You can hear them even from inside the men’s locker room at the gym. The shouted instructions. The pulsing music. The stamping feet. Standing in line at the water fountain you can see them through a glass door. Arms waving and legs kicking. I finally heard and saw so much that I decided to try it. Last night I went to my first aerobics class.

How hard could it be? I can keep time with music. I fancy myself a dancer. What else is involved?

Still I went to the back of the room so other people in the class wouldn’t see me in front of them. Most of them were too busy trying to follow instructor to pay attention to me anyway. After a while I found I could do all the moves; what I never caught on to was when they were coming. Aerobics instructions is a language unto itself.

"Hams! One, two, three!" shouted Noriko, our instructor. She wasn’t passing out food. That was the command to try to kick yourself in the butt with your heels to work the hamstring muscle. OK, got that one.

"Now, diagonal step kick forward!" she yelled. And suddenly everyone in the class had moved halfway across the room. Figuring out how to do the moves is an exercise in futility (and the only exercise you’ll get) if you don’t understand the instructor’s jargon that tells you when to do them. It didn’t help that Noriko speaks heavily accented English and with her voice distorted by the sound system, she wasn’t talking as much as she was barking.

When she wasn’t screaming for no apparent reason.

Guys grunt as they heave weights. Girls scream while doing aerobics, I guess. Some women may still be intimidated by the club’s weightlifting and cardio equipment but they feel at home here in the aerobics studio. This is their realm. In our class of about 40 people, three of us were men. I bet part of women’s attraction to aerobics classes is that the class is full of females. (I bet it’s part of men’s attraction to the classes, too, but I’m not saying that that was the source of my interest.) Someone who feels self conscious because she has to lift a barbell with no weight on it while some guy next to her has what looks like a thousand pounds on the one he’s lifting can feel vindicated when she’s in step with the instructor and she gets to laugh at some uncoordinated geek trying to hide in the back of the room.

Said geek struggled to follow Noriko’s extemporaneous choreography that seemed apparent to most of the rest of the class. As a group, we weren’t exactly moving with the precision of a chorus line but I was especially out of step.

I’m not afraid of making a fool of myself. I did "the gator" at our senior banquet in high school. You know the gator. It’s the one where you drop to the floor and flop around like you’re having an epileptic seizure. Well, I did this in my three-piece suit during what was supposed to be the stiffly formal celebration of our entrance into adulthood. So I wasn’t worried about embarrassing myself here. At least I was dressed appropriately for the dance this time. When I saw a co-worker watching me through glass doors and laughing, I just shrugged my shoulders and laughed myself. Then noticed headlights in the mirror at the front of the room and realized that the back of the room was front window of the building and that I could be performing for anyone passing by. OK, so then I was feeling just slightly self conscious.

But how do you leave? It’s easy to walk into a class, even in the middle. But how do you exit gracefully when you think you’ve had enough but your instructor thinks you haven’t? I could walk out just as I walked in. But then everyone would know that I’d quit. That I couldn’t take it. That I’d weenied out. Of a class full of women!

No way.

I had to stick it out even if all that meant was staying out of the way of people (and their kicking feet) who knew what they were doing. By this time I had been reduced to flapping my arms and legs in what weren’t even close approximations of the instructor’s movements. I’m sure I looked more like someone imitating a chimpanzee than someone taking an aerobics class. Still I stayed.

Finally the class took a break and my chance came. Of course, I couldn’t just bolt for the door like I was fleeing the scene. I walked proudly erect to the door as though I had accomplished what I wanted and was now taking my regularly scheduled leave. What I was doing was fleeing the scene.

Next time I hear them when I’m in the shower, I think I’ll just do my aerobics there. By myself and behind the curtain where no one else can see me. That would be better for everyone.

John

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