On the Outside Looking Indian

by Rupinder Gill

  Jaclyn convinced me to attend a noon-hour aerobics class with her one Wednesday. I had not been to the gym in over a month and couldn’t think of a reasonable excuse not to go, so I decided this would be a great jump start to my afternoon. The longer I felt unready to don a bathing suit, the longer it would be before I could start to swim.

  Standing outside of the class, I smiled at my-soon-to-be fellow aerobicizers as I adjusted my T-shirt strategically over my love handles. To my horror, some of my coworkers were in the fitness flock.

  We smiled politely at one another and flooded into the room when the doors opened. I ran instantly for the back corner, out of view. When I turned back, I saw Jaclyn, dead center and directly in front of two male coworkers. She motioned to the mat beside her and I reluctantly shuffled over. When everyone started grabbing barbells and loading them with weights that would challenge Mr. T, I realized I was in way over my head.

  I contemplated making a run for it when the instructor breezed past me, her biceps larger than my buttocks. Her abs rippled as she leaped up onto the platform and screamed, “Are you ready for this?!”

  Everyone shouted their affirmative replies and clapped excitedly, drowning out my scream of “No! Not really!”

  With a push of a button, “Pump Up the Jam” blasted from the speakers and the instructor motioned for us to pick up our barbells. Jaclyn had loaded mine with what she felt was a good weight for a beginner but felt more like the body weight of a baby elephant.

  I struggled to lift the weight and position it on my shoulders as instructed.

  “Okay!” the instructor yelled, “Let’s squat a superset!”

  We squatted once, twice, thrice, again; a superset seemed to be some sort of infinite exercise torture. From this we lunged, then squatted again, and returned to lunging. I looked up at the clock for mercy, but we were only ten minutes into the hour.

  “Nice work, everyone!” She-Ra bellowed from the podium. “Now put down the barbells and load on about double the weight for our back segment.”

  I mimed adding more weight and used the pause for an opportunity to drink half of my water bottle and splash the other half on my face. The chest-and-back set was more torturous than the leg exercises. For most of it, as we lay on the benches to do our chest workout, I threw down my barbells and just punched my fists up in the air.

  As my muscles knotted like pretzels, I imagined each blow landing on Jaclyn, who I had believed to be my friend but who had obviously signed me up for a hidden-camera prank. As we moved on to the arm portion of the class, my perspiration had hit epic proportions. My hair was drenched and the only thing that stopped me from wringing it out onto my mat was the intense burning pain in what is apparently called a tricep.

  “Almost done,” the instructor yelled. Fifteen minutes left. These would be the longest fifteen minutes of my life, second only to the time a boy in my drama class performed a “Vagina Monologue” for his end-of-the-year exam.

  I spent the abs section lying on my mat with my eyes closed and the end of the class agonizing through the cooldown. When I got up from the stretch, my right leg buckled beneath me. Jaclyn put my mat and weights away while I held on to the wall for support and staggered to the change room.

  I almost pulled down the shower curtain, grabbing onto it for support. I may have put my dress back on inside out and I cannot verify whose underwear I grabbed from the locker, but I made it back to work, muscles on fire. The next four days I screamed every time I went up and down a stair.

  But, despite being embarrassingly out of shape and having two left tap shoes, after three weeks of instruction, I could almost, almost, almost dance. After one week where my instructor had to single me out to help me learn a step, I decided I had to take matters into my own hands. With the blessing of my kindly neighbors below me, I strapped on my tap shoes, turned on some music, and ran through some steps in my living room. I would look up videos on the Internet and practice along the night before each class.

  “What’s that music you’re dancing to?” Navjit asked one night when she came over to watch True Blood.

  “Um, it’s Lil Wayne,” I mumbled. “I couldn’t find anything else.”

  “Show me your routine,” she said, sitting down. This is when I realized I didn’t know the names of any of the steps, only how they looked in the mirror.

  “This is called a scuttlebug,” I lied, kicking my leg out and tapping the other. “And, um, this is the one-legged jimmy.” I leaped into the air and made tapping sounds when I landed.

  “Um…that’s great,” she said. We both knew I was lying, but neither of us was going to say anything.

  “I need a bit more practice,” I said.

  After class one night, I sprinted to the streetcar with a fellow tapper named Sue as the Toronto snow swirled violently around us. Dodging an icy patch on the sidewalk, she asked me what brought me to the class. At first I hesitated. I didn’t want to open the can of worms that was my life. It would have been simplest to just say that I loved dance or that I was trying to get into shape. But if I was committed to my project, I had to be open about it.

  “Well,” I said, a puff of breath freezing in the air over my face, “it’s a long story.” I told her of my desire to make up for lost time and my plan for the year. Having started on the topic, I asked Sue about the lessons of her youth and she laughed and said, “Well, with Asian parents, I had to take piano. So maybe in a way you were lucky?” I really wasn’t sure.

  I also wasn’t sure if and when I would ever get to Disney World. All I knew was that I had to go. There is an episode of The Golden Girls where Dorothy asks her mother, Sophia, where she wants to go on their vacation. Sophia doesn’t hesitate to choose Disney World. If Sophia could wait until eighty-four to go, riding Space Mountain with her wicker purse in her hand, I was going to have a blast.

  I thought it would be quite hard to convince my fellow adults to come with me on my pilgrimage to Orlando, Florida. But anyone who heard my plan was instantly on board. One friend even devised a plan to drive there—until learning it took twenty-two hours.

  My new life resolution had experienced some bumps, but altogether, it was coming along nicely. I had some Disney World brochures, about a hundred bookmarks saved on my computer for dog breeders and pet adoption agencies, two tap routines half mastered, and I had visited the gym about ten times in the month in preparation for my self-inflicted bathing-suit season. More importantly, I was having more fun than I could have imagined. Instead of continuing to hit SNOOZE on my alarm clock until 8:59 every morning, I got up on time to pack my dance outfit and shoes for the evening class. I had a trip to look forward to and my cellulite didn’t believe me, but I actually liked working out. It turned out that creating the life you wanted was infinitely more fun than going through the motions. Why didn’t I listen to Dr. Phil earlier?

  I was definitely making headway, but with everything I wanted to achieve, I knew that I really had to kick it into high gear to get my goals achieved for the year.

  SIX

  sleepover club

  The February blahs hit around midmonth, and I began to lose momentum. Like most grown-ups, after a long day at a job that was becoming increasingly stressful, the last thing that appealed to me was adding more to my plate. I had tried to bring healthier meals to work since starting dance class, but when I would get back from a meeting and see a hundred e-mails in my inbox, only a handful of chocolate almonds from my candy drawer were going to suffice. My attendance at the gym was becoming spotty and I was falling back into the trap of thinking exercise was a luxury, not a necessity. I had any and all excuses in the book: I was too tired. I didn’t have time to wash my hair at the gym. The cashier begged me to buy at least three boxes of the discount Valentine’s Day chocolates.

  The truth was that nothing appealed to me more than sitting on my sofa and watching TV, and I was getting more off track than the flight from Lost.

  So when my lady friends from high school
proposed a March weekend in the country, I relished the opportunity to kick-start my resolutions by accomplishing another childhood wish. It wasn’t grand enough to require addition to the list, but it would help get me back on track. And I would finally get to attend a rite of passage in girlhood: I was going to a sleepover.

  The only times we Gills ever slept over anywhere was when we went to visit relatives or family friends. Then the kids would be relegated to sleep in one room together, whether they wanted to or not. Gurpreet and I once had to sleep with a cousin who gave us head lice, which made me see both the merits of one’s own bed and the importance of medical disclosure among children.

  I had never been to a real sleepover but imagined it to be the type of experience that would result in buying those dime-store “Best Friends Forever” necklaces that break in half. Deep dark secrets would be revealed and cotton candy would be consumed before everyone drifted off to a tranquil slumber. It meant that you belonged and that you had friends who liked you enough to want to spend eighteen consecutive hours with you. For a child who desperately wanted to be invited to an event, yet knew she could never attend, this was vital validation for me. However, my parents pictured sleepovers as Roman orgies where the sleeping bags were filled with fluffy mounds of cocaine, so my siblings and I were never allowed to attend them growing up.

  I asked Jen what a good sleepover required so I could get a kit together. She gave me the list of required sleepover activities, including prank calls, calling boys you like, eating junk food, having a dance party, watching horror films, staying up all night, and doing each other’s makeup. Board games and Ouija boards were optional.

  There was so much I didn’t know, like the importance of “finding a good piece of carpet,” as Jen put it, to stake your claim in the hierarchy of the group. “If you’re on the outside, then you’re not as popular,” Jen told me. “It means that nobody wants to sleep beside you.” Luckily our sleepover would not involve a piece of carpet—I was thirty and not camping out for Rolling Stones tickets, so would not be going within fifty feet of a musty sleeping bag. Also, we were missing a very integral part of the sleepover: the girls-only invite list.

  From what I knew (from episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210), the proper role of boys in a sleepover was to peek into your windows or be substituted for by throw pillows that Andrea Zuckerman used to practice kissing. They were not, under any circumstances, to attend. But adult life is different, and being in a relationship means that your significant other can also become your permanent plus one. In fact, the majority of our group was going to consist of couples, save for me, Jess (whose husband was out of town), and Jill’s female dog, Cindy (who no doubt would think herself too good to participate in the makeup portion of the night).

  I didn’t want to be too pushy with my agenda, so I would have to feel out the situation and see if any of the husbands looked as if he wanted to paint his nails and talk about Jordan Catalano from My So-Called Life. As watching horror films and eating junk food was not a girls-only activity, I hoped we would still partake in some slumber-party-related activities.

  I drove up with Jill, with her dog, Cindy, snuggled in my lap. Jill’s boyfriend, Rob, also came up, with his family bulldog, Toby, in tow. “So, what’s new?” I asked Jill. It was a three-hour drive to our destination and we hadn’t seen each other in months, so it would be a great chance to catch up. Jill started telling me about her decorating plans for her new house and I oohed and aahed at her descriptions of brocade curtains and tufted headboards. Twenty minutes into our three-hour car ride, Rob was sound asleep in the backseat. If our girl talk had already put him to sleep, then he was in for a weekend-long hibernation when we connected with the rest of our gal pals.

  Ripping open a bag of chips, we turned on the radio and settled in for a lovely country drive. We sang along to eighties rock ballads on the radio and looked at each other, laughing. Then we looked at each other again. Then Jill looked at Cindy and I looked at the bottom of my shoes. “What IS that?” I screamed.

  Toby looked sheepishly out the window. Then she unleashed the foulest scent this side of a Calcutta outhouse in August. We rolled down the windows, frantic. “Wake up!” we screamed at Rob. “Wake up! Wake up!” He laughed, like a mother who was used to the smell of her baby’s dirty diapers and didn’t understand the commotion.

  “Toby just ate something weird,” Rob explained. “Don’t worry about it.”

  We kept the windows down for a few minutes before recalling that it was still the dead of winter. Poor Cindy was shivering, so we were forced to cage ourselves back in and hope for the best.

  I looked back at Toby, who was now also asleep. We turned the radio down because as everyone knows, you should let sleeping dogs lie. And you should let dogs that can re-create the scents of Chernobyl sleep indefinitely. But Toby, with her bulldog resilience, was not going to let a small detail like unconsciousness get in the way of her stomach-acid output.

  “Oh God!” we screamed, pumping the window levers. “I can’t breathe!” I screamed, shoving my head out the window.

  Jill alternated driving with her breath held with quick bursts out the window to inhale.

  “I don’t know if I can make it,” I said to Jill, my breath labored.

  When we finally reached the country house, I fell out of the car, gasping for air like a deep-sea diver racing for the ocean surface after a shark knocked the tank off his back. We told everyone at the house about our drive and they assumed we were exaggerating. But throughout the two days, Toby made sure to prove our point every half hour or so. “Dear Lord!” someone would scream, knocking over the Scrabble board to find shelter from the smell. “Toby!” someone else would scream from inside the shower.

  Watching Cindy and Toby play, I was acutely aware of how easily pets become the focal point of a room. Jill and Rob would wake up at ungodly hours to take the dogs out. Then, as the rest of us sat by the roaring fire, they would pull on their parkas and go out again in the evening. Dogs are wonderful because they always love you, but they also always need you. They don’t grow up and get potty-trained, and they won’t go off to college and learn to support themselves. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be that needed.

  Despite fear of methane poisoning, the weekend was fun—jaunts through the village, walks on the winter-swept beach, and games around the fire. But there are certain things that are no longer options when men are involved. Candid conversations, for instance.

  “Quite the snowy day out there, huh?” Husband One would venture as we all sat in silence.

  “Yes indeed,” Gal Pal One would respond. “Really coming down out there, really coming down.”

  Silence.

  “Anyone see that miniature village on the way in?” Gal Pal Three would venture.

  “Oh yes, it was great,” Husband Two would agree. “We should go back and check that out tomorrow; it looked really interesting.”

  Silence.

  “So,” Husband One would say. “Anyone hear the new Nickelback album?”

  Dead silence.

  When my high school girlfriends and I get together, the majority of our time together is spent talking about high school, men, recipes, our hopes and dreams, and general nonsense. There were times during the weekend when we would all be sitting around talking and suddenly realize that the conversation had taken a distinct turn.

  “That’s a great bedroom,” Jill would say, motioning to the design show currently playing on HGTV.

  “That’s exactly the type of window treatment I was thinking of doing in my guest bedroom,” Stacey said. “Do you think that could work?”

  “You probably need a Philips Cobalt 200 drill to get the curtain rod hung perfectly,” Rob interjected.

  This sparked a heated debate regarding the proper drill bits, whether or not a drywall plug was required, and how to properly change the electrical outlet beside the window to get it up to code. This was not how things happened at the sleepovers in The Baby-Sitters Clu
b.

  Because of the presence of the gentlemen, I also had to tone down my enthusiasm for all things sleepover-related.

  “Who brought the Twister?” I heard someone say shortly after we arrived, while I put away my clothes in the room Jess and I were sharing.

  “Oh, ha ha,” I said, running into the living room. “What’s that doing in there?” Three mud masks tumbled out of the box and I scrambled to pick them up before anybody noticed. “Here, let me take that from you,” I said, laughing.

  It had taken only two hours and I was already poised to be the girl whose piece of carpet was going to be in the furnace room.

  “So what should we do?” Stacey, our gracious host, asked.

  “Well,” I said, “has anyone seen The Omen? Rosemary’s Baby? The Fog? I just happen to have them in my—”

  “Let’s play Trivial Pursuit,” someone said. Fine, Trivial Pursuit it was. No worries, I assured myself. The game will go a couple of hours and then it will only be 11 P.M. In sleepover time, that was close to 7 P.M.

  The game ended at midnight. We were asleep at 12:05.

  The next day consisted of the very fun but entirely un-

  sleepover activity of antiquing followed by more board games.

  As a traditional kids’ sleepover, the weekend was an utter failure. My horror movies lay patiently in my overnight bag and nary a prank call was made. A dance party would have been wholly out of the question and a bra freezing would have been simply humiliating. But as a fun adult getaway, I was having a blast. With the exception of attempting to apply a mud mask to Cindy, I gave up trying to push my agenda on everyone and just enjoyed my weekend out of the city.

  When I got to work Monday morning, Jaclyn asked me about the weekend, and when I told her about Toby, she topped my story with the most horrific dog tale ever. In case the reader is eating cereal, as I was when I heard this disgusting tale, I will offer only the broad strokes. Jaclyn’s dog, Tucker, had been sick. Like any cute little dog that runs its household, he sleeps in the bed, and on Saturday morning, instead of waking up and smelling the coffee, Jaclyn awoke to the smell of dog crap. Which was running down her pillow. It was across her duvet, on the floor, and under the bed. It was, in short, a shit storm.