Bikram Yoga Kicked My Ass

I didn't know Bikram Yoga was the hot one -- the wring-your-body-like-a-wet-rag, sweaty, brutal kind of yoga. I was expecting some light breathing exercises. I walked into the 90-degree studio and thought I was going to die. Half-way into the session I really did think yoga was going to kill me, and when in the end I found I still had a pulse, I felt alive in the way only near scrapes with death can generate.

The studio smelled like a dirty jockstrap. This is my one complaint.

Otherwise I saw a lot of naked women. It's something I ruminate on from time to time, because I am often in gym locker rooms, and its maybe the one place where us ladies can feel completely ok with public nudity (some more than others). Today, I was, as usual, impressed by the variety of form -- not one of us is the same. Buttocks can be flabby, rounded, down-turned, explosive (?!), flat, fleshy. Bellies can curve inwards or outwards, can have seams, horizontally or vertically, be bony or love-handled, and no two buttons are the same. Skin can be porcelain or pock-marked, dark, light, spotted, hoary or scarred. This body has breasts like hanging gourds; this one, tiny mosquito bites; this one, pink nipples against creamy skin; this one is olive and smooth, Italian maybe, and has the most perfect pair I have ever seen. In such frequency and close proximity, we all seem like motherly cows milling, udders displayed prosaically from our chests, all for the same purpose and of similar design.

Nude, sweaty women. I find no sex appeal in it: udders are not sexy. We, women, bodies, serve a purpose. We are but bags of skin; the tupperware of our souls fading and sagging with time. I imagine the male perception of us -- how we are coveted so -- and feel at once exhiliarated and heavy. How many men coveted that one's body, knowing she would one day be so wrinkled, so similar to a topographical map of Earth from space? Where did those scars come from and how many babies have swelled inside of her, stretching, kicking, gaping? What violence has that soft shell had to bend against?

Only clothed are we uniform. Fashionistas, we become like male peacocks -- flashy but increasingly similar. Yet, if we were all always featherless, how much coveting would there be? We would be nude cows, prosaic and milling, concentration camp-like.

Yet so much of our energy is spent strutting, I think we forget that within our soft shells hides a quiet strength that calmly waits for hardship. This heavily padded, squarish-looking woman next to me is a battleship, yes, armed with melons, warts and cellulite -- a lioness. That the female form can be broken down into a formula for beauty is baffling. We are all beautiful -- each a unique collection of flesh hanging demurely on bone, at the ravenous mercy of gravity, age and experience.

Messenger Bag

I was happy to find that we are still friends. We're both skinnier than we were back then; learning self-control or learning to let go of it has been good for both of us. Has it really been five years? I stretch my hand halfway across the table and the gulf between us seems smaller than it has in a long time. Its an uncomfortable regret that I hold for you: such a good man. I am guilty of not understanding.

What solace though, to see that our little world could rise from its own ashes. I remember writing it off as scorched, fatally, maybe even on purpose because I could think of no creative solution. But I started to see last night that relationships don't need to be finite - that we could evolve, grow together while apart, and return every so often to nurture the spring tendrils of the adults we are becoming. So I stretch my hand across the table to say, I finally see you; I'm sorry it took me so long - it was not until this moment that I had enough light in me to see your reflection.