Planet Fitness: The Down and Dirty, Part 1

Disclaimer: All posited self-impressions of insecurity and body dysmorphia are only partially true and greatly embellished. Also, I'm sure that Planet Fitness serves as an excellent vehicle for some people trying to get in shape, I'm just not sure how or why. But more on that next!
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Now, there's no beans about it- you can't walk into a gym without properly casing it first. You need to find out some basics: who is the swolest, monster-huge diesel bro in this place? What kind of traffic is there around the bench press and free weights? How many bands of puny, roving, time-wasting little teenagers are there swarming single pieces of equipment for hours on end? Do the water fountains actually work? Also, how many layers of slime mold are there on the water fountains? Without this important information, you can find yourself helpless with an arm pump fading; the blood slowly evacuating every single axillary blood vessel you have and nowhere to revive the dying friend that is, or rather was, your sick arm pump. Why? Because there's a half a dozen gangly teenagers watching a cat video in front of the free weights, and apparently, it is poor gym etiquette to throw 45's at people.

In other words, case the gym- find the hot spots, the sticky spots, and the slippery spots, and bring rubber-soled shoes as appropriate to the situation.  Here's what I found in Planet Fitness.

A land of terrifying and mystical crimes against humanity!!!
Although I'll be the first to admit, this picture conveys that
in a much more emotional than literal sense... meh! We can
work with it.

Breaking (my own will) and Entering (a P-F)
I sat there in a petite gray Toyota, gazing balefully at the front of the Planet Fitness. The clashing purple and yellow colors were causing me physical anguish; literally burning into my retinas with their gaudy hues. To calm my eyes and steady my heart palpitations, I read a relaxing space opera for a few minutes. Slamming the book shut, I took a few deep breaths, hurled myself out the driver door, and assuredly walked towards the Planet Fitness. Questions raced through my mind faster than fat people chasing Twinkies on an indoor track- that is, rather slowly but very prominently: would I be chastised for not being fat? Would the purple and yellow walls literally vaporize me with their horrid color patterns? Would the Lunk Alarm sound the moment I opened the door? Most importantly of all, was there actually any real weight inside of the P-F?

Battery and Assault (of everything I once thought decent in a gym)
A Pacific Islander woman of some sort turned her head in my vague direction as I strutted through the doors. Fazed by confidence unseen in the premises for some time, she stuttered a greeting as her mind attempted to cobble together the words to properly acknowledge me.

"Good afternoon! I'm looking into possibly maybe, hm, considering the potential option of eventually joining this gym. Can I get, uh, a tour or something?" I asked, pretending that I couldn't already see the entire gym from where I was standing. The only reason I wanted a tour was because word on the streets from my man Izzy-G was that P-F only had dumbbells going up to 60lbs. I refused to believe such an acrimonious accusation without seeing it with my own two eyes, which now had purple and yellow patterns blazed into them permanently.

The woman gazed at me from behind a fort of makeup and insecurity which barricaded all facial features inside her head, and apparently, also coherent words. "Uh, well... gym. Yes. I am... I mean, it is. This." (Slightly exxagerated for comedic effect.)

"Hahaha! I'm so confused, tee-hee!"

Luckily, her partner in gym-crime and common bro-decency violation swooped in and helped me. He responded promptly to my request for a tour. From behind a mop of chestnut brown hair and a braces-induced lisp, he began talking to me while he calmly exited his cute little desk castle, offering me windows into this incredible, seedy underbelly of the fitness world. He talked about some of the machines, and then gestured towards purple booths that resembled indoor outhouses. (Not bathrooms, mind you, but literally indoor outhouses.) "Do you tan?" He asked in a manner more personal than professional.

 "My beautiful complexion is only bronzed in the finest tropical suns, good sir," I informed him.
"Oh... because we have tanning booths with the Premium Ultra Bonanza P-F Card. It's only 249.99$ extra a month. It also includes those massage chairs..." I shook my head.

Walking by the bathrooms, he gestured, remarking, "Well, these are our bathrooms... your garden variety bathrooms, really. They have lockers and locks and, y'know, all the bathrooming stuff."
I nodded as if I was paying really close attention, which I was. I had to survive this ordeal and document it for posterity's sake.

A World (of Gainslessness) unlike any other
The environment in which we were conducting our safari did not seem at all conducive to gains-seeking forms of human life. I was perplexed. How does one survive here? By wringing the sweat out of towels and drinking the questionably translucent green liquid in the spray bottles? By eating what must be spony weights attached to each of these feeble machines? Lo and behold, I could not see anyone sweating anywhere around me, and the machines seemed too feeble even for sustenance. The mysteries, and odd substances in the spray bottles, thickened.

I would've put a picture here, but after googling 'congeal,' 

my board of editors advised rather strongly against it.

While my courteous guide was cutting our tour short of the dumbbell rack to trundle between equipments intended for some exotic sort of exercise known to indigenous P-F populace as 'Car-dyow,' I stopped dead in my tracks and stared wistfully over at the dumbbell RACK (that's right, barely one, I was as shocked as you surely are at this moment) in order to attempt to verify Izzy-G's audacious claim that dumbells in this foreign place only matched with numerals up to sixty. I squinted and flexed most of my facial muscles in order to increase the bloodflow to eyes, and I almost wish I hadn't- a 60lber was the largest weight I could see, gym patrons nonwithstanding, hehe.

I must've let out a tiny gasp, or perhaps an inaudible scream from my very soul, because my personal P-F sherpa followed my gaze and consoled me, "Oh, those are the dumbbells over there. Not much to look out. However, that Lunk Alarm goes off is someone's being loud grunting or banging weight around."

I shed a lonely tear of agreement and mourning, then sucked it back in. I refused to let this house of heathens receive even a drop of my precious moisture. That bit about the Lunk Alarm definitely caught my attention, however.

"I'm 2 years old and I use 70s to shrug, waaaah! Need bigger weights!"

End of Recon Brief
As my personal pathfinder concluded our tour and talked to me about some finer points of P-F culture, I recalled several fascinating tidbits. First, he kept referring to this place as a 'club.' This was deeply disturbing to me. I thought this was a gym, and perhaps I was misled into this state of mind- but clubs are for swarthy Italian men and corrupt Union mobsters smoking cigars, splayed out contentedly eating strombolis and cannolis, and other fun foods that end in that satisfying 'i' sound. As if confirming this suspicion indirectly, I was informed there were Pizza Mondays and Bagel Tuesdays on the first and second weeks of the month, respectively. I gasped again. How DARE these people desecrate this, huh, SO-CALLED temple of swole with such impure macronutrients!!! I politely excused myself, eye twitching and legs cramping up from sheer absurdity, and dashed out the door of Planet Fitness. As the blasphemy induced dizziness subsided and the swirling yellow and purple bands of color in my vision faded, I realized I had seen all I needed to see...

It is my destiny to set off the Lunk Alarm time after time again, until the pillars of this establishment come crashing down and there is nothing left in the carnage save for the 45lbers and the sole rack of dumbbells contained therein, relics kidnapped by this realm of philistines and barbarians- except that those words might conjure images of strong, pillaging, marauding men of brawn and, well, not valor, but whatever's the opposite of that, so perhaps a realm of philistines and softbodies. Anyway, destiny and all that. In the words of the great Arnold, "I will be back," though next time with some tinted goggles to protect my eyes and some preworkout to fuel my anabolic rage!!

This suspicious gaze matched my own. The beautiful jawline, unfortunately, did and does not.