A Grain of Salt

Conflicting Interests

So as most of you don't know, I recently joined Gold's gym, since it's the only gym in my new neighborhood. I'm not such a fan of the classes -- they tend to focus around aerobics, and something about the bouncing and the arm pumps makes me feel like I'm back in my parents' house in the early 1990s, doing Jane Fonda workout videos. (I went through a phase.)

Last week, though, I went to a class that I actually found effective -- it had a lot of abs and was run sort of as a circuit. I was sore for two days afterwards. This, I thought, was the good stuff.

But when I went back yesterday, the teacher did something I think was totally out of line: she broke us up into two-person teams and told us that as we went around the circuit, we would be competing in a race. And, what's more, in order to win we had to be touching our teammate for the entire time. If you stopped touching? You had to start again at the beginning.

Let me be clear: I hate touching people. Especially people in gyms. Anyone who read this blog in the fall of 2004 knows that yoga partner exercises were a great source of horrified inspiration for me. So I was standing there, listening to her explain the circuit, wondering if anyone would notice if I slipped out the door.

I decided to stay b/c I wanted to actually exercise -- but further problems arose when we got ready to start and it became obvious that my partner, an older-looking Asian gentleman, either didn't fully understand her instructions or just hadn't listened to her. He went over to a step to prepare to do dips, but when I walked over to join him, he walked over to another step -- thinking, perhaps, that I was crowding his space. You can imagine his confusion, then, when she said "Go!" and I reached out to hold his hand.

For reasons still unclear to me, he seemed amenable enough to holding hands while we were actually doing the exercise (probably because I continued to follow him from step to step until he acquiesced). But every time we switched stations, a comical chase ensued with me running behind him trying to reach for his hand before the teacher could see that we had broken contact. This continued around the entire circuit until we were at the second-to-last station and a light-bulb went off. "Oh," he said, as we lay side-by-side on our backs, hands touching, doing hamstring curls. "It's a race!"

At this point, his spirits became much more energized. Still holding hands, we ran to our final station -- the step -- and went through a series of 60 toe touches that, if I do say so, was inspirational in its speed and dexterity.

And yes, dear Saltines, you correctly anticipated the outcome of my competitive streak: despite our early confusion, we won. Big time.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Shattered Dreams

Remember when I used to blog? I do. Those were the glory days, before I started writing for another blog, Broadsheet and began to hate the idea of putting my writing out in public. (It is much nicer to get comments on the Salt blog from my dad than from anonymous Salon readers, let me just tell you.)

But I have something I must share: I've started going to hip hop dance classes at a place called Newstyle Motherlode. Their brochure has a picture of a man doing a breakdancing freeze on his head. They are serious. The dance class, fortunately, does not involve much head-standing, but it does include an enthusiastic teacher named Corey who is, perhaps not coincidentally, an amazing dancer. Me? Not so much. l love dancing, don't get me wrong, but I'm not about to star in a hiphop brochure.

But I say that with hindsight. Because the thing is, when I went to my first class with Corey, I was in the very back row. And it was a crowded class, so I couldn't see my reflection in the mirror. For a second this was frustrating, but then I realized something beautiful: I could see Corey in the mirror. I could feel my body moving. Ergo, I could look at Corey's reflection, feel my body move, and pretend that I was him.

It might seem hard to imagine yourself as the best dancer in a class of people made up of people actually wearing Reebok dance shoes. But it wasn't, Saltines. As I danced, I developed elaborate fantasies of a talent scout walking by our class, catching sight of me, and saying to themselves "Man, that girl can move." After class they'd hand me their business card and the next thing you know, I'm training people for Dancing With the Stars.

I was so enraptured by this vision of myself as dancer extraordinaire that I bought a ten-pass and started attending classes with names like "Reggae Away," always positioning myself in the back directly behind other people to keep up my illusion.

And it worked . . . until last Friday. Corey's class was less crowded than usual, and the woman in front of me kept moving out of my line of sight so that I could have clear view of myself in the mirror. Polite, perhaps, but in this case, soul-shattering -- it only took about thirty seconds of catching sight of my awkward shoulder pops, my jerky body rolls, all set to an up-tempo version of Prince's "When Doves Cry," for me to realize that a talent scout is never going to approach me after class. If anyone is going to approach me, it might be a small child, waiting for their "Kids' Hiphop Class" to begin, who notices my attempts and tells me, with the straightforwardness/rudeness that only children are allowed to get away with, that I should stop trying so hard.

But I don't really care. Because the class is fun, there's always a crowd, and next time, I'll pick a different person to stand behind.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.