I have made a new year's resolution, which is to discontinue use of the word "we". Not conversationally when I really need it, just in a context like "we watch Big Brother because we are stupid". It annoys readers. I know this because they complain. "You don't mean 'we'; you mean 'you'," ran one complaint. It was true, and from now on, when I mean "you", I'm going to say it, and stop trying to hide behind this fake complicity. So I have to say, "You people are stupid when it comes to gymnasiums in this season of restraint." I really wouldn't say "we", here, even without my resolution - I have no intention of joining a gym.
For you, however, there is a high probability that you will pay a full year's membership and use the place for only one month, two if you're lucky. You will waste about £400. If you wasted that on a rubbish holiday, you'd be writing to Esther Rantzen (well, you would if this were the 80s). Because of the nature of this money wastage, however - that you walked into it with your eyes wide open; that you could, at any point of the year, resume gym attendance and start getting your money's worth; that the self-hate you feel for wasting the money dovetails neatly with the self-hate for your slothful nature - nobody will ever rail against the gyms themselves.
It is amazingly rare to hear anyone say: "That's rather sharp practice, isn't it?" At least when a mobile phone company ties you in for a whole year, they don't do so smirking, knowing damn well that in two months' time you will lose all interest in using your mobile phone. It is much more common for a person to smile ruefully and say. "Yes, I went to the gym twice. I effectively spent £231 on each swim." Yes, that is funny. But, man, that is a lot of money.
I'm trying to unpack the levels of delusion that might make you persist with this dumb behaviour. It is not unusual to credit oneself with more vim and determination than one actually has, but, generally speaking, there is a background voice saying: "Am I really going to do that? Might I not have a hangover?" Something must occur, in the gym lobby, to disable this voice. I wonder if they're not piping in some kind of chemical agent, under the cloak of BO. I also wonder here whether there is not some deep-seated Nietzschean fascination with the furthest reaches of human strength, and just the consideration of achieving it makes your heads go fuzzy and the voice of reason sound very far away. There is probably an element of mass hysteria. It's a total, no-warning conspiracy.
One minute BLT means bacon, lettuce and tomato, the next it's bums, legs and tums. It is suddenly considered normal to fixate on your body-fat percentage. The lack of dissent can be explained, I think, by the fact that individuality and subversion and being the goat-dude in a herd of sheep, all those things are very cool, but none is as cool as being thin. It's amazing how easy it was to trample the 20th-century cult of uniqueness. All it took was a bit of cellulite.
Of course, the gym does have a faith-like element. It requires a stolid, single-minded disengagement of interrogative faculties. You mustn't ask questions like: what am I doing mimicking physical toil to no purpose; why am I cycling nowhere; did I really just drive here to use a running machine? Is there any more potent symbol of mankind's profligacy than that I would come here to waste energy on a machine that is wasting energy in encouraging me to waste energy? It takes a lot of mental effort, silencing questions like these. The last thing we'll be thinking about is the direct debit. Damn it, I just blew my resolution, probably quicker even than the three weeks it'll take you to stop exercising. But at least mine didn't cost me 400 quid.
