Paying for It

By the second week of November, the neon blue Christmas tree was lit and decorated for the upcoming holidays. Maybe it was blue to include the Jews, or maybe it was blue just because the color was rad, or maybe it was blue to remind the Jews that they weren't allowed to have Christmas trees. The soft white lights coming from the tree gave a little extra glint to the paper American flags that were taped securely to the desk and the walls. It was going to be a real American Christmas, just the way Bill O'Reilly had intended it to be.

Behind the desk and the iconic tree, images of cops and gang violence were spray painted onto the walls graffiti style. It was to remind us that life on the streets is tough, bitch.

Every time I walk through the door, I am forced to stare at images and newspaper clippings reminding me to "REMEMBER" 9/11. All of the clippings are slightly racist in nature, but this is expected from a place that puts up their Christmas tree two weeks before Thanksgiving.

To be allowed to enter this fine establishment, I pay $27 a month. I go to this place, wear little shorts and old t-shirts, and run for miles on a treadmill that makes loud clicking sounds every time my right foot hits the belt. I am sure that one day it is going to start on fire, but I am slightly obsessed with weight loss and therefore take my chances every day. I think to myself, "Well, I may be burnt alive but at least I'll be thin and have great muscle definition!"

Located on a strip of Lincoln Avenue that is better known for its carpet and tile stores than its work out facilities, my gym is hidden between a Kabala Center and a mystery store that probably sells drugs. And at only $27 a month, I get what I pay for.

There is no towel service. No high tech machines. At least six of the treadmills are always broken. The indoor track that the gym brags about slopes upward and then downward at awkward intervals. The gym advertises their many classes by tacking up a sheet of paper to the water fountain and bathroom stalls, much like a high school student would do when running for treasurer of Student Council.

I have never taken a spinning class, yoga class, or even women on weights because I am really intimidated by the instructor. She is some Eastern European women with bright blonde hair and large boobs. She has a weird face and a belly that she can get away with because of her chest size. This angers me about her. I hated her the moment I saw her. I vowed never to accept an offer for free personal training. As much as I hate her, I am kind of obsessed with her, in a way. I constantly wonder if she is considered attractive by conventional standards and if her accent is a turn on to men. Every time she is near me, I pause my headphones so I can get a better grasp of her accent. She's a whisperer, so I can never tell. One day, I hope to challenge her to a race and finish the competition off with a battle of wits.

Unlike most gyms, though, my gym doesn't usually make me feel overly bad about the way I look. Actually, it's quite the opposite. I often walk in and realize that I may be the most attractive girl who has passed under the American flag guarded entrance all day. Last night, while working on my legs, I noticed a boy doing sit ups feverishly. He was actually attractive. I wondered where he came from and why he wasn't at Crunch or Bally's where all the beautiful people work out. What kind of place did he think this was? I wanted to stand over him and yell, "Hey! What do you think you're doing? You take those abs and those pretty eyes elsewhere, because I want to become the most attractive person at this gym and you're ruining it!"

The attractive boy was making me self conscious and I wondered if the pit stains on my beer t-shirt would make me look hard core or just dirty. I stared at him a little longer, squeezed my pony tail and let the sweat drip to the floor, and walked away, leaving the little puddle of sweat just for him.

There was a time awhile back where I enjoyed the elliptical. I would run, but maybe only twice a week. The elliptical felt like skiing on air, which I liked to pretend I was really doing. Also, it is possible to read a book or a magazine while exercising on the elliptical. On a treadmill, things just get messy. It was because I was doing the elliptical that I met Angel. It was because of Angel that I will never do the elliptical again. After working hard on the elliptical and feeling good about myself, I walked over to do some weights. It was there that I was approached. No one has ever approached me at the gym before. He started talking to me and I couldn't hear him because of my headphones. I removed one headphone from my ear as if to say, "I'm listening, but only briefly because I'm still half listening to my workout music".

"I've been watching you on the elliptical," Angel says. He's been watching me? For how long? This wasn't the first time I'd seen him at the gym. He was hard to miss. Angel has thick, long dreads that go all the way down his back. Sometimes, he likes to make a show about pulling them back and securing them with a brightly colored scrunchy.

He spoke with the same accent that the large-chested personal trainer spoke with, an accent that I have come to call "generic foreign accent". Hey, my gym is clearly no place to be politically correct.

The man in not-hot dreads continued to speak with me, looking me up and down. "You work pretty hard on the elliptical, but the elliptical isn't for people who need to lose weight. It's for people who just want to stay fit."

Was he calling me fat? He grabbed my hand and said, "Hey, I'm Angel." So now he was "Angel", the man who called me fat.

"Your legs…" I looked down at my legs. People always complimented my legs. They are lean and tough. "…They look pretty good." Phew. So according to Angel, my legs looked good. "But your middle…" Oh God. Please don't. I have always been very sensitive about my belly that won't seem to disappear, try as I might. Angel went on, "You could afford to lose a few pounds in your middle."

He had called me fat. In my mind, Angel had basically just told me that I was about the most unattractive girl he had ever seen and it was no wonder I couldn't hold onto any boy, because no one wants to date the fat girl. My self-esteem is sensitive. And low. My brain turned his comments into as horrible as I could make them.

Angel went on to give me some free "advice" on products I should purchase from the GNC. For the next few weeks at the gym, I adamantly avoided Angel every time I saw him. He tried to say hello and make conversation, but I would have none of it. Now when I see Angel, I glare it him from my treadmill and hope that he breaks his ankle so that he won't be able to work out anymore and get really fat. Since the berating by Angel, I have never once even thought about going back on the elliptical. It's been the treadmill, six days a week.

I continue to go to this gym and pay money to be sweated on, and called fat, and be a part of someone's political agenda that I never wanted anything to do with. I do this because, well, it's cheap, and so close to my apartment. It does have heavy things I can lift repeatedly to tone up my arms and treadmills that tell me how many calories I have burned before I may or may not start on fire. So I hope that if I just keep my headphones on and keep trekking along on the wobbly treadmills, one day I will only be so lucky as to have Angel come up to me and tell me that I'm beautiful.

Assaulted for Underwear

Victoria's "Secret" is that she is a lesbian who likes to wear men's carpenter pants, a wife beater under a blue and white flannel shirt, and work boots. Victoria likes to think that in another world, she's a lumberjack. Victoria believes that a woman's body is beautiful, but she feels more manly than feminine. Victoria is okay with this. She accepts it and loves herself for it. In fact, Victoria has very high self esteem and a fantastic self image that other women would die for. And so Victoria designs beautiful, lacey, sometimes complex pieces of lingerie and panties for her girlfriend, Jasmine. Jasmine is a dancer and always hoped to make it big. She has stunning dark features and a large chest. Victoria and Jasmine immediately fell in love, and like most lesbian couples, they moved in together exactly two months after they began dating.

Their relationship is going well and everyone is comfortable with it. Often at big Victoria's Secret meetings, Victoria will have Jasmine model the new pieces of lingerie she has designed in front of the boardroom for the top stock holders to see. The stock holders feel very much a part of the "process" at Victoria's Secret Corporation.

In fact, everyone who works at Victoria's Secret feels very comfortable with the womanly figure. This is mostly due to Victoria and Jasmine's relationship. They have created with they call in the business world a "safe zone", where people are safe to explore and develop their feelings and work through insecurities.

People like me are highly, extremely, overly uncomfortable with the "safe zone" which has far outreached the private board rooms and offices of the Victoria's Secret corporation. Their safe zone is apparent in their pink smelly stores.

Upon walking into a Victoria's Secret store, it is evident that a large pink marshmallow had vomited everywhere, leaving the hot pink contents of its stomach to ooze down the walls. One also sees that the staff of the lingerie empire has just come out of the break room where they appeared to have showered in old lady perfume and been snorting pixie sticks.

My problem with this establishment is not the intensity of the sales staff or even the careless use of gallons of pink paint. I will admit that I am slightly taken aback by all of the cleavage on the sales staff, but that probably has more to do with my feeling that I am more likely to be hired as a representative in the pre-teen bra section of a department store than as an ambassador in the big-breasted grown up woman's lingerie store.

My discomfort with Victoria's Secret stores mostly has to do with the nipple graze. Yes, the nipple graze. More than once, I have been casually felt up by a staff member of Victoria's Secret. I didn't enter the store looking for a good time, but that's exactly what they tried to give me.

Entering the store, a cheery, busty woman always approaches me and asks if I am looking for "panties or a bra!". Then, she will point out some of her favorite bras and the new "panties" they just got in. I, for one, prefer to call them "underpants" rather than "panties". "Underpants" takes longer to say and gets a completely different reaction than if one were to say "panties". It makes the sales people a little uncomfortable because "underpants" sounds anything but sexy. Then, before I know it, the tape measure is out and the lady has her arms wrapped around me and my arms are hovering over my head. I want to say, "Stop! You are violating my personal space!", but the words just don't come out. Next, a bunch of bras are thrown at me and I am forced into a fitting room where I have a moment alone to gather my thoughts. But it's always just a moment because soon there is knocking at the door. "Did you put on the very sexy busty and separating extra cleavage bra? Let me see it!"

Two things always happen at this point. First, the lady makes me nervous and I somehow get stuck in the bra. Secondly, I fear and dread the point that I have to come out the fitting room shirtless. Yet, I don't ever say no. I do exactly what they tell me to do because they have jugs and I, well, don't. Maybe subconsciously I think that if they notice the lack of cleavage coming from my bra, they will give me some of their cleavage.

The knocking at the door continues and I am forced to come out of the dressing room, shirtless. I always try to stay in the room and just open the door, but the fitting room attendant pulls me out by the arm and shoves me in front of a big mirror where I am forced to stare at my inadequacies with a woman whom I do not know. This is usually where the nipple graze comes in. And yes, this has happened more than once. The lady stares for a long time at my breasts in the bra and then shakes her head. "Hmmmm…" she says. "Girl, you barely fill out that cup!" Then, she'll reach into the bra, grab a boob in each hand, and yank it up in an effort to fill out the bra. You can't help but graze the nipple when your hands are fishing around in someone else's bra.

After trying on what seems like hundreds of bras and having the attendant try to mold my breasts into a shape more conducive for filling out a Victoria's Secret push-up bra after each fitting, the whole event becomes a little blasé. I get used to the lady's hands all over my breasts and even begin to get bored with it instead of tense and nervous. Her comments about my anything-but- large-breasts are still just as biting, but I learn to accept it. "At least I need a bra," I think. "It's not like I could go without one, so how bad can they be?"

Eventually, I find a bra that fits and usually purchase the matching underpants. But really, what does it matter if I have a hot matching bra and panty set when I clearly get more action inside the underwear store than at home?

Despite my ever growing stack of insecurities with my body, I continue to go back to Victoria's Secret and pay an exorbitant amount of money for a good bra and a feel-up. And even though I feel like I do not belong at Victoria's Secret, I still hope that one day I can join the club.