It’s called the triple-count-Rumba-air-fisting-Lindy-Hop.

I made a mistake, last night.

It involved the gym and twenty-two women.

I’d like to tell you about it, so I am.

I’ve been a faithful team player of a local gym for the past month.  It was part of a personal New Year’s resolution slash Christmas gift (from Amanda). And I’ve been a good lover to it. Three or four visits a week, and fully committed each visit, and giving 100% of my attention to her…you name it, and I’ve paid for it.

Admittedly, I was gone most of last week, so I hadn’t been courting her properly. Guilt got the better of my judgment, though, and I dragged myself, in a matching powder blue gym suit right down to my shoes, out into the cold and came knocking on her doors last night, around 6:00.

She had not waited, in faithful anticipation.

There were hundreds of people. Not a treadmill to be had for miles. So, I pretended to do other forms of exercise: I sat on the pull-every-chest-muscle-press-bench-couch-thing for a few minutes, fiddling with the weights, making lots of “workout” noises. I got up and wandered over to the this-is-really-for-my-thigh-muscles-and-not-an-invitation-chaise-lounge-machine and tried to use it, but I felt embarrassed sitting on it.

Then, I decided: Hey, just flip your routine.

Usually after a good thirty minute treadmill jog and walk (or jalk, as I call it), Amanda and I will head to a side room at the gym and do yoga. Well, she does yoga. I try and copy her. I do well enough on the Cobra; I’m less than appealing on the Downward Facing Dog, though I swear I’ve done that move a thousand times before.

I got off the thigh thing, and slipped off to the familiar side room to do my yoga-thing first. Surely, I thought, a treadmill will be available by the time I was through.

The room was empty, and quiet. I pulled my mat off the wall, took off my glasses which have a tendency to fly off my face with the tiniest bead of sweat, and began to do stretchy contortions. I don’t know what I was doing, but stretching in general just feels good.

I closed my eyes, and for a good solid five minutes, got my muscles into suggestive, cramping positions. Then, I began to notice a trickle of voices entering the room. But, I kept going. I focused. And then…more voices.

I was, you should know, over in the corner, where I usually stretch…far away from the one exit out of the room. This is important. Remember this.

More and more voices came into the room, and it became distracting, so I had little choice but to stop my stretching. I opened my eyes, reached for my glasses, and it was then that several horrible things began to occur simultaneously.

These horrors are in no particular order: 1) the room filled with women, 2) I was the farthest away from the exit door of anyone else in the room, 3) the tiny secret, closet door behind which the office lies, was flung open and a small woman emerged with such a force of energy that, in retrospect, my only regret was that she didn’t also come with an electrical outlet, 3) music on a decibel level of 247 instantly blared through the speakers, and 4) I knew then that I was trapped.

And by becoming trapped, I was thus committed to whatever fresh hell was about to happen to me.

It didn’t take long to figure out: the initial song stridently coming through the speakers had a beat that I think most would refer to as Latin, and a rumbling voice that garbled Spanish for the most part; though, the one word that I caught was one I’d heard a few nights earlier on an infomercial.

Zumba.

Dear god, I thought, I’m scared.

I had to think fast. I had to get to the exit and as soon as possible. I started to jet my butt to the left, where the door was, and was soundly singled out by Instructor Meredith, a.k.a. the Duracell, who loudly encouraged others to follow suit.

“He’s got the idea, ladies! Use what you got and go all out!!”

I had unknowingly “felt the beat,” in my dash for the door, appropriately enough to warrant a shout-out from the instructor. Everyone started gyrating in a similar manner. Had I been more successful, I suppose I would have led everyone out the door, where I was heading, but as it were, I merely fed fuel to the fire.

What to do?

I thought, Surely, this will only be a fifteen, twenty minute class, right? Surely, it’s a beginner’s class?

It was not.

There is no such thing as a beginner in Zumba. There is no beginning, middle, or end to Zumba. It simply is Zumba. And therefore, you simply do Zumba.

And Zumba hurts.

Twenty minutes came and went…slowly.

However, I was now a good ten feet closer to the door. But, there in the middle of the room, I ran into the mother of a friend of mine who was elated that I’d “no shame in doing this with a bunch of women,”

After hearing that, I was too affronted to give up.

Oh, it’s on, now, I thought. I’m sticking it out for the full half-hour class, for all the Men in the world. Ha. Talk to me about shame, please, I said to myself, I don’t know the meaning of the word shame.

I was wrong on both counts: I know shame very intimately, and the class was still in full swing, literally, after thirty minutes.

Initially, I was rather proud of myself. I managed to mambo, cha-cha, and salsa without much threat of physical danger. To myself or others. I was holding strong…until the forty minute mark.

It was then that I began to lose consciousness; nevertheless, my body would not surrender. I’d continued to merengue despite the stomach cramps; I’d bachata-ed through a throbbing ankle; I’d kept my tango to a crisp point even though my chest had been pulled over for speeding and was placed under cardiac arrest.

Through it all,  I stayed on my feet.

The young woman wearing the yellow Kappa Sig T-shirt was not so lucky. She fell. Right in the middle of the triple-count -Rumba-Paso-Doble-air-fisting-Lindy-Hop that was required of all during the alleged “cool down” period.

The woman next to me, all the while keeping time in her Reeboks, said, “Oh, no! Poor thing. Do we help her?”

To which I replied, “Shh. I don’t think we’re allowed to talk.”

After an hour (an hour!) the class dismissed. Those who hadn’t bruised a lung managed to smile and speak, pretending they would come back on Wednesday. Me, personally, I don’t know how I left the room. I couldn’t feel my legs, my arms, my neck, my body.

Until this morning.

I woke up in so much pain that I was certain I’d undergone an emergency appendectomy that also involved a heart transplant and the removal of kidney stones—the old fashioned way.

But I also woke up a victor.

I’d not given up, I’d embraced the Fate presented to me, I’d pulled muscles that I must assume were on loan from someone else because they were no muscles I’d ever been aware of before last night. I couldn’t move with ease, and I couldn’t move quickly. Every step I took, I remembered each agonizing moment of the longest hour known to Man, and I recalled with bitterness the current craze that is Zumba.

And I hated it. Hated it, hated it, hated, hated, hated it.

I hate it so much that I’ve decided I’m never going back…until Wednesday…at 6:00 PM.

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