My morning reading gets done in the bathroom. Several novels have been finished in there this year--Dolores Claiborne, Little Children, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, to name a few--and it's this type of consistent word diet which primes me for anything meaningful which will happen at my laptop. The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta is what sits next to the toilet today, and I clear a thirteen-page chapter in one sitting.
I wear a tucked in button-down with dark jeans to the Acme. The attire is a little much, considering I'm shopping for Cinnamon Toast Crunch and cold cuts, but I want to look like I'm employed. Otherwise, people stare if I walk in wearing a sleep-warm tee shirt and sweat pants. I can hardly blame them. No one wants to see an unkempt twenty-something walking in there after ten a.m. It sends a negative message, and I don't want that on my shoulders so early in the day.
I save my attitude for the gym, which is where I head after breakfast. My key card runs over the scanner at five of noon, and I'm running laps no more than a minute after. On the way to the track room my Soffe shorts get stared down by an old man sitting against the wall. The nylon bottoms probably don't surpass a five-inch inseam, yet I stare back to remind the guy that staring is rude.
The track circles over the perimeter of the basketball court, which is currently partitioned down the middle, separating the daycare program from a team of middle-aged men playing a game of horse. There's only one other runner up here--a blonde woman about ten years older than me--but she sticks to her own lane, so I know everything is going to be beautiful.
It's late 2016, but in order to get fired up for the daily run, I need it to become the eighties up here above the courts. A Spotify Hair Metal playlist gets me through the initial ten or twelve minutes of my run--Bon Jovi, Murray Head, Skid Row--before moving on to more pop-oriented throwbacks like "Turning Japanese" and "Big in Japan." There's nothing like running through a montage to make you think you're getting in shape.
