I wake at 5:00 AM, probably because I wrote a bit yesterday and had conversations with people that turned into a whole new screenplay idea — so this morning my eager writer-brain clearly thinks we are back on our drug of choice. (Side note to writer-brain: we are nearly there, just hang on a little longer…).
6:02 AM. I am driving to the gym. It’s dark and for the first time truly cold, but the trees still have their leaves and so in spite of the chill, everything feels lush and mysterious. I have a clear, sharp memory of being about 12 — my parents owned a restaurant, and sometimes my father would wake me at 4:30 or 5:00 and take me with him to the Farmers Market. It was always dark, and often cold, and we would drive silent together through empty streets. And then around a dark corner into the light of trucks and stalls and ceiling heaters, voices yelling, the smell of coffee and diesel fumes, baskets of berries, enormous oranges, mountains of potatoes put into careful piles by the hard hands of men whose easy laughter made their hard faces beautiful. Those mornings made me realize that there were other worlds beside the one I lived in, and that I could go to them. All I had to do was get up early and drive.
That was a long time ago, but I still love the memory. When I was in my 20’s and often drove between Chicago and Florida, I would set off at 3:30 or so, drive through the dark and then the dawn, and by the time day came I already felt free, as if being out of sync with the regular schedule of the world somehow made lighter whatever baggage I might be carrying. I am sure that came in part from those few mornings with my dad.
6:05 AM. Curves is a women-only gym and the workout is based on resistance training, so anyone at any fitness level can go to their own personal max and get something out of it. And so we are not glamor girls at Curves. We are in our 40’s and 50’s and 60’s, we are fat and lean, we are mostly white and straight, married or divorced. And as is so often true of women in the absence of men, we are still nice, but not particularly careful or shy. When I walk in today, the place is full of us.
6:06 AM. I join the circle of machines and start my workout to an aerobicized cover of “Dark Lady” by Cher.
6:09 AM. The woman across the circle is talking cheerfully about anal leakage from eating too much olestra. The rest of us are laughing ourselves sick.
6:15 AM. The discussion has moved on to sports bras and breast bounce during exercise. All the large-breasted women in the room are holding up their boobs with their hands and making funny faces. The rest of us are laughing ourselves sick.
6:23 AM. The anal leakage woman is talking about dating (men) again after 28 years. She met a man recently who gets four days’ use out of a single pair of underwear by wearing them (consecutively) right side out facing front, inside out facing front, right side out backwards, inside out backwards. This same woman is bemoaning the lack of nice men to date in Seattle. She says that since few men have the courage to ask her out, she feels like she has to go out with anyone who asks. She is re-thinking this strategy after Underwear Man. Someone suggests that she should ask men out instead of waiting for them to make the first move. She responds, completely sincerely, that men don’t like to be asked out, it makes them uncomfortable, and so the only ones who would say yes are the ones who are really needy, and she doesn’t want to deal with that.
6:36 AM. As I finish my second circuit, there are several conversations going on, but one voice rises over the top: “Oh, men don’t want women to talk!” This is met by a shriek of general laughter as everyone gets the brief mental picture of what men would prefer women do with their mouths. Everyone, from the very quiet 30-something who just came in, to the woman in her 70’s who has done more than a thousand of these workouts, is pretty much helpless with the kind of cackling laughter that I imagine sometimes renders women absolutely alien to men.
6:45 AM. I have stretched and done pushups and crunches while the talk around me has moved to other things: jobs, grandkids, the election (That debate just made me want to puke! someone says), how long it takes to drive to Tacoma in the morning commute. I leave. I feel good.
I grew up Southern. I learned early how to get along with men, and I saw how the women of my culture managed the men around them. I know what a lady is, and I know how to be one. I’m pretty good at it when I must be. But I have to say, I much prefer the company of women, and the company of men who like them. I’m glad there are no ladies at my gym.
