Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now by Starship
New York at this time of year, of course, smells like sulfur, piss, and garbage. Walking around is like doing the breaststroke through a swimming pool filled with rats, cockroaches, Instagram influencers, and high-priced pastry shops. People spend thousands and thousands of dollars just to spend a few days here. I booked a yoga class this morning, not knowing until I arrived that it was hot yoga. I was told not to worry, though—temperatures in the room would only reach 105, ‘not that different from outside,’ the lady laughed and I thought, simultaneously. The instructor, a white man with dreadlocks, began class by saying that he stopped in the park on the way to the studio to do a headstand and think about his nightmares from the previous evening. My morning was off to a good start.
The class was mostly women, but there was a beautifully sculpted, 6’4 man there who was doing every pose 20 times better and more accurately than everyone else. Every time we moved through a sun salutation, he did some sort of bizarre arm balance that was like a one-armed handstand meeting a backflip. As I slipped in my own sweat, I couldn’t decide whether he was more obnoxious than the would-be Rastafarian instructor. Whatever. I suppose yogis believe anyone can be whoever they want.
After the class, in the narrow hallway leading up to the staircase where everyone puts their shoes back on, an intense, absurdly fit woman with eye makeup bleeding down her cheeks, probably in her early 30s, stomped over toward the sculpted man and handed him what I assume to be her business card. ‘If you ever want to get a drink, I would really like to.’ I watched the interaction while heaving into thin air, how does anyone have the energy or confidence to do that after such a class?
The man turned around and looked at her as if she farted in his face.
‘I’m flattered,’ he said with confidence, clearly not that flattered. ‘I’m uhm. If you want, I’ll talk to you for 10 minutes now, and then we can take it from there?’
The 2022 version of young Jane Fonda looked back at the man as if he took a shit on the floor of her living room before metamorphosing into a werewolf. She just kind of nodded for what felt like three minutes. By now, I think 12 people were watching this interaction.
‘Oh my god, that’s so nice.’ She finally responded. ‘I have a meeting in like literally 5 minutes that I have to run to. But it was so good meeting you!’
She walked away very quickly, and, as if nothing happened, the man turned back around to put his shoes on. On his way out of the studio, he looked at the card one more time before throwing it into the trash.