I Tried to Use a Pool at 24Hour Fitness

I tore my meniscus two months ago. Knee injuries are difficult because you can do almost nothing for exercise.

I was told by my doctor I could either swim or ride a stationary bike. I did the bike for a week. Nothing makes you feel the prison of time more than getting on a stationary bike. Do you feel like your kids are growing up too fast? Get on a stationary bike. Your kids will never age.

I made the decision yesterday to take up swimming.

I am a member of 24hr Fitness. I’ve accepted what 24hr Fitness is. It is a big-time shit hole. It is never clean. It is always packed. It smells like the farts of a man who died months ago. Every man seems homophobic, yet the locker room vibe is distractingly homoerotic. I watched a man, naked, eat an ice cream cone with no intention of leaving the locker room or putting on clothes. I wish this was a joke.

I found out 24hr Fitness has locations with pools. Cool, I said. I was a child of summer to think that 24hr Fitness being responsible for a body of water was cool.

I drove to Lemon Grove, California which is the eastern part of San Diego County in California. The name Lemon Grove is interesting because a ball sack does not smell like a grove of lemons, yet that is what Lemon Grove is. Lemon Grove is a horrible ball sack. The Lemon Grove location was the only 24hr Fitness with a working pool.

When I entered the pool area from the main exercise floor, I was greeted with screaming. From who? I am not sure because I saw no mouths moving, but yet there were screams. The scene was like a mix between a Roman bathhouse and a Bangkok prison. There were, I don’t know, 74 people in the room? It was enough people for me to say out loud “Where the fuck is the pool?” I could smell the pool. Either that or someone committed murder and was working extra hard on cleaning the place up.

And you know what? I’m going to say it: I was the only white guy. 72 of the people were Asian men. The last person was a black woman with floatie weights in the middle lane. She was screaming at a group of men.

“STOP SPITTING ON THE GODDAMN FLOOR.”

There were men sitting against the wall shirtless with no intention of going in the pool. Other men were fully clothed and on their phones. Everyone was spitting on the goddamn floor.

The water was grey. There were three lanes. One lane had two men standing in the middle talking. The middle lane we have discussed. Last lane…open! So the water is fucking grey. Big deal. I am also disgusting. I take my shit and place it on the edge of the lane.

Not so fast. A man jogged to the lane I was attempting to occupy, grabbed a pool noodle from the corner of the room that is comically overstocked with pool noodles, threw it in the middle of the lane, and then jumped into the water. He resurfaced next to his noodle and straddled like a horse. He did not move. He looked at me as if to say, “I hope you understand that this is my lane.” This man was in his early fifties and I hated him.

I stuck around to see if any other lane would open. I was fuming. My knee hurt. I knew I was going to have to go on a stationary bike again. In my walking from lane to lane in an attempt to get to the front of some imaginary queue I realized that I was the most active person in this pool area. This made me madder. What muscle groups are you trying to hit when you bob up and down on a pool noodle like a fucking four-year-old?

Luckily, I was redeemed. Chaos can take the form of a man straddling a pool noodle, and it can hurt. But chaos can also heal. Chaos can be a hero.

There was another man who also enjoyed the pool. One could say that he enjoyed the pool the most. He got into the far lane of the pool and began to do laps.

Not normal laps. No. Nothing about these laps were normal. Because when he would go from one end of the pool to the other, he would not turn around and return in the same lane. He would swim to one end, roll over the divide, and then return using the adjacent lane.

But if that’s true, wouldn’t that mean that this man used every single lane?

Yes, yes it does.

This fucking legend was doing a full sprint backstroke across three pool lanes. My guy was slapping the water like it insulted his family. When someone got in his way it was not a question who was in charge because one motherfucker was doing the slapping and all the other motherfuckers were getting SLAPPED.

When my hero got in the lane I previously wanted, I looked at the dumb fuck bobbing on the noodle. For the first time, he seemed concerned with something other than himself and his noodle time. He had a force of truth coming at him. He tried to get out of the way by ducking under my hero’s broad swipes. He failed. His attempt to flee only got him slapped harder.

I laughed. But my laugh was different. It was guttural. For a moment, I was part of the screams that decorated the Lemon Grove 24hr Fitness Pool Room. I became like everyone who pays for the basic membership at a low-rate gym: my pleasures were carnal and I craved blood. My only hope was that this man cried out in pain and that his noodle would be taken by a stronger man.

I left the pool room and rode a stationary bike for like, seven minutes.