Step in time

About a year and a half ago, my friend Emily talked me into coming to a step aerobics class with her at 8:00 on a Saturday morning. I’m pretty sure I pretended to be hesitant at first, but secretly thought it might be kind of fun. This was back when I was beginning to shed the frame of mind of avoiding anything that might make me look gay. Step aerobics was definitely one of those things, but my desire to try it won out.

Emily and I have spent the past year and half attending step on a weekly basis. Well basically weekly. Emily’s moving to Utah this weekend and getting married next month to a guy who I enjoy quoting SNL skits with way too much (Troy’s back! Troy’s back!). Needless to say, she’s been busy with that and hasn’t been able to attend as often, but last night she was there for the last time before moving. I think Mr. Step Instructor Man decided to go all out. I swear he did a line of crack before coming to class. We stepped to JT singing Sexyback at warp speeds. It’s not so sexy when he sounds like a chipmunk. I tripped a few times over my platform while trying to perform the “Johnson Busy”. Don’t worry, it only sounds dirty.

Emily and I have made lots of friends at step class over the past year and a half, and by made friends I mean that we assign nicknames to other people in the class and speculate about what their lives are like outside of class. There’s Lashes. We haven’t seen her in a while, but when she does come, she’s all done up, complete with enormous fake lashes. You’d think that would make her girly, but she has a weird edge to her that scares me just a tiny bit. She’s like six feet tall and I’m pretty sure she could beat the crap out of me.

Another friend is Stripper. She’s cute and petite and she does step like there should be a pole and dollar bills involved. I think we’ve speculated that maybe she could be a Blazerdancer. We haven’t confirmed that though.

Ballerina only comes sometimes on Saturdays and there’s nothing really exciting about her other than the fact that she does step like she’s in pointe shoes.

There’s a lady who we haven’t really nicknamed but she has a tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil lifting a barbell on her shoulder and she sweats like nobody should. She usually ends up right by me in class and by 30 minutes in, her hair is usually soaked. Whenever she does a twirly move, her long grey mane whips around and sprays me with her sweat. It doesn’t turn me on.

One of the most traumatizing for me is the Cougar. You can probably guess half of her story by her name. She could probably be my mother and she has the unfortunate habit of smiling and winking at very inappropriate moments. The worst incident was one day when she was directly in front of me in class and all the stars aligned in the worst way possible. There was a moment when we ended up facing each other while doing inner thigh kicks. Just as her foot was high over head, we made eye contact and she instinctively gave me a wink and a smile. And my whole body shuddered like when you eat something really disgusting.

There are definitely others; let me know if I missed anyone important, Emily, and remember to come back and visit me and all our friends. We’ll miss you!