The Snow Is My Temple Now

The gym is a warm temple on a frigid night. The windows are fogged with condensation as people rush in to escape the chill. The smell of sweat and breath fills the air, almost steamy within this sanctuary. The sound of metal against rubber, weights being dropped, and the intense exhalation of a gym echo all around. Is it for vanity that I am here? Memories come marching as I think of days long past on the California beaches, where muscular men were touted as ‘true’, while friends of mine were mocked for being fat. I leave one machine to begin on the next, trading chest fly for chest press. Am I trying to build huge muscles, to be attractive—or at least to avoid being the target of that same ire? Or am I here for functional fitness, to do the things I love, to maintain what brings me joy?

As I set the weight and do a light stretch, I people watch. I always do, I must, the people around me are leading their own lives, working out for their own reasons. The solipsism of it all hits me; the vibrancy of life, the mirrored need to exist healthily. But the sound of weights brings me back to my workouts, making me think of my reasons for being at this gym, on this frigid February night. My music plays faintly through my headphones in the background, heard and unheard at the same time.

These thoughts flash through my mind as I lift the seventy-pound weights, metal clanging against gravity. A loud grunting draws my attention to a huge man in short shorts and a cut-up tank, utterly focused on his own workout and oblivious to others. He stands knocking out set after set, unaware of the cacophony of noises and pools of sweat he’s creating. Is that masculinity? Taking up all the space you want, making all the noise, being this huge presence in the middle of the room? It simply can’t be right? 

In ages past, these stereotypes made sense, but in the current era their societal ramifications only seem to separate and isolate us. I chuckle, uncertain whether it’s at him or my own discomfort, refocusing as I start my next set, eyes drifting briefly to the foggy windows. Surely, at the end of the day, we as homo sapiens, are more than our gender; we are thinkers, doers, creators. There are so many flavors of people beyond their genitalia. I didn’t ask for manhood to be this subversive and contradictory thing; I am simply left parsing out what others have left me. 

The set finishes. I consciously stop it from crashing down, feeling the burn in my chest as the weight slowly kisses the one beneath it – a soft touch in a space not accustomed to gentleness. I just want to live, I just want to do the things I want to, unbothering & unjudging of others, unjudged and unbothered by others.  

I stand up and grab the cloth to wipe my machine down. Spray, wipe, & disinfect for the next person. The smell of rubbing alcohol fills my nose as I clean the equipment, wondering about how thorough I should be and if anyone’s watching me.These constant litmus tests of masculinity are exhausting.

 My unheard music changes to a love song — Five Years Time by Noah and the Whale — gaining my attention as the whistling intro comes in. Just a bit more now. You know why you are here: to do what you love. But also to satisfy the requirement that men have to be strong. You can follow two rules at once, the ones you do for yourself and the societal ones that happen to coincide with yours. 

I skipped this song. I don’t want love songs right now. I want to be angry, I want music that encourages pushing myself to the limit, not sit in the comfortability of love. It’s hot and loud in here. A man would be unbothered and finish his set. 

I sit down at my next machine, muscles crying for a break, yet I simply must push myself into the next set. Ignore the pain, ignore the exhaustion, ignore the loneliness, ignore the sadness, ignore it all. Push, push, PUSH, PUSH.

Once again, though my chest screams at me to drop the weight, I allow it to gently kiss its weighty brethren as it returns to rest. Aren’t you tired? Isn’t this pushing too much? Ignoring everything? Is that the goal? What is it to be a man? What is it to be fit? 

I stand up, drink some water, and wipe my face with my shirt, noting the stains of sweat left behind. I look around – the people on the treadmill bouncing up and down as they run, the faint whirring of their machines taking up the background noise.  These societal questions, these societal roles… they weigh on me as much as these weights I lift.

I glance at the guys in the free weight area, hulking masses of muscle and sinew, wonderfully strong, I’m sure, but hard to look at.  Is this me gaining power? Is ignoring my emotions – everything  besides my aggression, my anger – what I need to be doing? Why is listening to a love song too vulnerable for me to work out to?

The cold smell of the outside invades my nostrils as a new gym goer enters this place, this confused temple. These are such silly questions. I see people of all creeds and religions, of all shapes and sizes, everyone looking to improve their health, maintain their health. That’s a wonderful thing, everyone working towards a common goal. 

A memory surfaces; my friends and I, sitting despondent in the kitchen after losing the soccer match. Our coach, Mr. Bran, saw this moping, this growing sadness in his team and spoke wisdom at us. “Gentlemen! Please! Pick your heads up, you tried your best and we can’t fault you for that. Yes, yes, it’s important to be strong, but real strength is know when you can take a break a feel the pain of the loss. Let get into what happened on the field, today…” The yoke of yesterday, ingrained in our minds. 

I walk the gym with a deadpan face, unsure of my current state of being, unwilling to let my thoughts be read. Can’t I afford myself a little more patience? I sit back down and begin again, and I grab the key to adjust the weight, hesitating.  As I push through the final stretch of my workout, this masculinity I contemplate—toxic or not—is at home in this place. I lower the weight, and begin. 

My music changes again, the gentle piano notes of Experience by Ludovico Einaudi float into my brain. I let it play. Rest is allowed. Taking a break to feel the pain of loss is ok. I grab the handles to begin again, for the final time.

As I finish, I refrain from letting it smash into its sister plates. I allow a quiet finish to this workout. Much like everything else in this world, masculinity is a grey area, simply just parts and pieces of ideas, and adhering to those stringent rules, those unbending conceptions of what is and what isn’t. The infinite styles of masculinity and femininity. 

No explosive end. No huge clash of metal on metal, just the silent submission of me being done with working out for the day.  Societal, swirling projections of our genders, on display in this place – this ‘temple’. The cold outside beckons me, choices lying all around. The tools of kindness, patience, understanding, thought, and commiseration. These rusty, cobweb-filled aspects of masculinity. I choose to dust them off, to maintain and support these.

I stand slowly, collecting my waterbottle and jacket as I head for the door. Masculinity can be what I make it to be, it bends to my will, and not the inverse. The heat is everywhere, the sound of the gym overwhelming, the weight of perception flushing my cheeks. I nod at the front desk staff as I head out, returning their “Goodbye! Be safe out there!” with “See y’all soon! Godspeed tonight!”

The cold hits me like walking into a wall. The shorts I’m wearing suddenly feel paper-thin, the cold dominating my senses as my body adapts. The air smells cold; my nose protests the temperature change, the inside of my nostrils burning slightly. In this snow, I can just be.

The silence overtakes me as I walk away from the warmth of the gym, the safety of that temple. The ramifications of society fall away as the snow hushes my ears. Gentle, chaotic flakes fill my vision; the scent of cold and the tickle of an incoming sniffle fill my nose.

The snow shifts around my feet as I disturb it for the first time, making my mark as I tread new paths to my car. I unlock it, the ethereal lights of my beast illuminating the white landscape around me. There are only the senses here – only the self to process them. Here I am, becoming simply the viewer, an objective viewer.

The silence is overwhelming.  For a few precious seconds. Not man, not woman, not third gender, just a creature witnessing and holding vigil for its surroundings. I don’t open my door yet, standing outside my car. Unannounced, alone, and yet so whole. Admiring the quiet world around me, the cold biting at my legs and my cheeks, and yet there is such an unadulterated beauty to it.

 From my shoulder, my headphones hushedly play a song, unknown to me, but the notes of the music blend with my thoughts as I stand amidst the flurries and flows. I see why men looked forward to bleeding out in the snow—a people on a quest to free themselves, a quiet serenity that borders on the dramatic, going out feeling like a hero.

I shake my head, flakes of snow flurrying down around me, caressing my arms as they fall to my feet, sticking to my legs. I look at the gym, a warm temple to the human body. One of thousands in this country. A myriad of people in there living up to societal expectations, me among them. Peaceful and bittersweet, no? Only allowed to be who you are in the in those unwitnessed moments, those moments of true stillness.

I open my car door, and a small lump of snow falls to my feet with a soft thump, burying my sneakers. I exhale – a cloud of steam rising from my mouth like that of a dragon. I shake off my shoes and throw my stuff in the car, taking one last look around the quiet world around me, undisturbed by people. Outside, the snow is my temple now – silent, unjudging, unperceiving.