sent from: London, UK. destination: UK

No one talks about a gym when they want to talk about good things in life. Sweaty socks, locker rooms, dirty showers, loud music, yelling. Like I say, nothing good.
The LA Fitness on the corner of Wilshire and Gayley is one such place. One day I saw Suzie leaving the gym. Suzie was my prim neighbour who liked to throw cocktail parties for people she thought worth knowing. I was never invited.
Later that day in the building elevator, we coincided. I asked her how her gym session went.
“Tough. I’m trying to get in shape.”
“New acting gig?”
“No, I have a class at the Sports Club.”
The Sports Club was the place you went to get away from sweaty socks and filthy showers. Where white gloved attendants parked your beautiful car and you would make sure you were seen entering with other beautiful people, all pinned and stretched and plucked. If the local gym was a few bucks a month, the Sports Club was a second mortgage.
“Why not work out at the Sports Club?” I asked, though from the look on her face it was thought I’d asked her to be in a porn film with her grandmother.
“I have to be in shape to go there, I can’t just go to work out! A lot of industry people will be at the class.”
She looked at me, her eyelashes a little over-thickened, panda-eyed, a slight up and down motion making it clear I was just scanned and found wanting. I held my tongue, but I wanted to tell her she was crazy. Was my own judgement any less arbitrary?
I walked into my flat; it wasn’t fancy. Clothes lay about, and with the windows shut on a hot day the air went stale. Maybe I should clean this place up, I thought.