Like most gyms, the 24-Hour Fitness on Pico contains two very distinct worlds, not to mention a caste system that makes India’s seem laid-back. There’s the Pump Room, with its free weights, its carefully sculpted bodies, its narcissistic, strutting muscle men who preen endlessly in the wall-to-wall mirrors and, operating under a new definition of heterosexuality that’s as flexible as their bodies are hard, admire and touch one another, poking pecs, squeezing biceps, probing abs. They sweat, they strain, they work hard to look so perfect—and they enjoy the results a little too much. Thank you, Men’s Health, for elevating vanity from one of the seven deadly sins to a virtue, like having clean fingernails and using deodorant.
Then there’s the other area, the area so unimportant, it has no name. The men and women who work out in this area don’t exercise nearly so hard nor look nearly so good. Apparently, there’s only so much a Nautilus machine can do. But some of the machines have flashing lights, sound effects, and enough Nintendo touches so what you lack in muscle tone, you make up for by feeling contemporary. While the Pump Room is the domain of guys (with a few spectacular women who could never be as vain as the men, even though they deserve to be), the nameless room is the world of heart patients gamely following doctors’ orders, grown-ups putting up a brave struggle against age, and young men who want to be in the Pump Room but can’t quite carry it off.
Two worlds, like the Capulets and Montagues, the Sharks and Jets, USC and UCLA, UPN and PBS.
It was Friday morning at 9:00 and Perry, with a self-discipline that was positively Germanic, was in the Pump Room, studiously doing arm curls, looking in the mirror and watching that weird, prominent vein in his forehead pulsate like it was about to explode. He was up to three twelve-set reps of forty pounds, which wasn’t bad for a twenty-six-year-old ectomorph. It was even more impressive, considering his hangover. Whatever possessed him to go drinking? The taping at Boing!—the cheesy cable game show kind enough to employ him as writer—couldn’t have gone worse, with a series of questions so direly unfunny that Perry, already bleary-eyed and drained from the week, was forced to write more jokes in one hour than he had in the previous three weeks. At least they were good jokes, and the show had gotten done—albeit at 1:00 A.M., not 9:00 P.M. as scheduled. “You know,” suggested Tom McMahon, the aged, campy host, who had parlayed his modest success as a disc jockey into a spiraling career of lesser and lesser game shows, “when I was on the network, the writers
wrote funny stuff at the beginning and we didn’t have to go through this shit at the last minute.”
“Welcome to the wonderful world of cable,” Perry had answered dryly.
“I’m serious,” said McMahon. “If you don’t change your attitude, this show will be never be on TVLand.” Ah yes, thought Perry, the very definition of a classic—a show that ends up on TVLand, sometime after Hogan’s Heroes but before The White Shadow. And with retro commercials. How cool!
“I want those residuals as much as anyone,” Perry had said. Well, even more—since that was the whole point of anyone giving his life over to Hollywood—the same reason people robbed banks, for that matter. That’s where the money was. He didn’t bother to explain. He and two other writers had driven quickly to Barney’s Beanery to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible. Perry didn’t much like Barney’s Beanery—no one did, thanks to its manufactured seediness and boisterous clientele—but there were no other bars in that part of L.A. except gay bars. Getting seriously drunk had gone out of fashion west of La Brea Boulevard, and while that was a sizable inconvenience to a lot of drinkers, it was good news for Barney’s.
Now, Perry had other problems than a surly star, a hangover, and a pulsating vein in his forehead. Tim was in the other area, the nameless area, rapidly bending over and over on some contraption that held out a vague promise of a flat stomach. Tim never looked in the wall-to-wall mirrors, because when he did, he saw a twenty-six-year-old who managed to be too fat and too skinny at the same time. He was so skinny, he drove the guy at Westime in the Westside Pavilion crazy, making him take so many links out of his new watchband that there was hardly any band left. And yet just inches north, past the elbow, the bicep (it seemed a stretch even calling it a bicep)
was—well, it was soft, almost chubby. Perry could never understand why Tim didn’t get his life together, and the two hadn’t spoken in weeks. Perry hadn’t written Tim off—he could never bring himself to do that—but he was taking a Tim break, one of many he’d treated himself to over the years.
Tim knew all too well that Perry was there. He saw him enter, quickly deduced that a hangover was the problem du jour, and watched from the nameless area as Perry began his workout. Tim hated Perry’s dedication. They were so much alike in so many ways—it wasn’t even that long ago when they’d regularly worn each other’s clothes—and now Perry had gone and fixed himself, while Tim remained broken. Perry was a hunk; Tim was not. Perry was successful; Tim was still struggling. Perry was smart and cynical and a sellout. Tim was smart and cynical and lost.
Tim bided his time. He knew Perry well enough to gauge when he’d lapse into a semiconscious state and would be easily confused. He sneaked up as Perry was bent over and stood quietly behind him, making sure his reflection in the mirror would be the first thing that Perry would see.
Perry felt awful. Exercising in this condition didn’t make him feel any better; it just made him dizzy and nauseous. He looked up in the mirror to see if he was as pale and clammy as he felt. A quick look at his reflection and he realized he was sicker than he thought. Although he felt like he was sitting on a bench, the mirror doesn’t lie—and in the mirror, he was standing tall. And wearing a dumb T-shirt. He looked down at his own T-shirt—a perfectly hip Billabong. He looked up at his reflection, which was sporting a silly freebie from Barnes & Noble. He looked down. He looked up. He turned around.
“I hate when you do that,” Perry said, glowering at his brother.
“I love it. It’s one of the few benefits of having you as a twin,” countered Tim.
Perry realized his Tim break was officially over.
“I was going to call you,” he said, with a certain resignation. “Are you going to dinner at Mom and Dad’s Sunday?”
“I guess so,” said Tim. “My life hasn’t been quite boring enough lately. That should help it.”
“I was thinking of bringing Nancy, just so Dad will have someone to talk travel to,” said Perry.
“And to feed Mom’s grandkid fantasies,” added Tim. “We can play count the hints and see how many times she brings it up.”
“Remember, you’re the one who can turn any family dinner into Armageddon. I’ll even pay you a hundred dollars if you do.”
“You’ll have to do better than that,” said Tim. “You’re rich.”
“I could offer you a million and you’d still be too gutless.”
“Oh, good. A double-dog dare. just like when we had bunk beds. Wanna play Legos?”
“I’d rather you wait for Thanksgiving or Christmas anyway,” said Perry. “I think you should save it for a special holiday.”
“No wonder you’re such a semisuccessful TV hack,” said Tim, not without affection. “Only in the wonderful world of TV does someone choose Christmas to blurt out, ‘Hey, Mom, hey, Dad, I’m a homo.’”
“That’s why TV is better than life,” said Perry. “It’s so much more entertaining.”