I actually forgot to complain about something when I spoke about the gym last month.

I tend to go to the gym first thing in the morning. This is mostly because I am an early riser, but I also just find it to generally be the best time to do it in that there is no one there. I impress no one at the gym, and the less people there are around to not impress, the better. Thus I am always just a little disappointed when people are actually there during my completely unreasonable time of the morning. Much to my irritation, there almost always is someone there with me in the morning, but for the most part I can ignore them. Except for this one lady.

Ignoring Chinese ladies is a bit of a passion project of mine[1], and I do it with a surprising success rate. But I am after all only human, so when I hear the a cry of what sounds like bloody murder I cannot help but react by wanting to help the poor person being killed. When I first heard the blood-curling cry I was happily doing sit ups. That’s when I heard it; the distinct sound a human being makes when punched in the stomach. I threw myself off the bench and looked around, hoping to help. I found the source of the injured cry in the form of a young lady working with a trainer. She was in the yoga room and also attempting to do sit ups, but was apparently unable to do them under her own power. Instead, her personal trainer was behind her trying to hoist her up, which didn’t look terribly difficult as this lady looked like she weighed less than the backpack I carry to school. I walked to the men’s bathroom, put myself down on a bench and broke out in hysterical laughter. The thought of this tiny person crying out with agony and not doing any actual work was to much to bear She wasn’t even doing a sit up under her own power. How funny was that?

I guess I must have been heard laughing, because this lady decided to extract her revenge on me. In the following week she would be at the gym every time I was there howling like a werewolf banshee at every move and twitch of her muscle. And she would always do this in close proximity to me, like some kind of clingy and obsessed moon. Every exercise I would do would be mirrored by this lady, who would wail and cry while she did it. She also tended to be just generally loud and obnoxious. Such is life, I guess.

[1] Confused? I once went out with a group of my work colleagues, all female. They had just about nothing to say to me except ask me questions about where I was from, which isn’t conversation as much as interrogation. But each and every one of them ate there food by loudly opening their mouths up and down with every god damn bite. Also, spitting seems to be a pretty big part of the eating process here in China. Honestly, I felt like I was having dinner in a fucking barn. Sometimes I think China is actively working to make me gay.