On a fourteen-mile-long island of eight million full-time residents, you'd think we would be better at paying attention to personal space, both our own and other's.
Permit me a little self-indulgence.
I know, that as a native - four generations on one side, three on the other - how to weave my way through a jammed sidewalk, subway, or event at a nightclub. It's almost second nature. I say to myself, you can always tell the non-natives: They seem oblivious to their surroundings. And in this town, that can spell anything from annoyance to downright danger. Not that all non-natives are so unmindful, mind you.
(An aside: The word, "annoy" and its variants, "annoying," "annoyance" seem to be the word(s) of the moment. It's annoying.)
For some screwed-up reason, I find it most glaring when I work out, at The Gym.
After almost thirty-five years of working out in this city, from crazed-competitive aerobics classes in the early eighties, to holistic-spiritual aerobics classes and personal trainers into the 90s, to the realization that I was just better off doing my own thing, in the twenty-first century, I think I have a handle on work-out etiquette.
I go off-hours, since the after-work rush makes getting on a preferred heart-thumping machine, or wiggling in to an available space on a communal mat almost impossible.
At The Gym, the key offenders of oblivion, and worse, the willful takers-over of space, are the personal trainers. Like water, they spread and seep into all available corners.
A word on some of the other patrons of The Gym. During the relative peace of the mid-afternoon hours, I have seen Kyle MacLachlan work out. He wears a bandanna and glasses, spends most of his time on weight machines, and has very skinny calves.
I have seen Matthew Modine too, who looks great. He is bigger and taller than I realize - every time.
(All we would need to complete this holy trinity is Campbell Scott.)
And then there are the too-thin, tallish, wannabe models. Ah, the dears, with their squeaky, high-pitched voices, chatting among themselves (I have seldom, if ever, seen any break an actual sweat) about this or that fashion magazine, or the E! Entertainment re-run about Demi Moore's boyfriends and husbands. Yes, The Gym has flat-screen televisions all over the place.
Nope. It's the trainers, walking purposefully in their black outfits, the word "Coach" stenciled in orange on their chests and backs. They are a mostly young set, and judging from overheard conversation, they have come to New York from other States. They cannot make two sentences in a row without saying "I was like...," that great substitute fill-in for "I said," or "I thought." These people are not rocket surgeons, no.
So often, when I am on the mat, going through my self-taught, old-fashioned, mat-Pilates sequence (I loathed the way William Gibson attempted to exploit the practice by assigning it obsessively to his main character, in his novel Pattern Recognition. I remember harumphing at first, then cursing it later. Awful, trite, annoying.), a trainer, client in tow, will take up all available space, without making the slightest acknowledgment that hey, there might be another person there, on the floor.
Call me kooky-obsessive, but I always eye-scan and check for available space, making sure that once down on the ground, there is sufficient space all around, for one very simple reason: I don't want to kick anyone in the head.
Today, at 2:15 p.m. the worst. I was mid-way through the core sequence (the midsection), when a trainer and three others took over half the mat, to conduct a chat - about shoulders? - when one opened a container of food, and started to eat. I think they were all trainers. But food? Distinct garlic-smelling food, on the mat - when someone less than a foot away is simply trying to complete their daily workout?
The Gym ain't cheap. I have never registered a complaint. Until today. I left the mat, and padded to the manager's office, to say something. And then I returned to the mat, where the kumbaya-kids were still sitting. Another trainer came over and told them they could not eat on the floor (news flash), and they looked at me funny. Clue-free and living in the big city.
I picked up my stuff, walked off to another mat, completed my workout, and left.
These people need to get some city smarts. Yesterday would be good.
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