“The loss of muscle mass after age 60 is real,” Geoff said over our lunch of poached salmon. He owns a consulting firm I’ve hired a couple of times at work, and he was good about buying me lunch once or twice a year to keep our contact warm. “I’m about 10 years older than you, I’d guess; at any rate, I’m eyeing retirement in the next year or so. I’ve had to cut back on work so I can make it to the gym in the morning, just so I don’t lose any more.”
“Gak!” I thought to myself. I bloody hate going to the gym. I dislike lifting weights at home only slightly less.
In my mid 20s I thought that if I just made myself build a workout habit, it would eventually stick, which would serve me well when I eventually turned 40. 40! I chuckle at that now. I was still in fina natural shape at 40. I could do almost everything I did at 25. Anyway, I first joined a workout class at the Y so I could learn what to do. When that ended I joined a regular gym, learned the weight circuit they offered, and did it three times a week. That lasted only a couple years — good grief was it ever boring.
I also have some head trash about gyms. As a teen I was tall but scrawny. I was not athletic in the slightest, and I was quiet and sensitive. The edgy, boastful, competitive camaraderie among the other boys repelled me. I found locker-room talk to be disgusting. I wouldn’t play along. The boys started asking if I were gay, and rumors spread. It was the early 80s; being gay, even being thought of as gay, was not okay. I endured all manner of ribbing, trash talk, and bullying over it. Once, in a dark back hallway leading away from the school gym, I was assaulted by a couple of boys who called me faggot.
Even at that gym of my mid-20s, a few times the buff guys sniggered amongst themselves about me. A couple times, one of them would come up and shout at me to lift more weight, do one more set. In retrospect I think they were trying to be encouraging, but I felt threatened by it. I wouldn’t like it much now, either.
All of this has had a profound effect on my willingness to seek connection with other men. I am drawn to the nerds. I find their odd fascinations to be fascinating, and I’ve had much more success with them building genuine, vulnerable connection.
At age 55 I no longer care about becoming buff. I just want to be in good enough shape to enjoy my old age. I think about my grandfather, whose doctors told him that if he’d only get out and walk more, he’d have a better chance of pushing through the illness that ended up taking his life. I think of my father in his last years, who didn’t have to walk far before he was done in. He had terrible muscle tone when he died. His cancer played a major role, but he wasn’t in good shape to begin with.
Even if I can push through my head trash around weight training and the gym, I don’t know how to make time for it. I’d have to let go of something I’m doing to add it in, and I don’t want to let go of anything I’m doing.
Fortunately, I love to walk and ride my bike. Aerobic exercise is better than nothing. On the bike, I can really build up my legs. It has never mattered how much upper-body work I do, I stay scrawny from the waist up. But when I ride my bike a lot, my legs get huge.
The great thing about walking and bicycling, especially now that I work from home four days out of five, is that I can squeeze it in. It’s easy enough for me to use that hour I’m not in a meeting to get out quickly for a walk or a ride.
And I love to be out in the world on my feet or in the saddle. I find the rhythms to be almost meditative. And because my inner explorer is strong, I am intensely curious to know what’s down that road or around that corner. I can always bring a camera along and stop when I see something beautiful or interesting. That’s how I made this photo, on an early spring walk when the trees were in bloom.
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