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| Photo by Carl Van Vechten (1947). |
Now that Valentine’s Day has come and gone, a Republican representative from New York, can note that perhaps it wasn’t such a hot idea to troll for action other than action from the wife (his wife, not
his best friend’s wife). There is something positively hilarious about him sending forth photographs of his buff-ness, but there he stands, abs at attention, looking for love in all the wrong places. He lost his job over the scandal, but hey, another New Yawker, E. Spitzer fooled around and parlayed his infamous self into a talk show. And Bill Clinton? Oh that’s a nasty one, even for a lefty like me. Face it, women are stuck with keeping their shirts on, that is, unless they are on a topless beach.
Speaking of abs, the building I live in has a perfectly swell Exercise Room. I know, because I’ve been in it. Once. With my slim trim 27-year-old grandkid, who, in a heroic effort, took her grams (me) into the sweat cave in order to demonstrate some exercises I perhaps could do, but didn’t. When we exited, she remarked, “I could feel the two dudes eyes (the guys on the treadmills), glued to my butt.” She’s a beautiful woman, and in all fairness to the treadmill guys, I cut them some slack in the Department of Butt Watching.
It was either eye her bottom side or ogle something boring on the winking blinking television vying for attention. Men are, in the end, human. Come to think of it, that’s how I came to be.
Anyway, there was a time when several male residents had the nerve to grace the Exercise Room, shirtless. I say “grace” because we have a fair proportion of residents who have reached the age where going shirtless is an affront to civility. I’m no prude, but please, let’s use a modicum of decorum, particularly in public (more or less) spaces where the sight of someone’s flesh joggling flappitly-flably, is a sight not to behold.
This brings me around to addressing the super-fit couple who would make the recently departed Jack of Juicer fame blush. They’re into their 70s and devoted to wellness, so much so that they participate in various runs, including Al’s big one that pounds up Prospect Avenue annually. Rain, sleet and hail do not keep them from their rounds, which seem to be daily, or if not daily, then almost. They positively glow with health.
Quite a few residents here actually get outside of their units and walk the walk. One of them runs up and down the seventeen flights of stairs linking our floors. It’s enough to make a fat woman (me) sob. Perhaps though, the chap who gets the heaviest workout, is the guy who helps maintain the building. He does it the hard way by shoveling snow (endless this year), tending to our summertime landscape and generally stretching and bending in order to keep order around here.
All in all, this is a good place to be if you keep your shirt on.
