It’s tough to keep fit when you smoke a pack a day, start drinking cocktails in the early afternoon, and subsist on a steady diet of red meat and Golden Oreos, so after last year’s historic election, I felt like maybe it was time for some change. My goal wasn’t necessarily to “stay fit” (the moment for that had long since passed). I would have been content just to slow the atrophy that must inevitably follow from my aversion to physical exercise.
I haven’t run any more than a block or two since high school, and stationary bikes and the like always struck me as more than a little emasculating–a man shouldn’t exert himself for no reason other than vanity. What I needed was a game–something competitive like billiards or horseshoes but just a tiny bit more physically demanding. You can’t play tennis in the winter, and even in the context of my own meager athletic abilities, I’m an outright disgrace on the basketball court. What did intrigue me was squash.
Squash was big in my neighborhood growing up. A lot of my friends had been playing since they were little kids at the Merion Cricket Club, a beautiful facility but not exactly a magnet for Philadelphia’s Jewish community. On my trips back home over the last few years, I’d get the occasional invite to go over there for a game, and though I had no natural aptitude for this sport or any other, I enjoyed it.
One thing to note about squash is that despite its elitist reputation, I’m reliably informed by Wikipedia that the game got its start as a sort of wall ball for street kids in 16th-century France. Since then it has evolved a little bit, but it’s still more checkers than chess–a kid’s game that has players mindlessly chasing a little ball around the court.
And it’s a small court. You never have to run more than a few feet in any direction, with the result that my poor physical conditioning doesn’t necessarily leave me feeling nauseated within minutes of the first volley. (Which is good, because modern squash is kind of pretentious, and throwing up on the court is an automatic DQ.)
It turns out there’s a very nice club with a couple of squash courts just a block from my office. I decided to try to join, and, much to my surprise, I was accepted. I’d been blackballed from every club I’d ever attempted to join prior to this–including three separate times in just four years at college.
Not that I was bitter about it back then. Like Groucho Marx, I was sure I didn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. I tried one place twice, but only so I could be doubly sure they had high standards. Fortunately, my new club isn’t terribly discriminating in whom they allow to join (I even saw Bob Barr there once), and it turns out being accepted isn’t so bad.
I started going over two and three times a week to play with one of my colleagues, an hour break in the afternoon to get a little exercise. Taking a smoke break may not be socially acceptable any longer, but it dawned on me only recently that my more health-conscious peers were running a similar scam and managing to avoid any disapproving looks.
Still, it’s not clear that I’m making a whole lot of progress in my overall fitness. I’m not losing any weight or developing an A-Rod-like physique. Then again, the goal was only to offset some of my bad habits. Unfortunately I’m having some trouble even meeting that rather unambitious goal. The thing about the club is that the drinks are cheap, and you don’t even see the bill until the end of the month. It’s like drinking for free.
It’s actually possible that I’m losing ground here and am in worse shape than when I embarked on this campaign. But I’m almost 30, I’m married, and the country is well on its way to universal health care, so I’m not too worried about the downward trajectory. Meanwhile, there’s a whole slew of activities at the club for someone of my physical characteristics. There’s chess, billiards, and card games. There’s even a steak night. The only problem is I have to go outside to smoke–which is a little more physical activity than I’m looking for after a couple of drinks and a ribeye.
MICHAEL GOLDFARB
