It’s not as though I thought I would be good at Brazilian dance aerobics.
I’m no fool. I knew it would be difficult and embarrassing, but I imagined it would be in a fun-loving kind of way that would make exercise seem less boring.
I thought it would make me laugh.
I went with a friend who swore she’d never tried it, thinking it would help me feel less intimidated. I figured we’d be in the same boat, stumbling through some tough moves, but emerging on the other side having enjoyed a good workout.
I did not know then there is no such thing as an ally in Brazilian dance aerobics.
A few minutes into the class,when we’d already hit levels of motor skill and humiliation that exceeded my expectations with this move where you had to wave your arms and shake your ass while performing a grotesque sort of limbo, I looked over at my pal, fully expecting to see my suffering written all over her face. Instead, she was dancing that dance like it was her job, by far the best one on the floor.
(After class, when I confronted her about being a lying liar, she nonchalantly said, “Oh, well, years ago, I used to study Haitian and African dance. I guess there are a lot of similarities!”)
As I watched my friend earnestly grind her way through my nightmare, it dawned on me that I had made a terrible mistake. I began to panic, and from there things went downhill quickly. Like a horse smells fear, the instructor sensed my weakness and tried to build me up with well-meaning encouragement that only made everything worse.
“Keeeem, you gotta move your heeeps!” she said, shaking her own hips suggestively. She did not seem to realize, despite the compelling evidence miserable and slumping before her, that I possess neither the physiological nor the emotional capacity to create that kind of movement.
“Keeem, you gotta stand up straight!”
“Keeem, you’re gonna learn the dance and find a husband!”
It wasn’t long before the supportive comments devolved into frustrated, but friendly, commands.
“Keeem, no, here, watch how I do it.”
“No, Keeem, the wave goes through your body and you tuck in the stomach.”
And finally just: “KEEEM! HEEEEPS!”
There were drills up and down the length of the room. There were intricate routines that required you to move each appendage to a different beat. There was a goddamn hippie in a hemp skirt. I pressed on through it all, fueled by hate and despair and the certain knowledge that, eventually, it had to end.
The class concluded with a mandatory dance circle.
No humiliation—including those I experienced during the first 87 minutes of Brazilian dance aerobics and the countless others I’ve endured during the 33 years of near-constant mortification that led up to it—could have prepared me for what I would feel as I “danced” within that circle.
I guess I was still in denial when the teacher stepped in the ring, but when the first student ducked in after her, I had to admit to myself that the worst was happening. I gripped the sweaty hands of the ladies standing next to me and wished myself dead with an urgency I haven’t felt since my photo shoot at the Sears Portrait Studio.
Student One flailed about with abandon, not showing any hint of irony or self-loathing.
Student Two, a girl of no more than 20, decided to take things to the next level with a dance of seduction. She rolled around on the floor in a way that would have made me deeply uncomfortable if I’d had the capacity to feel anything in that moment apart from my own dread.
Student Three, an older lady of size, followed suit, running her hands suggestively up and down the length of her body. All too soon she was beckoning me, the next dancer up, like she was Patrick Fucking Swayze.
As I stepped into the circle, I told myself to just go with it. I knew that acting self-conscious would only draw attention to my own ridiculousness. And anyway, who cares, right? Brazilian dance aerobics is practically Jazzercise; it’s not like anyone there was trying to be cool.
Unfortunately, “just going with it” proved to be physically impossible. Instead, I sort of stood in the center of the circle, bopping my head ever so slightly while everyone looked on in pity. It was among the worst moments of my life.
Days later, when I recounted this story to a friend, she asked why I didn’t just break the circle and leave. The truth is the idea didn’t even occur to me. It goes to show that you never know exactly how you’re going to react when you’re going through a trauma, like that time I yelled at my muggers and they ran away.
Anyway, now I’m doing zumba, which is a lot more fun. Zumba class, if you’ve never tried it, is comprised of zippy little dance routines that last only the length of a single song. Probably the best thing about it is that some of the songs are proprietary, and for those there’s always someone in the background yelling “ZUMBA!” in, like, a fake Jamaican accent.
The second-best thing is that you mostly perform the same routines week to week, which really appeals to my autistic tendencies.
That is not to say zumba does not have its drawbacks. Probably the worst part for me is the inevitable moment when I realize that everyone else in the world is better at zumba than me. This happens every class. I often spend my time before we begin sizing up the other ladies, which tends to make me feel overconfident. Typically, they are older or heavier or both. One is a blue-hair who wears those creepy shoes that look like feet. All of them can totally out-dance me.
The other bad part is the shame I feel in front of the zumba instructors, these beautiful paragons of fitness who never break a sweat. Even their simplest movements are full of flair and grace. Each step has a certain bounce. I have to imagine they are really good in bed. And as I throw myself around the room, sweating like a hog and moving just a little bit behind the beat, I can’t help but wonder what they think about me.
Other zumba issues are instructor-specific. For example, my Monday class is taught by a lady who can't commit to facing forward or backward. I have some sort of brain tic where I have trouble mirroring people, so the constant switching back-and-forth means that I’m always moving left when I should be moving right, etc. This exacerbates my feelings of inadequacy and occasionally leads to full-on collisions.
Thursday class is my favorite even though one of our regular routines has a freestyle segment. (By now, you might have inferred I am thoroughly unequipped for, and maybe even fundamentally incapable of, freestyle zumba.) The first time it happened, I stood stock still, watching in abject horror as all the other ladies cavorted around me like Beyonce.
My favorite time was when the instructor—this tiny lady with a huge ponytail who always wears a visor even though the class is indoors and at night—looked at me during the freestyle portion of the routine and yelled, “Come on, girl, we KNOW you go to the club!”
I wanted to be like, “Oh, I think we know that I don’t.” But I’m a dancer now, so instead I expressed my emotions through the movement.
30 August 2011
24 August 2011
Tim LaFollette, Often Awesome
Today I logged on to Facebook and learned about the death of my friend Tim LaFollette.
I knew it was coming. I saw the signs on his Wall, where well-wishers had been waving goodbye as Tim spent the last few days shuffling off this mortal coil. No thought or feeling you’ve ever had about science-fiction or postmodernism—and I’ve had a few—can prepare you for what it’s like to scroll through hundreds of messages like that. It was scary and sweet and surreal and sad and comforting and chilling. Probably the Germans have a word for it.
I never knew Tim very well, but we grew up in the same Tennessee cow town and then happened to go to the same liberal arts college in Greensboro, North Carolina. We had some of the same friends and went to some of the same parties and liked some of the same bands. We talked a few times. That is all.
Yet, like a lot of people who knew him a little, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Tim over the last few years as he’s battled something called Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which most of us know as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Tim was diagnosed with ALS in April 2009, at age 29. His foot had been dragging since a minor biking accident, but he was otherwise symptom-free at the time. Fast-forward to just over one year later, and he had lost his ability to move and breathe on his own.
Think about that for a minute. Imagine, a year from now, being a prisoner inside your own body, unable to walk, or eat pizza, or scratch your nose.
The Often Awesome Army was founded by close friends that leveraged Facebook, Paypal, and other web-based technology to help Tim and his wife sort through the expensive logistical nightmare that is terminal illness. They organized his daily care. They held fundraisers that ranged from quilting bees to punk rock shows, from silent art auctions to tattoo parlor benefits. They picked up his prescriptions and brought him DVDs and sat by his bedside while he slept so he didn’t wake up and feel alone.
Over the last few years, the Often Awesome Army has expanded from a tight-knit group of caregivers to reach into the Greensboro community and beyond. The last count I saw was 1,400+ members. These people care for Tim with a fierceness that makes me kind of jealous. The most I dare hope for if I become incapacitated is that someone out there loves me enough to smother me with a pillow.
The story of Tim and his army is documented in an award-winning web series that is also called Often Awesome. It was born out of Tim’s fervent desire to educate people about his disease. To date, there are 33 episodes. I strongly encourage you to check them out. This one is my favorite.
As I’ve watched, I’ve been blown away by Tim’s bravery in the face of something so difficult and frightening and unfair. In episode 1, he looks into the camera and tells you what it’s like when a doctor tells you that you’re going to die a really nasty death. In episode 14, in a confessional reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project, he tells you how scary it is to lose movement in your arms. In episode 19, he tells you what it’s like to get a tracheotomy, his voice reduced to a permanent whisper.
The profit-driven realities of the pharmaceutical industry mean that there isn’t nearly enough research on ALS, which affects a tiny percentage of the population. What that means in practical terms is that no new treatments have been developed since the disease killed Tim’s mom 30 years ago. That is not to say progress hasn’t been made—in fact, researchers at Northwestern recently identified the cause. But the best hope for a cure is for us to give ALS (or, as Tim called it, “America’s best-kept secret disease”) a voice.
I am writing today, on one level, as my own small effort to raise public awareness of a horrible disease that ravages its victims in obscurity. But the hard truth is that there are a lot of terrible things in the world to be aware of, and sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of them all.
So the other reason I’m telling you about Tim and Often Awesome is I think they represent something larger than Lou Gehrig’s disease. Watching the selfless testimonials of the Often Awesome Army as they describe the logistical challenges and emotional hardships and invaluable rewards of coming together to lift up Tim at the end of his life has given me hope that I will someday overcome my own Tyra Banks-level solipsism. It helps me believe in something bigger—sort of like religion, but with people instead of god.
It’s one thing to live your life, and it’s another thing to make it matter. For many (if not most) of us, the former is all we can manage. I am grateful to Tim for mattering so hard with such a great sense of humor. It has made me a better person.
In a sense, writing these words is a sad and impotent act. Even more sad and impotent was the context in which they originally appeared, a Facebook note I wrote for my friends. It was like shaking my fist at the universe while the rest of the universe played FarmVille. Tim is dead. Bill is now friends with Becca Walton and three other people, Sharon is making a joke about the earthquake, and Tim is dead, and pretty soon they will all be buried in my newsfeed and I will click that I like a picture of someone’s baby or vacation or cat. It would be depressing if it weren’t so fucking inane.
At the same time, I’m writing with lungs full of breath and a heart full of hope that all of us here are connected by something more than Facebook or the inevitability of death or our collective dislike of the cast of Jersey Shore, and for that I feel almost unbearably grateful.
About a year ago, when Tim lost his speech, he learned how to talk with his eyeballs. A special computer tracked his gaze so he could crack wise with a wicked cool robot voice.
Now he has a whole host of new voices. He has the Often Awesome Army, which is, in its own way, controlled by his gaze. He has a legacy of love plain to see in his friends and his family. And he has me, here, whispering his story in your ear. Please pass it on.
I knew it was coming. I saw the signs on his Wall, where well-wishers had been waving goodbye as Tim spent the last few days shuffling off this mortal coil. No thought or feeling you’ve ever had about science-fiction or postmodernism—and I’ve had a few—can prepare you for what it’s like to scroll through hundreds of messages like that. It was scary and sweet and surreal and sad and comforting and chilling. Probably the Germans have a word for it.
I never knew Tim very well, but we grew up in the same Tennessee cow town and then happened to go to the same liberal arts college in Greensboro, North Carolina. We had some of the same friends and went to some of the same parties and liked some of the same bands. We talked a few times. That is all.
Yet, like a lot of people who knew him a little, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Tim over the last few years as he’s battled something called Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which most of us know as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Tim was diagnosed with ALS in April 2009, at age 29. His foot had been dragging since a minor biking accident, but he was otherwise symptom-free at the time. Fast-forward to just over one year later, and he had lost his ability to move and breathe on his own.
Think about that for a minute. Imagine, a year from now, being a prisoner inside your own body, unable to walk, or eat pizza, or scratch your nose.
The Often Awesome Army was founded by close friends that leveraged Facebook, Paypal, and other web-based technology to help Tim and his wife sort through the expensive logistical nightmare that is terminal illness. They organized his daily care. They held fundraisers that ranged from quilting bees to punk rock shows, from silent art auctions to tattoo parlor benefits. They picked up his prescriptions and brought him DVDs and sat by his bedside while he slept so he didn’t wake up and feel alone.
Over the last few years, the Often Awesome Army has expanded from a tight-knit group of caregivers to reach into the Greensboro community and beyond. The last count I saw was 1,400+ members. These people care for Tim with a fierceness that makes me kind of jealous. The most I dare hope for if I become incapacitated is that someone out there loves me enough to smother me with a pillow.
The story of Tim and his army is documented in an award-winning web series that is also called Often Awesome. It was born out of Tim’s fervent desire to educate people about his disease. To date, there are 33 episodes. I strongly encourage you to check them out. This one is my favorite.
As I’ve watched, I’ve been blown away by Tim’s bravery in the face of something so difficult and frightening and unfair. In episode 1, he looks into the camera and tells you what it’s like when a doctor tells you that you’re going to die a really nasty death. In episode 14, in a confessional reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project, he tells you how scary it is to lose movement in your arms. In episode 19, he tells you what it’s like to get a tracheotomy, his voice reduced to a permanent whisper.
The profit-driven realities of the pharmaceutical industry mean that there isn’t nearly enough research on ALS, which affects a tiny percentage of the population. What that means in practical terms is that no new treatments have been developed since the disease killed Tim’s mom 30 years ago. That is not to say progress hasn’t been made—in fact, researchers at Northwestern recently identified the cause. But the best hope for a cure is for us to give ALS (or, as Tim called it, “America’s best-kept secret disease”) a voice.
I am writing today, on one level, as my own small effort to raise public awareness of a horrible disease that ravages its victims in obscurity. But the hard truth is that there are a lot of terrible things in the world to be aware of, and sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of them all.
So the other reason I’m telling you about Tim and Often Awesome is I think they represent something larger than Lou Gehrig’s disease. Watching the selfless testimonials of the Often Awesome Army as they describe the logistical challenges and emotional hardships and invaluable rewards of coming together to lift up Tim at the end of his life has given me hope that I will someday overcome my own Tyra Banks-level solipsism. It helps me believe in something bigger—sort of like religion, but with people instead of god.
It’s one thing to live your life, and it’s another thing to make it matter. For many (if not most) of us, the former is all we can manage. I am grateful to Tim for mattering so hard with such a great sense of humor. It has made me a better person.
In a sense, writing these words is a sad and impotent act. Even more sad and impotent was the context in which they originally appeared, a Facebook note I wrote for my friends. It was like shaking my fist at the universe while the rest of the universe played FarmVille. Tim is dead. Bill is now friends with Becca Walton and three other people, Sharon is making a joke about the earthquake, and Tim is dead, and pretty soon they will all be buried in my newsfeed and I will click that I like a picture of someone’s baby or vacation or cat. It would be depressing if it weren’t so fucking inane.
At the same time, I’m writing with lungs full of breath and a heart full of hope that all of us here are connected by something more than Facebook or the inevitability of death or our collective dislike of the cast of Jersey Shore, and for that I feel almost unbearably grateful.
About a year ago, when Tim lost his speech, he learned how to talk with his eyeballs. A special computer tracked his gaze so he could crack wise with a wicked cool robot voice.
Now he has a whole host of new voices. He has the Often Awesome Army, which is, in its own way, controlled by his gaze. He has a legacy of love plain to see in his friends and his family. And he has me, here, whispering his story in your ear. Please pass it on.
17 August 2011
imaginary jobs I would be so good at
1. Assessing the believability of fake Southern accents in television and movies
2. Picking out the best shades of red nail polish
3. Ironing things until I feel less nervous
4. Using my fancy education to analyze mass-market paperbacks
5. Betting on the horses with the best names
6. Tchotchke curator
7. Proofreading menus at ethnic restaurants
8. Cat namer
9. Karaoke consultant
10. Professional Balderdash
2. Picking out the best shades of red nail polish
3. Ironing things until I feel less nervous
4. Using my fancy education to analyze mass-market paperbacks
5. Betting on the horses with the best names
6. Tchotchke curator
7. Proofreading menus at ethnic restaurants
8. Cat namer
9. Karaoke consultant
10. Professional Balderdash
12 August 2011
looking ahead
It’s no secret that I have a stupid heart. Like many other smart women, my romantic history is rife with inappropriate choices and poor communication.
It’s funny how long it took me to figure that out. You spend a lifetime trying to balance the need to rise above what you read in women’s magazines with the intense self-scrutiny that is required to be a thoughtful citizen of the modern world, only to realize you’ve inadvertently spent the better part of your adult life loving a bunch of jerks.
That was the epiphany I had a few years ago when my friend Z and I were sizing up the contestants on the television program Survivor. (Apparently all my epiphanies occur during conversations about Survivor.) There was this one guy who was sort of funny, but also really mean-spirited and egotistical. His personality showed clear markers of sociopathy, yet I found him compelling.
“I don’t know why I like Tyson on Survivor,” I said, “but I do.”
“Well, that’s hardly a surprise,” Z said. “We all know you’re into assholes.”
Gah!
While he is a skillful logician, I hardly expected Z to turn our conversation about reality television into a platform for hardcore Truth Telling. But there it was: BOOM. I was like, well, jeez. I guess I’m going to stop thinking so much about all the complexity and hypocrisy surrounding my identity as a woman in the 21st century and just try to focus on not liking assholes anymore.
As it turned out, I didn’t like anyone very much for almost two years. Part of it was a conscious effort to spend some time figuring out why I had been making so many bad decisions. Part of it was the kind of sheer disinterest in other people that you feel after someone breaks your heart. And part of it was that one time, right around the midway point when I felt the faintest glimmer of interest in someone, I puked my guts out at the end of an otherwise enjoyable evening we spent getting to know each other. It was stomach flu, but I took it as a sign from the universe that I wasn’t ready for anything quite yet. Maybe ever.
After dedicating a truly embarrassing amount of time and analysis to figuring out WTF my problem is, lo, I found myself capable of liking someone who’s not a jerk at all. (Feminists everywhere are so proud, I’m sure.) But what I have found to be the legacy of romantic apocalypse--even after I moved on and even after I had taken the critical (but totally fucking excruciating) step of accepting personal responsibility for it--is an unhealthy amount of worrying about what is going to happen with future relationships. More specifically, what is going to happen if things go nuclear. Which is, needless to say, a sort of toxic mindset when you’re going about the strange and delicate business of starting to care about someone.
I’ve told you that I wonder if writers fetishsize the idea of The End. In any narrative, a writer is working towards it. The End is always the goal, and you have to hunt and slay all the story’s possibilities before you can reach it.
I’m so tired of thinking about endings.
Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure series, those books that made reading a game where you got to make decisions about what happened next at critical points in the plot? You might be presented with two choices on page 12:
Do you want to fight the sea monster or run away?
I was the kind of child who would flip ahead and read both outcomes before committing one way or the other. I knew that reading ahead went against the spirit of the books, but I couldn’t help it. I was too worried about not choosing the best adventure to let myself have any fun.
I often found that those stories let me down. They inevitably petered out into a single sad thin paragraph that never lived up to my expectations. Still, there was this magical moment just before I looked ahead that I recognize now as the thrill of possibility. I experienced it, just for a second, before I snuffed it out with my neurotic urge to analyze both outcomes and decide which one was better.
I think I would tell a robot that possibilities feel like a chest full of fireflies: all buzzy and lovely, but ephemeral.
Now I’m going to repeat myself a little, because there’s an idea I’ve been trying to articulate here for a long time.
My idea is about transience, the natural ways in which people move in and out of our orbits.
I think if you’re lucky, you’ll meet a handful of people in life who thoroughly delight you. It’s not just about whoever they are; it’s who you are with them. They’re these faceted creatures that cast new light on the tired old world, and on your tired old self.
As you get older, you learn more about the ways in which facets turn to fissures and you grow leery of that fragility, its implied threat. And when you have a stupid heart, it’s hard not to become your own nervous father, demanding that every suitor pledge his honorable intentions.
I have been fighting that urge. I guess I’m trying to relax!
Meanwhile, I’ve written you a love story.
Once upon a time, you had a chest full of fireflies, but they flew away, one by one, when you weren’t looking.
Now all that’s left is just one little loner, and you can tell it’s preparing to leave.
You cup it in your palms. Its light shines through the cracks of your fingers.
You won’t want to let it go. But you will, eventually.
You’ll watch as it drifts away, flickering like a streetlamp in a movie just before the light fails and something bad happens.
You realize that’s the best and worst part: the privilege of holding it in your hands before you bury it in your heart.
It’s funny how long it took me to figure that out. You spend a lifetime trying to balance the need to rise above what you read in women’s magazines with the intense self-scrutiny that is required to be a thoughtful citizen of the modern world, only to realize you’ve inadvertently spent the better part of your adult life loving a bunch of jerks.
That was the epiphany I had a few years ago when my friend Z and I were sizing up the contestants on the television program Survivor. (Apparently all my epiphanies occur during conversations about Survivor.) There was this one guy who was sort of funny, but also really mean-spirited and egotistical. His personality showed clear markers of sociopathy, yet I found him compelling.
“I don’t know why I like Tyson on Survivor,” I said, “but I do.”
“Well, that’s hardly a surprise,” Z said. “We all know you’re into assholes.”
Gah!
While he is a skillful logician, I hardly expected Z to turn our conversation about reality television into a platform for hardcore Truth Telling. But there it was: BOOM. I was like, well, jeez. I guess I’m going to stop thinking so much about all the complexity and hypocrisy surrounding my identity as a woman in the 21st century and just try to focus on not liking assholes anymore.
As it turned out, I didn’t like anyone very much for almost two years. Part of it was a conscious effort to spend some time figuring out why I had been making so many bad decisions. Part of it was the kind of sheer disinterest in other people that you feel after someone breaks your heart. And part of it was that one time, right around the midway point when I felt the faintest glimmer of interest in someone, I puked my guts out at the end of an otherwise enjoyable evening we spent getting to know each other. It was stomach flu, but I took it as a sign from the universe that I wasn’t ready for anything quite yet. Maybe ever.
After dedicating a truly embarrassing amount of time and analysis to figuring out WTF my problem is, lo, I found myself capable of liking someone who’s not a jerk at all. (Feminists everywhere are so proud, I’m sure.) But what I have found to be the legacy of romantic apocalypse--even after I moved on and even after I had taken the critical (but totally fucking excruciating) step of accepting personal responsibility for it--is an unhealthy amount of worrying about what is going to happen with future relationships. More specifically, what is going to happen if things go nuclear. Which is, needless to say, a sort of toxic mindset when you’re going about the strange and delicate business of starting to care about someone.
I’ve told you that I wonder if writers fetishsize the idea of The End. In any narrative, a writer is working towards it. The End is always the goal, and you have to hunt and slay all the story’s possibilities before you can reach it.
I’m so tired of thinking about endings.
Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure series, those books that made reading a game where you got to make decisions about what happened next at critical points in the plot? You might be presented with two choices on page 12:
Do you want to fight the sea monster or run away?
I was the kind of child who would flip ahead and read both outcomes before committing one way or the other. I knew that reading ahead went against the spirit of the books, but I couldn’t help it. I was too worried about not choosing the best adventure to let myself have any fun.
I often found that those stories let me down. They inevitably petered out into a single sad thin paragraph that never lived up to my expectations. Still, there was this magical moment just before I looked ahead that I recognize now as the thrill of possibility. I experienced it, just for a second, before I snuffed it out with my neurotic urge to analyze both outcomes and decide which one was better.
I think I would tell a robot that possibilities feel like a chest full of fireflies: all buzzy and lovely, but ephemeral.
Now I’m going to repeat myself a little, because there’s an idea I’ve been trying to articulate here for a long time.
My idea is about transience, the natural ways in which people move in and out of our orbits.
I think if you’re lucky, you’ll meet a handful of people in life who thoroughly delight you. It’s not just about whoever they are; it’s who you are with them. They’re these faceted creatures that cast new light on the tired old world, and on your tired old self.
As you get older, you learn more about the ways in which facets turn to fissures and you grow leery of that fragility, its implied threat. And when you have a stupid heart, it’s hard not to become your own nervous father, demanding that every suitor pledge his honorable intentions.
I have been fighting that urge. I guess I’m trying to relax!
Meanwhile, I’ve written you a love story.
Once upon a time, you had a chest full of fireflies, but they flew away, one by one, when you weren’t looking.
Now all that’s left is just one little loner, and you can tell it’s preparing to leave.
You cup it in your palms. Its light shines through the cracks of your fingers.
You won’t want to let it go. But you will, eventually.
You’ll watch as it drifts away, flickering like a streetlamp in a movie just before the light fails and something bad happens.
You realize that’s the best and worst part: the privilege of holding it in your hands before you bury it in your heart.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)