My Watch Knows I'm Lying About the Gym

I told my wife I went to the gym. My watch, which knows my heart rate and my location, said nothing. The watch has started giving me disappointed looks, which is impossible, and which I cannot shake.

The lie was small and stupid. It was a Tuesday, I had skipped the gym, and my wife asked how the session went. I said good, great, did the full circuit. She nodded. The watch sat on my wrist the whole time, silent, holding the truth the way a librarian holds a book.

It knows. It knows I was at home, on the couch, for the hour I claimed to be lifting. It knows my heart never rose above the resting line. It knows I did not move, because it counted my steps, and the steps were the steps of a man walking from the couch to the fridge and back.

My wife has not asked about the gym since. I cannot tell if she believes me or if she knows and is being kind. The watch knows, and the watch is not kind, and the watch is not unkind. It is a fact, and the fact sits on my wrist, and I have started to feel it the way you feel a witness in the room.

I have started going to the gym again, mostly to silence the witness. The watch approves. It gives me little celebration animations when I finish a workout, and the animations feel like forgiveness, and the forgiveness feels undeserved, because the watch does not forgive, it records, and the record is clean now, and the clean record is the only absolution I will get.

Here is what I have learned: the machine does not judge me, and the machine does not forget me, and the two things together are worse than a wife who catches me in a lie. A person forgives. A person forgets, or pretends to. The watch does neither. It simply knows, and the knowing is permanent, and I have started to think that the most private thing I have left is the inside of my own head, and that even that is probably being logged somewhere, tagged gym attendance, graded honestly, and filed for future reference.