"You will keep me in the titty loop, right?" the spousal unit joked last night.

Ah, yes, the titty loop, or as we can call it here, The Saga of the Incredibly Tasteless Picture. The spousal unit intends to follow The Saga of the Incredibly Tasteless Picture avidly.

See, there's this guy at my gym who's in oh, I don't know, probably his mid-40's or so and his attitude towards people of my gender and ethnicity can be neatly summed up with the words: Women, The Other White Meat. There may be a link between this attitude and the fact that he has been unattached for a very, very long time and is currently shopping around for a mail order bride.

I'm just saying.

So, uh, Prince Charming joined the gym to workout to improve his physique because he's decided he's going to get himself a 20-something bride. Since I also work out in the free weight section of my gym and I'm an inveterate eavesdropper, I've gleaned that his main criteria for his future bride is youth, attractiveness and a generous bra cup size. Apparently, he's been corresponding with a number of catalogue women over the last few months but not one of these women has snapped him up.

Go figure.

Last week Prince Charming brought in a picture to stick on the wall of the gym for "inspiration" while he works out. I myself missed the event but from other women at the gym I have heard that it involved a scantily clad, heavily made-up big-haired woman sporting several thousand dollars worth of silicone in her chestal area, with her uh "high beams" conspicuously on.

Well, well, well.

One final nugget you need to know to understand the situation is that when my trainer, a woman, started to work at my gym over a year ago one of the first things she did was take down a number of unrealistic pictures that had graced the walls of my gym. They were the sort of thing gym equipment manufacturers send out--glossy posters of impossibly thin, immaculately made-up and coifed women sporting skimpy gym outfits, dragon lady fingernails, and several thousand dollars worth of chestal silicone whilst using said gym equipment.

My trainer has always stressed that as far as she's concerned it's not about trying to meet some unrealistic standard. Be strong. Be fit. Eat sanely. Stop beating yourself up over physical goals that only a very small proportion of people can meet. Those four sentences pretty much sum up her attitude.

Given all this, it's not surprising that when some of the women at my gym saw Prince Charming's "inspirational" picture they were sore offended and complained to the gym management. It fell to my trainer who happened to be on duty to tell Prince Charming that his picture had to go.

One of the prerequisites of being a gym trainer is finely honed diplomatic skills. If you offend clients, they don't come back. No clients, no job. So my trainer began by telling Prince Charming that his picture had to go because women at the gym had complained about it, that they found it offensive.

That in itself should have been enough, but Prince Charming immediately asked my trainer what was wrong with the picture. My trainer was somewhat flabbergasted at that point because what do you say to a man who is so unaware of women's sensitivities that he has brought a semi-pornographic image of a woman to a co-ed gym and stuck it on the wall?

So she told him that the women at the gym were offended by the artificial boobage. It was the best she could come up with to politely reduce the whole complex issue of women and body issue into simple words for this poor, lonely man. He took his picture home with him.

Yesterday I happened to be at the gym at the same time as Prince Charming. My trainer and I were chatting when he wandered over to her. Apparently, he had been mulling over the whole Saga of the Incredibly Tasteless Picture.

"If I bring in a picture with smaller titties, can I put it up?" he asked. Just like that. With no preamble.

The only sound was the soft thud, thud as both my jaw and my trainer's jaw hit the floor of the gym. The word "dumbfounded" does not begin to cover our reaction to this elegantly phrased, ever so politically incorrect query. Apparently our expressions spoke volumes, because Prince Charming did not pursue the topic further and wandered off.

Last night during supper I shared The Saga of the Incredibly Tasteless Picture with the spousal unit. I, of course, managed to work myself into a semi-lather over Prince Charming's insensitivity. The spousal unit, of course, was in stitches at the image of my trainer and I completely and utterly flabbergasted by this man's "titty" question.

Since he knows me incredibly well and thus can pull my chain like nobody else on the planet, the spousal unit just couldn't resist saying, "You will keep me in the titty loop, right?"

The titty loop.

You know, sometimes you just have to throw up your hands and laugh.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 118.44 miles.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers