Our Virgin Of The Broken Pinkies

After a great deal of nagging, I finally bought a membership at the local gym. The first thing I notice when I walk into the gym is that it's almost completely populated by beefy muscle-guys. There are also a couple of markedly skinny young men who you know are following some Hero of the Beach end-game. But this gym is not "Curves."

The man at the counter invites me to look around the gym and get myself familiar with the equipment. Every man turns around and stares at me as I walk by. The weights are huge, and the entire place smells like jock. Baha Men play in the background. One huge man wipes down the sweat off some piece of equipment that features weights the size of truck tires.

My childhood was defined largely by weights and big cans of protein powder. My father was a body-builder. Six-pack, biceps, tan, shaved chest. I have a baby picture of me sitting in my swing set, looking at a body-building magazine in my hands. The swing set's mechanism was disabled and another chair propped my legs up, so the whole thing served as an ottoman; I had my sedentary inclinations indulged for me at a very young age.

I am told that it is required that I bring a towel with me to wipe off my sweat off the equipment. I picture myself getting taken aside by an old boxer, trained in the arts of hand-to-hand combat, and becoming a famous jewel thief.

I become conscious of the fact that I have just stepped into what will become no doubt another humorous footnote to my life. I haven't eaten since 9:00. I'm trying to lose weight. I'm dizzy.

I smile for my ID card photo and head home. On the way, I suddenly get the impulse to visit my old church. I haven't been there since I was 12, though I lived in the neighborhood. The area is cold, empty. Presumably there are students in the parochial school next door. But other than a retreating delivery man, not a sign of life.

The church has long, tall gates around it now, which are padlocked in intervals. I thought maybe I could go into the church and sit for a while, but that is apparently impossible.

A number of people I know look back at the traditional religion that was grafted onto their childhoods with an instinctive disgust. Standing in front of the gated church of my youth, I have the sudden impulse to fling myself upon it and cry. I want in. But even if I got in, would it even be the same as I remembered? Or would I feel alien, like an interloper?

I look for the statue of the Virgin Mary with the broken pinkies. I knew the boys who broke those pinkies off her hands. I get a compulsion to find one of them and beat the shit out of them, though they are probably my age and either in jail or a fucking accountant or something.

Next door to the church is a relatively new, sprawling senior citizen complex. I look for notices in front of the church announcing some sort of services, but there aren't any.

I get paranoid, and wonder if the church is closed for good. Just like Circuit City.

I end my trip at a stop at McDonalds. At this point I can't tell if I'm numb and shaky from the extremely cold weather or the fact that I need food. I order a spartan two plain hamburgers and a small coffee. The calories are relatively low, and the burgers will provide the right balance of protein and carbs. I frown at the lightness of my coffee, and picture the half-and-half indiscriminately poured into the beverage as adding unnecessarily to my caloric intake. I vow to go black.