An Ode to Spin Class

I am on the edge of consciousness as I sit here, writing this to you. Every fiber of my biological being—every cell and sinew and breath I draw from the dark void that surrounds me—urges me to lie down. I fear for the morning. Fear what I will feel upon waking. Those first, vulnerable movements from beneath the covers will be my tell-all prescription for every movement thereafter; a ball and chain of accidental injury, though some may call it the price you pay to walk the road to freedom…

No, I am not trapped (though not entirely free), and can still hear inside me that pounding, pounding, pounding music, urging me onward, upward—turning up the dial then sprinting in place on the machines which they provided—just sprinting, sprinting, sprinting, until the master yelled, “BUMP IT UP!” and I looked around to see the others turning a dial which I dare not touch.

The machines themselves looked like an old friend; a familiar shape whose saddle had carried me over many lands, and whose frame and wheels I had even named with affection and childlike mischief. But these…These machines were unlike the ones I have come to care for in gentler times. With digital face and knobs and the grotesque lack of wheels made them not unlike the master’s monsters, never leaving the blood red room with the pounding, pounding, pounding music. Never knowing sun, never knowing wind, never knowing the road beneath their storied tread. Just standing upright in the blood red room, waiting for we who have come to get our asses paddled then handed back to us, an addictive kind of punishment which makes us scream and trill for more…Until the madness recedes and we spiral out of consciousness into pain and wincing, cultivating a seedling of passion and obsession that will hopefully make us fit enough that even the gods will look down on us and sigh.