Op-Ed: Please Stay Out of My Line of Sight When Waiting for the Hip Thrust Machine

 I sit on the unsettlingly warm cushioned seat playing on my phone, the machine belt wrapped around my waist. It’s leg day and I’ve just finished my second set of hip thrusts with one more to go. I get up and try to make a show of putting more weight on the machine, impressing nobody but my ego, and then I sat back down. 

During my break, I contemplate my goals in life: is it good grades? Perhaps fame? Maybe riches? No, it’s much more important than that: I want the fat ass. Not just any old fat ass, I’m talking THE fat ass. The type that makes you say you’re cutting onions to explain the tears you get from looking at it. 

I was peacefully contemplating these goals when an irritating presence walked up to me. “Hey, how many sets do you have left?” This is the ultimate downfall of Pottruck: I just want to work on my glutes in peace and harmony, uninterrupted, but there’s only one hip thrust machine in the building. Someone should really say something about that. People LOVE that machine.

So, I respond: “Oh, I only have one left.”

“Oh okay, perfect!” God that was terrible. I hate interacting with people at such a vulnerable position. It’s emasculating. This interaction couldn’t have gone worse.

But it did. Instead of just walking away for a second, she just… stood there. I was planning on taking a nice, long break playing sudoku on my phone. But no. There she is, standing right in front of me, patiently waiting for me to do my last set. My internal conflict is telling me she wants the machine, and she wants it NOW. No more fucking around. It’s time to go beast mode. 

The bad part about someone watching you do hip thrusts is that you’re doing hip thrusts while someone is watching you. Her beady eyes were staring into my shallow, superficial soul. The twenty-second set felt like an eternity in the second circle of hell. I felt shame; I felt like I should be put on a list. 

And, to top it all off, I had to get up to wipe the seat down. I told her to wait just a few seconds, but she was in perfect view of a humongous snail trail on the seat. Sometimes having the fat ass has its cons.

I’m never hitting the hip-thrust machine again. Getting the fat ass is not worth the public humiliation of having to make suggestive motions in front of someone waiting for you to finish. I’ll just get a BBL.