The Number One Bike

A cycling venue opened in my neighborhood. Normally I scoff at exercise fads. But when I walked by the window, I noticed a big sign tacked to the glass: Free Ride. I couldn’t resist.

Anyone can ride a bike! I went inside to collect my coupon for one free cycling class. “Do you have your own gear?” the very young receptionist inquired and I answered in the affirmative while thinking: Gear?

Turns out, the new cycling world has absolutely nothing in common with the bike riding of the past. Modern cycling has hardware, costumes, soundtracks and nomenclature. There is a website to help you determine your best cycling nickname. IMAX is opening an indoor cycling experience.

“No matter, he said, noting my confusion. “We’ll provide everything for the first class.”

The following week, I returned for my free class. I signed away all my rights and waived the additional personal insurance rider, provided my shoe size and voila! I was ready to ride. But first: some gear. I was handed a pair of cycling shoes that, apparently, have an important role in your workout results. Also, they look seriously cool. “Your instructor will show you to your assigned bike, and then he’ll review the functions, postures and positions.” I was about to feel insulted at the implied assumption that I don’t know how to ride a bike, but then he added, “He’ll show you how to properly clip in.” Clip in?

The nightclub-style studio was dark. I saw dozens of bikes, some draped already with little white towels. At the front of the room, on an elevated platform was, I swear, a prop from the Terminator, bolted to the floor. Was that a bike? The seat hovered over the frame like a vulture’s beak. The pedals had been stripped away, leaving only a bolt in their place. I have to say, I felt a little intimidated so I busied myself by studying the preparation of the other cyclists.

It became quickly evident that there was much to do before the real work of cycling began. A man performed stretches with the finesse of a professional figure skater, lifting each leg to rest on the armrests of his bike and then carrying each ankle around in a wide arc, pulling the whole leg behind him. Who bends like that? Gumby! He nodded at me so I did a quad stretch to show my solidarity and then followed him to the cabinet in the back to retrieve a towel. He extracted five white towels from the stack. We need five towels?

The instructor arrived and signaled to me. He pointed to a bike, Bike Number One, right in the front. He showed me how to adjust my seat and how to suspend my weight evenly on both clipped-in feet. He suggested that, next time, I wear clothing that “breathes” and I promised to do exactly that even though I had no intention of buying clothes in which to sweat. My workout attire includes an old T-shirt probably worn by both my kids and tights that are much more comfortable now that they’ve outlived their elasticity. Cycling people, it should be said, take their workout wardrobe seriously. Twisting-back tank tops and sleek riding shorts were in abundance. Headbands were obviously part of the uniform. Matching socks, optional.

The instructor recommended I drink water and enjoy the ride before climbing atop the robotic structure on the platform that was his bike. I must say, he looked magnificent in Lycra. Some of us do not.

The lights dimmed to true dark, the sound of a Hip Hop beat encouraged my legs to pump in rhythm. I listened to the very enthusiastic voice of the instructor as he guided the class through the landscape of music. I was relaxed and encouraged. This was easy! Everyone knows how to ride a bike. The next two songs increased in tempo and ferocity. I pedaled along with the beat. No sweat! I was cycling with the best of them, keeping up and looking strong.

After the fourth song, my shoulders burned and my legs were screaming. I pretended to reach for a new towel, and managed to twist my tension knob down without anyone noticing. “If you feel tired, take the tension down to Two,” the instructor said through his secret-service headset. I nodded at him, as if to say, thanks for the advice, but not me, I don’t need to reduce my tension, I’m doing just fine over here in the about-to-vomit section.

Fifteen minutes into the class, I found myself leaned against the back wall with my hands on my thighs, gasping, as the other cyclists visualized reaching the crest of a hill. Two dozen Lycra’ed asses bobbed in front of me. Beyond the sea of toned glutes and thighs, my own image glowed like red coal in the far mirror. My hair was black paste, my face the color of an eggplant. My T-shirt hung like a becalmed flag, soaked dark in my own sweat. I sipped at the water bottle that I’d bought in the lobby for $3 and silently coached my heart to calm. Every few minutes, I heard the instructor ask: “Are you okay back there?”

After a while, I returned to my bike amid grunts of appreciation from my classmates. “Way to stick with it,” a woman said. I tried to smile as I slid back onto the boulder-hard crescent seat that was, supposedly, padded to ensure maximum riding comfort. I clicked my shoes in, put a new towel over my handles and pushed the pedal forward. I could do this.

At the end of the class, I saw that a puddle had formed underneath Bike Number One, about the size and scope of Lake Erie. I could have mopped it up with a little white towels, but I was afraid to bend forward.

I made my way to the front desk and returned the loaner shoes. “Want to sign up for your next class?” the receptionist asked as if the suggestion was a no-brainer. I thought about responding, but my mouth was too dry. My lips were stuck to my teeth. I walked home like that, with my mouth frozen in a grimace and my T-shirt hanging to my knees. Next class? I think not.

A Brief Electronic Affair

ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: JAN. 21, 2011

He friended me just after Thanksgiving, Week 13 of regular-season football this year. He wanted to know if I was the same Lisa who studied marine science at a certain East Coast college for a summer semester back in the early ’80s. I was. I am.

The inquiry catapulted me back to when I was 19, unattached, uncommitted and looking for adventure and high excitement. The college town was the perfect place: the program was good and the ocean was practically outside my door. Those were my only two requirements. Because I had never been to that campus before, it also offered the added and unexpected luxury of absolute anonymity. That summer I worked nights tending bar and went to school during the day. Class was held onboard an outrigger trawler. All I wore were sneakers and a bathing suit.

I logged in and clicked on his name. He looked almost the same. Well, maybe not. My memory from that summer is vague. His personal profile revealed where he lived, that he had three kids and that he was married.

We began to chat. Like me, he left the dream of a career in marine science behind and settled for a standard paying job. Like me, he had a parent suffering from dementia. He remembered I had a hand-painted car; I remembered his vast collection of records by the Who. I told him I hit a deer while driving on a dark road the previous weekend; that same night he sat in his car in the parking lot of the Nassau Coliseum until midnight while his teenage daughter attended a hip-hop concert inside. He offered his cellphone number and urged me to call and keep him company during his long commute to work, but I would never do that. I’m married, after all.

One night, he posed the question: Does your husband mind that you are chatting with me? I was immediately conflicted. Why would he mind? Were we doing something wrong? The multiple messages we exchanged each day online did not interfere with my family life or my work. But each note produced a thrill in my body, like a quick shock of static electricity. It was exciting. It was fun. It was a little addicting.

While my husband scrolled through the newspapers on his Droid in the evenings, I chatted with my friend on the laptop. His comments often made me blush.

“Who are you talking to?” my husband asked as we sat together on the couch watching a football game. It was the very end of December, the end of the regular season. The Ravens needed a win to secure a playoff spot.

I told him.

“I don’t think I like you talking to old boyfriends,” my husband challenged, with one eye on the television.

“It’s just writing,” I said. My computer chimed: I miss your laugh, my friend wrote. You had the best laugh.

“Fumble!” My husband shouted, jumping up. I moved the laptop to the coffee table, out of the way. The Ravens were ahead.

“We could be going to the Super Bowl,” he said. His voice was low and guttural, practically churning with restraint. I flashed my eyes at him. In 25 years of marriage, I’d learned a few things about the game of football.

“Don’t jinx it,” I said.

He took both my hands. We faced each other and synchronized a few overly dramatic breaths. The players were ready on the line. My husband tossed pistachio nuts into his mouth, nervous with anticipation; the shells scattered on the table.

My laptop chimed again. Remember the night we went to the J. Geils concert? A hot flash of sexual memory flared inside me. I remembered. And I remembered what we did after the concert in the car, and again later in his dorm room. You never forget things like that.

Cheers surged from the stadium on our big-screen TV, filling the living room with charged energy. There wasn’t much time on the clock. All we needed was a first down, and the game was ours. Joe Flacco, the Ravens’ quarterback, released the ball into the air: a tight spiral, a perfect pass. The receiver stretched his long arms past the defending cornerback and trapped the ball against his chest. We had the first down.

My husband held out his hand and dropped a pile of shelled pistachios into my palm. He knew I didn’t like to break the shells open myself.

“Here,” he said. “I peeled these for you.”

I closed the lid of the laptop. A few minutes later, the clock ran out, and we won.

Fear and Laughing

Original publication: AUG. 6, 2009

Our worst fear has recently come to pass: the dementia ward of the veterans’ home where my father had been living transferred him to a psychiatric hospital. But when I met my mother there on the day they brought him over, I wasn’t really surprised to see her waving from across the hall with a big smile on her face, about to laugh. We’re a family of laughers. We laugh when we’re happy, when we’re angry and, most of all, when we’re frightened.

“That’s him,” she said, chortling and pointing to the ambulance in the bay. “He just arrived, and he’s mad as a wet hen. But the ambulance driver said he didn’t slug anyone, so that’s an improvement.”

They wheeled my father up. “Hi, Dad.” I touched his hand, which was locked down under a thick restraining belt. His sweat pants were stained with food; the socks on his feet twisted and wrong. He looked at me through the blue eyes I’ve been looking into for 49 years. I smiled at him, and winked. He winked back. He is 75 and in perfect health if you don’t count his brain. He’s had dementia for a few years, but things got worse after an adverse drug reaction.

They pulled the gurney away. “We’ll meet you inside!” I yelled. My father craned his neck and answered: “Two. Four. Seventeen!”

My mother and I followed someone into the admitting office to do the paperwork. “We brought his medical records,” I told the nurse, reaching across the desk to where my mother sat, stalwart. I wiggled my fingers for the papers, but my mother only glared at me.

“Mom. Pass me the records.”

She shook her head.

The nurse moved away, ostensibly to retrieve a form. I leaned toward my mother. “What are you doing?” My mother gripped her purse with two hands. “I don’t want them to have a bad impression of your father,” she said. I reached for her purse. She held tight. I pulled. “We probably shouldn’t have an altercation,” I said, pausing. “It might look bad.”

Photo

CreditHolly Wales

My mother smiled. Look bad? We were in a mental hospital. Who cared? We both began to laugh, gently at first, and then with increasing gusto. By the time the nurse returned, it took all of our shared strength to stop.

The nurse handed us an information sheet. “This is the number of the telephone on the ward,” she said, pointing with her pencil. “Call this number anytime and ask to speak with your husband,” she explained, looking kindly at my mother.

Later we sat with my father on the ward, trying not to cry. For months, professionals had been saying that he’d probably need to go to the psychiatric hospital. But we’d closed our minds to that possibility. My mother declared she would not survive it. And now here we were.

We sat on either side of him, distracting ourselves with his food tray. I cut up the chicken and put the loaded fork into my father’s hand. My leg bounced off his — something was there. “There’s something in Dad’s pocket,” I informed my mother. “Put your hand in there and pull it out, will you?”

She crossed her eyes. “I’m not doing it. You do it.”

I held my breath and reached in — and then extracted a brightly colored, stuffed bowling pin. I held it up and met my mother’s disbelieving stare. That did it; we collapsed into gales of wrenching laughter again, hiding behind our hands and lowering our heads into our collars. “Stop,” my mother begged with her eyes flooding tears. “Stop, or they won’t let us out!”

I got up and walked away, wiping my eyes. I imagined I looked like every other visitor, splotchy with emotion and bereavement. When I regained my composure, I returned to the table. My mother had stepped into the bathroom; my father was eating his napkin.

Soon it was time to leave him there. As we waited to be escorted through the double-locked doors, the hall phone began to ring. A woman appeared wearing a long purple sweater and opera-length pearls. She picked up the phone and began to speak gibberish with a Slavic accent. She chattered, listened and then hung up. As she walked away, we saw that she was naked from the waist down.

My mother’s eyes widened. “That’s who answers the hall phone?” she blurted.

The security guard appeared and escorted us through the maze of doors and foyers until we met with the cool air. “Call anytime!” my mother squealed, bending at the waist with her arms crossed over herself. By the time we walked across the parking lot, we were laughing so hard our faces were slick with tears.

Whereas You Were an Insensitive Fool...

ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: July 1, 2007

The simple truth is that if you want to be heard by your husband, you must speak a language he understands.

An example: A friend of mine is married to a wealthy spendthrift who used to drive like a maniac — tailgating, speeding, weaving between lanes. My friend repeatedly expressed her fear about his dangerous habits but he didn’t modify his behavior; money was the language he spoke. She gave him one final warning: slow down or else. He didn’t, so without any fanfare, she withdrew $40,000 from their bank accounts and bought herself a luxury convertible. I hear he’s a pretty safe driver now.

My husband is a lawyer, so naturally the language he best understands is that of the legal profession. For more than two decades we have enjoyed a peaceful relationship of love, respect and decency.

Until six weeks ago, that is, when I stumbled off a curb on the first day of a long-awaited vacation abroad, breaking my foot and thus ending the trip before it really began. That’s when my mild-mannered, gentle husband, with whom I’ve raised two children, the man I truly love and rely on, became someone I didn’t know: resentful, insensitive, uncaring. And his hideous behavior lasted long beyond the accident and its immediate aftermath; indeed, it continued until I figured out how to get his attention.

Neither my silent seething nor my open anger would reach him. So I, Lisa K. Friedman, being of sound mind and broken foot, turned to the language he spoke: I served him with a mock complaint, claiming Breach of Contract (our marriage contract). I drafted it myself, using all the standard conventions, as I have watched him do many times. Then I hired a legal courier to deliver it to my husband’s office, identify him and conclude with the standard assertion: “You have been served.”

What he saw when he opened the envelope went something like this:

Complaint

COMES NOW, Plaintiff, Lisa K. Friedman, and for her complaint against the Defendant, her husband, states as follows:

The Parties

1. The Plaintiff is a housewife whose principal role includes general household maintenance, food service, transportation and management of the domicile shared by them, their two children and one dog.

2. Her husband, the Defendant, is an attorney in Washington, D.C.

Jurisdiction and Venue

3. The Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Md., handles major criminal and civil cases including marital breach of contract complaints filed by any and all outraged wives who, after suffering vacation-ending injuries, are cruelly blamed and mistreated by their husbands.

Background Facts

4. On June 29, 1986, Lisa K. Friedman, heretofore known as “the Plaintiff” and her husband signed a Contract of Marriage (the “Contract”).

5. The Contract contemplated, among many clauses, that the parties will “love and comfort, in sickness and in health” for an estimated length of time described in the Contract as “as long as [they] both shall live.”

Count One

Breach of Contract

6. The Defendant breached the Contract by failing and refusing to offer aid and comfort to the Plaintiff after she stumbled off a curb in front of the hotel where the couple intended to enjoy a romantic and restful three nights before beginning their highly anticipated, hugely expensive and meticulously planned archaeological hiking tour of remote historical sites in Israel and Jordan.

The fall fractured the fifth metatarsal bone of her right foot. It is not relevant to the complaint that neither the Plaintiff nor the Defendant immediately knew that the foot was broken, despite the Plaintiff’s report that she heard a “snapping sound” when she stumbled and fell.

The Defendant dismissed this evidence of a broken bone, contending, ridiculously, that it must have been the strap on her sandal snapping. The Plaintiff did not feel the bone snap because she was consumed at the time by a white light of pain, so intense that it blotted out all other physical sensation.

Therefore, they did not find out the foot was broken until days later, when they were back in the United States, because no medical care was sought for the Plaintiff in Israel even though the next morning her foot was so swollen she could hardly distinguish her toes, and the entirety of her foot resembled an exotic purple vegetable or gourd.

7. The Defendant breached the Contract by behaving in a nasty and demeaning way toward the Plaintiff in the immediate aftermath of the accident, including but not limited to terse comments, ridicule, eye rolling and ignoring of the injured Plaintiff. He seemed, at one point, to be “almost having a stroke” (the Plaintiff’s characterization) as he contemplated the myriad disappointments associated with the untimely demise of their dream vacation. And even though the Defendant seemed to sense that his behavior toward the Plaintiff was truly awful and unforgivable, he simply couldn’t control it due to the mounting displeasure and inconvenience caused by her untimely stumble. This inconvenience included but was not limited to the Defendant’s resentment-filled two-hour search for crutches for the Plaintiff, which left him mute with frustration — for a time he was unwilling to communicate verbally with the Plaintiff in any manner about any subject.

8. The Defendant breached the Contract, and all acceptable codes of husbandly (and human) conduct, by remaining unhelpful when it came to the required purchase of airline tickets for their premature return to the United States.

At the time the Defendant could not have known that the cost of these last-minute tickets would total a staggering $6,000. But he did know that this amount would be added to the $4,000 the Plaintiff and Defendant already had paid for their original advanced-purchase tickets (secured using mileage bonus coupons) and would not include the countless thousands of dollars in nonrefundable expenses they had laid out for guides, lodging and transportation.

So perhaps it was the Defendant’s piqued awareness of this looming financial nightmare that caused him to snap at the Plaintiff about booking the tickets: “This is your problem. You take care of it.” Which the Plaintiff then did, from the hotel lobby, in her borrowed wheelchair, using a lent international cellphone (after the battery on hers had died).