which we do. None beat the Lauren’s gym in price or cute boys. We speed back and get there exactly on time, hungry but on time.

"Okay Lauren, we’re back for two reasons." I start.

"One: you broke a rib from laughing so hard; and two: you can get us a good deal on tanning."

Later that day, we try on swim suits and other pieces of skanky swim wear that could be possible tanning outfits . Our favorite is the tight white box-cut shorts that said "Varsity" on the ass. They didn’t hide much at all, in fact they hid nothing, they were so tight. We also had time to coordinate a white party outfit.

Sixty-eight dollars later we leave happily. Later that night we were the first people in the theatre to see Mandy Moore’s new movie, Chasing Liberty.

We may be complex People-reading-ab-obsessed-Jerry-loving homos but there’s nothing like a good five minute pre-view of Hillary Duff’s new movie to make us cry and prove to us that we're really nothing more two simple people living a simple life.