Episode Details

At some point, I realized that going to the gym for two hours every other day was the same thing as going to the gym for one hour every day—kind of.

I was still avoiding the strange robots around ny building which seemed to only lurk during the daytime hours— I had remained largely offline for the last couple days, resting and working quietly in the daytime in order to attempt to shift my sleeping schedule to allow my workouts to occur into the nights when others most likely couldn't disturb me; they did after all seem to be on some kind of track of some sort, often the same faces showing up regardless of what time I could arrive to the gym, as if they were somehow being alerted to my arrival at the gym. I took it as no coincidence.

It seemed that if I were to connect to the WiFi at all, certain other people would appear within moments, or that if I there was someone already in the gym upon arrival, another would show up within minutes. Oftenthese “robots” would do less working out than just sitting on their phones—one of them even bold enough to turn towards me strangely for a few minutes, simply standing awkwardly on the treadmill and staring directly at me—as if I might react with an outburst of anger—instead, I just grunted like an animal so that I didn't scream at him, more wanting to say

“what the fuck did you come to the gym for—to just stand there?!”

And it seemed as though many people actually did, indeed come to the gym to lazily push weights around for a couple sets, scroll and text—then even more lazily stare into their phones, just fucking sitting there motionless— for more time than they had spent working out, almost as if appearing at the gym was just to be able to say to their other social media drones “I'm at the gym” or to brag “I went to the gym today.”

They certainly weren't there to work out, and it was draining.

My training was not so that I could brag—I wanted a second husband.

*edit

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Even in the awakening of understanding what a man was— and how it would end, or that it would end at all— and most likely due to his cheating, as most marriages ended anyway.

I had come to quite admire Ms. Elizabeth Taylor for having married something like eight times—maybe even nine.

Why not take into competitive spirit the art of love and marriage in trying to succeed this record— I was after all, a champion at such. Love, that isS

I admired more the stars of the golden era than the lackluster and almost fraudulent “celebrities” of my own time. The streaming era plastics of the new age.

It seemed anything living behind a camera or a screen was a bigger lie than it had ever been and my eyes often fell to the back of my head upon seeing someone taking a selfie or using face time— it seemed awful that the world was in such a baseless competition with itself when the fact was that the algorithm controlled all things. If you were going to be a superstar, it was because someone paid to run up your streams—someone paid to put you into the eye of the public, and usually for alterior motives.

I needed the job more than anything and something told me that I would get it, instead of like my last interview at equinox, arriving late and wearing the nicest clothes I had—gym attire which was worn and ill fitting, I would arrive early, and even more so, more than 15 minutes early. I had plenty of books to read while waiting, and more reasons that I could count for needing the job in the first place—I could not go on in the same cycle of needing and needing, nevermind what I wanted. I was willing to sacrifice my attempt at superstardom for just being a normal working person, especially since it meant being able to eventually escape New York, and perhaps even the poverty