Unclean spirit
Jeremy Clarke
Iwas on the exercise bike by the window last week. Hill profile. Ten minutes, Level nine. Optimum heart rate — 145 beats per minute. Only two other people in the gym, both women. One on the treadmill, the other warming up on the mat in front of me. The woman on the treadmill was an almost perfect sphere; the young woman on the mat a strikingly harmonious combination of projections and concavities.
As a result of looking at too much pornography on the Internet lately. I think I have become possessed by an unclean spirit. A lustful spirit. All I can think about is sex. I even think about it while watching serious television programmes like Tonight With Trevor McDonald. I'm either awake and thinking about sex or asleep and dreaming about it.
The woman warming up on the mat excited my unclean spirit. As I pedalled I leched at her while pretending not to look at her at all. She caught me looking twice: once when I was staring directly at her, and once when sneakily staring at her reflection via a wall mirror.
Those of you who have had them will know that unclean spirits can be resisted surprisingly easily with a simple act of will. They defeat you in the end, of course, because they aren't in any particular hurry. And they are past masters at catching you when your guard is down. But to begin with at any rate, if you are on your mettle, they are a pushover.
So to spare the girl on the mat further embarrassment I resisted my unclean spirit by simply turning my attention to the globe on the treadmill instead. I had to look at someone. Staring into a neutral space and thinking beautiful, liberal thoughts like the thousands of other people who use exercise
machinery in public is for me out of the question. The poverty of my thought doesn't allow it. (That is probably why the unclean spirit chose me in the first place.) There aren't enough basic premises in my mind to get a dialogue going for one thing. I haven't even got any opinions. If there's someone else in the room, I can't not look at them. It is the mentality of a ghekko.
I've tried praying for deliverance while pedalling. (Oh Lord,' I begin, pompously.) But since my unclean spirit entered in, prayer has been impossible. I've even prayed for the ability to pray — the phrase 'stillness of mind' generally features here — but it's useless. My prayers invariably deteriorate into gross sexual fantasy. Reading a book while pedalling does no good either. I only have to see a word like 'thigh' or even 'analyse' and off I go, tramping down that muddy old track again.
So I looked at the woman on the treadmill_ The treadmill and the floor shook with every thump, thump, thump, of her feet. My God, I thought, I wouldn't know where to start. Then she caught me staring as well and shot me a glare. I looked out of the window.
Looking out of the window (the gym is on the first floor), I could see the road, then a row of privately owned ex-council houses. Behind these, a green hill with four cypress trees planted on the apex. Being level with the upstairs windows of the excouncil houses, I could see right inside some of them. In the bedroom directly opposite the gym, for example, I could see a man wrestling with his wife on the bed. After a second or two I realised they weren't wrestling. After another second or two I realised that the person underneath couldn't possibly be the man's wife because it was another man.
Just then the gym supervisor came out of the office. Ian gave me my gym induction. Built along the lines of the Pentagon in Washington, with a clean-shaven head and serious tattoos, Ian is a real gentleman. There were a dozen of us at the compulsory induction for new gym-users. We were each resigned to the indignity of being shepherded around the gym for the next hour and lectured about the obvious. But instead of that, Ian led us all out of his office, flapped a vague hand at the gym and told us all to go ahead. If we had any questions he'd be around somewhere, he said.
I called Ian over and he changed direction in mid-stride, perhaps expecting a technical enquiry. 'Ian! Look!' I said, pointing over to the ex-council houses. He saw, and steadied himself, feet apart, arms folded, great biceps bulging, and settled down to watch with me.
We watched together in silence. Ian's great Desperate Dan chin was on his chest, giving him an air of judicial authority. I kept pedalling. 'Three minutes to go,' it said in red lights on my bike's monitor. Thump, thump, thump, went the woman on the treadmill.
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