Accidental Boxing

The day begins. It is a beautiful Friday morning and I have a meeting with an agent. I am pumped. I take the long kind of shower, where I shave and wash and scrub, and I don make-up. My hair is blow-dried straight and I brush my teeth for a full 2 minutes. In car terms, I detailed myself.

I decide that I will go to the gym after my meeting since his office and said gym are only a block apart. I pack a bag with all of my gym essentials and head off. The sun is shining brightly, the air is a little crisp, and I am feeling invigorated.

The meeting goes okay. He is old school New York. Probably mid-60s, white mustache, white and balding hair, short, and completely uninterested in me. We never make eye-contact, and I am staring at him, smiling at him, doing everything but the perfect cheer to get his attention. Nothin'. He tells me he'd like to work with me and sends me off. A good meeting I guess, but I felt lousy. (Those who know me best know that I need a little more attention than that.)

Off to the gym.

Now, I only have 15 minutes to get to the gym, change, and find a good spot in the Total Body Conditioning class that starts at 1pm. I haven't eaten lunch and it takes everything in me not to duck in one of the pizza shops and ditch the gym; but, I need to get in shape and I press on.

At the gym, I fly down the steps and find a locker. I have dressed cutely today, so it takes a minute to fiddle with all of my buttons and peel the jeans off. I am in a race against time. I put my sports bra on and dig through my bag for my clothes. I hate this part of the gym experience. (I try to bare my body for as little time as possible, even though everybody else in there is flaunting their 'here and there's as if it's a naked pageant! Well, Miss Kentucky is not interested!)

It doesn't take long for me to realize that I have forgotten my t-shirt and shorts. I am now standing half-naked over my backpack in a frantic state of "what-do-I-do-now?". Should I just leave and get something to eat? I mean at least you tried to work-out. Should I try to find a shop and buy some clothes? Maybe someone in here brought extra and will let me borrow them. Ahh! There's no time! Total Body Conditioning is about to start!

I don't know what to do, when suddenly, a voice comes from behind me. "Forgot your clothes, huh?" I turn to see a bare-breasted woman in her 40's bent over and taking off her underwear. Why, on God's fabulous green Earth, did she choose that particular moment to address me? "I forgot my tennis shoes once. Can't work-out without those."

I turn back to my locker and say, "Yeah, can't work-out in my undies either."

"I think they sell tees and shorts upstairs at the desk."

"Really?" A glimmer of hope. I pull my jeans back on, throw a towel around my upper part, and jet bare-foot upstairs. At the desk, they are taking their sweet time, showing me all the guy's shirts and shorts that they have, none of which would come anywhere close to fitting me. They tell me that they are out of all female attire. I am considering just giving up. I mean, I didn't exactly wanna drop 30 bucks on mens' gym clothes, but I didn't wanna leave without working-out either. I'd come this far!

When suddenly Keisha, the Sports Club checker-inner, found a gray NYSC t-shirt in Men's Small. "That'll work!" I say. I am starting to see the light. I still have 2 minutes before class starts.

Keisha slowly stands up and turns around with a quite stoic facial expression. "I also found a pair of shorts," she says, as if someone has died.

"Great! I'll take 'em!"

Then, she unfolds the tiniest pair of black biker shorts I have ever laid eyes on.

"You're kidding," followed by a slow Keisha shake. "I don't really do biker shorts."

Keisha assures me that they will (somehow) fit and tells me that they really do wonders for "making the booty pop". Interesting.

So I skip back down to the locker room and think that maybe the men's t-shirt will be long enough to help cover the tightly enclosed backside. I change at lightning speed and head off toward the studio. My bright white legs are bulging out of the black biker shorts near the top of my thigh and my butt has never felt so restricted. The shirt is a little long, so at least the panty-lines are a bit hidden. Due to the fact that my thighs are chubbier than the shorts allow, the spandex heathens keep rolling up toward my crotch. I begin the long process of constantly pulling them back down.

When I enter the studio, I am pleasantly surprised that not too many people are in attendance and that they seem to be starting late. Before I go to grab my mat, I notice that the other 2 ladies in the class are both wrapping their wrists with tape. I found it unusual that they both had weak wrists. Then I see a guy in the far corner making quick and loud breathing sounds as he punches a large red bag hanging from the ceiling. What's he doing here? As I take a closer look at the class, I notice that it is primarily made of men, which is odd for Total Body Conditioning. When I see that everyone seems to be sporting flat footed high-top lace-up shoes, I realize that something is definitely wrong here.

I hustle to the door to check out the club schedule and see that Total Body Conditioning is actually at 1pm on Thursdays. This was a Friday, so, "Welcome to Boxing!" I hear the instructor say. He is right behind me and I am trapped. "Get in line with the others and start your laps."

Everyone is running around the studio in a circle and I hate to run; but by now, everyone is staring at me (due to the fact that the instructor said something along the lines of, "Hey everyone, look at the new girl!"), so I have to not only run, but look as though I'm good at it.

We run and run and run, and then we run in the other direction. We gallop, we skip, we do tons of push-ups and sit-ups, and we do squats. We lunge for our lives and we run a little more. We do everything but take a break. He leads us around the room, around all of the huge red bags that are now dangling from the ceiling, and I see his evil face on every one of them. As I loudly gasp for breath, I suddenly feel ready to fight.

The unfortunate thing about boxing is that my head came close to exploding off of my neck. I looked at the clock during our sprints and realized that I had only been in the room for 20 minutes. My face was not it's normal exercise induced flushed and pink color, but it was bright red. It did not matter that I looked abnormally cute today, nor did it matter that I was wearing make-up and had beautiful eat-your-heart-out hair. What mattered was that when I looked into the mirror, I saw that my face was actually bright red. Not pink, but red. I have not eaten and I have not run in years. I am already sweating through my new shirt, pools of condensation under my arms, the shirt no longer covering my bottom, but clinging to my lower back and abdomen. The shorts will not stay put, and I continue pulling them down as I trot around the room.

I was about to run right out the door when he called, "Last Lap!"

I moved over to my water bottle and downed half of it on the spot. He shouts for us to give him 20 push-ups and I give him the death stare and continue gulping, the only one standing up, defiant with hand on hip. He couldn't have gotten a push-up outta me if he had a million dollars. As far as I was concerned, we were both very lucky that I was still alive.

The rest of the class goes alright. They put heavy boxing gloves on me and teach me a few swings. When the teacher asked me to practice on him, I gladly gave him everything I had. I was jabbin', and punchin', and upper-cuttin' with the ferocity of a woman scorned. I didn't care that my shorts legs were rolled up like little intertubes or that my breathing was as shallow as a patient on oxygen. I didn't care that my face had finally cooled down to a nice hot pink shade or that my heart was still beating. All I cared about was giving this guy a black eye, something similar to the two I now had, due to the previously mentioned "cute make-up" smearing all over my face.

The worst part about boxing is the conditioning; but once you're past that, the worst part is being constricted by the gloves! I couldn't pull my shorts down! I couldn't fix my ponytail, so my hair was in my eyes, sticking to my neck, and shooting out at the oddest angles. I couldn't wipe the sweat off my face, so it streaked down in mascara brown, eye-shadow green, and blush pink. I swear, my face looked like a Salvador Dali masterpiece by quittin' time.

So, I survived. I made it through the fasion faux-pau and the running. I conquered the little voice in my head that kept screaming, "Kill the instructor and go get some pizza!" I have no words of encouragement for my readers, nor do I have a sentence to offer about staying the course. The moral of the story, however, is to know what you're getting into before you work so doggone hard to get into it.