Joining the James

Ms Rachow says, it's never to late to teach an old girl new tricks.

There are three things I notice about Coast Village Road in Montecito. One, the area is laid out according to an abstract by Picasso. Two, there are several restaurants I want to try. And three, all the women I see are fashionable, fit, and too slim to have eaten at any of those restaurants.
“I wanna look like those women,” I whine to my husband, hoping to hear the words every woman longs to hear: I love you just the way you are.
Because my hubby’s a guy who lives to solve problems, he says, “Honey, why don’t you join a gym and hire a trainer?”
“Why should I? I still have tons of room in here.” I grab my elastic waistband and stretch it out as far as my arm will reach.
He squints at me the way he does when I’ve just said something idiotic. The good news is I’ve only gained two pounds in the past year. The bad news is I’d done exactly that every year since high school. Maybe it's time to get serious about changing my image from Corn Fed Nebraskan to Coast Village Babe.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll check out the James.”
“The James?”
“Well, I certainly can’t call it ‘the gym’ until I get to know it a little better.”
The fitness center is surreal -- row after row of people on human-sized gerbil machines, running, pedaling, and climbing as if they are being chased by a mob of candied yams with legs. If the U.S. could harness half this energy, we could give up dependence on foreign oil.
The membership salesman (AKA the maniac) shows me a dozen plans. Picking the best one is as mysterious as a Sue “C is for Confusion” Grafton novel, but somehow I make my choice and fork over six months of grocery money, which I figure I won’t need anyway.
In exchange I receive a membership card and a tee shirt, size XXXS, a perfect fit for my twenty-pound Jack Russell terriers. Perhaps this tiny tee is meant to be a visual aid for my weight-loss goal.
Then I'm assigned a fitness coach. Apparently, there’s a California state law that all personal trainers must be young. Mine isn’t quite young enough to be my grandson, but I was in the fifth grade the year his mother was born.
It’s also mandatory that all trainers be attractive. What does mine look like? Imagine Michelangelo’s David in gym shorts. And only sixty bucks an hour.
I wear new workout clothes accessorized with a headband and the requisite gym towel to my first session. I am ready to sweat, but noooo…first we have to get measured. Lo and behold, my membership entitles me to have my upper thigh measured by a twenty-four-year-old. It's a miracle one of us doesn’t faint during this maneuver.
Then we have to talk diet. “I’m on the Minus-Ten plan,” I brag.
He hasn’t heard of that one. I'm not surprised. I invented it myself. “The idea is to eat ten percent less than normal. Only problem is, when I cut back, my body thinks famine has come, and it hangs tight to every ounce.”
“Then we’re just going to have to work your booty off.” He slaps his own butt for emphasis.
“Booty? I thought booty was something pirates stole.”
I am about to learn that the trick to losing pounds is lifting them. He hands me a pair of hand weights, and I get into the rhythm of the exercise.
“Don’t move your pelvis, Elvis,” he barks.
Listen, you whippersnapper, you weren’t even born the day Elvis died. I'd say it out loud, if I had any breath left.
Mid-workout his nickname changes from Michelangelo’s David, to Michelangelo’s Devil, and aptly so, because then he takes me downstairs to the underworld of the free-weight room where all the really ripped dudes hang out, lifting outrageously heavy dumbbells.
“How do you like it down here?” he asks.
“Well, it’s not exactly my peer group.”
Nevertheless, I keep coming back, day after day, to work my booty like the devil. It’s a miracle! Recently my old elastic-waist trousers fell in an embarrassing puddle around my ankles, but that’s another story. Please excuse me now. I have an appointment with my trainer. Then my hubby and I are going to a holiday dinner. And then, crawling if I have to, back to the James.
First published in the Montecito Journal November 23, 2006