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I could have just left after I had showered and gotten ready, but I had some kind of strange duty to follow through with the sales pitch to the end. I had known before I set foot inside the gym that it wasn't for me. The location was off, the building was inexpensive, and even the logo screamed "dedicated people only". None of those big window downtown gyms with rows of treadmills for office people to spend their corporate exercise money in. No, this was an industrial setting with industrial equipment with the sole purpose of pumping your body as far as it could take it. The clientele showed it. Just full of half-naked, roided up slabs of beef bench pressing my body weight as warm up. They were all perfectly polite, letting me go through the list of exercises I'd found online without any obvious stares or comments. But I was self-conscious the entire time, made worse by all the grunts and noises from the bodybuilders surrounding me. This was way outside my comfort zone, and way too serious for my goals of just getting back to my pre-covid jeans size.

"So, how was it?" asked the big hunk of meat who owned the place. Bigger than anyone I'd met before today, though not as large as some of the dudes out on the gym floor. He wasn't even wearing anything over his chest while doing business, or perhaps because of it. Regardless it was another red flag that this wasn't for me. "It's not... I was looking for something perhaps a bit more casual."

The titan behind the desk smirked knowingly, as if he was thinking "you better get a soy latte and go to yoga class, pussy boy", and fixed the position of his white ALPHA flat brim cap. "You sure? We have instructors that can coach you, make you more comfortable with the equipment." The equipment wasn't what I had issues with. "No, I think this isn't for me." I should have just left once I was done in the locker room after all and avoided this. "Well, that's why we have free trials, right?" he said and reached for a tablet from one of the desk drawers. "I just want you to look at something before you leave." He tapped the screen a few times and handed over the tablet to me, with some weird animated spiral showing on it.