Freak show

Today in anatomy class Dr. T did the unthinkable.
He had a student demo a yoga posture not included in the asana series we are here to learn. Maybe in someone else’s yoga college that sort of thing would fly.
Not here. We do, learn, speak, practice, and perfect 26 very specific expressions of hatha yoga. No more. No less.

And you do not mess with the formula.

At the exact moment Dr.T finagles this kid into the posture, we see the silhouette of Bikram reflected through the glass door. He’s paying a surprise visit. He’s entering the room while the totally well intentioned, but momentarily ill advised, Christian chiropractor is introducing a non-Bikram asana into the lecture. No good will come of this. I want to spare the sweet man in front of us--the mediocre comedian, the bible study teacher ,the sometimes-deeply-paranoid Dr. Frank Trapani….I want to stand up and scream “ABORT MISSION DR. T! THE HEN IS IN THE CHICKEN HOUSE! ABORT MISSION! SAVE YOURSELF!”

But its too late. The inventor of disco is already in the room. And his expression is not one of pleasure.

He stood back there for about 45 seconds and shook his head, not saying a word, then finally left the room.

I imagined a security detail hovering just outside the Ilikai waiting to take poor Dr. T away.
An unmarked van would be parked around the corner, the motor quietly humming, ready to swiftly whisk the anatomy teacher to some undisclosed location. I thought about his wife and grandchildren and how much they’d miss him. I especially thought about his adopted grandchild…the one he, himself, had concocted a homeopathic baby formula for…because he doesn’t trust the F.D.A and the nutritional assault he believes they’ve launched against
American toddlers (for more background on Frank Trapani and his crusade against the Ferderal Dietary Association, see a few posts back)…I thought about the time he checked his wife out of the hospital hours after she gave birth to their first daughter…because his wife’s O.B. wanted to treat her (gasp) with antibiotics for a staff infection she’d contracted.
He doesn’t trust any doctors or any medicine and promptly took his wife (who had an infected breast and 104 degree fever) home to their apartment in Brooklyn.
Once there, he gave her chiropractic adjustments and fed her juice made from the rind of a lemon until she got better. He might be crazy, that Dr. T, but his heart was always in the right place. You just knew that about him. You knew it the minute you met him.

I imagined myself standing in the tire marks and exhaust fumes of that van speeding away…the van he’d surely be carried away in…crying, “why? Why Dr. T? why’d you do it? why’d you show us that renegade version of triangle, trikanasana?? It wasn’t worth it…(sob sob)…it (sob) wasn’t (sob) worth it….”

Hours later, after my dinner break, I saw Dr. T lounging poolside.

He suffered a severe stroke a couple of years ago, all but destroying his powers of proprioception and balance, and now relies on swimming for most of his exercise. He's always at that pool. He walks with a marked limp and my heart breaks just a fraction with every fresh step he takes.

He was sunning himself and appeared to be reading the newspaper and eating some pineapple. He seemed perfectly unharmed.

Bikram did mention the incident in class tonight—and he definitely wasn’t down with what happened—but I guess when all is said and done, he still loves the good doctor. They met decades ago, on the yogi’s first trip to Hawaii. Dr. T (ever the progressive thinker) was trying to introduce yoga to his clientele back in the 70’s. He met the small Indian and begged him to teach him yoga, old school style. They’ve been friends ever since. The affable doc with his clean jokes and pleated khaki pants…and the bite sized yogi with his cannon of curse words and his speedo.


We’re on round three of posture clinic. Teachers (amazingly) are pouring in from all over, crossing oceans and slathering on sunscreen, here to volunteer their time and help us learn to deliver the Bikram dialogue. So far, every single visiting instructor has been generous and great.
We all still sound like total morons…but, quite honestly, that’s what makes it fun. I’m going to be shattered when people get comfortable with these words, these postures.
Its so much better watching all the shaking and seizures we incur during the anxiety attacks we suffer every single time we have to stand up and speak. It is truly one of the most ridiculousfabulouspathetic things I’ve ever experienced. A room full of grown adults….many of us educated and accomplished, confident and well adjusted…brought to tears by the paramount frustrations, and subsequent humiliations, of trying to remember if the line is
“throughout the posture”
Or
“throughout the ENTIRE posture.”

Two of the visiting instructors are the kids who won the international yoga championship last February.
They performed their award winning ‘routines’ for us Tuesday night. I don’t know either of these people personally. Emotionally/intellectually/whatever …they might be horrible human beings…but, physical, they were awesome. Incredible. Transcendent.
And, of course, they look like people who win yoga competitions. The girl weighs about 80 pounds soaking wet and is so white she makes ME look like the Hawaiian Tropics girl…and the guy walks around in glorified underpants.

As I sat on my mat and watched them perform, I was reminded of something.
Something I haven’t thought about in years.

I spent the first 12-18 months of my practice cringing at men in tight short shorts. I just didn’t understand why anyone would do that…why anyone would wear something so embarrassing, so weird, so just-plain-wrong in a public setting. I would lie in savasana and quietly will them to go buy a pair of real shorts already. Baggy shorts. The baggier the better. I’d lend them the money if cash was an issue (which, frankly, seemed like the only plausible explanation for a man wearing something tantamount to PANTIES in class.)

I am neither proud nor kidding when I tell you that, back then, I would have taken one look at the both of these people, their legs contorted like pretzels around their necks, clad in really goofy yoga outfits, and I'd have wrapped my review up in one syllable: freaks.

So it is not lost on me that I am here now. I am surrounded by men in glorified underpants and I rarely even notice.
And while 3% of me still wants to feed her a steak and tell him to put some pants on…..97% of me, the larger part of me, just wants to see them do their demonstrations again. I want to see them do these impractical and magical things with their bodies. I want to sit there, breathless, at the execution of surreal physical feats (feats I, personally, am wholly incapable of) that are at once queer and dorky…graceful and gorgeous…wicked and totally radical.
Its the coolest uncool thing. If that makes any sense....

One more story and then I’m off to memorize incomplete sentences while watching the sunset.

Every night this week, during evening class, a woman sat outside the glass doors and watched us. She is a very large, older woman who moves around on one of those motorized scooter-things. (For some reason I want to call it a “rascal”but I have no idea why I’d know the brand name). She just sits there and observes us, fascinated.

Thursday night, his voice amped up and pounding through the speakers, Bikram made reference to her outside. He said she should come in and take class. He said she was fat and he could get her healthy and walking. The energy of the room pitches a bit when the word “fat” is thrown out…which it is…a lot. He actually told us we were, collectively, the fattest group of teacher trainers he’d ever had. In the award ceremony of most employed negatively-perceived adjectives, the results were tallied as follows:

Coming in third….”fat”
Edging ahead in second…”idiots”
Leading the race by a margin….”stupid Americans”

At this point, we’re used to it. When he’s calling us fat, its bearable. It really is. No pity parties, please.
We signed up for this…no one showed up in Hawaii without a debriefing…trust me.
But you couldn’t help but hope the woman outside wasn’t hearing it. She was an innocent bystander of sorts. And she appeared unable to walk. Clearly, she had enough struggles without a stranger calling her fat. I devoted a lot of energy to low-grade worrying about this woman….which turned out to be unnecessary because…

After class I was walking to collect my shoes and leave. I saw our controversial leader through the windows. He was on the other side of the glass talking to the woman on the rascal. He was facing towards her, and away from me—so I couldn’t see his face—but I could see hers. She was smiling ear to ear at whatever he was saying. She was riveted and glowing in his company. The visual was impeccable…Bikram from behind, his speedo pushed into a wedgie between his butt cheeks, dripping in sweat, and holding a one-woman audience with an enchanted stranger in a mumu on her motorized scooter. And while the odds of that mumu ever getting traded in for a spandex sports bra are negligent, at best….if anyone can pull it off, its this guy. Believe me. Its this guy. It just is.