Coffee, cigarette, Lamictal 100 mg. Place: Austria / Vienna / Europe. Time: 09:00 a.m. Settling down for the night.

The visit to the gym, the first one in more than a month, wasn't a big success. Well, in a way it was because I finally managed to leave my flat without really having to. I said I would try to do some weightlifting today in my last post, didn't I? So I did. It's a sleight-of-mind I acquired on livejournal.com - write about your plans in your journal, then follow them through so you don't have to make lame excuses to your esteemed fans & readers later on. The downside was that I was hit by racing thoughts as soon as I started to leave my place. I started to write about ten versions of a post about what I was going to do in my head as soon as I started to look for my car. It's been months since I've had it that bad. I shouldn't call racing thoughts 'hypomania' if not accompanied by physical restlessness but it still was exciting/bothersome.

At the gym I realized that I had forgotten the shower gel and my water bottle - as it turned out, the latter item miraculously turned up at the bottom of my quite small training bag. Unconscious self-sabotage, Case No.15688977. However, it gave me an excuse to toy around with the dumbbells for only 25 minutes or so, do some crunches, a little stretching and then hit the sauna. And there everything turned a little sour.

The mini-workout was ok. Baby steps and all that. There was no subjective shame in quitting so early because I didn't feel so hot after breaking the first light sweat (one bottle of beer above the usual quota last night, and beer is stronger here than in the US), and I have a tendency to overdo it anyway. So I thought I'd flush away the rest of those toxins out at the gym's sauna, taking a little discreet peek at the bare naked ladies there, give my body & brain the old hot-cold treatment as we say here, stop those loose mental cannons from bouncing around in my skull. Alas, it wasn't to be. The Dude was there. I hadn't seen him there for years but I still remember how he made fun of me because the towel I sat on smelled like cigarettes, something I hadn't even realized. Dunno if he remembered me at all but I sure remembered him.

Now people, such a thing really goes  against the national mentality's grain. There's no such thing as a grass-roots non-smoking movement. It's top-down all the way, the government thinking about banning smoking in restaurants altogether (now THAT raised a storm of protest), and they wouldn't have even hit on that exotic idea (for local community standards, that is) if it wasn't for the EU. What's even more inexcusable is breaking the unspoken taboo that prohibits strangers from openly criticizing others. I live in the city of Freud, remember. You didn't have to be a genius to notice how repressed society is here. It's not so much about nudity (see above) or sex, it's much more sophisticated than that. It's about What Is Just Not Done, and making me look like a smelly bum in front of others is definitely one of them. The fact is that my towel DID smell like cigarettes that time, and that it probably did today. The Dude, as is his wont, was acting like he owned the place. Opening the door to let a little air in, then closing it, holding a loud private conversation with his girlfriend (another thing that's Not Really Done In Small Enclosed Spaces Peopled By Strangers, like, say, elevator cars without muzak), and generally throwing his chicken weight about. He's about my age, fortyish, shoulder-length greying hair, annoyingly tight body in an Iggy Pop sort of way, and I know all about his skiing accident, his small Paperbox business, etc. He's the life and soul of the party wherever there is no party at all.

So I bailed out. It would have been pleasant to really sweat away all the stuff buzzing around in my head (it had already started to work until the Dude entered the room). I could already see him getting prepped about how evil cigarettes smell in small spaces - paranoia for sure but the guy was clearly getting bored after three minutes or so. Shower, changing room, parking lot, home. I didn't feel prepared for a confrontation, even if it was it would have been the customary joking kind with only a microscopic undertone of savage meanness, a mode of verbal combat this city is well known for and which even people from the Provinces don't always get due to its subtlety, let alone Germans or other tourists.

Ok, it was a small thing. I'm not genuinely troubled by it, even a little proud because it may have been a wise thing to do, to flee to fight another day. I've had some real serious problems in the past, and from what I've read in the forum so far, most people have had, and still have, much bigger problems than me. It's just that it's my journal - read at your own peril of getting annoyed or bored with my navel gazing. I'm sure there are more attractive belly buttons than mine out there. What the hell... I don't really feel all that bad and defensive. Let's see if I can post something more constructive in the forum, for a change.