MBA ’mshini wami and other spears of a sweating nation
In his book #ZuptasMustFall, veteran journalist and ‘equal opportunity offender’ Fred Khumalo conducts research at the gym, including the showers, Somizi Mhlongo-style
IWENT to the gym the other day after a long hiatus. It had been such a long break that I had forgotten the habits of my fellow gym-goers. Back at the Morningside branch of Virgin Active I smiled to myself as I spotted all the familiar faces that had coloured my previous gym experiences. The white guy who wears the really, really tight-fitting wife-beater with the track pants, baseball cap and sunglasses was still there. He is noticeable for never getting down to the real business of being inside a gym — you know, exercising.
No, he prances about so we can admire his bulk, which is quite impressive, I must admit. To look at his face, the fellow must be in his late sixties, yet his muscles are still firm. Unfortunately, at that age you never can win the battle against the bulge. So the naughty eye forgets about his impressive physique to concentrate on his awkward, oversized belly, which stands out no matter how much he sucks it in.
In this man’s never-ending inspection of the gym he finds time to pause every now and again to give advice to a total stranger like myself. “I can see you are trying to do a dead-lift but your posture is all wrong,” he will say. Then he will usurp the weights so he can demonstrate how it’s really done — only to realise the weights I have packed are too heavy.
“The weighting here is excessive, all wrong,” he remonstrates. “That’s why your posture gets compromised, which in turn will mess up your back. And once your back is messed up, many other things will get messed up, too.” Wink wink, nudge nudge.
When he first did this some time ago, I told him to mind his own business. This time around, however, I was so overwhelmed with nostalgia that I simply shrugged and watched him as he taught me how to lift.
There’s also the woman who, when lifting weights, cries out as if she’s having the orgasm of a lifetime. The less said about her, the better.
Another gym eccentric is Somizi Mhlongo. I used to see him a lot at the Old Eds branch of Virgin Active. Whenever I catch sight of him, dressed in a skimpy little number that looks like a panty, he would also be prancing all over the floor. Not once did I actually witness him en- gaged in physical exertion.
This picture of an almost-naked Somizi used to assail my mind even when I was in the US in 2011. Unlike Somizi, the guys at Harvard did not like being seen naked in the communal shower area.
While people in South Africa prance about freely in their naked glory, exhibiting all shapes and sizes of male tools and buttocks, the denizens of the Harvard gym which I used to go to are really very private when it comes to their privates. Their actions used to have me wondering whether the American male species was more reserved or introverted than their African counterparts — an unfair generalisation, of course, seeing that Harvard, an international cauldron of cultures and nationalities, does not represent the whole of America.
However, it is remarkable to see the lengths that these men would go to in order to hide those areas of their anatomy from others. At Harvard, a guy comes sweating from the gym area, gets into the communal shower area where he sheds his top, pants and shoes, and then goes to the private shower cubicle in his underwear with a towel in hand. When he comes out of the shower, he is wrapped in his towel before discreetly sliding into a fresh pair of underwear without removing the towel. As he does this, he keeps stealing furtive glances around him to make sure that no one catches even a glimpse of his buttocks.
These mannerisms not only had me sniggering but made me think that Somizi would be highly offended. What were these men at Harvard trying to hide? I can’t imagine that a professorial spear would be any different from an MBA ’mshini wami, so why make it a mystery? We are all men. These matters need to be aired in public.
Some of you will ask the obvious question: why drag Somizi into this? I would answer that it’s simply because I enjoy looking at Somizi looking at naked guys.
Of course, I do all these observations in the name of research. As a journalist and a novelist I have to observe people at close quarters. Who knows, for my next novel I might be inspired to create a scene that takes place inside the male showers at a gym. And when describing the mannerisms of men in their natural habitat I will have to be as accurate as possible. We call it verisimilitude — realism in the world of writing.
I am sure Somizi also watches these guys in the name of research. As a choreographer he is trained to admire bodies, to keep thinking: “That body over there could be moulded into a brilliant dancer, if only he could give me the opportunity to train him.”
Now that I am back at the gym, maybe I should do away with my shyness and collaborate with Somizi on a book-video combination. We could call it Magic at the Gym Showers. Could be fireworks, darrrling! “#ZuptasMustFall and Other Rants”, by Khumalo, is published by Penguin Random House, R220
This picture of an almost-naked Somizi used to assail my mind even when I was in the US in 2011