Just got back from the YMCA. It was a lovely day there, only a few folks working out and a ton of kids down in the gym playing with circus-y gear. My favorite thing about pumping iron- you know: beefing up the ol pythons- is watching the sweet sincerity of the male bonding that goes on in there. It’s a place where men who are strangers touch each other, smile at each other encouragingly, help each other out. At one moment one black guy with a dear smile and a large cross wrapping around his muscles on the left, and an “In Loving Memory” with dates on the right arm, lay on his back and lifted more weight then me up over his head. Behind him a white, French guy with big red shorts smiled seriously with his hands lightly touching the weight-lifter’s elbows. They traded spotting back and forth, waited politely, and kept their conversation at a shy minimum, and I watched out of the corner of my eye and loved them. Across the room the big benevolent Italian man who owns a popular restaurant in town stood face to face with a tall and lean guy in a Vanier shirt, and he spoke to him quietly with his hands on the slim man’s as the slim man breathed and panted redfaced lifting the loaded bar up to his chest.

I love that, though everyone is at a different place in their building-up or trimming-down, by the very nature of the activity everyone is always working almost equally hard. What ever you’re lifting, you’re lifting the heaviest you safely can, and competitiveness is at a minimum and it feels as though we are all in our own, linked-up and interdependant worlds, doing our best. I actually find the Yoga classes at the Parc Y less comfortable and relaxing then the wieght room.

The other thing I love about the Y is all the happy nakedness. In the locker rooms the women walk calm and proud, especially the large ones who know that their skin is flawless and beautiful; that, when people are naked, they are the ones with charismatic power and girth. The power women, so well made up and trim and fashionably dressed, sometimes look surprisingly stale and drawn. There are so many bodies down there and so many funny comfort levels. The young pretty girls are mostly self-conscious or shy. The girls with tatoos like me stand tall in the shower and walk around happily, and the women with too much interiority blowdry their hair at the hand driers, bent over naked because ‘who cares,’ and the startling perspective they offer when you walk out of the bathroom stall is always a good way to start your day.