Pam: Hey, how hard is your kickboxing class, man?
Patrick: … You’re going to be blogging about it tomorrow.

Consequently I’m in bed. I’m about to get up, but I want to make sure my entire body is awake before I stand. I haven’t actively engaged any muscles other than my arm to lift this laptop, and my fingers to type these words but… I have a feeling my lower half is angry with me.

I’d never been to this gym before. When I first moved here it was the hip, happening gym. It’s next to a movie theater, and it’s very strange to walk through that area wearing sweats, and then it feels like cheating to take an escalator to the gym.

The gym’s locker room showers have frosted glass on one side, backlit and facing the lobby. This means you can take a Porky’s shower. Which people did. And it’s really interesting to watch.

Then I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen, I think since the wedding. The bizarre thing is I’d had a dream about him just that morning. And because I’m unable to determine what things I should or shouldn’t say to people, I had this conversation:

[scripty]
HIM
I didn’t know you came here.

ME
I don’t. My friend teaches a class.

HIM
Spinning?

ME
No, kickboxing. Hey, you were in my dream last night. Isn’t that weird?

HIM
Yeah. That is weird. What was I doing?

ME
Oh. You were beating the shit out of your girlfriend.

HIM
… oh.

ME
But, um, if it’s any consolation, she was really smacking you around, too. Both of you were going at it.

HIM
Ah. Who was the girlfriend?

ME
… well, I couldn’t see her. Because… you were on top of her. In a bed.

HIM
What? … was I fucking her?

ME
Not… yet?

HIM
This was your dream about me?

ME
Well, lots of things were happening in the dream. You were just one part. Hey, there’s my friend! Bye!
[/scripty]

Honestly, I need to learn when someone needs to know the coincidence, and when it’s time to keep it to myself. Or lie. Maybe sometimes, I should just lie.

The class was hard. See? I’m still not going to lie. No warm-up. No cool down. I’d gotten so used to taking yoga or Bikram classes, where everybody eases into the work. But this. Just immediate kicking and punching. It’s a very good thing I’d put in years of Tae Bo, or I would have looked like a moron.

I’ve never taken a class from someone I know. Usually whenever I take one of these classes, I tend to hate the instructor. Because instructors lie. “One more set,” is about as trustworthy as, “I just want to be inside you for a second. Just the tip.” And Patrick was one of those lying instructors. It was a small class, so I couldn’t even blend into the background. Plus, I’m competitive. I forgot to warn Patrick that my face turns incredibly red whenever I do any athletic activity. It always has. Consequently, he was a little concerned that I was about to have a heart attack, or vomit. I was fine, but I didn’t look fine. And at one point I called him a motherfucker. But who does fifteen minutes of squats? What kind of nightmare class is this?

Afterwards he found me by the weights. “So, that happened,” I said.

“I didn’t tell you this before, but it’s kind of the hardest class we have here.”

See? One of those instructors. He might still be lying to me, but it’s the best thing he could have said after the class was over.

Okay, I’m getting out of bed. Heading to work. I’ve moved around, and it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be (I always have that image of John Travolta in Perfect the morning after he takes Jamie Lee Curtis’ Jazzercise class or whatever, and then they had sex (I think, it’s been some time since I saw this movie, and I never really saw it, but when you’re growing up in a house with cable, there are just some movies you’ve seen parts of over and over), and anyway, he wakes up frozen in her bed screaming, “I have Polio!” I suppose the joke doesn’t work so much this day and age, but it still makes me laugh whenever I wake up with a muscle hangover.).