All the Horrible Girliness

I'm bothered by titles. I have never been very good at them. I'm going to stop trying.

The girls of the office are discussing gyms. Not real gyms, but pilates and yoga gyms. Really expensive places where no techno plays and there are rooms to get your nails done.

I'm all for pilates and yoga and I'm even all for workouts consisting solely of these. I've tried both, and they are not for the weak. Plus, yoga really makes you need to fart. There's no pretty way to say that. You're in a room with mostly thin, mostly rich women and some gay guys and all you want in the world is release.

Pilates and yoga changes the body and works against body weight, which is fantastic. But the girls in the office can ruin anything, I swear to god.

There is one type of yoga class where they turn the heat way up. I've heard good (makes you sweat) and bad (causes you to stretch further than you should) things about this type of class, but the girls' big problem with it was that you get stinky.

Ladies, if you are reading this, listen closely: You are washable. One of the great joys in life is a shower well earned.

Once, and only once, I mentioned something about my kickboxing class to these girls. I think the subject was the way my feet turned the shower floor black afterward. It's kickboxing; shoes are optional and often not a good idea. You're running and rolling and falling down on a mat that's been host to dozens of running, rolling, falling bodies all day, and every one of them has been madly sweating. They try their damndest to keep the room cool, but once the class starts, you're just trying to keep the sweat from blinding you. We're talking wiping your forehead with the soaked, wrapped back of your hand every other minute. We're talking snot and, on occasion, blood.

In that class, you learn something about humanity. It's all there: skin and snot and blood and fart. Sometimes in grappling, I hear the farts are contagious. Pretty soon it's dueling farts.

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I'm pretty bad about typical Southern California personal hygiene. For instance: I don't own an exfoliator and, when I'm sick as I have been, makeup is optional. I try to remain soft, healthy and disease-free. My nails are very short and unpainted most of the time.

That comes from massage school. Can't massage correctly with nails, and now I find them bothersome, even though I don't do it anymore.

It was a $10,000 education that you might think was a waste of time and money. Actually I do think it was a waste of time and money, but I did learn something valuable during those nine months. The self does not stop at the skin.

I had many clients, especially in Beverly Hills, with fantastic skin and great hair and the greatest mess of knotted muscle you can imagine. I'm talking rhomboids that I could mistake for ribs. Pain they'd lived with and ignored for years until it became unbearable, or until they couldn't sleep, or they became really injured.

They came into my room, laid on my table and expected an hour of nice music, silence and massage, and they expected to leave cured. They got the music and massage.

First I asked if they had any pain, or if there was a place they wanted me to concentrate on. They told me about back pain, shoulder pain, headaches. They told me about stress. Then their golf swings, their new Porsches, divorces, clients...

"What position are you in most of the day?" I'd ask. They usually asked what I meant. I never did find a good way to ask that question.

"Do you sit? Do you watch a computer screen? Do you use a mouse? Do you move? Do you exercise at all?"

Most of them had to think about it. They honestly didn't know what their posture was like, or whether they looked down or up or straight ahead at the screen. They couldn't remember if they sat with both feet on the floor. It reminds me of Weight Watchers. The new people honestly can't tell you what they eat. When they start writing down everything they put in their mouths, they're shocked.

The best thing massage school taught me was to be aware. It's invaluable.

I told one of the girls at the office once about massage. She had lower back pain, and I recognized it as problems in her gluteal area. She looked at me like I'd just admitted to enjoying double anal.

"You... you touched people's BUTTS?"

This is a girl who has the home phone number of her MAC lady. Her makeup bag could hold my groceries. Her desk smells like the inside of a Bath & Body Works. But she will eat McDonald's every day. She will pour the most toxic shit down her gullet and never consider what her insides must look like.

When trying to lose five pounds, she forced herself to eat yogurt, which she hates. Why? Because she'd seen me eating it, and I lost weight.

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So, at night, I wash and shave. Halfway through my 3-step Clinique cleansing process, I'm bored. I get into bed with Mr. Aran smelling like Dove soap and conditioner, and he tells me I'm beautiful. I'm pretty sure the girls would think me pretty classless, but it works for me.

posted by Samus @ 1:06 PM