James' World 2

Raleigh McCool | Longreads | September 5, 2024 | 3,082 words (11 minutes)

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It’s my first day of spin class, and I am in the darkest corner of the room. My feet are crammed into shoes I rent from the front desk—little black Velcro things with cleats on the bottoms. The feet of other riders are strapped into sleek Nikes splashed in bright reds and volt blues and glow-in-the-dark neons. Dangling from my perch upon the bike’s seat, my feet strain at the pedals as I attempt to jam the cleats until they fit. I flail around for a second, until finally, a satisfying snap. I’m connected.

To the bike, I mean. Outside of class, I’m terribly lonely. That’s how I’ve ended up here.

There’s a tweet I wish I’d written about how the real miracle was Jesus having a dozen friends in his 30s, and as someone who has now outlived Jesus, I can testify to the divine work it takes to have friends. With few exceptions, all my friends are married, having kids, and buying houses in the ’burbs. Achieving domestic bliss has really started to cut into my friends’ hangout time.

In the bike room, my feet are tethered to the pedals and I begin to spin my legs around in warm-up. I stand, pedal like I’m riding down Ridgewood Road to my friend Ross’s house—he lived down the street, and in the summer I’d bike over, and we’d hole up in his attic, playing video games and the dice baseball game we invented. Riding my bike as a kid, my bowl cut whooshed in the hot Tennessee air. Here it’s pulled back with a headband, and the room is dark and cool, and the instructor announces we’ll start in a couple minutes. She comes up to me, introduces herself, thanks me for being there. Her name’s Karson. She makes sure my cleats are clipped in and that I have water, tugging on the handlebars to ensure everything is in place.

When class starts, the lights go out. “We ride to the beat of the music,” Karson says. The music is a pop remix I don’t recognize, and it’s playing at a volume that could raise the dead. She helps us find the cadence, “Right, left, right; right, left, right.” Karson announces that when the beat drops, we’ll rise up out of our seats, and we’ll ride, and we’ll, like, drop our elbows, or . . . something? And then, it happens. The music wobble-wobbles, and the lights flash on. Every last one of the 40 or so bikers is on their feet and bouncing up and down, their hands clutching the handlebars as they perform synchronized push-ups, even as their feet maintain the pulsing beat. I do my best to match, but I’m off, my legs too fast and my body too slow. Or maybe it’s the other way around. All around the room, everyone has got it, and it’s not just that their legs are pumping synchronously or that their push-ups are perfectly timed—it’s some ineffable flair, an extra zhuzh of swag that my bike neighbors are adding. I sort of want to pause and be like, “Well, look at you go!” but the lights go dim again, and I am positively gasping. I use the dark to snatch at my towel, slug my water, and sit.

We are halfway through the first song.

In a last-ditch effort to make friends at my gym, I recently plucked out my headphones and stepped up to the squat rack in silence. The only sounds were the clang of weights, the hum of the AC, and my grunty breaths. The idea was to signal to the people around me that I was open for connection, conversation, or a spot. I’d been going to that gym for the past year, and I’d never talked to a soul—each of us with our headphones on, in our own little worlds of isolation.

The no-headphones thing didn’t really work. A couple guys asked for a bench press spot, but providing a spot for these men strangely did not lead to close personal friendship, which put it in good company alongside organizing a wiffle ball game, throwing a birthday party, working at a restaurant, drinking alone at bars, and scrolling mindlessly on my phone, none of which had led to friendships either.

There’s a tweet I wish I’d written about how the real miracle was Jesus having a dozen friends in his 30s, and as someone who has now outlived Jesus, I can testify to the divine work it takes to have friends.

My 30s have been weird: isolating and demoralizing, a depressing gnarl in my stomach. A bone-deep, soul-swamped loneliness I can’t seem to text or swipe my way out of. Days alone in a crowded gym, nights alone on my couch, scrolling and hoping for connection and washing down hope with a handful of IPAs instead. I’m ashamed to be lonely, ashamed to ask for friends in the first place. Needing someone? How embarrassing.

I’ve read and listened to all the articles and podcasts: the friendship recession is upon us. I’m not alone in being alone, which knowledge does not help. I follow the results of my Google search on “how to make friends” to a T: I cohost a bowling night, join a flag football team. The bowling turnout is abysmal, and our flag football team is so bad we’ve all turned against each other. One day I search for group fitness classes near me, and a spin studio pops up: Full Ride Cycling is just down the street.

The next time the beat drops, Karson adds another move to the dance, a little twist, and then a lean, and there’s a moment when she instructs us to “tap (y)our ass back” while riding, which seems simple enough when she does it and yet, my attempts to pump my legs and tighten my core and hurl my ass backward to the beat prove too much for my body altogether. I sit my ass down, and it stays there for the rest of class.

Somewhere in the latter half of my first spin class, I burst into tears. The room has gone completely dark. “This bike room is not about competition,” Karson says. “It’s not about getting it right, or how it looks.” There are two candles lit, the light fluttering up like she’s telling a ghost story; Karson blows them out. “It’s about showing up,” she says. “It’s about trying.” There’s no choreography or beat to keep, and in the utter darkness, I slump my shoulders, looking up at the ceiling I can’t see. “You belong here,” she says, somewhere out there in the dark. “Every one of you. You are welcome.” The song’s too loud to hear my sniffles. I sit and slowly pedal.

When I was little, we passed communion around on little trays—matzos wafers to crack apart, tiny plastic shot glasses of grape juice jiggling on a saucer. I loved church. All the people, our voices harmonizing together, the buzzy electrical currents of love, the huge beautiful mystery of God.

I was a good kid. I obeyed God, followed all the rules—I memorized the verses and respected my elders, didn’t lust or use the Lord’s name in vain. No one yelled it or painted it blood-red on a sign, but they told us: to disobey was sin. And sinners went to hell.

It didn’t hit me until decades later, how afraid I’d been. Fire. Eternal separation. How the flames singed the corners of everything, a childhood charred by fear. The story of Jesus still yanks at me—God on earth, grabbing hold of the lost, insisting they belong—but I don’t really go to church anymore. The fear is still near, hot to the touch.

Sometimes, though, I miss it. The harmonies, the kind smiles, the whole messy lot of us together. When I miss it enough, I rise early and go to an Episcopal church down the street. When it’s time for communion, I file in line with strangers, and at the altar, the reverend hands me a hunk of torn-off bread and a goblet of wine. “This is the body of Christ broken for you,” she says, looking deeply into my eyes. “This is the blood of Christ shed for you,” she says, handing me the cup. When she finally unlocks her gaze, I close my eyes, let the bread and wine melt on my tongue.

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Illustration by CLR. Stock art by M_Light_Zone/Getty Images.

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