Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut (14 page)

18

Not only do I abhor exercise, I also detest people who talk about exercise. These evangelists who preach about their latest fitness obsessions (Pilates, Gyrotonics, Ironman triathlon training, vaginal kegels) make my eyes roll into the back of my head. I live near the park so I always see these couples jogging together side by side, dude in gray tee, girl
avec
ponytail swinging to and fro, each with matching stripes down their legs, so twelve stripes between them. They huff and puff and run, boobs ’n’ balls bouncing in sync, then go home, tear off the Adidas, and have athletic sex. And to that I say: ew.

Where’s the feminine mystery? The red lips? The lace and garters? Okay, fine, so maybe in lieu of La Perla
point d’esprit,
I’m wearing Urban O boy shorts, which ain’t zackly smokin’, but
still
. Oh, and also, here is my lifelong theory. Ready? It’s controversial . . .

Working out makes you fat.

Yes indeedy.
Look
at those women in Paris, all dainty with their lithe limbies and bony bods? Not a StairMaster in sight! I live across from an Equinox gym and I see all the smoothie sippers going in and out all day long and bouncing away on treadmills. Lemme tell ya something: they be beefy. My most hippo-esque state was when I did the New York marathon. When I exercised I used to go and eat a frying pan (no, like, seriously, served in the skillet) of mac ’n’ cheese at the now-defunct Drovers Tap Room on Jones Street. It was seriously Frank Lloyd Wrong. Two thousand calories recommended by the FDA? That stands for
fuckin’ dream away
! If you work out you could Dyson
twice
that easily! So back to my theory. Better to not work out and be thin. Like my mom. And my late great-aunt Laura. She was a rail and simply walked Manhattan, buying her fish at the fish market and cooking without fat-free garbage. Both she and my mom always ate three squares. Not chowing, just three normal meals.

Me? I was always a binger. I used to never feel hungry at breakfast time, so by the afternoon I was like the ravenous Tuscan wild boars in
Hannibal
that ate Gary Oldman’s burnt face off. But when I discovered the magic of breakfast, I lost like eight pounds. I was full by lunch and had a half a sammy or a yogurt and then normal dindin. And that was when I had the idea for my bestselling diet book! You wanna know what it’s called? Okay . . . drumroll . . .
Eat Less Food
.

It would be just one chapter! One page, actually. After years of trying to get down to my birth weight, I am finally satisfied with what I am. I’m embracing my bod! I’m happy! So why oh why, then, would I fucking start exercising?

Two words: peer pressure. No, not really. But kind of. I’ve turned down cocaine and never smoked pot, but spinning class? Pass the bong. I did it.

It all began when my friends Tara and Alexis started their spiel. They were addicted. It was a studio called SoulCycle, which in fact produced its own tank tops that said
obsessed
,
where the
O
was a wheel. They claimed I absolutely had to go, issuing a friendship subpoena. I blew it off. Then everyone else started buzzing about it: the scene, the Escalades all parked outside, the tits on sticks BlackBerrying outside, the Russian model with the oil-oligarch boyfriend who sends her in his Maybach, the yummy mummy of three who ran off with the hot lesbian instructor, the works. I was semi-intrigued but still said hell to the no.

Them:
Why
?!

Me:
Because I
hate bike rides
.

Them:
It’s so not like bike rides.

Me:
How is that
possible
?
It’s on bikes!

Them:
Because it’s not! It’s
pitch-
black with music blaring.

Me:
What do you mean, like . . . it’s dark?

Them:
Yeah! Totally dark.

Me:
Is the music any good or do they play torturous crap and then I’m trapped there?

Them:
It’s
totally
good! It’s like going to a nightclub. It’s
fun
! You don’t even realize you’re working out!

Me:
You guys are such cult members.

Them:
Okay, it’s true. But it’s a good cult!

Their sermons morphed into Charlie Brown teacher-speak after a while, but then a few weeks later my friend Marcie told me that she had booked an extra bike. She wanted me to come with her for her birthday, and she even dropped off a full outfit in my lobby. Shit. I had to go.

CUT TO: “Hi, I’m Jill, and I’m a SoulCycle addict.”

I go four days a week.

I’m a Branch Davidian–level devotee.

“Huh?” you might ask. Well, you’d be echoed by a chorus of all who know me. You? Spinning? Yes. My husband was so freaked that he told me that if the me from six months ago Michael J. Fox’d here and met the me of today, she’d smack me across the fucking face.

“Who are y-you?” he stammered. “You hate people who exercise!”

“I know. I don’t know what’s come over me. I’ve . . . changed.”

He literally thought I was going to reach up into my hair and reveal a zipper that I’d pull down my back to reveal my scale-covered alien body underneath. That I was actually the reptilian Martian that ate the woman he called his wife, as if my real self was trapped inside like John Cusack at the end of
Being John Malkovich
.

So how the eff did this transformation occur, you ask? Well, the girls were right. It’s fucking fun. And not only that, unlike real biking (which I hate), you don’t have to bake in the sun. Yes, you schvitz because it is a workout. But you don’t have to watch where you’re going, so you can close your eyes and listen to the music and zone out. If you did that on a real bike, you’d smash into a road sign. Or run over a fallen branch and go flying and break serious boneage. Or simply ride through doody. In the studio, I’m just still. And despite blaring music, at peace.

My first class was very intimidating. I was a bit freaked by the French-manicure set with their spray-on tans and boobies and BeDazzled wifebeaters with the studio’s Helvetica Bold logo. One girl was bitching that her bike was “in Staten Island,” i.e., the back row of four. Those bikes are considered less-plum placement and are also called the Weeds, as in “Damn, I’m on bike forty-six today, I’m out in the fucking weeds!” I started there on purpose because I didn’t want to be front and center, where they sometimes get into your face to pedal faster. There was some choreography I had to learn, like getting “out of the saddle” (riding standing up), and they keep yelling at you to “engage your core,” which basically just means suck in your stomach. There’s also a weights section where you hold little barbells and do curls for all your ’ceps (bi and tri). Within weeks my pipes were honed and even had a little Popeye bulge, but not grodily. The only problem with the lifting part is that the bikes are close together and I happen to have obscenely long arms. Think
Australopithecus
. They practically drag on the floor behind me. So I almost always bump my neighbor with a sweaty elbow and have to mouth out “sorry” over the Jay-Z/Journey remix. But I guess I’d rather have my long arms than those short stumpy ones like the freakish sister with baby hands that Kristen Wiig plays on
SNL
in the Lawrence Welk sketch. I also learned strong arms are called guns, as in “nice guns,” which of course I dig.

And, like all good cult members, I roped in a newbie: my mom. Yes, I dragged Maman after all my evangelizing and made her accompany me. I got her Smartwater and clicked her shoes in the pedals for her and watched her go. The first time she panted and sweated and practically fell into an X on Third Avenue when we exited.

“It’s like Singapore in there!” she vented. “In August.”

It’s true. It is fucking sweaty as a Russian bathhouse à la
Eastern Promises
. Minus the switchblades. (Though I’d take a knife wound to be near naked Viggo any day.)

“What about all the germs?” my mom asked. “Everyone’s sharing all that air!”

True again. I sometimes ride the bike hearing coughs over the vintage Michael Jackson/P. Diddy combo and think of that scene in
Outbreak
where it switches into GermCam and follows someone’s spraying saliva all through a crowded theater. But I ain’t worried; Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo won’t be kickin’ down the door to SoulCycle in hazmat suits any time soon. In fact, I happen to think a little ’teria is good for us. Just like pain or sweat or sore muscles. And by the way, despite my mom’s complaints that she was going to keel over afterward and there’d be a chalk outline drawn around her spinning outfit, she called me the next morning to say she’d signed up for the next two days. See? Cult!

I don’t know exactly why, but somehow, all the components come together in that room. It’s not just about the music or the motions, it’s . . . gosh, I am such a sappy-ass sucker, but . . . (gulp) the soul. And I don’t mean like spiritual yoga bullshit where everyone says “om” and it smells like ass with Parmesan cheese. But it is a happy empowering space, a little safe nook where the only light is two flickering votives and the teachers’ voices inspire you to ride your fucking ass off. Which, by the way, I literally did. I used to have this pocket of cottage cheese between thigh and ass that I called thass, and now it’s
gone
. Like, vanished. It’s a fucking miracle. And yet, I don’t even do it for my ass, I do it for my head. Working and organizing three kids’ schedules sometimes makes me feel like I’m playing a never-ending game of Tetris. I wake up with such a gut-churning pit in my stomach, because all those little pieces are raining down on me and I don’t know what to do. I manage to reconfigure them and guide them all into place, snapping them exactly where they ought to go, but just when I have the satisfaction that everything and everyone is settled, a new storm of challenges starts falling down on me. All my worries, all the stress, all the pieces, they evaporate when I am breathing and moving my body faster than I knew it could go.

My teacher MB says you can’t change your body without a little pain, so you need to “shred it” with each ride, pushing yourself harder. In the front row, no less! Any mother can sometimes feel like the living dead, but there in the darkness, deafened by beats, I feel more alive than ever. I’m not swallowing Kool-Aid any time soon but I have indeed joined the cult, and no FBI deprogrammer can ever throw a burlap sack over me and drag me to the woods to convince me to stop. Part of me always wanted to be a feminine, witty Edith Wharton or Brontë heroine, and those ladies would never sweat their sweet lace-wearing asses off, but guess what? Those delicate dames also croaked early. And I have so much to live for. No matter how challenging each new day’s Tetris storm is, deep deep down, I enjoy the rain.

Acknowledgments

I wish I could say the idea for this book came to me in bed at 3:00
a.m.
or in the shower or in a spontaneous Bon Jovi Blaze of Glory, but all credit actually goes to my editor, goddess Debbie Stier: part life coach, part tech queen, part friend and blue ribbon/gold medal/plaque–covered chalice winner for Most Charismatic Person Ever. Your enthusiasm is infectious and encouragement a gift. Thank you, Debbie. So effin’ much.

Mega shoutouts also to the whole new posse at HarperCollins/William Morrow: Kathryn Ratcliffe-Lee, Christine Maddalena, Seale Ballenger, Lynn Grady, and Liate Stehlik. To Jenn Joel, überagent, agent, and possessor of best shoe collection ever, you rule. Thanks also to Clay Ezell, Nancy Tan, John Kotik, Aja Pollock, Steven Beer, Mary Miles, and the incomparable Carol Bell and Barbara Martin.

Merci mille fois à
Pamela Berkovic,
amie
and photographer who feared I looked too ugly on the cover. I told her I was trying to look funny, not pretty, but
chérie
thank you for allowing
les “eedeous” photos
!

My first reader, as always, was Dr. Lisa Turvey, who gave notes while nursing a newborn. Now that’s fuckin’ friendship. And to my other chéres: Vanessa Eastman, Jeannie Stern, Dana Wallach Jones, and Lauren Duff—this book couldn’t have been written without you.

Thanks also to my other close friends and supporters who have helped me so much along the way: Trip Cullman, Michael Jones, Dan Allen, Laura Tanny, Tara Lipton, Alexis Mintz, the Heinzes, Michael and Marisa Fox Bevilacqua, Michael Kovner and Jean Doyen de Montaillou, Vern Lochan, Carrie Karasyov, Julia Van Nice, Robyn Brown, Jacky Blake, Lynn Biase, Kelley Ford Owen, Jenn Linardos, Marcie Pantzer, Jeanne Polydoris, Daniel Wiener, Abby Gordon, Jonathan Prince, Lisa Fallon, Konstantin Grab, M. B. Regan, Nick Oram, Erica Kasel, Rebekah McCabe, Andrew Saffir, Daniel Benedict, Richard Sinnott, and all the Kargmans and Kopelmans.

And to all those who tortured me along the way—thanks for the character building! (Assholes.)

Lastly to my kiddos and Harry: thanks for letting me work away on this—I love you so much. And to my mom, dad, and Willie: you three shaped how I see the everything and everyone, and I’m so grateful for all our stories.