My third-to-last personal trainer was a young man named Ronan Coltan. When he first showed up at my door I saw a small, posturing muscle ball in a tank top and sweatpants. He smelled of cigarettes and beer, looked like an angry child, had a thick, Irish accent and several suspicious looking tattoos.
I think we only worked-out together three or four times, and in that time I discovered that Ronan was literally just off the boat from a small Irish town, lived in a rooming house where he refused to share the refrigerator with the rest of the men who lived there, and finally was making ends meet by working as a stripper in the Gay Village.
At any rate, when I signed-up with Ronan I got a deal if I paid for 8 sessions up front, but due to some embarrassing reason, I only had 4 before we parted ways. That was about two year ago, and just recently I decided that I needed a personal trainer again to help get me in shape, and realizing I had a few sessions already paid for with Ronan, decided to give him a call.
Me: Is this Ronan?
Ronan: Who be asking?
Me: It’s me, Michael Murray, remember? You used to train me on Queen Street!
Ronan: No, I don’t remember you.
Me: I wore glasses, only have one lung and lived in a creepy apartment.
Ronan: (inaudible yelling in the background, thought I might have heard the word bumbaclot.)
Me: Ronan?
Ronan: Are you the guy who couldn’t lift any weights, but only the bar that was supposed to hold the weights, so you just did curls with that?
Me: Yes! That’s me!!
Ronan: Yeah, I remember you. That was a creepy apartment, man! Cobwebs and taxidermy everywhere, Mother of Mary it used to give me the shivers.
Me: Yeah, well great! We’ve moved, you know, and now live in nice place with windows and stuff. You’d like it! Anyway, the reason I’m calling is that I need to get back in shape and when I was working with you I think I paid for 8 sessions in advance, but only actually took 4, and I was wondering if we might work-out some arrangement where you could start training me again and I could get credit for those four sessions?
Ronan: That can’t be done.
Me: Why?
Ronan: You already paid for those sessions.
Me: But that’s my point.
Ronan: They were only good for a year.
Me: That’s not true. We never said that.
Ronan: It was implied in our agreement.
Me: So was my fitness. You failed me Ronan.
Ronan: You failed yourself, mate.
Me: You always smelled of Chunky Beef Soup.
Ronan: Your teeth disgusted me.
Me: I know you’re here illegally, mate.
Ronan: You don’t know shit, ya jammy rag.
And then he hung up on me.