I attack her meekly for a few more reps before I gain enough confidence to go harder. Spurred on by her enthusiasm, I turn up the power until she’s lungeing to absorb me, grinning like I’m her child who just won a school prize or something. Fist connects with padding. Flexed foot connects with a block. My smile connects with a stranger’s. I swipe and attack until there’s no oxygen left in my lungs, and then we switch over. I can tell she’s not giving it her all as she lays into me, but it feels fine.
When we’re both sweaty, giddy messes, the instructor calls it quits. We return the equipment to the corner, everyone smiling, everyone moist, everyone friendly.
‘Right ladies,’ she claps again. ‘Game time.’
‘You’ll love this,’ Charlotte whispers. ‘It’s the best bit.’
‘Right, sit in a circle everyone. Newbies, this will be weird for two minutes, and then will be super fun. It’s just some kid-like cardio games to release any excess nervous energy before you have to face the universe again.’
We all sit inwards, cross-legged, like pass the parcel is about to begin. ‘So, this game is based on “Fishes in the Sea”, a game that you may’ve played when you were little. But we’ve changed up the words a bit, so you ladies can reclaim any negative labels you may’ve been called in the past.’ She walks around us and starts patting us, one by one, on the head. ‘Needy, crazy, nagging, desperate.’ She doles out the words like she’s allocating school teams. ‘Needy, crazy, nagging, desperate. Needy, crazy …’ She gently pats my head at ‘crazy’ and it’s the first time I’ve been called it that doesn’t make me want to instantly cry. In fact, I hear a giggle and realise it’s me. When we’ve each been allocated our word, she explains the rules. When our label is called, we have to get up and start running around the outside. Sometimes she’ll call ‘times are changing’ and we’ll have to run in the opposite direction. Sometimes she’ll call ‘when they go low’ and we have to run on our tiptoes and yell back ‘we go high’. Sometimes she’ll call ‘progress is one step forward’ and we have to run backwards. Finally, whenever she calls ‘the patriarchy’s coming’, we have to race back to our space, and the last one to sit down is out.
It’s a whole new realm of bonkers. I crane my neck around, trying to make eye contact with Charlotte to make a ‘this is crazy’ face, but she’s nodding and smiling like it’s totally normal. Everyone is.
‘Right, let’s get going. NAGGING!’
A quarter of the room full of otherwise normal-looking women stand up and start running around the circle.
After five minutes, I totally and utterly get it.
‘CRAZY!’ I’m up and I’m jogging, my heart thumping, trying to keep pace with the rest of the crazies.
‘WHEN THEY GO LOW!’ I rise up onto my tiptoes and we all laugh at how hard it is to run like that.
‘TIMES ARE A CHANGING!’ I almost twist my ankle as I spin to change direction.
‘NEEDY!’ Another quarter of the room hop up and start running with us. Every single one of us is smiling, in that free way that hurts your face. My trainers thud on the wood. My arms swing by my sides.
‘THE PATRIARCHY’S COMING!’ We all squeal and peg it back to our spots. I thrust my body forward, chuck my legs into a crossed position and land my arse heavily onto the ground. Charlotte, a needy, comes in last. She grins as she faces outwards, shrugging, unbothered, her face red from running. I smile at her as the word ‘DESPERATE!’ is called and feet thump around me once again.
‘CRAZY!’ Oh, me again. We all laugh, acknowledging the total lack of break we’ve had from the last run. Our breath comes out thick and heavy. It’s hard to run fast when you’re laughing so much. We run backwards, we scurry back to our places, we swap directions. NEEDY, DESPERATE, CRAZY, DESPERATE, NAGGING, NEEDY, NAGGING, CRAZY … I’ve never laughed at these words before. They are words that I’m usually incapable of having a sense of humour about. Because these words are always loaded. Even if the man holds his hands up and says, ‘Oh come on, I was only joking’, you cannot laugh, not properly, because these words are never a joke, they are only ever a method of control. But today, times are a changing. I run and run and I see these silly labels for the silly labels they are. I shoot back to a memory of Ryan standing over me as I cried in the corner because he told me I was too fat and he couldn’t get an erection because of it. ‘God, why are you crying, AGAIN? You’re crazy.’ And I see the craziness of that word being used, when my behaviour was the most normal response to what he’d just said. ‘I wasn’t crazy,’ I whisper as I run, thud thud thudding on the floor. ‘You made me crazy.’
I’ve never truly believed that before, no matter how many times Megan protested it. But with endorphins surging through my blood, and other women jogging around and laughing at that word with me, the message begins to bed in. It curls up in my soul, nestling in, and part of me releases a tiny squib of tension I’ve been holding in for years.
Nobody stays out for very long. The instructor keeps saying ‘Oh, don’t worry, just join back in’ so we can all continue playing. The air is loaded with giddy. We land our feet in unison. Our hair swings madly from side to side. We apologise whenever one of us gets too excited and accidentally runs into the back of someone else.
‘WHEN THEY GO LOW!’
‘CRAZY, DESPERATE!’
‘THE PATRIACHY’S COMING!’
In the last round, she calls ‘WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER’, the signal that everyone has to get up and run in a circle. It becomes more of a conga line than a circle – too many of us in the hall to really run properly. We hold each other’s clammy shoulders, getting one another’s sweat smeared into our palms, we push each other through the tiredness, draining ourselves of the very last droplets of energy. My face feels redder than it’s ever felt in my life. I’m sweating out of every pore of my body. We all are. Ugly and breathless, but smiling and powerful.
‘Right, game over! Let’s dance it out to finish!’ The speakers crank on. ‘Just a Girl’ by No Doubt blasts out. We all whoop like we’re in a nightclub. I’m skanking like I used to as a teen, and everyone around me is doing the same. No one is dancing to look pretty. Half of us are screaming along with the lyrics. I jump, flick more sweat around. I’ve never felt happier than in this moment. Charlotte is next to me, yelling along even louder. Her sweaty arms are around me. We pogo up and down. I feel drunk with happiness. Lost in whatever is happening. We all are. We scream out the final words, punching our fists into the air, swinging some of the bags. Then the song dies, and it’s quiet again. We become two dozen female strangers, soaked through in sweat, hugging one another in a tiny dilapidated hall.
‘Well done ladies. That was a great one. Oh my God, it is hot in here. Luckily the shower is just about working.’
We let go of one another but the bond doesn’t feel broken. Charlotte is eyeing me, her cheeks raised with her smile. ‘So, how did you find it?’
‘That is the weirdest but best thing I’ve done in a while.’