I’m having one of those days where I’m walking around fully functional yet my eyes don’t quite feel completely awake. My body is craving sleep but when I try to nap, my eyes refuse to close. Do you remember those dolls when you were a kid, whose eyes shut when you laid her down horizontally, then popped open again when you stood her up? I feel like one of those dolls, but all fucked up. Lay me down and my eyes refuse to shut…stand me up and all I want to do is shut them.
It was another beautiful, sunny Saturday in Oakland today. This morning, my S.O. and I hit our usual coffee and muffin spot, Arizmendi, a co-op owned bakery a few blocks from where we live. It’s a little ritual we’ve developed over the course of our relationship and although I’m a highly ritualistic person by nature, I’m not quite sure I will ever get used to the rituals of my S.O.
It’s not quite August yet, but I already sense in him a mood swing that happens at the beginning of every month. Mr. Crankypants is coming for yet another visit. Oh, yay. Feelings of dissatisfaction, boredom, and regret envelop my S.O. every month like clockwork. And although he tells me he’s had mild depression his whole life, and even though he insists it’s him and not me…not us…there’s an annoying nudging in my side that won’t go away despite his reassurances.
The coffee thing at Arizmendi is our ritual, yes, but our weekends now mostly consist of his rituals. Hitting balls at the range, soccer games on Sunday, eating at his Vietnamese deli, playing 18 holes during Twilight hours on Sundays and me, always his trusty golf cart driver.
I used to have rituals of my own. Every Saturday, I enjoyed long solitary workouts at my gym, then ran to Peets for super-strong coffee and a fat-free vegan scone. I’d sit across the street, plant myself on a window ledge, usually next to a trio of Ethiopians enjoying their smokes, and people-watch. I used to make up stories as to why that middle-aged lady with the pink yoga mat had such a big grin on her face. Maybe her daughter who never called her, suddenly called her just to say hi. Or maybe her neighbor, whom she had her eye on, finally made the first move and now she’s meeting him for a latte after yoga. After a good hour or so, I’d go back to the gym and catch up with my friends in kickboxing class, which was always, always, my favorite Saturday activity.
But that was months ago. And this morning, as my S.O. and I were walking back to the car from our usual Saturday breakfast, I ran into Simin, who was standing behind the green newspaper racks, sipping a cup of coffee and enjoying the sunshine. Simin was a yoga instructor that I knew from my gym. Tall, thin and soft-spoken, she was the quintessential yoga instructor. I’d often run into her around the Lake or shopping at Whole Foods, but mostly at the gym. Her Saturday yoga class was from 12 to 1:30 pm. Our kickboxing class was the class right after hers. Every now and again, she and I would chat. As the yoga people rolled up their mats and put away their blocks and the kickboxers would begin quickly wrapping their hands, Simin and I would exchange compliments and tips on staying healthy and feeling good. She would comment on how tough she thought I looked in all my kickboxing gear and I would go on about how flexible and strong she seemed doing her yoga postures. It was a mutual admiration club for two.
She said she hadn’t seen me at the gym in a while and suddenly my already-sleepy eyes became heavier for different reasons. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t been to the gym in quite some time and all at once I felt sadness, shame, nostalgic and resentment. And anger. Anger mostly at myself for becoming the subject of countless magazine articles about women who “lose themselves” in their relationships. Oh brother. When did this happen? And how? And am I really one of those stupid, stupid women with whom I’m always getting angry?
The subject needs further investigation. All I know is, for now, I need to reinstitute some of my own rituals. Like bad habits, rituals never go away, they just get replaced by new ones.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Friday, July 29, 2005
A Minute in the Ring
I really need to start wearing a watch again. I got out of the habit after 2001, right around the time Paperloop.com laid me off. As an event planner, a watch is part of the uniform. But after 9/11, I and so many of my fellow planners across the country took off our watches, as we stuffed our pink slips in card board boxes and headed out the door.
It’s been four years and although I’ve been gainfully employed for most of that time, I never took to wearing a watch again. There was always the computer clock, the clock on my cell phone, the VCR clock. It was a great way to practice talking to strangers, Hi, do you have the time?
All day at work, I was painfully mindful of the time. At my last job, I had left my $2.99 Target wall clock in my cube as a reminder to my office mates that “May Was Here.” I had yet to put a clock up in my new cube. As I exchanged short conversations with people throughout the day, I mentally logged minutes spent chatting and counted them down until the 5 o’clock hour hit.
I had to be at Fairtex gym by 5:20 pm. I had made an appointment for my $10 introductory session with Ken earlier in the week and I had been looking forward to it all day long. The trek from North Beach to Fairtex, in the SoMa district of the City, was about 15 blocks but if I sped-walked at an energetic clip, I would just make it. Fairtex was a muay thai kickboxing gym that had recently moved to its new location, at Hawthorne Lane and Harrison. A few months earlier, I visited my old office at 2nd and Harrison, in a futile attempt to become re-employed there. After a miserable interview and needing a caffeine, fat and sugar fix—coffee and a chocolate chip cookie—I walked around corner to what used to be Boudin Bakery. Serendipitously, what I found instead was Fairtex gym.
Ah! The bones of the front room were strikingly familiar. The mechanized platform for wheelchairs was still there. Thank you, ADA! The counter that used to sit above displays of cookies, sourdough and sweet baguettes and cheese Danish, now sat above handwraps, boxing gloves and an assortment of differently-sized shin guards. The poster-size prints of old San Francisco were replaced by pictures of muay thai champions in the requisite “fists up” pose. I stepped to the back of the café, half-expecting to see the same table my friend Jodie and I would eat our chowder-in-a-bread-bowl but there was no “corner” anymore. The room had been become a hallway that lead to a huge, cavernous warehouse, the center of which stood a regulation-size boxing ring. It was beautiful. To the left of the ring, the floor was a patchwork of blue mats, the squishy, soft kind that was more forgiving to bare feet that the hardwood my feet were used to. Large, black kicking and heavy bags lined the perimeter of the blue mats. In my mind, I could already picture my leg thwacking into that bag and making a dent right there…just below the Fairtex logo. To the right of ring were the jiu jitsu mats. The floor was red and smooth and just a little tacky. I wondered what it’d be like to grapple on that surface. I imagined some wicked floorburns.
My introductory session consisted of me training one-on-one with a Fairtex trainer. A private session for $10! Not a bad deal! I used to pay $40 a session with my old trainer every other week. A trainer named Pongsansan wrapped my hands. I recognized him from the picture on the T-shirts they were selling at the front desk. Yikes! This guy is a bad-ass! I told him I was a beginner. He guessed that I had been training two years. I lied and said yes even though it was probably more like four years. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of a Fairtex trainer and not be as good as a person should be who had been training for four years straight.
But it was Armand, not Pongsansan, who would train with me that evening. He was wiry, around 5’8” I guessed, and personable. We introduced ourselves and after I warmed up with a few minutes of skipping rope, he took me into the center ring to begin.
I had never stepped foot into a ring before. There was a time when I had considered training for a smoker, a series of matches put on by gyms every now and again. Lack of nerve and a desire not to be weighed publicly always kept me from making the commitment. I was shy to step inside. There’s no doubt, that at least for a few seconds, everyone’s eyes will glance your way and judge you. I know, because I give everyone I see in the ring the same once-over, as I would be subject to now.
The floor was surprisingly slippery, slightly powdery-feeling. I felt I could be knocked on my ass at the slightest misstep. Armand started to show me the basics, the boxer’s stance, how to throw a jab and a cross. My new job in the City and the growing difficulty I had in stealing time away, had prevented me from going to a regular kickboxing class in over a month. My conditioning had deteriorated. And muscle memory? Mine were suffering from amnesia. I prayed I wouldn’t re-injure my groin muscles again, as I winced trying to throw double-roundhouses in succession.
Armand sprinkled water on the mat to prevent me getting knocked on my butt. He held the pads from me and called out different combinations. Jab-cross-kick-kick. Cross-hook-step-knee. Sixty seconds later and my eyes started stinging from the sweat running down my forehead. Unbelievable! How do boxers go fifteen rounds?
After a few rounds in the ring, I felt fatigued but Armand wasn’t done with me yet. We stepped out of the ring and walked toward the kicking bags. The conditioning drills consisted of forty kicks with each leg then one hundred “knees”. (Kneeing your opponent’s torso is allowed and encouraged in muay thai.) After that, fifty pushups and fifty crunches. Exhausted, I thanked God Armand “cut it short” after forty minutes. I was tired, but wanted more. Kicking bags, the blue mats, the ring…I had never before complete access to this kind of equipment. I decided to observe the next kickboxing class and partake in a little cheap therapy of the kicking kind with that hanging black bag in the corner, the one with my name on it.
I haven’t been back since my introductory lesson. If my work schedule continues to eat up my free time, I doubt I’ll be able to kickbox regularly. But at least I would have had my time in the ring, even though it was just for forty minutes.
It’s been four years and although I’ve been gainfully employed for most of that time, I never took to wearing a watch again. There was always the computer clock, the clock on my cell phone, the VCR clock. It was a great way to practice talking to strangers, Hi, do you have the time?
All day at work, I was painfully mindful of the time. At my last job, I had left my $2.99 Target wall clock in my cube as a reminder to my office mates that “May Was Here.” I had yet to put a clock up in my new cube. As I exchanged short conversations with people throughout the day, I mentally logged minutes spent chatting and counted them down until the 5 o’clock hour hit.
I had to be at Fairtex gym by 5:20 pm. I had made an appointment for my $10 introductory session with Ken earlier in the week and I had been looking forward to it all day long. The trek from North Beach to Fairtex, in the SoMa district of the City, was about 15 blocks but if I sped-walked at an energetic clip, I would just make it. Fairtex was a muay thai kickboxing gym that had recently moved to its new location, at Hawthorne Lane and Harrison. A few months earlier, I visited my old office at 2nd and Harrison, in a futile attempt to become re-employed there. After a miserable interview and needing a caffeine, fat and sugar fix—coffee and a chocolate chip cookie—I walked around corner to what used to be Boudin Bakery. Serendipitously, what I found instead was Fairtex gym.
Ah! The bones of the front room were strikingly familiar. The mechanized platform for wheelchairs was still there. Thank you, ADA! The counter that used to sit above displays of cookies, sourdough and sweet baguettes and cheese Danish, now sat above handwraps, boxing gloves and an assortment of differently-sized shin guards. The poster-size prints of old San Francisco were replaced by pictures of muay thai champions in the requisite “fists up” pose. I stepped to the back of the café, half-expecting to see the same table my friend Jodie and I would eat our chowder-in-a-bread-bowl but there was no “corner” anymore. The room had been become a hallway that lead to a huge, cavernous warehouse, the center of which stood a regulation-size boxing ring. It was beautiful. To the left of the ring, the floor was a patchwork of blue mats, the squishy, soft kind that was more forgiving to bare feet that the hardwood my feet were used to. Large, black kicking and heavy bags lined the perimeter of the blue mats. In my mind, I could already picture my leg thwacking into that bag and making a dent right there…just below the Fairtex logo. To the right of ring were the jiu jitsu mats. The floor was red and smooth and just a little tacky. I wondered what it’d be like to grapple on that surface. I imagined some wicked floorburns.
My introductory session consisted of me training one-on-one with a Fairtex trainer. A private session for $10! Not a bad deal! I used to pay $40 a session with my old trainer every other week. A trainer named Pongsansan wrapped my hands. I recognized him from the picture on the T-shirts they were selling at the front desk. Yikes! This guy is a bad-ass! I told him I was a beginner. He guessed that I had been training two years. I lied and said yes even though it was probably more like four years. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of a Fairtex trainer and not be as good as a person should be who had been training for four years straight.
But it was Armand, not Pongsansan, who would train with me that evening. He was wiry, around 5’8” I guessed, and personable. We introduced ourselves and after I warmed up with a few minutes of skipping rope, he took me into the center ring to begin.
I had never stepped foot into a ring before. There was a time when I had considered training for a smoker, a series of matches put on by gyms every now and again. Lack of nerve and a desire not to be weighed publicly always kept me from making the commitment. I was shy to step inside. There’s no doubt, that at least for a few seconds, everyone’s eyes will glance your way and judge you. I know, because I give everyone I see in the ring the same once-over, as I would be subject to now.
The floor was surprisingly slippery, slightly powdery-feeling. I felt I could be knocked on my ass at the slightest misstep. Armand started to show me the basics, the boxer’s stance, how to throw a jab and a cross. My new job in the City and the growing difficulty I had in stealing time away, had prevented me from going to a regular kickboxing class in over a month. My conditioning had deteriorated. And muscle memory? Mine were suffering from amnesia. I prayed I wouldn’t re-injure my groin muscles again, as I winced trying to throw double-roundhouses in succession.
Armand sprinkled water on the mat to prevent me getting knocked on my butt. He held the pads from me and called out different combinations. Jab-cross-kick-kick. Cross-hook-step-knee. Sixty seconds later and my eyes started stinging from the sweat running down my forehead. Unbelievable! How do boxers go fifteen rounds?
After a few rounds in the ring, I felt fatigued but Armand wasn’t done with me yet. We stepped out of the ring and walked toward the kicking bags. The conditioning drills consisted of forty kicks with each leg then one hundred “knees”. (Kneeing your opponent’s torso is allowed and encouraged in muay thai.) After that, fifty pushups and fifty crunches. Exhausted, I thanked God Armand “cut it short” after forty minutes. I was tired, but wanted more. Kicking bags, the blue mats, the ring…I had never before complete access to this kind of equipment. I decided to observe the next kickboxing class and partake in a little cheap therapy of the kicking kind with that hanging black bag in the corner, the one with my name on it.
I haven’t been back since my introductory lesson. If my work schedule continues to eat up my free time, I doubt I’ll be able to kickbox regularly. But at least I would have had my time in the ring, even though it was just for forty minutes.
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