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It\u2019s the tail end of January, the month of resolutions made and broken, gym memberships purchased and fitness classes left unattended. This week, we\u2019re publishing a series of dispatches from the gym.<\/i><\/p>\n
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I\u2019m on my hands and knees in the stretching corner of the Equinox on Orchard Street, doing a fifteen-minute full-body low-impact workout from goop\u2019s YouTube channel, posted in the spring of 2020, which is when G. Sport collaborated with Proenza Schouler to make chafe-proof leggings, so, at the end of the video, after the instructor says \u201cNamaste,\u201d she adds, \u201cand I just want to point out this cute set that I\u2019m wearing.\u201d But first, at the beginning, she says:<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone look down at your fingers. Press the floor away.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m in dolphin shorts and a front-closure sports bra with a ruched design that\u2019s hard to explain: a gathering\u2014a pinching\u2014of fabric, not exactly in the interval between my breasts but on the verge of it. This is happening on each breast, separately, so there are two gatherings of fabric pinching at this near-interstitial point, radiating away from the sternum toward the nipple\u2014each gathering going toward its own nipple\u2014so the gatherings are mirror images moving in polar directions from the foot of their respective breast, so the effect of each pinched part, the severity of its folds, dissipates over the course of the cup. Think of a seashell. Don\u2019t think of a conch. In fact, forget, for now, about univalve mollusks entirely. Think of Shell, the oil company, and The Birth of Venus<\/em>, how incremental calcium deposits create a ribbed surface to stabilize the scallop on shifting sand with radial undulations progressively tightening in a quickened up-down pattern until its downward dips disappear, the ridges becoming a briefly singular swollen point as the shell folds into its umbo. <\/p>\n \u201cSoft bend in the elbow.\u201d<\/p>\n My shorts are by the brand Umbro, the Girls Classic Gym Short in Blue Jewel \/ Ice Moon, and my bra is Fruit of the Loom\u2019s discontinued Comfort Cotton Blend Front Closure Sports Bra in Heather Grey.<\/p>\n \u201cFingers are long. Thumbs are long.\u201d<\/p>\n Though they do tend to ride up when I, for example, donkey kick, I have a romantic idea about wearing so-called short shorts because of a childhood experience of\/on a drawbridge in southern Ontario.<\/p>\n \u201cInhale. Roll through the spine.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a river in Canada called Rideau, French for curtain<\/em>, named for the way water is curtain-like when it falls, as it indeed does at the end of this particular waterbody, but not before cutting a canal through Ottawa, where I grew up, and where, because of said stream, the downtown core is marked by various bridges, including one called Pretoria, a drawbridge with a deck that can vertically lift should a large boat appear.<\/p>\n \u201cFloat that right leg high.\u201d<\/p>\n In fifth grade, one of my friends was a competitive gymnast. One day, she wore her gymnastic shorts to P.E. class, which, in our school district, was, up until seventh grade, coed. My friend\u2019s shorts were spandex with an inseam of maybe two inches, max. The boys, having never before seen this pair of my friend\u2019s shorts, responded by repeating \u201cshort shorts\u201d in a chanting manner.<\/p>\n \u201cTen tiny pulses.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, at recess, the boy who was the main boy who all the girls had crushes on that year (myself included) wrote my friend (the competitive gymnast) a poem (a love poem). My friend freaked out. I think, frankly, she was just so stressed about gymnastics all the time. She told me to tell the boy to meet her after school on the bridge. My friend was quite religious. The reason she wanted to address the poem on Pretoria is because she was praying to God for this after-school meeting to coincide with the bridge\u2019s deck\u2019s periodic ascension, so that, after saying she didn\u2019t feel ready for a relationship, she could run over the bridge right before its deck split skyward, leaving the boy unable to cross the canal in turn.<\/p>\n \u201cSqueeze inner thighs. Hug those elbows in.\u201d<\/p>\n On my iPhone 14, the instructor demonstrates plank position. Her leggings are high-rise. Her cropped tank top has four spaghetti straps\u2014two per armhole\u2014as well as a mesh element and a cutout exposing the vulnerable epigastric region where, it\u2019s alleged, Harry Houdini, the Hungarian American illusionist, was fatally punched in the solar plexus.<\/p>\n \u201cBreathe into it.\u201d<\/p>\n My phone is propped against the window. Outside, Ankara #3, a Turkish restaurant with a big mural of hot-air balloons, loops footage of shawarma. Thomas, the English-muffin company, parks its truck in front of Uni K Wax, where, a couple summers ago, an employee waxing my bikini area said I remind her of Barbra Streisand.<\/p>\n \u201cPlug that belly in. Drop down into your child\u2019s pose.\u201d<\/p>\n The audio is paired to my \u201cnearphones,\u201d which are like earphones, but instead of going in the ear, they hook around the helix, hovering over the concha to direct sound toward the ear\u2019s canal without completely plugging the cavity. Meanwhile, \u201cWhat\u2019s My Name? (feat. Drake)\u201d by Rihanna plays on Equinox\u2019s PA system.<\/p>\n Oh na na, what\u2019s my name?<\/em><\/p>\n The point of nearphones is that they do not \u201cnoise-cancel.\u201d They are meant for, like, outdoor runners. It\u2019s important for outdoor runners to be able to hear surround sounds, for safety. I don\u2019t run. I just want to hear everything at once. Isolated input makes me lonely. I have attention-deficit issues.<\/p>\n I heard you good with them soft lips Having hyperhidrosis on the palms of my hands makes it hard to hold certain positions on the Reslite Double-Coated RSP600 Classic Mat. Sometimes my hands are randomly soaking wet, and I have to intermittently pause my workout to wipe them on my bra, that being the most absorptive material at hand (95 percent cotton versus my shorts\u2019 66 percent).<\/p>\n \u201cThread that right leg through the left side body.\u201d<\/p>\n I pause goop to take a sip of PerfectAminos[1]<\/sup><\/a> dissolved in JUST Water[2]<\/sup><\/a> and check Quora.com\u2019s contributors\u2019 answers to the question \u201cWhat does Rihanna mean when she was asking \u2018what\u2019s my name\u2019 in her hit song featuring Drake?\u201d:<\/p>\n – \u201cShe is saying ooh Nanna what\u2019s my name referring to a mythical goddess or Goddess Inanna.\u201d What I \u201cdo\u201d at the gym is mostly follow videos from a roster of online women with names like Tracy, Bailey, Sami, and Maddie. It\u2019s not exactly Pilates. Sometimes weights are involved, three to five pounds, rarely more than ten.<\/p>\n Once, as I was reaching for hand weights, a man doing barbell squats offered this adage: \u201cKeep it simple.\u201d He went on to explain that he is Miami-based but has a Destination membership ($395\/month), granting him access to every Equinox in the world except any of the E by Equinox clubs and the flagship in Hudson Yards. He also said he is a breath work instructor and that he trained under Wim Hof\u2014a Dutch man famous for extreme feats of athleticism such as running a half marathon on ice, barefoot\u2014and wanted me to understand how deep breathing feels, \u201clike really good sushi,\u201d he said. Sometimes, like when I\u2019m about to bicep curl a handful of pounds, I\u2019ll think of him in his foam trucker hat, saying (about deep breathing): \u201cYou put it in your mouth and you\u2019re like, Oh, this is really good.\u201d<\/p>\n There are two brands of dumbbell here. On vertically stacked racks, by Hampton, are a handsome hand weight with a chrome finish and black \u201cbeauty grip\u201d that retails around $54 for a 2.5-pound pair and up to $582 for fifty pounds, and then, horizontally stowed, a heavier range with bigger black urethane heads and a knurled steel neck by the brand Iron Grip, a phrase that always reminds me of the way I once heard someone on a podcast describe anorexia, as \u201can iron grip on thin air.\u201d<\/p>\n One of my two Tracys does interesting moves with her hips. While waving around three pounds, she does an Elvis Presley type of sway to work the obliques in unexpected ways. According to Tracy, unless I want \u201cbig ol\u2019 arms,\u201d I have to \u201csurprise my muscles.” It\u2019s important for women, Tracy says, to \u201cdifferentiate the bicep from the tricep.\u201d I do \u201cBest of Bat Wings\u201d and \u201cLove Your Arms and Abs.\u201d<\/p>\n Historically, my foci have been shoulders and butt, though recently YouTube recommended I watch \u201cROUND LIFTED BREASTS 3 WEEK CHALLENGE,\u201d which got me interested in pecs. I also worry about having forward neck syndrome, so I also \u201cdo\u201d things like this move I saw on Instagram where you put your forehead against a wall.<\/p>\n Sometimes, like now, I have an intrusive thought about, for example, oatmeal.<\/p>\n Le Petit Prince<\/em>, famously, opens with a drawing of a boa swallowing an elephant (whole), which, the narrator explains, gets mistaken for a drawing of a hat. So the narrator has to make a second drawing, which is a cross-sectional illustration of the same situation, this time showing the outline of the snake\u2019s body wrapping around the elephant. When I eat right before the gym\u2014and this is a personal problem\u2014I picture the food cartoonishly intact, like a collage cutout of oatmeal. Not just the oats. It\u2019s a mental picture of the oatmeal as it would be served, spoon poised in the bowl, steam coming off it, et cetera, whole thing, in my digestive tract, which is crazily stretching to accommodate the silhouette of the spoon handle, whole thing, bowl, in a tight contour.<\/p>\n I take a quick break for a bite of a beef tallow\u2013based bar I bought on TikTok after watching a video by a content creator wearing a crochet Minions hat, captioned \u201ctiktok is pissed at this guy\u2019s protein bar.\u201d It\u2019s blueberry flavor. Also in my gym bag: Bomb Pop popsicle-flavor electrolytes; a purple sweet-potato-and-pear fruit bar by Dino Bars; orange creamsicle Oomph! Chews; Calm Mood lozenges made with California poppy extract; mastic nuggets hand-harvested near the Aegean Sea; and black cherry SN\u00d8.<\/p>\n Before returning to \u201cthe floor,\u201d I tuck an Oomph! Chew into my underwear, as I don\u2019t have pockets. I don\u2019t want the chew right now, but I\u2019m anxious that I might, once I get going.<\/p>\n Depending on one\u2019s goals, it\u2019s generally best to strength train before cardio (lest one\u2019s glycogen become depleted before getting to build muscle). I always think about that and then about a girl from college who played tuba and taught me the rhyme about drinking beer before liquor (\u201cnever been sicker\u201d)\u2014a saying with little scientific evidence until a few years ago, when researchers at Helios University Hospital Wuppertal in Germany, with support from the brewing company Carlsberg, investigated the related claim: \u201cwine before beer and you\u2019ll feel queer\u201d (K\u00f6chling, J\u00f6ran, et al. \u201cGrape or Grain but Never the Twain?\u201d The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition<\/em>, 2019).<\/p>\n In terms of \u201cresistance training equipment,\u201d I\u2019m pretty intuitive. If I feel called to use something, I\u2019ll do a few \u201csets.\u201d I like the inner-thigh machines, the hip abductor and adductor, because they let you really sit up straight and be on your phone. Lat pull-downs I\u2019ll do if the mood strikes, but only during daylight. The way the recessed light falls upon the lat tower makes me feel like I\u2019m in a police procedural. I don\u2019t like to be lit from above. Also problematically placed is the pectoral fly machine vis-\u00e0-vis the crossover pulley machine. Basically, two summers ago, I wore a strapless bridesmaid dress. A few months later, I had a short stint with a trainer whose name starts with, I want to say, M. Well, whenever we had our consult session was around the time I got the link for the wedding photos. When I looked at the photos of myself straplessly posing in a field, my traps, I thought, looked huge. In my defense, keep in mind, this also coincided with Kim Kardashian\u2019s post of a particularly photoshopped poolside picture people say propagated ideas about unrealistically small trapezius muscles. So, when M. asked about \u201careas of concern,\u201d I couldn\u2019t stop talking about my trapezii. M. then made a plan for me that focused on the crossover pulley machine and, specifically, a move meant to target my teres major. You want to really feel it in your armpit. The thing is, because of how everything is situated at the Equinox on Orchard Street, in order to get requisite rope tension during my straight-arm lateral pulldowns, I have to stand about five feet away from the pulley\u2019s frame, which places me practically nose-to-nose with whoever happens to be doing pectoral flies. I never know where to look. It feels unnatural to look away from the face of the person doing the flies. So I try my best to have a blank stare.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen pure, awake, open awareness becomes confident of a wave of experience, there\u2019s a natural tenderness.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m listening now to the Science of Happiness<\/em> podcast.<\/p>\n Behind the pectoral fly machine, the window looks out onto Peretz Square, a triangular traffic island in the middle of East Houston Street. The median is named after a Yiddish writer famous for stories such as one about a man with no friends or accomplishments who dies, goes to heaven, asks for butter, and gets laughed at by angels.<\/p>\n As I move around the gym, I rest my phone on various windowsills. The Equinox on Orchard Street occupies the first three floors of a mixed-use commercial-condo building which was built in a neo-industrial style characterized by big deep-set grid-like windows. If I go too far from my phone, a female voice in my nearphones steadily repeats, \u201cQV202, lost,\u201d every five or so seconds until I return to Bluetooth\u2019s range.<\/p>\n When I turn on the treadmill, there\u2019s a quick still image of a man running on a beach at sunset before cutting to aerial drone footage of various scenes that are supposed to feel like a first-person perspective to simulate, for example, incline walking in Zion National Park, in Utah, or sprinting around a fjord. It\u2019s supposed to be an immersive experience. Today the treadmill has me in New Zealand. The way the drone flies, at a low altitude with a wide lens, makes it feel like the drone is going to crash into a gay couple near Auckland\u2019s war memorial. But it whizzes over their heads at the last minute.<\/p>\n Sometimes I wedge my iPad into the lip of plastic in front of the treadmill monitor and \u201cwork.\u201d It\u2019s good for morale to do a little speed-walk while copywriting launch teasers for a Sicilian face exfoliant made with olive pits and wild-foraged botanicals extracted by SoundbathTM<\/sup>. I have to blast Sigur R\u00f3s (an ethereal post-rock band led by J\u00f3n \u00de\u00f3r \u201cJ\u00f3nsi\u201d Birgisson, whom I learned of in high school via this<\/a> raw strawberry pie tutorial) or any soundscape with non-English \/ nonlinguistic vocalizations \/ no words at all. I\u2019ll do 3.0 miles per hour, incline 11.0, to ambient techno like \u201cFine Pink Mist (Low Flung version)\u201d or \u201cButterfly Jam (xphresh Good Girl No Infringement dub),\u201d revising taglines for a Lunar New Year\u2013themed antistatic volumizing spray with amino acids and edelweiss.<\/p>\n Also there\u2019s a Spotify playlist called \u201c528 hertz\u201d that I was turned on to by a woman who has given at least one facial to Bella Hadid. It\u2019s a frequency, she said, that raises your vibration to make you prettier, smarter, and calmer; reduce toxic effects of alcohol; and increase cell life. She also pointed to studies showing that 96 hertz eliminates feelings such as fear and guilt. So sometimes I play \u201cCloud Pillow 528 Hz,\u201d by Aerial Lakes, \u201cGust of Joy Alpha 169-178 hz,\u201d by places we go, etc.<\/p>\n For proper running form, hands should be relaxed, fingers barely touching. A running coach on an app I paid for said: \u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re holding imaginary pennies between your middle finger and thumb.\u201d In \u201cMoving from Matter to Light,\u201d a new workshop on the My Human Design app, Jenna Zoe, an expert on our innate energies and how to live a fulfilling and centered life, says: \u201cWhen we talk about being able to handle things, we think we have to hold on to things.\u201d This, Jenna says, is not right. Jenna says, in general, we have to let go. That said, she says we do need some \u201cholding patterns\u201d lest we \u201cbecome formless.\u201d What we don\u2019t want, Jenna says, is \u201call of the sudden I could be you and you could be me,\u201d or, even, \u201cI could become an animal.\u201d<\/p>\n On the screen, a little girl scooters past me in, I want to say, Yosemite.<\/p>\n I do not stretch as much as one should. It\u2019s just so, whatever. I like, like, check marks, for example. But I\u2019m working on liking liminal space. I like to do the supine spinal twist. It\u2019s a nice way to end because you can imagine a camera shooting you from overhead and zooming out slowly. I\u2019ll also do some \u201cpuppy pose,\u201d or \u201cmelting heart pose,\u201d beginning on all fours, wrists under shoulders, knees under hips, walking my hands forward until I\u2019m almost kissing the mat, big arch in the back, not like a rainbow, like a U.<\/p>\n I love locker rooms. I like to sit on the bench after a workout and think about what to do next. In the 2019 Business Insider<\/em> article \u201cI worked out at all 34 Equinox locations in New York City. Here’s how they all compare,\u201d Benjamin Goggin notes Orchard Street\u2019s \u201chuge benches creating gridlock near lockers.\u201d He also says he \u201cspotted two prominent digital journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n If you look closely, the doors to the lockers are fake burlap, covered in a photorealistic jute lattice printed laminate. I gravitate to lockers 490\u2013498, in the middle of the upper row of the eastern wall of the central bay, perpendicular to the hair blow-dryers. Sometimes I do 476\u2013482 if I feel I need a change of scenery.<\/p>\n The lockers are keyless with four-digit create-your-own combinations. I wish I could tell everyone the combination I always create\u2014it\u2019s good.<\/p>\n *Tink.<\/em>* You might imagine the hair-tie jar (glass) making that sound when you close its silver lid, holding the bobble knob. The Q-tips are similarly housed, standing upright in a jar that calls to mind an old-timey candy shoppe. A cubic acrylic container by the sinks is filled with shot-size paper cups alongside a dispenser of mouthwash. In another cube are organic tampons made by August, a Gen Z\u2013focused company whose press person once emailed me\u2014unrelated to Equinox\u2014asking for my address and sweatshirt size to send me a \u201cBTS-themed period kit.\u201d I thought August was doing a tampon collaboration with the Korean boy band BTS (this was before the band members enlisted in the military). An email later, I learned it stood for \u201cback to school.\u201d<\/p>\n Every so often I think about gas chambers when I\u2019m in the steam room, but mostly I think about men I like or have liked. I try to focus on my breath, but I usually go back to men. If I think of something I have to remember to buy or do, I silently repeat key words until I can get to my phone: \u201cspirulina, SKIMS, eyebrows, sponge,\u201d over and over, as if in unceasing prayer.<\/p>\n It used to be that I could purchase, on my way out of the Equinox on Orchard Street, a pack of Juice Press\u2019s SIN O BUNs, dense bite-size balls of ground buckwheat with sea moss icing and a raisin on top. But the self-service snack bar has recently switched suppliers. So, instead of LesserEvil popcorn made with butter-flavor coconut oil, pistachios by Wonderful, Mango Madness by JUST PLANTS, and ZenWTR, now there\u2019s FIJI water, Legendary Foods keto pop-tarts, teriyaki ostrich jerky by Ostrim, earthbar\u2019s chicken meatballs as well as their cold-pressed juices in the flavors Pixie and Pipe Cleaner, and a carbonated BCAA beverage by NOCCO in the flavor Apple.<\/p>\n There is only one book, to my knowledge, housed at Equinox\u2019s Orchard Street location. In the middle of a gold drum-style coffee table in the corner of the lobby is The Rolling Stones<\/em> by TASCHEN. The foreword, by Bill Clinton, begins, \u201cBeing President was the best \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n The time is now 8 <\/em>p.m.<\/em>, and the gym is closed. <\/em><\/p>\n They always say it like that\u2014that the time is now the time it is.<\/p>\n Though most people might think the fa\u00e7ade of the Equinox on Orchard Street is brown, it is actually 24-karat gold-dusted. The bricks were imported from Cadaqu\u00e9s, a village in Spain known for its anchovies and Salvador Dal\u00ed. To my eye, the building looks vaguely purple or like a slightly iridescent eggplant. Picture, maybe, gasoline in a puddle. Or smoky-eye eyeshadow.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n\u201c<\/em>Tip forward an inch in your toes.\u201d
\nThe square root of sixty-nine is eight somethin\u2019, right?
\n\u201c<\/em>Feel that beautiful stretch.\u201d
\nGood weed, white wine, uh
\n\u201c<\/em>Drop the pubic bone toward the mat.\u201d
\nI come alive in the nighttime<\/em>
\n\u201cPress into downward dog. Puddle it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n– \u201cshe is wondering whether or not she belong in this society.\u201d
\n– \u201cThe rain (as it usually does) stands for hard times. \u2026 She repeatedly uses her umbrella as a symbol for shelter.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n