The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones by Sandra Tsing Loh

when I looked at my Visa bill, gave new meaning to the phrase, “feel the burn”). Now I wanted Stef to go away. Could I gift my twelve training sessions to someone? Sell them on Craigslist? Maybe I could pay Equinox a second fee to get this overeager trainer to now leave me alone.
    Then again, thanks to Stef, I was no longer depressed. I was simply scared of my personal trainer, and instead of mortality what I most dreaded in life was our sessions.
    I also noticed that while I was grunting with Stef, almost wanting to vomit, just beyond, Mr. Y and Fabrizio could be seen leaning against the pec equipment and discussing local haircutters. Poor Mr. Y. In six weeks (or twelve?) he was still going to have a fluffy soufflé top while I was going to have—as Stef put it—a “rock-star body.” (“ Rock-star body! ” she’d scream, as I hopped through an endless row of tires in a fit of panic.)
    Getting more physically confident, ’tis true, I decide it is finally time to check out some of those Logan’s Run classes. Having a talent for reading between the lines, with a red pen I immediately cross out several obvious problems: Ab Blast, Barre Burn, Tread Shread, Bikini Body Workout, Streamline Sculpt, and Hardbody Meltdown. No sirree. I don’t feel that confident. I settle on Yoga Glow, and the more loosey-goosey-sounding Fitness Scramble.
    The only problem I find with Fitness Scramble, populated mostly by women and led by a diminutive, fantastically fit blonde in a baseball cap, is that I neglected to have at least three lines of cocaine, or at least some amyl poppers, before starting. In five-minute and thirty-second and sixty-second bursts, over a hip-hop music mix punctuated by the sound of a whip cracking, you rush from station to station working thighs, abs, pecs, glutes, as though on a kind of mad fitness scavenger hunt. I am running about so frantically, bending over, sitting up, lunging back, squatting down, that at one point I feel myself doing what I, a mother of two, can only call a “reverse Kegel.”
    As for the gear, aside from the standard weights, elastic bands, bars, ropes, and pads, apparently the newest thing in exercise technology is something called the Kettlebell. It’s a diabolical little hand weight shaped like a teakettle. Our leader urges us to swing the Kettlebell through the air. I hoist it over my head like a cow tossing its collar. Our teacher further exhorts us to feel the Kettlebell power, to catch Kettlebell fever! Sweating profusely, over the whip cracking and the timer constantly going off, I begin hallucinating. I imagine myself getting a full-blown Kettlebell . . . infection.
    Wow! Becoming manic, I am turning into a total exercise-class dilettante. There is no weirdly named exercise class I won’t try once. I try Cardio Barre—fifty minutes of “targeted body sculpting” involving little weights you pick up and move in tiny, quarter-size circles, tilting your arm at a precise unpleasant angle, sixty-four times a side. Seven minutes into Cardio Barre I wish for death, but it is an active wish. Much more preferable was Zumba, the Latin (Brazilian?) dance craze! I cumbia , I grasp my machete and cut sugarcane, do Bollywood left, Bollywood right, walk like a model, wave my finger back and forth in rhythm to the music and shout, “No more! No more!” When after class I see I have missed another called Cardio Broadway, I let out a Nathan Lane–size falsetto scream!

A Brief Discussion of Manopause
    TOP TEN SIGNS YOU ARE GOING THROUGH MANOPAUSE
    Excessive YouTube-ing of old footage of your eighties college rock band
    Excited remixing of old band tapes—transferring cassettes to digital, remixing
    Those are really the only two I can think of, as per my short attention span.
    L ET ME TRY ANOTHER approach in order to address the men.
    CLUB BLAB is in session again. Mr. Y and I are standing with glasses of wine in the kitchen, gossiping.
    I have been asked by Elise—you recall, my