I sometimes go to the gym, or “health club”, as they call it (offensive sauna dude). I think I got the membership there because I saw it as an easy way to stay in shape.

Dante and Sartre have written about hell, and maybe you know that I have been there before as well (Christoph in hell?), but this “health club” is far worse.

The whole place is designed to be 100% appealing, and the people who go there are trying to design themselves into being 100% appealing as well.

The advertising posters, the relaxing music, and the friendliness of the clerks have enslaved them all, driving them into thinking that what they really need is some obscure sort of well-being, and that maybe a tattoo on the right ankle might make a personality appear a bit more interesting.

I carry a book and bury my head in it between workouts whenever I go to the “health club”.

The place is located on the 5th floor of an office building. Just like everyone else, I am paying a shitload of money for my workout, so damned right I always take the elevator to where the stepping-machines are. Fuck the stairs, I didn’t pay for them!

Today I got out of there and entered the elevator with some dude around fifty. His eyes were red as if blood-shot, probably from doing an excessive workout or from having an excessive sauna. Excess was always the key. The elevator doors closed, and both of us were just standing there, trying not to exist.

Then I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I turned around.

“What a sad place,” I told him.

“What?”

“A sad place,” I repeated, “that health club.”

“Oh…” A surprised look appeared on his face, and I felt the sudden need to explain.

“So vain and… soulless,” I said.

He didn’t say anything, just gave me a very irritated look from his red eyes, looking up and down my body, and it almost seemed like he was going to edge away from me a little.

There was a moment of silence.

The elevator had reached the ground floor.

Then the doors opened.

Soundtrack: Abd Al-Malik – “12 Septembre 2001″