The Music of What Happens(69)

Burpees seem basically like God’s way of punishing you for wanting to get into good shape. You start with your hands over your head, you fall into a squat, then kick your legs back to a push-up position, do a push-up, then pull your legs back into a squat, and then you jump up to the start position again.

Max will start with the forward grip rope pull and I’ll start with the ball slams. Twenty seconds on, ten seconds rest, and then right to the next exercise. Four sets of all four, or eight minutes.

It actually doesn’t sound that bad. If you think about it, some of that time is resting, so it’s not even staying active for eight minutes. It’ll be fine, I decide.

He presses a button and a succession of beeps sounds, and then he says, “Ready?”

I say, “Yup.”

The final beep comes and we go.

The fifteen-pound ball is heavier than it looks. My legs shake as I pick it up in a squat and try to stand. Then my arms shake as I lift it over my head, and it slips from my hand. It glances against my forehead, not entirely pleasantly, and it slams into the ground with a huge thump.

“Ow,” I say, and Max looks back and stops what he’s doing.

“You okay?” he says, smirking.

My face reddens and I look away, pissed. He’s started me too high. He’s used to this shit. I can’t do this. I have negative muscles. Like the utter absence of strength or strong tissue. I’m skinny and I’m weak, and I’ve always been that way, and I’m in way over my head, and suddenly I realize that.

“I’m fine,” I say, averting my eyes.

We start again, and this time, I am able to avoid giving myself a nearly certain concussion by gripping the ball tighter. But I also find out just how long twenty seconds is. It’s like an hour, basically, when you’re exerting yourself. I had no idea. When the five-seconds-left warning beeps sound, I am insanely grateful. When the final beep sounds, I say a prayer of thanks to gay Jesus.

Then I find out just how short, conversely, ten seconds is. When you’re out of breath and having to go to another workstation. I’ve barely grabbed the rope when the automated voice says, “Go!”

Pulling a rope is hard work. I would be worthless in a boatyard or a warehouse or wherever it is that people pull ropes for a living. This is not exactly a surprise to me, but nonetheless it sucks for the fifty hours it takes for twenty seconds to go by.

But it’s nothing compared to the burpees. Who the hell would have guessed that a simple five-step exercise could be so awful? I do three of them and my lungs are screaming for relief. Another one, and I consider staying down until the beeps start. And when they don’t, I wobble to my feet and do a fifth, cursing out Max for throwing me into the deep end of exercise.

The second set is awful. By the third set, I feel like I might have a heart attack. And when it’s time to slam the ball for the fourth time, some six minutes into the eight-minute drill, I squat down, try to pick up the ball, and fail. I collapse onto the scratchy purple rug, hoping to die.

Max doesn’t stop, and when it’s his turn to slam the ball, he does it so close to my head that I wince. And I hate him for it. For being so insensitive to what it feels like to be knocked out. For not giving a shit that I am a hard-core failure at this and every other thing in my life.

Some silly trumpet horns sound when the eight minutes is up, and Max crouches down next to me.

“You okay?”

I’m still trying to catch my breath. “Uh-huh,” I say.

He laughs and shoots me a Guy Smiley smile. “I promise. This gets more fun when you do it more often.”

Fuck you too, I think. A couple hours ago, we were so connected. Reading poems and him drawing on the sidewalk. This Max feels like a stranger.

He takes me to this thing he calls a leg press next. You sit back with your legs angled up and your feet against this platform, and you load weights on a bar on top of it. Max adds two really heavy-looking round weights to each side. “Forty-fives,” he explains, and I’m good enough at math to realize he’s about to lift a hundred and eighty pounds in the air with his legs. My throat tightens. I definitely can’t do this, and I’m going to have to tell Max.

But he’s busy grabbing different accoutrements. He brings over these huge flat rubber bands, and he attaches them, one to the chair apparatus where you sit, and one to the bar on top of the platform.

“This makes it really burn,” he says, looking all excited, and I try to match his excitement but I fail. This is just not … me. Not my thing.

He sits down, grabs the handles near his hands, twists them, and I guess that releases what the platform is resting on. His large quads tighten and pulse, and he lowers the platform until his knees are pushed up against his chest. Then he exhales with a grunt and pushes hard, and his legs straighten out.

Max is … impressive. But of course he is. He’s perfect. And that’s annoying. The rubber bands expand as he stretches his legs out, and contract as he allows the weight to fall close to his body.

“This would be a great rubber band flick trick,” I say, imagining flinging a big rubber band across the room. He gives a charity grunt without looking at me, and keeps pushing. He does nine, then ten, then eleven, and finally twelve, and for the final three, his growls like a bear. A bead of sweat drips down his forehead, barely missing his eye.

“Yes,” he shouts as he twists the handles back to catch the hundred-and-eighty-pound platform.