Amazon MILF Uprising at the Y

Terminus: Cold wave on the silver dusk. It's thirty degrees and the wind chill drops it to a steady Fuck This. Here at the Y fighting the fat, poison, and the quick years' toll on the vanity. The arctic gusts outside have scattered the New Year's resolve from the crowds that have packed the weight rooms, yoga classes, and stair-climbers. Only a skeleton crew of the wind-whipped and bone-chilled hardcore have mustered for Better Me Duty tonight.

You got me, still high from the bowl I smoked after work with the Little Baller before the Mad Max commute down 85. I'm not here to look better, no matter how much I might wish I did, I'm here to burn rage somewhere where I won't get arrested or get my ass kicked.

You got the Meat Squad regulars. A cadre of brothers with the physiques of old He-Man action figures. They huddle around the free weights, bench 300 to warm up and take glugs from plastic milk bottles filled with brown-green protein cocktails. They talk grid-iron ballet, vitamin supplement immortality and the latest innovations in the delicate art of repetitively lifting heavy objects while grunting.

Then you got the Amazon MILFs of Decatur and they're a different story. Whereas the Meat Squad workout with a recreational camaraderie these ladies of savage tattoos and punk riot dyed hair, hit the machines with the single minded-focus of martial arts film protagonists training during montage sequences. They do not grunt. They do not laugh. They do not allow a single crack in their stone facade glowing with sweat. They clearly did not come here to make friends or fuck around. They did not come here to simply workout but rather they came here to work.
And looking at the men and then looking at the women who outnumber us four to one I begin to see why.

Men workout normally so they can look better... but the women workout so they do not become invisible. They are fighting to be seen in a world that grows blind to them a little more with each passing year and while I live in a world that tells me to be confident, they live in one where they are told to be eternally as beautiful as they were when they were young. When they were thin. When they didn't have kids or bills or an accumulation of experiences that register as history for a guy but gets labeled baggage once the ownership of a vagina is involved.

Such are my musings when I pop off the elliptical after three miles and the entirety of the GZA's Liquid Swords only to collide into one of the Amazon MILFs of Decatur. She's got some mass on her, enough to make our impact mosh worthy and send me sprawling back. I try to regain my balance, stomp on a loose shoelace with the other foot and almost go sprawling ass first to the floor.

But I don't.

I'm hovering off the back of my heels at a 45 degree angle and I look down to see she's got a fist clenched around the collar of my t-shirt keeping me from plummeting.

With a heave on her end and some dance floor muscle memory activated off the lizard brain, we both manage to get me back on my feet.

I go to apologize and then realize I can't say a word.

Her eyes. Pale gray. Gray as the winter clouds. Pale enough to shine full moon luminescent, two glowing pearls clutched in black mascaraed crow feet. Pull back. Southern face, rounded but sharp chinned, full of cheek, wise-ass smile that the belles here wear no matter how the fashions or the times may change around them. She's a plucky juggernaut, long black stringy hair, thick curved and a candy colored winged scarab sits tattooed beneath the v-neck peek with mandibles ready to bite stares that wander to deep down its lair.

Her fist remains clenched around my collar.

Blink.

She pulls me into her. We kiss. Hard. As if it's been years since we've kissed anyone outside of a ghost or a memory. As if it was the end of the world outside. As if the cold was dropping, faster and faster, icing over our inhibitions until the possibilities glitter off their surface . Outside the world has frozen over. We're trapped inside the gym with no source for heat but each other. The Amazon MILFs of Decatur take over the Y. They exert their dominion over the few men within their ranks. They divvy us up between their attentions. Most of them go for the bigger and younger guys in the Meat Squad. But a few, not many, choose me.

They are the mother of two who still remembers knocking a molar out of a skinheads jaw at a Corrosion of Conformity show back in '88, the frustrated sales rep who at night opens up a bottle of cheap red and wages war with a diminished but not defeated talent across the empty canvas, the rockabilly demonette who buried a good man too soon and left her with a bed that's been empty too long since.

And her, my pale eyed savior, my champion.

Who tells me after another feral night of slaying frost giants and lovemaking...

"I'm sorry I didn't see you there." She lets go of my t-shirt sending me to plummet vertical back into reality. "You okay?"

I nod. I smile weakly at the wall behind her. I apologize and hit the lockers.

I don't stop trembling until I'm in the car lighting up one of the cigarettes I was going to quit smoking this year. It's twenty degrees and I'm still sweating.

Deep breath. Start up the car. Blow it off, let the cold grow until it freezes dry these visions of a MILF uprising at the Y.

How I met your Mother:

Terminus: The Mourning Commute