personal trainer
This isn’t a storyline kiss. No nightmare situation. It’s… trying to capture a feeling I had, after reading your comment about taking your friend’s ability from her; and then wanting to share a physical feeling. A brief fantasy. Hope you like it.
My shoulders burn and when I reach out more than a foot or so my arms shake like I’m palsied. Still I’m working. My trainer sets me circuits: kettlebells, medicine balls, dumbbells; high-intensity interval stuff that sets my heart racing, interleaved with breaks that return me to some fraction of normal.
You’re never far from my mind. When things get hard I call for you. Not to help, but to witness. Exhausted but determined, I dig deep and pull a steady rhythm out of my shaking frame. Weights swing, knees bend, a ball is slammed loud enough people look around. I do it to be worth your attention.
I know you care. Truly and deeply. And I know that you would undo me if you could. The two facts do not stand in tension, for me.
The last circuit was brutal. Aircon keeps me from being lathered but every other sign of exertion hangs upon me: aches, weakness, heavy breathing. And above it all, a pounding heart.
I feel my chest and step into a long moment with you.
You’re there in front of me and I want to share so much with you. I don’t know what you look like but I know—just know—that I’d recognise the way you’d look at me. Here I am, a child who has a toy to share, and I can see your indulgent smile as you step forward.
See the way my palm is pressed against my solar plexus. Feel your own, right where the ribs join, just below the sternum. You’ll feel your heart beating, feel the throb. Well, mine is pushing huge quantities of blood through my major muscles. Each beat is like a small punch, visible at the skin. When I take your hand and replace my palm with yours you can feel just how close my heart is to your touch.
It feels like a tender moment. We stare into one another’s eyes and smile from opposite sides of the predator/prey divide.
When you make the first cut my smile falters. It hurts to be split like that. Reflexes pull the corners of my lips down, tighten my jaw to a grind, roll my shoulders forwards in a gesture of protection. I don’t stop you, though.
You give me a moment to adjust to the pain. Endorphins flood my system, intended to help me cope with injury and fight my way to safety. Instead they help me cope and stand straighter. The smile returns to my eyes, if you look for it. I can see you looking.
Your hand is slender enough to push through the incision you made. The pounding is only intensified within my chest. Push aside the lung, it won’t hurt. My knees almost buckle at the pain of the stretch—few people have ever felt what I’m feeling now—but you don’t stop and I don’t want you to.
With your fingertips gliding into place around my pericardium the powerful beat resolves itself into the four main contractions. I like to think your left hand curls around and cups my heart, so all but your thumb ride the powerful left ventricle, the one feeding my whole body.
Not close enough. My heart had no use for protection from you. You cut again—thumbnail? blade? tendril?—I don’t know. All I know is my heart’s on fire as you invade the last stronghold of my pericardium. I make a sound—the politest scream you’ll ever hear, more an “aaah” of “don’t go too near the cliffside” rather than anything of terror. But I never look away from you. You read the agony in my face and return it with that same affectionate smile. I clutch at its warmth like a life ring.
That’s my heart muscle you feel nestled in your palm, squirming beneath your fingertips. Feel the smooth fascia connecting bands of muscle, or the ridges of little vessels seeking entry into the powerful pump. Hook your index finger under my aorta. Feel it pulse as strongly as anything in there.
You’re holding my heart in your hand.
I don’t know what you do next. I give; it’s up to you to take. Do you clench your fist, watch greyness overcome my face and follow me down as I collapse to my knees? Do you make a third and final cut, pull out a heart still quivering and sink your teeth into its hot, living flesh? Or do you just hold me in your palm, exquisitely vulnerable, all my power and potential and cleverness trapped and bound up with you, for as long as choose to hold me?
I don’t mind. I just want to make you smile.