Kayden Kross writes on www.complex.com – It was sunny and 75 yesterday and there were river currents in the streets last week. When I crossed my shoes were wet to the ankle, along with my purse, which I cared about, and my hair, which I didn’t. I wouldn’t have crossed the street at all, except the fine coffee of Urth Caffé was on the other side.

Long story short, the weather drove me back inside. This is unheard of in L.A. I gave understanding glances to the strangers I passed. They stood on street corners with folded down and the blank faces of awe and botox. I offered to show one woman how to unfold her umbrella. She must not have heard me.

I texted a few people to see how they were faring in the rain, but mostly to find something to do. My trainer was at a fitness expo. I really shouldn’t call him my trainer because I never train with him anymore. I eat with him, and I swap sex stories with him, and once he helped me saw the stump off a Christmas tree because he happens to carry saws in his back seat, which he won’t admit is weird, but I don’t really work out with him anymore. He hurts.

Aside from attracting homeless people and knockoff purse vendors, downtown also attracts throngs of people who want to come together and bond over very specific interests en masse. Between the Staples Center, the Nokia Theater, LA Live, and the Los Angeles Convention Center, a pack of hardcore enthusiasts can always be found.

I love the conventions that attract the costumers. The sci-fi and gaming ones are fun; the porn ones are spectacular. You usually have to travel far off the beaten bath to find a man in latex with bigger tits than your girlfriend, but visit any one of those three conventions and they come straight to you.

And there is usually more than one convention at a time. For example, this week there was a Crafts and Hobby convention in the West Hall and the Fitness Expo in the South Hall. Last time I attended the Porn Convention it was the same weekend as the Ski Convention. Girls with bleached blond extensions down to their ass cheeks and belts for skirts glided past bleached blond trust fund kids in sunglasses and beanies in opposite directions on the escalator. You could tell who belonged where.

The Fitness Expo. I went. I went partly out of guilt, because as the text came through that said I should check it out, I had a chocolate truffle halfway to my mouth. The chocolate truffles were breakfast. I don’t even think they were organic or fair trade. The only thing worse I could have been stuffing in my body at that time of day is kid’s cereal. I also went because it was indoors, and because I was curious about what sort of things fit people involved themselves with.

Once I got past the Crafts and Hobby entrance I became very excited. The people flocking to that one all looked like cat owners, or like they might be repulsed by a vagina. Or sex in general. But then I rounded the corner and saw beautiful, beautiful men with broad shoulders and thick necks and asses like shelves. They had crispy tans and bleached hair (what is it with bleach and conventions?).

I was reminded of male talent, and of why I like porn so much. I went on like that for a while, the eye-fucking and walking, and then stopped because each would gradually feel the burn on their skulls from my gaze and turn around and I’d see that she needed to shave, not her legs—they all had that covered—but her face…

Inside I did feel better about the chocolate truffles. Fit people love chocolate. It’s all they eat. Chocolate bars, chocolate shakes, chocolate supplements, chocolate chews, chocolate appetite suppressants. Ninety percent of the booths sold only chocolate flavored food knockoffs. The other ten percent sold Affliction wear knockoffs or gym memberships and home exercise options and replacements. There was hair and hormone replacement. Everything was a replacement for something else. Someone had actually reinvented the jump rope, which made me sad, because I was looking for a real jump rope. Apparently they are extinct now. The world’s children should mourn. The new one isn’t connected to itself so you can’t trip. Lawyers everywhere should also mourn.

There were pull up competitions on the stage, and MMA fights in the rings, and I lost complete track of gender when the participants started moving fast. Little food bars were served in cut up squares stuck with toothpicks like gallery hors d’oeuvres. They were powdery and contained no food ingredients. There was a booth for sexercise and a stripper boot camp, and both drew me in and sent me away sad. There was no sex in the sexercise, only an exercise mat and bad, hyped-up background music, for copyright reasons. The stripper boot camp involved a pole. That was an improvement. Except the man teaching it had a vagina.

The confirmed males were hot, though. Eye candy everywhere. But I don’t think I was their type because my BMI registers and because I am pale and unmotivated. After some time I did see some especially hot women—like women-women—but they wore work-out clothes with high heels, a problem for me. They were like sneaker-stilts. Lawyers everywhere can be happy again.

The children should stay sad, though. This is what we’ve replaced fitness with.