A field guide to the 6AM gym man

Common name: the 6AM Gym Man Range: every gym Conservation status: thriving, unassisted

#Distribution

He is at every gym.

We want to address this at the top because it is the single most-asked question and the honest answer is that we do not have one. Observers in different cities, on the same morning, have independently reported him. The reports match. The shirt matches.

We are not proposing an explanation. We are recording the observation.

#Plumage

A shirt from a race. He did not run the race. The race was in 2014. The shirt has outlived the event, the sponsor, and the charity it was raising money for.

Shorts with a built-in mesh liner, the existence of which he does not acknowledge and about which no question has ever been asked.

Footwear is worn past the point of function and into the point of principle.

#Territorial display

Three items on one bench: a towel, a water bottle, a phone.

The towel is not for sweat. The towel is a flag. The bottle is not for water — it is full, it has always been full, and it will be full when he leaves. These objects have never been used for their stated purpose. They are a claim, staked at 6:02am, held for ninety minutes, respected without discussion by every other mammal in the room.

#Vocalisation

The primary call is:

"you gonna use that?"

Field note: this is delivered while he is already using it. It is not a question. It is a courtesy — the acoustic equivalent of a nod. The expected response is not an answer. The expected response is to be startled and say "no, go ahead," which you will say, even if you were going to use that.

The secondary vocalisation is the exhale. It is audible at forty metres. It is not for you. It is not for anyone. It has been measured and it is louder than the machine.

He knows the staff's names. All of them. He uses them.

The staff do not know his name. He has never been asked and he has never volunteered it, and at this point the asymmetry has calcified into something nobody can undo. He has been coming here for eleven years. It would be unspeakably rude to ask now.

#Migration

None.

Arrive at 5:40 and he is finishing. Arrive at 6:30 and he is finishing. Arrive at any hour on any day of any year and you will find him in the same state, which is finishing.

He has been finishing for eleven years. No observer has recorded a start. No observer has recorded a departure. We have him only ever in the final set, wiping down a machine he is about to use again.

#Predators

None.

Attempts by management to introduce a competing schedule — a 6am class, twice, in 2019 and 2023 — failed both times. The class did not displace him. The class dissolved around him, the way water goes around a rock, and the instructor started saying good morning to him by name within a fortnight.

#Observer's note

We are required to include personal observation and we have been putting this off.

On the last morning of the survey he held a door for me. He said good morning. He used my name, which I had not given him, and which he had presumably learned by listening, over months, carefully, while I had spent the same months writing him up as a specimen.

He then went and did his last set, which was not his last set.

I have thought about it all week. The field guide stands. I would like it noted that the field guide is not fair.

Other resilient organisms in shared habitats: the office fridge, which cannot be removed for structural reasons.

And if you want to be somewhere at 6am where the hostility is at least honest about itself, the labyrinth is open, and nothing in it has ever learned your name.