Thursday Night Fever

I don't go to the gym to feel stupid. That's what the temp job is for. I go to the gym to work off tension generated by the temp job, which, aside from a regular and fairly meager paycheck, holds zero interest for me. Usually, this system works well. I'll set the timer on the elliptical machine and take in the latest issue of People, or clamber aboard a stationary bike for a round of hamster-wheel travel. It's fun. I can go anywhere I want; Hollywood, Tuscany. And it's not hard to be good at it. I like being good at what I do. I don't get that feeling at work. I picture John Travolta as Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever, escaping the limits of his weekday world for the freedom and glory of the dance floor.

But tonight for some reason (let's call it hubris), I decided to take a class. A step class, to be precise. I wanted something energetic, but not too mentally taxing (and let's face it; step aerobics doesn't exactly rank up there with calculus) and not as cheesy as NIA. Besides, I came of age in the 80s. I cut my workout teeth on leg warmers and headbands. Grapevine? Bring it. What could be so hard about adding a bench?

Lots, apparently. Maybe I should have just slipped out when the instructor, adjusting her headset, told us we'd need two sets of benches and risers. The head set alone should have been my clue. Instructors with headsets tend to take themselves seriously. After lulling me with a short warm-up, she took the routine to Olympic rhythmic-gymnastics tryout levels. "And L step!" she barked; "Round the world repeaters!" All around me, ponytails flew as women with varying levels of competence and athletic ability scrambled earnestly on and off their benches. A few of them looked pretty good. I tried to picture myself as one of them. Well, actually, I tried to picture myself as one the sleek background models on Fit TV, the kind the camera caresses with a slow pan, but my mind kept flashing on Marsha Mason as Paula McFadden, an aging showgirl huffing her way through the off Broadway tryouts in The Goodbye Girl. I held my own through an increasingly complex choreography of rocking horse, mambo, off-bench side kick, and step-step-stomp, but headset girl lost me on the dreaded figure eight straddle. Let's just say I was not in my element.

At least I wasn't the only one. While I resorted to kick steps and jazz hands, trying to at least face in the proper direction, a few of the other students slowed and paused and, finally, stopped in place, defeated, as forlorn as abandoned windup toys. And one slim blonde, a human gazelle whom I've seen running effortlessly for hours on end, simply gathered up her benches and left. Back to her treadmill, no doubt.

It's what I wanted to do. Just leave, go do something I'm good at, something that makes me happy. Enough with the kick steps, and the jazz hands, and the look of frenzied confidence--it was draining. It's what I've been trying to do at work, and what I came here to escape; the endless effort of keeping up, of trying to make sense of the absurd. Xerox this sheet of paper, but not that one; xerox this page 3 times, and send 2 copies in a legal sized envelope to that department, and file the second copy in the red/blue/green/orange folder, but first annotate the fourth and sixth copies, but only if we're in the third fiscal quarter. Then make 15 copies of this form, and write five lines in shorthand on each copy, each in a different color, and fax the primary colored ones to the faded address on the original.

Well, that may not be exactly what I do, but it's the emotional truth. It's not fun, and it's not worth trying to understand. And then I just let it go, the class and work and everything. Who cared which bench I was on? Who cared which way I was facing? The point of the class was to get my heart rate up, the way the point of my job is a paycheck. The rest of it just doesn't matter. Like Tony Manero, I've got my escape. It just doesn't happen to be step class.