It's mid-afternoon and I'm using a weight machine at a no-frills gym in an aging Toronto shopping center. I'm pumping those five pounds somethin' fierce when I spot him. This particular gem is wearing socks pulled halfway to his knees, sweatshorts, and a pit-stained yellow T-shirt that clings to his muffin top. He isn't really working out, just half-heartedly doing leg presses while shamelessly watching me.
We are the only people in a small room with 12 weight machines and steps that's set apart from the main gym. I am irritated but ignore him, determined not to let a middle-aged looky-loo ruin my circuit. Suddenly, he's just one machine away, eyeing me and my arm lift with all the subtlety of a cat in heat. I get up to grab the disinfectant and paper towel, but before I can return, he's pounced.
"Uh, I still need to clean that," I say.
"Oh no," he says with a grin. "I don't mind."
What a perv, I think as I walk away. He tries—rather pathetically—to make conversation by asking me what my tattoo says, but I answer him curtly over my shoulder and move to the next machine. This has happened before, when a different guy stole my sweaty machine, but it was much more obvious and gross this time.
It's hard not to suspect this guy has some sexual thing about sweat. It's not a super common or well-known fetish—like those for feet, peeing on people, or sniffing dirty panties—but virtually anything can be a fetish, and this one definitely has some members. Obviously, it's no cause for concern when people practice their interest in sweat consensually, but not a lot of women (me especially) want to watch some guy slide around in their sweat after they work out.
"He probably just wanted to get that machine and wasn't bothered by the sweat," friends initially told me after I told them this story, ignoring the weirdness of him needing that particular machine among dozens of free ones, not to mention the fact that he didn't seem to actually be working out. They couldn't wrap their heads around the idea that someone would go out of their way to sit in a puddle of ass sweat.
But this wasn't an isolated incident at my gym.
When my friend's sister started there around a year ago, the three of us delighted in her story of this gross dude who swiped her machine before she could wipe it. I remember thinking it was hilarious. Not so much when I ask her to retell it to me now.
"I already had the paper towels and was going back there, and he was getting ready to park," she said. "Like, an element of non-consent. If someone is going to a gym and routinely approaching women and manipulating a situation to get access to their sweat then, yeah, I think that's something that is a community safety issue," he said.
Kerner also acknowledged that for some, sweat is a body fluid they aren't trying to share, and "the idea of somebody sexually indulging in it is kind of sleazy and creepy."
I know I'm constantly watchful at the gym now, and I'm itching to confront these guys next time it happens. It's my damn sweat, and I don't want it going home on some guy's shorts for him to use as he pleases. Sweat-stealers, you've been warned.
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