Such Men Are Dangerous by Stephen Benatar Page B

fainted. He wondered if he ought to see the doctor; on occasions he imagined pains in his chest, felt sick again—with fear. He questioned his priorities, resolved to give the whole thing up, then returned for an equally gruelling workout. It was at these times, surviving the session following the fear, that he felt unusually elated. He was continually testing himself. More than that. Continually pushing himself, continually forcing himself to surpass his own previous performance. When he was buoyant he didn’t believe he would bring on any heart attack; when he was depressed he muttered that he didn’t care; it was a possibility he even courted. He didn’t want the pain, of course, but the solution—partial or entire, the rest or the oblivion—these sounded, at times, not undesirable: a welcome respite from his weariness, a final end to it. The strenuous exercise itself, however, especially if coupled with the beating of some record, almost invariably got rid of his depression.
    This morning, for instance: for a while he totally forgot Janice and her ‘somebody rather special’; he totally forgot that pustules on his son’s face and neck had ever existed. And even during those moments when these things did come back to him they had grown more bearable: minor irritations around the periphery, rather than unthinkable threats full at the centre. On Saturday mornings the gym was at its most crowded; there were generally at least a dozen people. He didn’t mind this. The place was small and it meant he might have to wait longer to use equipment but he enjoyed the atmosphere of clublike masculinity, the simple camaraderie made up of shared interests and a spirit of easygoing rivalry.
    On a Saturday morning, though, he was often more aware of the absurdity of it all. Every aid to manly development appeared to be in constant use: the thigh machine and the lat machine and the curling machine and the rowing machine and the standing-press machine; the abdominal boards and the bench press and the power jog and the multi-purpose exerciser and the bike; the barbells and the dumbbells. Oh the pain of it, the grunting and the sweat, oh the heartfelt determination! Oh the concentration on the biceps or the triceps or the deltoid or the calf, the striving for perfection, for the godlike build, when in countries like South America people screamed out from the effects of torture, or in Beirut soldiers were having limbs blown off, when half the world was dying from starvation, when even in civilized England babies were mugged and little girls had their faces set on fire. Who ever knew what atrocities were being perpetrated in any part of the globe at any given instant, what accidents were taking place, what howls of agony were right now , somewhere, ripping at the air? Most of the men who came to the gym were younger than he was but one or two were older; did they all think (did he think) that they were going to turn themselves into objects of irresistible desire? Did they suppose (did he suppose) that, even if they did, it was going to make the world a better place for anybody, anywhere, other than (perhaps) themselves and the lucky women who might benefit from all their bulked-up charms? It was absurd all right.
    But in a way he sometimes found it quite a comfort: the very fact that life was so inescapably absurd. It absolved. It cancelled out. It rendered unimportant.
    It assisted you to laugh.
    Supposing he were suddenly to say: “You know, my two lads met an angel behind Tiffany’s the other night.”
    “Just hope she made a man of them!”
    “Not that sort. The kind you read about in bibles.”
    “Christ! Is it glue-sniffing your lads are into, or drugs, or just old-fashioned alcohol?”
    He tried it out, as he was drying from his shower. The other man was large and nearly every inch of him from the neck down, with the exception of his hands, was covered in tattoos; you might, from the back, have thought him fully