Wading in the Velvet Sea

We hop in her car. OK, we don’t actually hop, because that would be patently ridiculous. If people hopped towards things, literally, as many times as they relate anecdotally, the world would be a much sillier place. But I digress. We walked to her car and got in, not hopping once, and headed down to Club KO. She’s decked out in her full workout gear, I’m in a ratty tank top and mesh shorts. As is the norm in this relationship, he’s looking put together and I look like I was found on the side of a road in a ditch. But I figure there can’t possibly be that many people inside this warehouse posing as a gym, so who’s gonna notice?

Walk in to find the place teeming with people. Faaaantastic. Sign up with a guest pass, get handed a pair of decades-old gloves, and start filling out one of those “since you’re here, we’ll gonna get all your vital info” forms. Would have been filled out quicker if I had thought to put on the gloves after filling out the form. Doing it before only betrayed the fact that this was my first time and that I was quite possibly mentally retarded.

Find The Girl in the waaaay back, after what seems like 200 people between the desk and her. It’s more like 50 people, if I had to guess at gunpoint (another one of those “where did that expression come from” phrases…is there a history of general interrogation under duress of potential death that I don’t know about?). The place is roughly 75% women, and those women break down as 25% there to kick some ass, and 75% there to look good in their new outfit. You know these latter people: these are the ones who carry-on full conversations without any problems on the treadmill you’re waiting for. These people are the enemy. They must be stopped. I’ve started spiking their bottles of Aquafina with minute amounts of radioactive material. That way we can track them by satellite, lure them into an alley, and kill them with our lasers. Once we, of course, develop laser satellite technology. I’m sure we can do it. They did it in “Real Genius” and that was like, 20 years ago.

She’s scoped out a punching bag for me, one of those “you could fit a point guard in them” bags. The place is full of them, and pretty much all but these last two are taken already. The Girl hands me a jumprope, and this is cute, because it’s obvious she expects me to do something with it. I glance around, and apparently this is the only way to warm up, since most everyone’s doing it. Except, of course, for those women who are occasionally jabbing the bag and giggling like Tommy Perkins left a note in their locker. Man, these woman have to go. Oh well. Have to face facts that they might catch me as an imposter to the kickboxing state if I don’t jump this rope, so I take a step back, make sure no one’s in a 6’5’’ radius of me, and start to swing the rope. And for a few jumps, things are working out well.

Roughly two minutes later, I’ve managed to find my eyeball and re-attach it to my face. Whew. That was embarrassing. I make an executive decision that I’ve done enough warming up involving anything used in double dutch. I start doing jumping jacks, which in and of itself was odd since I haven’t done one since high school. Not that I had some tragedy involving jumping jacks that psychologically prevented me from ever attempting one since. Just never got around to it, that’s all. That would be the worst psychosis ever, though: fear of jumping jacks. (Up there with the person I heard about who was mortally afraid of newspapers.) It just sounds like a bad student film: a kid finds out his parents have died in a tragic blimp accident at the moment he’s doing jumping jacks, and each time he sees a jumping jack after that, he goes out and kills a kitten and immediately rubs it on his pelvis. And the movie’s called “Junipers Never Foster Igloos”. Student films blow.

I tentatively strike the bag for the first time, using a jab. Or at least my facsimile of what The Girl showed me was the proper way to throw a jab. Hrm. Not bad. Try it with the left. Even better. A 1-2 combo later, and I’ve got the music from that tournament montage in “The Karate Kid”: “You’re the best/Aroooouuunnnd/And no one’s ever gonna keep you down!” I am taking down the Cobra Kai, one by one, earning not only the respect of others, but more important, respect from myself. I am the best. Around. And no one’s ever gonna keep me down. Except the guy running the class who’s yelling for me to start jogging. Ooops.

Problem was, and this continued throughout the class, that Club KO was essentially a giant room with lots of support beams. Throw in a stereo system and forty feet of distance and the guy turns into the teacher from those Charlie Brown cartoons. I see people near me take off running, I figure I should as well. Turns out the structure of the building has created a sort of track between the inner and outer bags, so half the room starts running, and the other half now place their backs against the wall, bend at the knees, and think about what they’ve done. (Well, it certainly seemed like punishment for a toddler to me. “Go against the wall and think about what you’ve done!” Fantastic advice for a four-year old. Thinking obviously played no part in the crime I’d just committed, and my sense of right and wrong wasn’t developed enough to mentally locate my transgression, no matter how long my back rested against the wall. Unreal.)

Part 2 coming soon...