Old post from my deactivated profile
Grey trackpants for the first time. Didn’t overthink it. Didn’t ask myself what angle I looked like from behind. Just put them on.
Black beanie? Didn’t wonder if it suited me.
I just popped it on and walked out the door.
I sprayed the Prada perfume. Just smeared it. I didn’t stand there calculating how I’d be perceived. That’s new.
At the gym, I smashed legs. Brutal reps. The kind that make your vision blur when you rack the weight. The kind that make your hoodie stick to your back.
And here’s the thing about my gym, it’s disgusting. No one uses towels. No one wipes machines. The aircon doesn’t work. Ventilation is garbage.
When you walk in, it hits you in the face. Moist sweaty air. Heavy. Saturated with other men’s sweat. it’s a texture. You’re breathing in testosterone
You don’t escape it. You stew in it.
It used to bother me. I used to feel hyper-aware of it. Hyper-aware of myself. Of how I looked. Of how I walked. Of who might see me.
I stopped wearing my glasses to the gym. Because I don’t need to see everything. I don’t need to scan the room. I don’t need distraction. I don't need to be staring at the guys anymore.
It’s just me and the weight now.
I used to walk home embarrassed in my gym clothes. Wondering who might see me. What they’d think. Sweaty. Beanie on. Trackpants sticking to my legs. Smelling like too much cologne mixed with iron and other men’s effort. And I don’t flinch.
My headphones changed too. Used to be history podcasts. Long intellectual rabbit holes. Now it’s discipline. Bodybuilding. Male affirmations. Structure. Power.
I’ve got a stack of philosophy books waiting for me. But I can no longer get through them. It hurts my head man. I noticed too that I started mixing up 'die', 'dat', 'de' and 'het' a lot (I speak dutch) and that's a major sign of being uneducated and lower class. Even though I'm highly educated, and very much from middle class people. But I was never middle-class in my heart.
And I’m not soft about it anymore.
