Ellen Lansky
Gray Matter in the Skull
The spinning instructor snaps a tape into the console, blows into her
microphone, and tells us to hit the road. I shift around on my saddle, adjust
my headphones, and tighten my toeclips.
Spinning is a workout freak's dream-a high intensity indoor cycling
class that's advertised as "the ride of the mind." The Spinning studio at my
health club, once a glass-walled racquetball court, is outfitted with special
stationary bikes. The bikes, sleek and black, with racing saddles,
aerodynamic handlebars, cages for water bottles on the steel frames, and
forty-pound flywheels, are arranged in arcs around the instructor's bike. Next
to the instructor's bike is a console that houses a tape deck and a broadcast
system. The participants tune in tiny radios to a special FM frequency, and
we listen to the instructor through headphones. An observer who didn't know
what exactly was going on in that dim, glass-walled room might think it was
some kind of weird laboratory or a do-it-yourself carnival ride.
I haven't worked out this hard since I was in graduate school in upstate
New York, more than ten years ago. Back then, I had a friend named Jim
who was an exercise physiology master's candidate. He told me he could
write me up a workout program that would turn me into Superwoman, and if
I did his program, it would help him finish up his research. I said, "Bring it
on."
Jim took me into the exercise physiology lab: a sort of combination
exam room, observation chamber, and gym. He weighed me, took girth
measurements, checked my body fat, and tested my flexibility and strength.
Then he clamped my nostrils, hooked me up to an EKG, and had me ride a
stationary bike while breathing through a tube so he could test my maximum
heart-rate and my lung capacity. His advisor watched us through plexiglas
panels in the front wall. When I finished my ride, Jim gave me a daily plan
that told me exactly what to eat and drink and whether to run or bike or lift
weights or rest. I stuck with Jim's program, and we both finished our
Master's projects right on schedule. I felt smart and invincible. Then I moved
down to New York City and learned that the right combination of cocaine
and Scotch could make me feel like Superwoman, and I didn't even have to
break a sweat.
"My name's Jill," the Spinning instructor croons as she ties a red
bandanna around her head. She is magnificent: sculpted, striated, scored.
"Your message today is this: I can. I want to. I want to go there."
I'm ready to go. I have been riding for a while now, and Spinning has
changed my look. My legs are strong; my ass is tight, and my stomach is
almost flat. I roll my shoulders as the tape rolls into the first song: a
worldbeat number with tinkling steel pans and a soothing bass line. We sit
up tall in our saddles, riding no-handed as Jill leads us through some upper
body stretches.
My friend Jim, along with trainers and other professional jocks, claims
that muscles have memories. This I believe. I used to play basketball, and in
practices, I shot so many free throws that to this day, twenty years later, I
can still hit eight for ten. But Spinning has made my memory muscular. The
gray matter in my skull is transforming itself into twitching fibers. When I
take these rides, it pumps out images that are stronger, denser, and more
defined than anything I've ever seen before.
"All right," Jill says as the music shifts. "Give yourself some road."
Everyone reaches down and twiddles the resistance knob that's below
the handlebars. I watch the soft brakepad close in on the whirring flywheel.
The muscles in my warmed up legs shiver and then hunker down.
"Imagine that the wind's at your back," Jill says. "You're riding down a
gravel road."
A synthesizer moans in my ears, and a disco beat begins to thump. Then
a choir of men's voices converges on a Gregorian chant.
"Control your cadence," Jill says. "Listen to the rhythm."
I'm not sure what Jill wants me to hear. I have this feeling that she
doesn't know that for one hot winter season a few years ago, this song was
playing in all the gay clubs and in the bedrooms of every lesbian in town.
"Pick it up," Jill says as the Gregorian chants shift to a steady pulse, a
disco instrumental mix. "Here we go. Close your eyes. We're in Southern
California now, and we're cruising along the boardwalk between Venice and
Santa Monica."
I shut my eyes and see those basketball courts and the barbells strewn
around Muscle Beach. I catch a glimpse of the rollercoaster that rises up and
over the Santa Monica pier.
Then the familiar opening notes of "L.A. Woman" ding into my
headphones. Now I see myself between the black steel rails of a narrow
twin-bed in a dorm room at Jeanne d'Arc College-the Catholic women's
institution in St. Paul, Minnesota-where I was an undergraduate in the early
1980s. I see my old particular friend, Mary Haley. Mary Haley knows all the
words to "LA Woman," and she sings them in my ear. She scrubs my hair
with her fingertips. "Let's go, baby" she says.
"Turn it up," Jill implores. "Leave your comfort zone. You can do it.
Your message to yourself: I can. I want to. I want to go there."
The rhythm slows and I open my eyes. "We are approaching a long,
steep hill," Jill warns.." Connect with your body now. Look inside."
I see myself pedaling up the wide, winding staircase in the dorm where
Mary Haley and I lived.
"Get out of your comfort zone," Jill instructs. "Come on, baby. Ride it."
I stand on the pedals and crank. I try to match my pedal strokes with the
beat: push, wipe, pull, lift. I'm sweating big drops onto the black frame. I
expect to see musical notes shoot out my kneecaps.
"I see the top of the hill," Jill says as "L.A. Woman" begins to pick up
momentum again.. "Can you get there? You know what I'm talking about,
don't you? It's not so bad out there, is it? It's all right. Sit down, turn down
your resistance, and pick it up."
I turn up the volume on my little radio and wipe my mouth and chin on
the shoulder of my T shirt..
"You can do this," Jill purrs. "Visualize. Find your rhythm and your
road. See it."
I see Mary Haley in the basement laundry room one slow Sunday
afternoon in late August of 1982. We'd just moved into the top floor of the
same dorm, and people were already mistaking us for sisters, each other, or
twins. In the laundry room that day, Mary Haley was wearing a a black
denim jumpsuit, and she was looping a red bandanna through her spiky dark-
brown hair. I was wearing a blue Mao-style Chinese worker outfit, including
a blue cap on top of my spiky dark brown hair. Everybody else on campus
had smooth, shoulder-length blondish-brown bobs, and they wore nice chino
pants, crisp oxford shirts, and sharp penny loafers. Our dryers finished at the
same time, and we found ourselves at the folding table, admiring each
other's clothes. I said it was funny that she was a junior and I was a senior,
but we'd never met before. She gripped my arm and said, "Where have you
been?"
On Labor Day, we saw the Eurythmics at the State Fair. I remember
that we got drunk on big cups of cheap beer, and after the show, we went
back to our dorm and ran up that wide, winding stair case to her room. She
pulled off my shorts and shirt like she was shucking an ear of corn. Then she
pushed me between the black steel rails of her bed, supplied by the college
and designed to deter what was about to happen. She took a slug from her
bedside bottle of peppermint schnapps and flipped on her tape deck.. Then
she jumped on me and pinned my hands at my ears. I could feel our heart
beating as the Eurythmics' skanky synthesizer grooves snaked "Sweet
Dreams" into my ears.
"Come on, baby," Jill buzzes into my headphones. "This is it."
Faster and faster we went, until I could not believe that I could put out
that many rotations and not topple headfirst over the handlebars or go
airborne.
"Give it to me," Jill says.
"Give it to me," Mary Haley said.
I haven't seen Mary Haley for many years. On the day I was leaving St.
Paul for upstate New York, she helped me bump the last load my stuff down
that staircase and into my car. I shut the hatchback, and gave a big sigh.
"I feel like I'm losing my Siamese Twin," Mary Haley said.
I didn't know what to say. I'd prepared for my long trip by loading up on
cheap speed, and my scalp felt like a electromagnetic field. At the moment
that Mary Haley started crying, I wished I were Rocket Girl, with jet packs
strapped to my back so I could launch myself skyward and flee.
"Stay with it," Jill says. The music shifts to a flute and bongo
instrumental. "Keep pedaling. Grab your water bottles. Pull your heart back
into your chest."
I drink some water and release the resistance knob on my bike. The
music shifts to a song from my childhood that is now a Golden Oldie:
Johnny Rivers singing "I can see clearly now."
"All right," Jill says " Now let's stretch those tired muscles."
I dismount and lean over to stretch my hamstrings. My T shirt is sopped
around the collar and down my back, and my cycling shorts are the same
temperature and texture as my skin. My hamstrings feel like burning stripes.
"Great," Jill says. "Find your pulse and let's do a heartrate check."
When I left New York and came back to Minnesota for chemical
dependency treatment, my doctor checked my heart and lungs and liver. He
ran tests and assured me that I was still in pretty good shape, but it would
probably take me six months to detox. I called Jim to see if he had any
suggestions. He said it was good to hear from me, but he figured I'd
probably put five hundred years on my body since last we'd met. He
recommended saunas and steam baths.
While I count my pulse, I try to imagine how my body would have felt
five hundred years ago. Instead of stretching my muscles and monitoring my
heartrate, some old crone would be pounding my kidneys right now, and
after that, I'd be on my way to the barber for a salubrious bloodletting.
I'm feeling much better these days, though sometimes I think my
memory needs a purgative. My problem is that when I remember somebody
like Mary Haley, I miss her so much that I forget that I was the one who left.
I know I could pick up the phone and call her, but the Mary Haley who lives
in Anchorage, Alaska now with her husband and two kids--she's not the
Mary Haley I want.
The tape floats to its finish, and Jill says, "Let your head drop down to
your chin.".
My cervicals crunch.
"Good job," she says. "The ride's over. You made it."
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