Brad Pitt, the Drag Queen and Me

I've always been a bit of a gym rat. I like to work-out and have at different times in my life been a little obsessed with my body image. Although there have been periods in my life where work commitments or finances have kept me from maintaining a gym membership at those times I could at least usually be found curling two paint cans tied together in my basement or undertaking 10 mile bike rides. I recently came off one of those down times and found myself at my heaviest weight and the most out of shape in my life. My battles with feelings of depression, quitting smoking, some financial troubles and poor eating habits had ballooned me to 235 lbs. and a 36 inch waistline. At a smidge under 6' tall I was rounder than I had ever been and not at all happy about it. As the summer of 2009 began I knew in September we would be producing The Rocky Horror Show and that no matter how good my performance was as Dr. Frank-n-Furter nobody was going to want to see an oompa loompa in a corset.

However, despite that fact I couldn't seem to get myself to work-out or diet. I was in a successful production of A Picasso, had a long commute and was producing two other shows so I just kept putting it off and putting it on. When A Picasso closed and my other shows were over the first of August rolled in and I rolled right in with it. Mortified at what I looked like and with the thought of a September 11th opening in my underwear in front of thousands of people I finally broke down and bought a gym membership on August 3rd, that day the scale read a whopping 238.

I began a blistering regimen of a two hour work-out every day, six days a week and I stopped eating (mostly) after dinner. No two bowls of cereal (my guilty childhood pleasure) or ice cream for dessert. The intensity of my work-outs became a thing of notoriety at my gym, even the personal trainers were impressed and they told me so. The positive reinforcement was great and I enjoyed it, except they kept calling me Brad which I couldn't figure out. It seemed odd they didn't know my name since I was there so much but I didn't think much about it and just smiled and went about my business. As anyone who belongs to a gym will attest there's a social atmosphere and camaraderie that develops among the 'regulars' , you chat, find out some personal information and in general become friendly with those folks you see every day. We laughed, enjoyed some typical locker room humor and talked in the sauna, steam room or sitting in the whirlpool. I started to look forward to seeing my 'friends', even if they didn't seem to know my real name.

One day one of the trainers was working with someone and asked me to come over and help spot his student on the bench press. " Hey Brad can you give us a hand over here?" After the sets were done and the trainer discharged his pupil to the steam room I finally broke down and told him that my name wasn't Brad. He said "Oh I know, that's just the nickname we've given you, I thought you knew that I'm sorry. Does it bother you?" I told him that it didn't bother me but I didn't understand it, how is "Brad" a nickname. He said- "You know? Like Brad Pitt." Now I don't have any delusions as to making a comparison of any kind between myself and Brad Pitt except we both have hot wives so I told him I still didn't get it. Then he asked me if I had ever seen the movie "Burn After Reading". oh no! When I do my cardio on the elliptical or treadmill, I have my music on and once I get my heart rate over 150 my eyes are closed, I zone out, in fact I've been pulled off my machine on more than one occasion because some of them beep after you go past the cool down timer. You see, I don't want to know how much time I have left or the distance I've traveled I just kinda flip a switch and go until I can't go anymore. Apparently, I also 'jam' a bit and much to my dismay apparently even sing once in awhile. Well after a good laugh I jokingly said that maybe being a performer had something to do with it. He asked what kind of performing I did and I told him what I had done recently and that in fact the reason I was working so hard was I was going to play the lead in Rocky Horror and was about to be on display in a corset and high heels. To quote Hedwig-'His face was so still it could have been a Yes album cover'. He excused himself and I went back to finish my work out thinking no more of it and determined to watch my exuberance on the cardio equipment.

The next day one of the usually friendly and flirtatious girls at the desk silently checked me in and as I went to grab my towels I caught her and one of the other employees looking at me and whispering. In the locker room I smelled my armpits, checked my breath and examined my teeth for parsley...nothing untoward was happening in any location so I chalked it up to girls being girls and started to change. My mates, usually not shy about locker room banter including giving me shit about my crooked back were curiously quiet. Nobody was rude and when I asked one guy how his ailing brother was we chatted and he asked me about a recent audition I had but I could tell something was amiss. After my work-outs I treat myself to a nice long steam trying to take advantage of my heightened metabolic rate and the heat to sweat off a few more ounces, it was in that fog that everything became clear. The minute I walked my naked butt into the steam room the three guys in there unceremoniously left and even in the mentholated smell of the steam room the trail of homophobia they left behind reeked to high heaven. These guys practically ran out of the place and at first I laughed but then I got pissed.

I have absolutely no tolerance for intolerance, it's what has driven me away from religion and even alienated me from members of my own family. No god worth a shit is going to tell me a member of their flock is an abomination because of who they sleep with. Tell me you think a gay couple shouldn't get married or use the word nigger, hebe or wop in a conversation and our relationship is over period, even if you're only 'kidding'-I find the subject void of humor.

So these guys all thought I was a drag queen or something and were suddenly afraid to be naked in front of me, how pathetic. I decided to ignore it giving others the benefit of the doubt and just figured that these morons were in the minority, I mean c'mon it's 2009 right? However, as the next several days went on it got worse, more cold shoulders, less conversation and a lot of alone time in the sauna. Admittedly, I escalated it as my anger grew each day, I'm a good Frank-n-Furter and had no problem swishing about or standing bare assed in the middle of the locker with my hands on my hips watching ESPN commenting on how cute A-Rod was or the size of his bat. As the show got closer I had to shave my upper body, chest, pits, everything and when I showed up that day at the gym you would have thought I had leprosy-it would have been laughable if it wasn't so disgusting.

Happily the week of the show came around and I didn't get into the gym for awhile. In fact I had decided I wasn't going back there at all. I had reached all my goals, I was down to 205, my waist was 33 inches and as one of my son's friends commented on seeing the show "Damn your Dad is ripped!". When we had finally put the show to bed I changed my mind and decided I'd go back to the gym and finish out the month's membership before cancelling and starting over somewhere else. Upon my arrival everything had changed, I was greeted with an almost reverence, the girls at the desk flirted unabashedly with me and the men that had shunned me when they thought I was gay were asking me how the show went. I was taken aback to say the least and not a little confused. I found out later in the day that one of the trainers had come to see the show with his girlfriend and she was a yoga student of my wife-I had been inadvertently de-outed. This did nothing to alleviate my anger and in fact it probably made it more vehement and I internally railed at the bigotry of my so called gym buddies. Then I took a deep breath and decided that I too had to be tolerant. I couldn't hate those people just because they were a bunch of hateful, ignorant, small minded prejudiced assholes. Stupid people need love too.

More truthfully though I liked this facility and I was not going to let those idiots force me to change my gym just because of their asinine beliefs and fear. I'm not all that forgiving though, the cold shoulder is now on the other foot so to speak and I have new 'gym buddies' and they actually know my name.