Dear YMCA of Greater Toronto:

I am going through trying times. You are really not helping.

The trying times are not so trying, not like Jeebus or Spartacus trying. So, fine, I've decided, I'll just have to live with them. Institute a good clean sensible regimen of cold showers, bike rides, Scrabble, wholesome foods and unsexy thoughts. But I'm getting pervy. And you, YMCA of Greater Toronto, are exacerbating this.

Like, while I'm at the gym on the rowing machine and pondering - I don't know - sunshine, what a poor job Yves Rocher did with my last snatchwax, the universality of the human drive to make music, if Po the Teletubby was Asian and that's why it was cutest, if I could ever sing as pretty as Nina Simone in a million years, dustbowl farming, the downward trajectory in the quality of Russell Crowe's performances since L. A. Confidential, springtime, and whether there's time for the sauna, I'll suddenly realize I've been thinking about all these things while staring unblinkingly at the crotch of the blonde guy using the free weights in front of me. I don't even like blonde men, they smell like ketchup. But there you are. Trying times.

Now, in your wisdom you have moved the rowing machines from the free-weight area to the machine area; in fact, you have put them right the fuck in front of the abdominal planks, which as any simpleton knows are the sexiest peice of equipment in the gym. First they attract exclusively men; second, exclusively super-fit men with already powerhouse abs that you just know would let them go for hours without even thinking about it, and third, exclusively uber-hot motherfuckers of men with the self-confidence to do really silly-looking exercises in front of a large exercise room full of people looking for visual distraction from thier physical pain.

I know the straight-to-gay man ratio at this YMCA is about 1:10. I don't care. You are still being utterly unsupportive of the trying times I am going through by subjecting me to this proximity to the abdominal planks while I use the rowing machine, which I must continue to do to help realize my fitness goal of being able to punch through a watermelon. Please move the rowing machines again, preferably to a place where the users face something unattractive, like the police precinct across the street or a wall with a picture of this on it.

Yours,

Mistress La Spliffe