A misleading intro to be honest; the gym has a pool and I swim at the gym but I rarely venture upstairs to spend time in the hall of mirrors. Once in a while I’ll drop in on a Saturday, after a good cycle, to exercise the rowing machine for half an hour before rounding off the day with decent lengths in the pool downstairs but mostly I’m content to leave all those machines for others to enjoy. I said as much when I joined the place five years ago, declaring myself a swimmer, but the girl at the desk didn’t offer me a discount for a semi and each month I pay a modest amount for the use of all of their installations.
El Gimnasi San Miquel is part of a tetris-like structure of buildings on Muntaner; sort of slipped below and coupled to a school that occupies the best part of the corner of the block and which in turn seems attached to a church just around the corner on Rossellò. Perhaps therein the saint in the name of the institution. We who use the place – all those animals and other friends – are a curious bunch and seem to be drawn from a rather vertical slice of the inhabitants of the city. What we have seems to be adequate.
Once I’m trough the heavy front door and into the foyer I’m met by the smell of chlorinated water which I find welcoming. I move past the three vending machines and hang a sneaky left, next to reception, to swipe in and clank through the turnstile. A few steps forward and to my right the entrance to the gym. I always look right as I move forward towards the stairs; through the door, in first plane, I’m met by the heaving masses of those working free weights. Behind them, the energetically, restless buttocks of girls on static bikes; often good for a double take. The rest of the gym extends both left and right of my field of vision. I proceed on down the stairs and negotiate the structural S-bend into the men’s changing rooms.
Once inside, universal masculine protocols apply (minus the two loud Brazilians who are always there, no matter when I go, and who just don’t get it); minimal eye contact, grunts of recognition if at all required but best avoided, the thousand yard stare through the lockers and the wall beyond as you drop your grundies and struggle to pull on your marble bag with the minimum of fuss, reshuffle the cabinet and tie up the draw strings. Another S-bend of showers ,a hard right and I’m out and looking at the pool. On the best of days, usually at odd hours, I’ll hear nothing but the slight bump of the swinging door behind me… reverberated; the water is a sheet of glass and I’ll pick my lane. Other days you’d think we were drag-netting tuna.
Of those us animals and others; the first to come to mind is Wanger Man whom I’ve not seen for a while. He generally worked out in the gym but once in a while came down to the pool for a few complementary lengths. A heavy set Nordic man – in his late fifties, I would hazard, – about six foot, with a head of thinning, shoulder length, blond hair, a couple of rings through both nipples and no doubt some heavy metal skewered through his bell. You might take him for an actor in the autumn of his professional life; in his day he might have stood the line – claymore in hand – with Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Or he might well be the remnants of a career kicked off at El Bagdad thirty years ago; an industry put to bed by the likes of Youporn. Greener pastures, it seems.