Living for Disco

I’m quite excited. I’m about to go and join the gym.

Never before in my entire life would I ever have put those two sentences together. I loathe gyms. I never remember how to use the machines properly, so I end up sidling up to them, trying to remain invisible in my ropey old t-shirt, putting them all on the wrong settings and then affecting an expression of ‘of course, I meant to do that. ahaha.’. It’s all pointless anyway; no-one cares - they’re all too busy examining how they look in spandex, or sniffing their own armpits.

The last gym I joined, in Clapham, I went to three times before giving up the ghost, at what amounted to an average cost of
£47 a pop. This, despite the fact that I quite liked it, because I went there one lunchtime, and was relieved to find that instead of the blonde, sweat-free bints on the running machines, the only people there were two men, with intimidating muscles, carnivorous-looking tattoos and bad teeth. They got on the step machines next to me and the beefiest, most elaborately painted man suddenly opened his mouth and, to the guy next to him, said the following sentence:

“Darling! I completely forgot to tell you! Roberto invited me to his villa in Italia! He’s such a little tart.”

Anyway, I digress.

Here, the gym appears to be the social hub of Windhoek. Everyone is a member, as far as I can tell. One of my friends regularly meets men there, not that this is a draw for me, you understand. I am now convinced, in any case, that there are no straight men left in Windhoek. I’m resigned to another year of celibacy.

The main pull for me, however, is that the three things I actually like - swimming, squash and all classes including yoga - are included in the membership fee.

So, I’m quite excited. About joining the gym. Weird.