When I go to the gym, all I want is some old-fashioned solitude. This is one of the few times I get to be by myself, and it's every bit as crucial to my well-being as food and oxygen. (I'm an only child, after all.) When I'm working out, I want to be inwardly focused, to concentrate on the kinetics of bones and muscles. I do not wish to be spoken to. This is especially true if I am on the treadmill, where my heart rate is accelerated and I'm already in a heightened state of primitive energy. If you talk to me then, I am liable to become enraged, and then I cannot be held responsible for my actions.

Still, it happens all the time. I get a lot of jokes, especially from guys, about how I "practically live here." So what? There are plenty of men who go to the gym every day of the week, too. Am I such an anomaly? I understand that the gym is its own discrete community, and as such, is often viewed as a place for socializing. But I've never cared about that aspect of it. I go because it's too expensive to buy all that equipment myself, and there's no room in our apartment for twenty tons of Nautilus paraphernalia.

The other day, there was a young man who sat down next to me while I was doing my bicep curls. Without warning, he launched into a full-scale discussion of the Adult Swim cartoons. This was a subject I normally would have been excited about, but I disliked this guy instantly because he started off by dismissing "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" (my favorite) as "that stupid show with the fry box." Once that was out of the way, he began to rattle off observations about "The Family Guy" in such a pretentious tone that he could have been doing a dissertation on the subject. He concluded by saying, "Lois is a nymphomaniac—Meg is a tramp." What? Was this a different "Family Guy" he was talking about? Maybe he meant to say "The Fall Guy" or something. Or maybe he was just one of those charming chaps who could put his own misogynist spin on anything. (It's a gift, like optimism.) At this point, I noticed that although he was sitting at a leg extension machine, his legs were just sort of swinging back and forth—he was only sitting there so he could impress me with his critical analyses.

I was trapped by a cartoon pundit.

I didn't want to be rude, but as soon as I finished up the bicep curls, I politely excused myself and relocated to a totally remote piece of equipment. This was about the time a middle-aged guy came up and claimed to recognize me. ("You look so familiar to me. Where have I seen you before? Hey, what do you think of the game?")

Is it that I look so very friendly? I do my best to cultivate a veneer of unapproachability when lifting weights—I scowl, for starters—but no one seems capable of reading such subtleties. Four million years of evolution and these guys can't tell a "come and talk to me" face from a "leave me alone" one. And is it such a stretch that someone with a Bauhaus logo on her shirt is a bit of a misanthrope?

Here are a few suggestions for those who are bored and are tempted to badger the person next to them with pointless conversation:

1. Bring a book
   
2. Bring a discman, or an mp3 player
   
3. Find something riveting on the telly (I'll grant you, that's a challenge these days)
   
4. Schedule your next set of steroid shots
   
5. Make a mental grocery list
   
6. Try to recite the U.S. presidents in order (I know a song about this, if anyone's interested)
   
7. Think up the perfect pick-up line (but don't use it on me!)
   

And because I sometimes run at a nearby track, here's a tip to all of you who may encounter me there. The inside lane is the running lane. DO NOT WALK in the running lane. And especially, don't walk in the running lane and then get all pissy when I run around you, as I will have to do every eighth of a mile unless you move over. Sometimes, there will be a whole phalanx of walkers (usually with sorority letters stitched onto their shorts) taking up the inside three or four lanes. Please don't do this, ladies. All I'm asking for is a modicum of courtesy here, not only for me, but for the poor track student who's trying to time her mile and can't get an accurate measure because she's having to run around you. Remember, without the basic rules of society, we'd all be characters in some neverending Kevin Costner dystopia.

Trust me, nobody wants that.