What accounts for our willingness to bare our souls—along with our backsides—in the locker rooms of suburban health clubs?
I’m sitting with a group of women around my age, when the one to my immediate right—I think her name is Susie—says in hushed tones, “My husband snores so loudly, I’ve moved permanently into the guest room. I have to confess, I’m enjoying my own space so much that I’ve started to question the whole marriage. Maybe his sleep apnea isn’t our only problem.”
The woman to my left, whose name I can’t remember at all, chimes in, “Yeah, my husband monopolizes the TV with sports programs at full volume. I’ve been drinking an entire bottle of wine every night to get through it. I need to do something about that.”
Then a third woman across the room lightens the mood: “My husband drove me crazy with the sports and the snoring, so I divorced his ass! Problem solved.”
Where is this conversation taking place, you might wonder. An AA meeting? A group therapy session? Sorry, no. We are in the locker room of my health club, a few near-strangers having a candid discussion as we change into our exercise garb before heading out to yoga or cycle class.
If you think gym discussions are confined to fluffy chitchat about weather, vacation plans, and local restaurants, think again. In my years at the gym, I’ve heard locker room conversations on a myriad of weighty subjects, discussed by women of varying ages in varying degrees of undress. These topics include marital tiffs. Nostalgia over old boyfriends. Unhappiness triggered by a child’s poor academic performance, a mother-in-law’s overbearing presence, a best friend’s betrayal. Even infidelity.
What accounts for our willingness to bare our souls—along with our backsides—in the locker rooms of suburban health clubs? I think it has to do with the near-anonymous nature of our gym encounters. We seldom know the last names of the people we’re talking to. Sometimes, we don’t even know one another’s first names. As a result, our fitness buddies make better confidantes than close friends or family members. Our secrets are safe with these casual acquaintances.
What happens at the gym stays at the gym.
So, when I decided to write a funny-sad novel about a woman who’s bitter over her divorce and determined to reinvent herself after a long marriage, a health club seemed like the ideal setting. Margaret Meyer, the protagonist of my novel who now goes by “Mar” as part of her do-over, is ready for new adventures—as long as they are commitment-free. She joins Seaside Fitness, a gym where she doesn’t know anyone from her former life. And in this club and its nearby environs, with each passing month she goes from one acquaintance to the next. Among them: a fellow gym member down on her luck, a flirty hip-hop instructor, a bossy but comical consultant. . . and a handsome best-selling novelist who wants more from Mar than she’s able to give.
The name of this episodic novel? I call it, appropriately, My Year of Casual Acquaintances. This title has won five literary awards, including Indies Today Best Contemporary Book of 2024, and was a BookLife/Publishers Weekly Editor’s Pick. And for those who can’t get enough of the characters, there is a sequel, The Unexpected Guests.
Speaking for myself – in my years of belonging to fitness clubs, I’ve formed more casual acquaintances than I can possibly count. But some of those have blossomed into close and lasting relationships that I treasure to this day. Will the same thing happen to my main character?
You’ll have to read the book to find out.