Girl

John woke up early this morning. It wasn't his alarm that woke him, no, he just woke up. This was because he had fallen asleep around 10:30 the night before right in the middle of an episode of Dark Angel. John used to brag about the fact that he never fell asleep when he was watching something... alas in the last year something has changed. His body just got old. It wasn't gradual like you'd expect. It just happened, one night he got tired, exhausted. The energy that he had always cherished was gone. Now a days, if he closes his eyes for a second, even amidst the most exciting scene a movie or TV show could manage, he would fall asleep almost instantly.

Since he was up, and it was 6:00 in the morning, John figured he'd go to the gym and get a little work-out in. When he arrived, it was business as usual, a 20 minute warm up on the elliptical, and then over to the weights. John never came to the gym on Tuesdays, he always did a Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine. While doing some rigorous bicep curls a girl walked past him in regular gym wear. John took notice and didn't feel guilty as this is common practice at the gym. He of course always takes part in this looking ritual, however he's never had high hopes for meeting women at the gym. The type of girl one finds at the gym at 6 or 7 in the morning all seemed a little too far outside of John’s preferred mold. Too much bleached hair, breast augmentation, and leather tanned skin for his tastes. When he saw this girl he figured it'd be a bit of the same and he didn't give it a second thought.

A few moments later, after lifting his head up from the drinking fountain, John looked up as this girl was walking towards him. It was the same girl who had just walked by. She was beautiful! Beautiful! Like in the top 5 of all time girls he had ever seen. John froze with his hand still pressing the fountain button and he stared. She caught his gaze for only a moment, and then looked at the ground. John tried to move but his muscles wouldn't budge. The girl turned down one of the isles of weight machines, and John's eyes followed her. Just as he thought "I need to stop staring" she looked over at him as if to check and see if he was still looking. He was. She smiled! As far as John was concerned, time had stopped... then he realized that his mouth had been open for this whole experiance, and all of the sudden time started to move very quickly. He awkwardly tried to convert his gawk into a smile. As John's awareness of just how ridiculous he must have looked sunk in, this time he was the one who broke the glance and looked down at the fountain, which was still running. He leaned over to take a drink, to try and cover his cowardess. When he finally looked up again she was across the room working on a machine.

John had never been good at meeting strangers, more specifically strangers who were attractive members of the opposite sex. He spent the next 30 minutes of his workout, strategizing and formulating some sort of game plan - and uh working out too. He looked for a ring, she didn't have one. He didn't think that meant much though... he even looked to see if any of the other girls had rings on, and he only found one, so he surmised that either all of these girls are single or some women take off their rings when they workout. Then John realized it didn't matter, what was he going to say? Girls don't go to the gym to get hit on. Maybe he could offer her some advice on one of the workouts she was doing, but John knew that he didn't know anything about exercising so that would probably make him sound stupid. Maybe something funny like starting his sentence out with "Since I am obviously the strongest guy in here..." (this would be funny because it's so blatantly obvious that he is not). Nothing seemed appropriate and John sort of decided that no matter what he did he would crash and burn if he were to attempt anything. So he gave up and just hoped that she would come up and hit on him. He diecided that if she did, he wouldn't try to play hard to get, he would just say yes. John finished his workout fantasizing that she would say something to him... even though that has never happened before.

She didn't.

Johnny Metropolis