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CHAPTER 1
This is a very bad beginning.
I wish I were not the kind of guy who finds himself totally hungover in a yoga class on New Year's Day.
Unfortunately, I am that guy. Or at least, that's the guy I've become.
I have a massive throbbing in the front of my head. I am still dehydrated. Despite my nausea, I need something to eat, but it will have to wait. I realize that I forgot to shave, but at least I'm reasonably clean, and my mouth has been swabbed of its mealy, alcoholic sleep state. Despite a continuous blur of New Year's Eve vodka martini toasts, I know I made it back safely to my apartment last night. I can only hope my foggy state means that last night's debauched memories will get blurrier. (Why am I here, you might ask ... because given my life these days, yoga is the only thing keeping me sane.)
Right now, if we're being truthful, rather than retrieving best-forgotten drunken memories, I'm trying my best not to indulge in ogling any of the hot women surrounding me. But brother, it's damn hard not to. They are everywhere. Slim, yogafied bodies. Median age twenty-five. Minimal makeup and even more minimal layers of clothing. Everywhere my roving eye wanders, there's someone fair and fetching dead in my sights — and I am one of only five guys in a room of forty-five women, a wolf let loose amongst a flock of comely sheep. I want to be on my best behavior here — I don't want to screw up the one corner of my life that's working — and I suppose I could close my eyes and pretend to meditate, but honestly, given my miserable condition, I'd probably just fall asleep.
As the students file into the room, Gigi, my yoga teacher (and rock-and-roll guru) and the co-owner of the Thank Heaven Yoga Center, greets us, one by one. Her recall of names — unlike my own — is encyclopedic. She hugs me with profound conviction — she hugs nearly everyone, yet I still feel special — and wishes me a happy New Year.
"Rough night, baby doll?" A long-lost echo of Creole drawl flavors each word. Her once-over of me is nonjudgmental but nonetheless thorough.
"Reasonable enough," I reply, assuming (and hoping) that she's just teasing me, in a half-knowing way. Yet again, I regret my best friend Hutch's steering me toward that fourth, fifth, and sixth vodka martini.
"Well, you picked the absolute perfect place to be this morning, is all I can say," Gigi soothes. Her sprightly Asian girlfriend, Calypso, gives me my second hug of the year. Thank Heaven indeed for the hospitality of lipstick lesbians. Generous, feminine, and totally sexy, but never demanding or accepting anything in return.
As always, Gigi's music is fantastic. Today, once we start moving, she has some wild uptempo stuff at the beginning, everything from Janis Joplin to Mary J. Blige, and then over the next hour and a half, she segues into music that is slower in tempo and mood. Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, something classical (Fauré's Requiem perhaps), and then a lot of Coltrane at the end. Sadness in sound.
A legendary '70s groupie, in her sixties now, for ten years Gigi was "with the band," accumulating a trunkload of stories of brilliant musicians, famous concerts, tragic overdoses, and narrowly missed plane crashes. As she says over and over, it's a miracle she's still on this earth. Hence her yoga center's name: Thank Heaven.
And, thank heaven, but I fuckin' love being in class at Thank Heaven. This is yoga for the hardcore crowd. Although yoga is supposedly noncompetitive, I can't help that my Alpha nature requires that I go for the hardest variation of every pose, always pushing my limits as far as possible.
We're balancing upside down when Gigi offers a super-challenging headstand variation: switch the position of your hands while inverted. This requires not only balance but real balls. I'm willing to take the risk.
I manage — almost — but come crashing down a few seconds later. My basic headstand is rock solid, so I'm back up and balancing immediately, and once I feel steady enough, it's only one deep breath before I give it another try. And this time — Shazam! — I nail it.
This is exactly why I love yoga so goddamn much. The physical thrills, the challenges, and the tests are endless. Three years ago, in a typical quest to get laid, I let one lovely lady drag me to Gigi's yoga class, thinking it would be easy, breezy stretchy crap. Once the sweat started pouring out of me — and I saw that despite my workout routine, Gigi seemed about a thousand times stronger, more balanced, and of course infinitely more flexible than I was — I was hooked. I plunged in, becoming instantly addicted to the vigorous, hyper-athletic style of Thank Heaven's classes.
This style of yoga is called vinyasa, and it basically means "flow." You breathe in harmony through fast-flowing sequences until, after getting extremely warm and energized, you start lingering in shapes and moving inward. Always going deeper. By the time the last forward bends are done, by the time the final twist is taken, we are all drenched, yet calmed, from over two hours of movement. Sweetly exhausted, we are totally ready for rest. It is then that we lie down and let ourselves go into Corpse Pose, Savasana.
Gigi comes around, her hands smeared with a scented lotion — something embarrassingly cheerful, like "Peaches" from Kiss My Face. Her warm hands hover over my closed eyes so I can detect her presence, then she presses down expertly on my shoulders, releasing tons of tension I didn't even know I had. Then she's gone, moving on to the next student in the crowded room — maybe Lavender Tights Over Perfect Butt, the beautiful woman who's only a foot or two away from me.
The scent does its job: automatically I deepen my breath. The simpler, reptilian areas of the brain — the ones that process smell, the ones that guide my loins — are addressed. Surprisingly, the smell of this Duane Reade beauty product brings something back to me. My bargain-brand madeleine, as it were.
The one — the last and only one — to break my heart ... Shane.
* * *
As I take another deep breath, a vast, open, empty corridor of fuzzy memory opens until it comes back to me: Shane was never a big fragrance girl, but I know I've smelled this on her at least once before ... last summer at the beach, an impromptu day trip to Montauk.
Spontaneously, we decide to stay the night. We luck into a vacancy at the East Deck, a groovy beachside motel straight out of the '50s. In town, just as it's closing, we find a drugstore for toothpaste and saline and, because Shane's had a bit of sun, some peach-scented lotion to sooth her slightly pink shoulders. As we polish off a very cold bottle of a nice chardonnay (an essential that I did remember), I slather the cool, slick moisturizer on her warm back as she reads aloud recipes from an old issue of Gourmet.
The next morning, while she's in the shower, I return to the drugstore to grab a copy of the Sunday Times so that we can do the crossword on the drive back together. Then I procure some surprisingly great iced coffee and breakfast burritos plus an awesome sesame-noodle salad from the Ditch Witch, a local food stand.
Driving home, Shane does most of the puzzle herself, asking me only an occasional question, mostly just to include me out of politeness. Shane's actually much better than I am at the crossword. While I come from blue collar, TV-watching roots, she grew up in an intellectual family that played word games compulsively, with endless string quartets playing in the background. On multiple levels, she doesn't need my help. Curled up in the front seat, I find her intense concentration and autonomy charming, sexy even.
I remember how, two months ago — the morning after our first night together, lingering in bed — Shane tried to tutor me on the finer points of crosswords but ended up scolding more than instructing.
"Stop! You're definitely not ready to start doing them in pen yet," she chides me, smiling. "You can't just jot down the first answer that pops into your head that fits and commit to it in ink. That kind of impulsiveness will get you into tons of trouble later on in the puzzle. The whole thing will end up a total mess."
I yield to the overwhelming impulse to kiss her again. "Oh, will it?" Shane holds her ground as I nuzzle her neck. "You're not giving your brain a chance to find other solutions, look for other meanings, explore other possibilities," she warns me. I continue kissing her as she lectures: "Plus, skipping around isn't good unless you're really stuck. It's better to work one corner and see where it takes you." I continue my quest to disrupt her concentration.
"And there are some frequently used words that you really should memorize," she tells me. I take my sensual exploration further. "I mean, you'll never use them in real life — take 'ret,' which means soaking flax or hemp — but it's used all the time, and ..." She moans softly. Puzzle temporarily abandoned, Shane's back in my arms. "Okay, you win this round," she concedes. I've won indeed.
(Please note, before we go too much further, that these are my shining moments. In the mornings, I am apt to be groggy and hungover, not a hunter-gatherer of impromptu picnics, much less ever clear-headed enough for the crossword. In fact, these are probably the only episodes in my narrative where I am the stand-up, responsible good guy you're rooting for, instead of the loser who totally fucks everything up with Shane.)
But the truth is, six months ago, if Shane had asked me, in that rental car, high on the smell of sand and surf and with the sweet scent of peach lotion rising from her shoulders, I might have considered switching gears and given up my dreams of nightlife glory and hipster moguldom. I'd have started studying for the LSAT or whatever, striving for respectability. But then again, Shane would never have asked or even wanted me to become a corporate drone. Anyway, it's all just theory now. Even if it was only six months ago, I was a lot younger then.
Now the lesson's tattooed across my forehead with the invisible, indelible ink of experience: Never, ever get near Shane territory again. Never invest so much in anyone romantically that you lose your head. The Buddha of casual sex, I remain detached at all costs.
* * *
Minutes later, Savasana ends. I have contented myself with Coltrane and steady breathing and fantasies that Shane will someday forgive me. Today, I have gone no further in Corpse Pose than jazz appreciation and the potent, painful nostalgia brought on by a cheap, peachy fragrance. Not profound peace. At best, aimless drifting.
And probably that's as far as I'll ever get.
CHAPTER 2
After class, I can't wait to eat something. A greasy bacon cheeseburger and an even greasier platter of onion rings call out my name.
Yet another contrast between my yoga comrades and me is that I'm a carnivore through and through, especially when hungover. Thank Heaven usually has some after class "offerings" donated by earnest vegan yogis — shapeless homemade lumps that I suppose are probably some sort of indigestible granola/oatmeal/molasses cookies designed be washed down with well-intentioned herbal tea. This is NOT the meal I want to start the new year with — not by a long stretch.
Before you know it, still sweaty against the January cold, I'm at the Knife & Fork, perched at my favorite counter stool. Sully, the owner, stands guard over the grill while his son, Sully Jr., takes orders and works the cash register.
The Knife & Fork is totally Classic with a capital C. Twelve seats at the Formica counter, each covered in red Naugahyde. A neon sign out front. Stainless steel panels and terrazzo floors reveal how little has changed since the '50s, including some gnarly old dudes who seem suspiciously close to homelessness, always sipping the abundantly refillable bad coffee.
Granted, there are four giggling Asian polysexual hipsters just coming back from clubbing, but beyond that, there's no way to tell which decade you're in. I may be a bit of a food and wine snob, but still, it's damn hard to trump a good diner.
My Pop runs a small family joint in Goshen, a small town of 13,000 people in Upstate New York, called The Grill. Unlike the Knife & Fork, The Grill is completely lacking in style. Fresh from the Marines, Pop bought the place just before I was born, and it never occurred to him to change one iota of its beige, '70s non-décor or its nondescript menu. The food is actually pretty decent although mostly pretty bland. Nothing there would ever surprise you, particularly as nothing has changed in thirty years. Imagination was never Pop's strong suit. Nonetheless, beyond the total lack of style, Pop does keep the place afloat — maybe because he's totally content with being Small Time. Unlike me, he's pillar of solidity and dependability.
At the Knife & Fork, I start with a milkshake, hoping it will quickly sop up any remaining alcohol and provide the simple sugar rush that I need after Gigi's class. It actually does help, but when my burger arrives, I decide to be honest and order a little hair of the dog, too. Thank God the Fork serves beer. Two Heinekens later, I've devoured everything in front of me, including a slice of Boston cream pie. Over a cup of coffee on the house — Sully Sr. is on autopilot after years of sobering me up and getting me through hangovers — I'm feeling relatively civilized again.
By now, it's almost four in the afternoon. Time to head home.
As completely delinquent as I am, I manage to be reliable towards one woman; on the way home I call my Mom, as I do like clockwork on Sundays and every major and minor holiday. Not the chatty type, I don't think Pop has ever answered the phone in his life, but I know my mom takes real pleasure every time I check in with her. We're generally low on "safe topics" — gone are the days of discussing my classes, and obviously my love life isn't "Mom Material" — but nonetheless, no matter how briefly, I actually do feel a little better every time I speak to her.
As I listen to Mom's recounting of her New Year's Eve at home with her grandkids watching the ball drop in Times Square on their TV, I'd like to say it was an accident, but it's an accident that happens on a pretty much daily basis: On my way home, I stop by the bridge gallery (the lowercase thing is their idea, not mine), which is five blocks from my pad, and gaze inside. Of course, on New Year's Day the gallery is closed, but I usually don't go in anyway. Arty video is projected on Mylar on the front window: an endless loop of a man and woman blowing smoke into each other's faces. It's kind of hot and kind of creepy at the same time. I pretend to check out the current exhibit of some postmodernist, neo-Expressionist whatever ... but that's not why I'm here. It is legitimately on my way home — although probably going directly down Essex, the way I always used to go, would be faster — but I somehow always end up on this block.
It was at this gallery that I last saw Shane, three months after things collapsed. Andrea, her college roommate, was having her first group show of paintings, something I would probably have blown off but knew that Shane would not. Andrea's relatively talented, enormously ambitious, and fiercely loyal to her friends — which is weird when you consider that most everyone I know feels that Andrea doesn't really like them. It may just be her art-snob superiority, but she somehow gives you the feeling that she disapproves of you, yet is also too cool to really express the true level of her disdain. Unlike me, Shane is one of the few people who meet her standards.
Looking at Andrea's large canvas but feeling my gaze on the back of her neck, Shane turns to me, almost in slow motion. Her look is atypically enigmatic — one of Shane's many virtues is her directness in all things — yet, in this moment, a galaxy of contradictory emotions is hurled my way — anger, hurt, and regret are the most luminous constellations — but before I can respond, she pulls back. She turns to her group and departs with them, somewhere between flight and hauteur. I sense it would be unwise — even life threatening — to chase after her, so I stay there, entrenched in stationary retreat. And now, like DiMaggio putting daily flowers on Marilyn's grave, I find myself compulsively drifting past here every day in a vigil that only reinforces my unredeemability.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Downward Dog"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Edward Vilga.
Excerpted by permission of Diversion Publishing Corp..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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