I’VE BEEN FEELING A LITTLE BIT HOSTILE LATELY

MODEL: SIEGFRIED FISCHBACHER, VANITY FAIR, 1980s. TEXT: Y.B.D.

I may be a middle-aged single mom, but I’ve been feeling a lot like an angry young man lately. Chalk it up to the depression, I guess.

So last Saturday morning at the gym, I took a cue from Fight Club’s Tyler Durden and decided to start a fight.

Again, this was at my GYM. The place where men twice my size go to get even bigger.

But I didn’t just pick a fight with any old guy at the gym. This guy was a FITNESS BULLY. Which, on the scale of bullies generally, isn’t very serious at all. But on the scale of gymgoers as a population? Fitness Bullies are the absolute WORST.

For those of you who don’t know, a Fitness Bully is someone who comes into a public gym and treats it like their own personal living room. This equipment is saved. This territory is occupied. You will all bow down in submission to my superior strength and fitness.

My point is that whatever a Fitness Bully wants or feels entitled to, they make sure everyone around them knows it, through sheer force of their presence.

For example, in this case, the Fitness Bully has already selected and placed his weights on the metal sleds, less than ten minutes after the gym opened on a Saturday morning. Yes, even though he will not actually be using the sleds for quite some time. Instead, the Fitness Bully will be busy for the next 30-45 minutes setting up a line of cones to run some nonsense circuit training obstacle course involving kettlebells and deep knee bends.

Please also note that a Fitness Bully will be dick-deep in his rowing machine warmup before he realizes you have removed all his carefully selected weights from his “saved” equipment, and placed them to the side, so that you can get your long-awaited 12 fucking minutes with the sled.

I am not asking for permission from a fitness bully, nor am I putting off my workout to concede to the Fitness Bully’s planned workout.

Instead, I am going to confront the Fitness Bully directly… by having a little fun, and deliberately fucking with the Fitness Bully by acting like I am the new (self-appointed) Fitness Bully in town.

No, you know what? That’s Princess Fitness Bully to you, Fitness Bully.

So that’s why I started a fight.

Maybe you’re wondering what happened next. Does it really matter, though? The important thing is that I started a fight. Me! Pathologically conflict-avoidant People Pleasing me. The girl who mostly just wants to satisfy everyone so they’ll go away and leave her alone.

Here’s hoping my mood improves throughout the week, or else I might become an even worse kind of bully… a self-righteous one. ❤️‍🔥 — Y.B.D.