I wish I were exaggerating when I say that I chased a personal trainer from my gym down the dairy aisle in the East Harlem Target the other night, but I’m not.
I was just so excited to recognize someone in my neighborhood that I didn’t bother to consider that I – coming off a four-mile run and wearing men’s sweat shorts – was in no shape to even be in the Target, let alone harassing the other shoppers. In fact, when I looked in the mirror before leaving the house for the run, I said to myself, “You look ridiculous.” And rather than change my outfit, which is what a normal person would do, I decided to roll up the legs of the shorts. Because, you know, cuffs were what I needed.
But I conveniently forgot about all of that when I spotted this poor guy trying to buy some cheese.
Usually this is the point in the story when my friends ask if he’s cute. And I always say, “Of course he’s cute! He’s a trainer.” And then they tell me that it’s a fair question because they’ve seen some unattractive ones before. And that’s when I tell them that they need to go to better gyms because, seriously, that should just never be happening.
Anyway, when he turned around to see who was following him, I blurted out, “Hey! Aren’t you the guy???”
I cringed immediately. Aren’t you the guy? Did I really just say that? Of course I did. And in case you needed reminding, I’m also the person who was wearing cuffed sweat shorts in public. But then just as I was working myself into a full panic about that, I noticed that he – The Guy, if you will –had turned bright red.
And he didn’t answer. So I said, “I didn’t know that you lived up here. Wait, do you live around here?”
And he just blurted out, “I’ve seen you on the 6 train.”
This was really quite a mistake on his part because I happen to take an aerial gymnastics class at his gym every Monday and I don’t know how he didn’t recognize me as the girl who is always hanging from the ceiling, messing up all the tricks and otherwise paying $40/hour to embarrass herself in a really elaborate way.
“Oh no no no,” I corrected him. “I’m from the gym. I take the aerial class.”
He still looked a little blank, so I added, “I’m the one who’s always falling.”
He nodded some more and turned even more red. At that point, I realized that he actually knew that all along and that, quite frankly, nothing good was going to come from this conversation because we were both hopelessly awkward. So I said, “WELL HAVE A NICE NIGHT!” which, considering that neither of us seemed capable of responding to the other in any logical way anyway, probably wasn’t all that bad – even if it was a bit on the loud side.
And with that, I went straight to the cashier. I wasn’t even finished shopping, but it didn’t matter because I didn’t want to risk seeing him again and having to say even one more sentence.
Besides, I live a block away. I told myself that I could just go to Target again tomorrow. In jeans. I could go again tomorrow in jeans.