Heavy Metal

Ms. Rachow dedicates this column to singer Grace Slick, writer Lewis Carroll, and, of course, Trainer Casey.

They’re playing classic rock today at the gym. This is the perfect music to accompany the punishing side-plank push-ups I’m doing. Obviously, this is not something I (or any sane person) would attempt without provocation. Therefore it should be no surprise that the young man watching me so intently is Trainer Casey Gutierrez.
“How many more?” I moan.
“Five,” he orders. It’s always five. When I can’t possibly do one more, that means I have only five more to go. “Mind over matter.”
After two years of steady workouts, the bad news is I haven’t yet transformed into the fabulously fit 25-year old I dream of becoming. The good news is I’m still slogging away.
Yes, I’ve had to learn to spell certain geological formations, such as p-l-a-t-e-a-u. But on many days, if I avoid looking too closely at the middle-aged woman in the mirror, I do feel young again. This is helpful because Trainer Casey hangs out on the lower end of twenty-something, and it takes all the young-at-heart spirit I can muster to keep our workout chat in the current century.
Casey played college football, and he looks the part. He also sounds like a football coach. “Come on. Push it. Get out the lead.”
Beads of sweat do the boogaloo on my brow. I have plenty of X-rated words to respond but it’s hard to say much when I’m on my back doing crunches while tossing a medicine ball up to Trainer Casey.
Now Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” plays. I warn myself not to sing along, but it’s impossible for a person of the rock generation to shut up during this song. “Remember what the dormouse said: Feed your he-ad…Feed your he-ad.”
“Hey, speaking of feeding your head, are you still keeping your food diary?” he asks.
“Yes, Trainer Casey.” I try my best to stay in 2008, but Grace Slick’s voice takes me back to my youth. I see her on stage. Her hair’s a cloud of frizz, and she wears beads and white leather and belts out Alice’s transformation. Ten feet tall to small. Suddenly I see new meaning in the song. Where can I get one of those magic pills that’ll make me fit and a few decades smaller?
Once I get going, I can’t seem to stop spouting ancient history. Damn it. I tell Trainer Casey all about Woodstock. And because Apollo 11 happened that same summer, I wax nostalgic about watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.
Casey has me do lunges, and I say, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Moonwalking makes sweat drip from the end of my nose. I hate that.
Casey gives me hand weights and makes the motion of flying.
I lift my outstretched arms and try to make it look effortlessly wing-like. Ouch. “My favorite exercise,” I lie.
“Hey, that reminds me,” Casey says. He takes his iPhone out of his pocket. “Check this out.” He’s always showing me iPhotos of his dog, his girlfriends and his grand adventures. Today it’s a picture of him and another trainer. Both guys are bare-chested, but they have white feathery wings attached to their backs.
“Hubba-hubba,” I say. “You look heavenly.”
One of the sidebars of working as a personal trainer is you get asked to do beefcake gigs for charities. This time Casey and his pal were angels at a benefit for the Dream Foundation, an organization dedicated to fulfilling wishes for terminally ill adults.
“Those iPhones are amazing,” I say. “But I can remember when telephones were connected to the wall with a cord. It’s still hard to believe that a phone now slips easily into the pocket of your gym shorts. You’ve got Internet access and GPS. It’s a camera, and it’s a freaking photo album. Geeze, one of these days Dick Tracy is going to call and want his phone back.”
“Dick who?” Casey asks.
“Never mind.” I make my voice go all creaky like I’m a 100-year-old woman. “Dick was just somebody I used to know back in the good ol’ days.” I wipe my sweaty hands and reach up to the bars of the Gravitron. Pull-ups are impossible. I clench my jaw.
“Breathe,” he says. “Listen to your body.”
“If I listened to my body, I’d be home taking a nap right now.” Slowly I pull myself up.
And I remember what Trainer Casey said: Get out the le-ad. Get out the le-ad.
First published in the Montecito Journal October 30, 2008