Dear Howler Monkey Guy,
You are not working hard enough. I know this because you are bouncing up and down in the saddle of your spin bike like a problematic Jack in the Box. You have zero resistance on your wheel.
Half the time you are standing up due to some misguided notion that you are firming up your glutes or whatever by doing so.
(You are still pedaling too fast, even as you are standing up.)
You are annoying and distracting. Now I know how Monica Seles’s opponents felt on the tennis court. Yes, I just compared you to a girl in a very short skirt. (Somehow I know this will annoy you to no end.)
But at least Monica Seles was consistent: she grunted every time she hit the ball. (Plus, she is way more bad-ass than you will ever be.)
But you! You are surprising, and not in a good way. You make the howler-monkey noise if you like the song; when you feel yourself moved by the amount you are sweating; if you like the way you look in the big wall mirror; if you feel the sweat stain you are producing on the front of your shirt looks particularly like something you like…I don’t know. I don’t live in your brain, thank god.
If you were working as hard as I am, you would not have enough energy or breath to Howler-Monkey. I know this.
I spend all of my time trying to outride you, but I can’t, because we are in spin class, and our bicycles are stationary.
So I moved from where you can startle me when you whoop, although I liked that position there. It was right in front of the mirror, so I could see the way my right knee tracks a little bit to the side when I ride, and correct it. I could keep my eye on my shoulders and ensure they are level, belying only small movements, every potential movement channeled right into my chicken calves.
But you were too close to me there, in a direct sonar line right behind me. I imagine your WOO! drills right into my medulla oblongata, or whatever part of my brain it is at the base of my skull, which must also be the part that makes all the hairs on the back of my neck rise up.
WOO!
Also, even though you are directly behind me so I do not have to look at your face when you WOO!, I still have to see you bobbing, weaving, bouncing all over the fucking place. I see glimpses of you, multiples of you, every pedal stroke, and it’s like this disappearing/appearing you is more stressful than the regular old you would be if I just had to stare at you all the time.
But the WOO!s are loud. They are SO loud from here. So I move.
I was wrong. Although this corner of the class is right by the very loud rotating fan they have on the ceiling to provide some kind of breeze, and thus is very very loud and sometimes drowns out your WOO!s, I can see all of you now, all the time, because there is sometimes no one between my line of sight in the mirror and you.
From here you look like a factory-discard bobble-head doll: “Oh, no. No, no, This prototype will never do. It moves so much it will scare small children. Throw it out. Put it in a dark room where no one will ever find it.” They dim the lights in spin class, but not enough, by a long shot.
Ah! Today you have shaved your normal porn-star mustache, so I can see the split second your lips start to purse and you start to blow out and argh argh argh, because there it is. WOO! The noise comes out of your pursed hairless lips, and all I can think of a literal asshole, blowing wind.
WOO!
Anyway. In this corner you are less noisy. But you are just as disruptive, and not in an uber/AirBnB kind of way. You just are annoying.
Real cyclists, by the way, do not ride the way you do. We do not bob and weave. We funnel all of our energy to our legs, from our neck down, as much as we can. Our shoulders are rock-steady. If we bobbed and wove like you did, we would be all over the road so fast.
We also do not WOO!
But you are not a real cyclist. You have probably never taken your bike outside. Do you even have a bike?
I think it is not a coincidence that, after every class with you, I do something like looking up a triathlon or a group ride or something.
There on the open road, the thinking probably goes, from my damaged medulla oblongata, I would not have to deal with you. If you did start to WOO!, I could just ride faster.
On the open road, I know, the wind rushes past my ears so fast that I can hardly hear my husband or friends calling to me.
I can hardly hear the gentle beeps of the cars wanting to pass, not that we hear them that often. Going downhill on a swooping mountain road, we are faster than they are. And on the uphills, I have only enough energy to contemplate my whistling lungs, my heartbeat pounding in my ear; the midges gathering around the sweat on my nose.
If I am in the foothills, on the trail, I hear nothing but birds, since I am usually alone. I pay close attention to where my front wheel is tracking, what the terrain looks like; can I make this short steep climb?
Cars hardly need to beep anyway, because I am a good cyclist. I take periodic glances over my shoulder.
On the open road, or trail, I am strong and fast and I am frustrated only by my lack of strength, or endurance. On the open road, if I hear something that annoys me, I can outride it. Him. Her. Sometimes, the stray dog, nipping at my heels.
On the open road I can see the end of the hill. The scenery distracts with its variety. My mind does not roam, though, to how annoyed I am, because you need to pay attention to the tiniest things on the open road, on the mountain trail.
How I wish I were there now!
Why am I not there now? Why do I let you torture me?
If I go to spin class in my eyeglasses and not my contacts, I have to take off my eyeglasses, so I don’t sweat all over them. And in this darker corner of the room, I can choose not to see as much.
In my refection in the mirror I can barely see my lips, stretched in a gasping grin, trying to ride out the effort. I wheeze through my teeth and try to outride your WOO!
The instructor says, like he always does, Relax your shoulders. Relax your face. This is not running.
If it were, I would outrun you, Howler Monkey Guy.
On the open road I would not grimace when you WOO. We are not even in the same universe, Howler Monkey Guy.
In the reflection of the gym mirror, in this darker corner to which I have moved to escape you, I can also hardly see my age spots, especially the huge one of my cheek. These age spots sit right over my cheekbones, the ones I’ve been been praised for all my life. In this dark corner, they are less prominent.
Put on sunscreen, says the doc. I tried that; SPF50 all the time.
“Let’s try bleaching cream,” said that doc. Tried that, too.
My husband says my spots are lightening up. But whenever I get out of the pool, I feel I can see a noticeable difference…I can see it—them—the ugliest blotches I have ever seen on any face, dark, stain-like, on my countenance.
I find it hard to look at pictures now, of myself in my 20s and all the way through my mid-30s, when the spots were not yet there.
I got the big one—well, it appeared, anyway, after a stint in the Philippines with the disaster relief agency I love so much. Close to the equator. Working all day. Not enough sunscreen in the world.
Sometimes, in my wildest, darkest dreams, I think I’d rather lose a finger, a toe, instead of having these stains on my face.
Sometimes, I like awake at night, thinking to myself, if I am this stained at 41, how will I look at 60? 75?
This is a losing proposition. This is just as bad as trying to outride you, Howler Monkey Guy, in a classroom of spin bikes.
Why am I here?
I am here because one can swim in the dark, at night, and one can run in the dark.
One cannot ride one’s bike in the dark, not where I like to go.
So one will tolerate you, won’t one, just to be close to one’s bicycle. One will collapse over one’s useless, unsteerable handlebars, time after time, effort after effort, deflated by your stabbing, animal yelps.
WOO!
One’s husband will tell one that one has GOT to get over it.
If one could get over this massive age spot on one’s face, this would not even be a problem. One would be outside, on the open road, where she truly wants to be.
