The Madwoman and the Roomba

by Sandra Tsing Loh

  Meanwhile, red meat? Woot, woot! It’s a red meat festival! Red meat you may have at every meal. Atkins does not mind if the cows themselves were force-fed McDonald’s while strapped in front of TVs watching bad reality shows featuring the Kardashians. Not only does Atkins not mind, Atkins invites you to top that red meat with bacon, eggs, and blue cheese because—that’s right. No carbs! Woot, woot! You might add a tomato but it should be, as they say, and I quote, “a SMALL tomato.”

  Going from the low-fat quasi-vegetarian diet I had been on into the Devil’s Lair of Atkins is surreal. As if in a dream, I find myself standing in my weekly farmer’s market and realizing . . . I can’t eat anything here! These colorful sample slices of peach, nectarine, Fuji apple? Corn and sweet potatoes? Vegan honey? Buckets of plutonium! What can I eat? Well, my friends, in slow motion, I crumple my canvas Trader Joe’s bags, throw them into the Volvo, and drive myself to In-N-Out, where I order a protein style (no bun) Double-Double.

  I have not had a cheeseburger in over ten years. It is a religious experience. And, horribly, I am so sorry to report? In a bit over a month, substituting a daily salad for lunch with an In-N-Out Double-Double, I dropped seven pounds. I’m not kidding. I do not know how this is possible. I have eaten so many In-N-Out burgers while driving, even when I make myself a snack in my kitchen, I find myself taking it out to the car so I can eat it over the steering wheel.

  In a Spin

  NOW I HAVE an amazing colon. I’m dropping weight.

  I have all this energy.

  I’m entering a phase we might call Survivor’s Guilt Olympics.

  In the upswing of my bipolar mania, at my yuppie gym, I find myself drawn to the spinning room. I peer in through the glass. For as long as I can remember, it has been a regular, brightly lit workout room, with rows of bikes. Overnight, it has been transformed into a kind of disco, with black walls and flashing neon lights. What on earth goes on in there? Sometimes, at the end of a class, packed with sweaty, euphoric, middle-aged cyclists you’ll see ghostly wall projections with people’s names on them—“Ashley!”—next to how far they had biked— To Tokyo! I think. I didn’t have my good glasses on. It seemed far. And international. And exciting.

  I study the schedule. Spinning class at 6:30 a.m. is a bridge too far, even on Tokyo time. 8:30 a.m. seems more civilized, but you can’t just walk in. You have to reserve a bike by downloading the gym’s app— Check! And then clicking on the bike you want— But no, here it’s the day before, and the class is already full! Yegads!

  My competitive instincts are now strung out to the max. Mind you, I don’t even know how to spin—and as I said, I hate biking. But the thought that I’m somehow being denied this magical experience is making me feel all jumpy and strung out and Lance Armstrong-y. Refreshing my browser and reading the fine print, I realize the booking window opens exactly twenty-six hours in advance! There’s a digital clock ticking down! I grab a Powerade and ready myself to beat all the others! I will not be denied my spin.

  So I am now setting my alarm the day before at 6:25 a.m. so I can book a bike at exactly 6:30. The alarm goes off, I zip downstairs to get my phone with the gym’s app, zip back up to get back into bed. Then, with a scream, at 6:29 a.m., I realize I left my reading glasses downstairs. The print’s too tiny to see. I sprint back down. I’m not even in the saddle and my heart rate is up to 150! But—

  Ding! I’m in!

  At 6:31 there are two bikes left, and one is mine, mine, mine!

  I arrive the next morning, amped up, even though I have no idea how to spin. Sonya, our Amazon-like spinning instructress, approaches me. She asks whether I am wearing cycling shoes. I do not know what those are. No matter. She fetches metal toe-holders that look like tiny bear traps. I’m getting in deep.

  All the arriving cyclists are very excited. No one is under the age of forty-five. No matter: all wear cut-off shirts and bike pants and backward caps. They’re a team. And here we go, cycling, to the B-52’s “Love Shack.” Sonya exhorts us to greet one another and exchange high-fives.

  “Woo hoo!” everyone yells. I’ve discovered a cult! I love it!

  “Go to 70 percent of your max!” Sonya cries out. “Play with your edge!” I ignore that and just continue on the easiest gear possible.

  Point being: I’m spinning!

  I sing along to the next tune, Duran Duran, no apologies: “Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand!”

  Getting Sirius

  I REMEMBER ONE TIME being very annoyed with my engineer friend Ned. His house’s solar panels made electric energy, which in turn powered his Tesla: “So I’m driving on sun!” I was forced to watch a video screen of Ned’s car’s extremely self-congratulatory energy system. Arrows fussily flowed around the engine as if to say, “Hey, look what I’m doing now!” Ned excitedly showed me how when we were going downhill: “I am literally making electricity. Right now.” Never mind that every twenty-nine miles you have to “plug the car in” so it could quietly commune with its Martian brethren.

  But Costco is amazing.

  My Volvo has been dying and . . .

  Just for this month, there’s a crazy deal where I can lease a hybrid electric Chevy Volt for under $200 a month, and get $700 in Costco cash and a several thousand dollar rebate from the state of California.

  The government Jerry Brown made is essentially paying me to drive clean. With my clean colon. I’m printing money—or at least Costco cash!

  But driving my new Volt, I get confused very quickly.

  “It doesn’t go in reverse!” I scream at Charlie, trying to back out of the driveway. I am anxiously tapping the gas and revving it and pumping the brake and I still can’t hear the engine. “What’s wrong with this car?”

  “I think you need to give it power!” he yells.

  “Aha!”

  Now that I know how to drive it, I immediately become smug myself. I feel so virtuous when I’m on electricity, like such a failure when we go to gas.

  But my pains are assuaged by Sirius XM radio, the music service for old people. They have stations like:

  “The Bridge”

  “The Coffeehouse”

  “Shoes Off Radio.” Shoes off!

  “Margaritaville,” which is all Jimmy Buffett (and why not?)

  Or just, you know, “the Eagles.”

  This is SO my demographic—they are channeling my inner thoughts! But mostly I do the mixes, like:

  “Real Jazz”

  When that’s too real, I switch to adult contemporary . . .

  “Watercolors”

  Too distractingly splashy? Now comes. . .

  “Spa”

  Too edgy?

  How about “Nail Spa”? Yes!

  With my Jamaican Rum Yankee Candle car air freshener, I’ll never leave the Hotel California!

  Me and My Massage Chair

  AS IF IN A continual waking dream, here I am again. Costco.

  I have been coming to Costco for twenty-five years. My adult life has been defined by the stages of Costco. So many memories are from here. The first time I took my dad’s Chinese wife Helen here, how she ran down the halls in her white tennies, afraid the bargains would be snatched away. The time Hannah and Sally’s cousin Wayne, small enough at two to be seated in the cart, suddenly let loose an explosion of pee over the Capri tomatoes with a sound like shattering glass. The time a teen Hannah and I caught our first Pokémon GO Ninetales in the returns line.

  I step into the entry “gallery” in the Glendale Costco, eternally curious. Look at these wonderfully strange products!

  The green Canadian-made duffle bags that won’t quite fit into airline overhead compartments (I’ve made that mistake). Lady’s Power Stretch Capris (four words that should not be in the same sentence). VSOP cognac. Boogie boards. I remember one time there were actually coffins.

  But then I see IT. My heart stops.

  Before I describe IT, let’s take a step back.

  I admit I am a massage glut
ton. I’m the sort of person who wonders why, like Madonna, I may not get a massage every day. When I do treat myself to this “luxury,” a slightly skanky Groupon 30-percent-off angle is typically involved. It’s akin to being handed a fluffy spa robe and towel, but only one slightly moldy spa sandal.

  Most recently, I’ve opted for mall “chair massages.”

  Oh yes. You know the type of place. It’s not an actual spa with private rooms. It’s like those quickie-massage places you see in airports. Here, a handful of defeated-looking pedestrians in their street clothes slump over chairs, towels over their backs, all dignity surrendered. Depressed-looking attendants in polo shirts rub their shoulders while gazing woodenly into the middle distance. It’s a veritable land of Unhappy Endings.

  “The Massage Store” . . . Like “Nighthawks,” it should be the subject of an Edward Hopper painting, everyone’s skin in greenish tones.

  Anyway, for years, like you, I’d pass these massage-on-the-go places and I would feel sorry for the sad-sack rubes who would risk infection and disease for the touch of a sullen stranger.

  But then, you know what? Overnight I became one of those people! I went to the mall telling myself I was only picking up Charlie’s annual (because it is thirty-four dollars) bottle of Kiehl’s shampoo. But then, feigning self-surprise, I found myself suddenly zigzagging left into “Healing Hands.”

  How did it go? To be honest, fifteen minutes later, I felt as besmirched—and yet as secretly elated—as if I had just used Tinder. The beauty is that the transaction is so simple, and clear. There are no appointments. You just walk in and, within sixty seconds, no questions asked, Asian—yes, they are—masseurs drape you over a chair with a—hopefully—clean towel on it and start massaging your shoulders.

  It’s so much better than a relationship—which I always experience as way too much talk and way too little massage.

  Kaitlin, of course, destroyed my bubble: “Do you know how much those people make? Do the math! They’re charging twelve dollars to rub your body. Since most of the overhead goes to the store and management, someone is getting four dollars to palpate your flabby arms. Don’t you feel violated? You’re certainly violating them. It’s like those Korean foot massage places, human sweatshops with little gray towels so worn out you can’t even see the Chi symbol on them.”

  “Well, I did feel guilty,” I protest, “of course I did. But I tip them like 40 percent!”

  “Which is like five dollars!”

  “But it’s still 40 percent,” I repeat, my cheeks flushing in confusion.

  But never mind all that.

  Because, here now, at Costco, the granter of dreams, is . . . The Massage Chair.

  The chocolate-colored leatherette behemoth-like Osaki 2000. $2,999.

  My very own Eurobear. My Sugar Daddy. Waiting for me to get on his lap.

  It sits before a case of engagement rings. As though to say, after the engagement, after many years, you will need the massage chair. Although to be honest, at Costco, what with the salad spinners next to beach towels, no narrative can really be read.

  True, Sally and I once saw a dead man at Costco. There was a sheet over a body with wee man’s dress shoes sticking out by the printer ink. The EMTs packing him up were unhurried. Although I, too, feel I sometimes can’t go on after comparing laser printer inks.

  The only problem is that there’s a twenty-year-old Latino guy in cargo shorts already auditioning the chair. His expression is masked behind dark, wrap-around sunglasses, gently vibrating.

  When I circle back ten minutes later, now there is an Armenian grandmother, with purplish hair downy as a chicken’s, hanging on for dear life. Her daughter, in blue Lycra leggings, holding a baby, lecturing, is making her do it. It looks like grandma needs a seat belt. Her hands gripping the Osaki are like claws. She is not happy.

  I circle away again to get a giant tub of Fancy Mixed Nuts. And when I return?

  The massage chair is free.

  There is no Purel in sight, and no matter. Massage chairs. Not for the shy. I settle down in the still-warm vessel, ass cheeks lightly clenched.

  I lift the magic remote. Click on “Relax.”

  Like a miniature Skylab, or robotic clam shell, the massage chair groans and tilts my feet up, head backward. This is serious.

  It encloses me in its soft leatherette labial folds.

  Whining rollers begin on my back and shoulders. This is very good. Shiatsu. Deep tissue.

  Now pincers close on my arms, irrevocably. “You’re going nowhere,” the chair seems to say. The pressure is not entirely unpleasant. I give in to it.

  With a moan, this rolling bar descends from my neck and shoulders, down my spine, to my butt.

  Oh my God.

  It’s not like I see God, but a portal opens.

  The emotion is intense. I want to get on bended knee and propose marriage to the Osaki. In the original German. And present it with a formal bouquet, like Der Rosenkavalier.

  My hip feels amazing. I exhale with that long sensual sigh heard only by the middle-aged people assuming child’s pose in yoga.

  But $2,999. Too much!

  In line, a Costco guy named Alberto catches up with me. “Just for today,” he says, “I can mark the Osaki down $1,000 to $1,999!”

  And here’s the thing—I can use $700 in Costco cash Jerry Brown gave me for my electric car! I’m printing money!

  Anyway: you can’t take it with you.

  The assembly almost kills us, in particular, Charlie, who has to crawl under it to attach the footrest, whose collapse would literally crush his skull.

  But from then on, I know pleasure.

  Middle age: it’s not so bad.

  Each night I sit in the massage chair with a glass of wine.

  In Sirius radio from the big computer come the gentle tones of the Spa Channel. While my new Roomba (also on sale) vacuums.

  Instead of guilt-making Third World help, I have happy robots.

  #winning.

  I am at peace.

  Villager Number 31

  “Storm of Joy”

  AND SO IT GOES, another fall.

  Hannah took the SAT, texted me the results. She is happy with her “Second-tier-UC-possibly-a-hair-below-average” score. When I make her take it a second time three months later, she will score ten points lower, and will refuse to take it again. And scene.

  Meanwhile, Sam is at community college. Thriving. Tiger Aunt reports: “For the first time in years, Sam is sleeping eight hours a night and is awake for all of his classes. He has put his schedule on an Excel spreadsheet and is getting straight As. He’s pulling it together.”

  He even has time to help others.

  Hannah has some AP bio homework so confounding she’s not objecting to help. I post the problem on our family e-mail thread of ten people. This includes my computer programmer brother, my sister, her scientist husband, UC Davis physics professor “Uncle” Greg . . .

  Even the adults are confused by the problem, but Sam jumps right in, quite coherent:

  In the first picture she has the wrong sign for the .3M. The core increased in mass (positive), not decreased (negative). The point is that everything wants to find equilibrium (a balance point). Example: If I was driving through Alaska during the winter and I opened my window, the temperature inside my car would drop until it was roughly the outdoor temperature. If I were to open the window while driving through Death Valley in summer, the temperature inside the car would increase. If I open the window while driving through PG, I just get the wind whipping through my hair.

  Why not start there and if there’s still confusion I can try explaining more?

  Sincerely,

  Rarely too busy to help a cousy

  (Where was he when Sally and I were doing middle school biology?)

  SO: A FINAL TALE about Hannah.

  As enlightened modern parents, we would no sooner spank our children than be naysayers to them. To crush their dreams. And yet, with each
child born in America, there comes the moment when they thrillingly declare, with shining eyes: “I am going to be the youngest kid ever to win twelve Olympic gold medals!”

  The emotion is so pure. The clouds part, the sun shines. Your son or daughter or beloved other beholds their certain-to-be glorious future.

  In the face of such optimism, who are we to smash their dreams?

  But in fact, the reasonable response is “Yes, and although you’re fairly young—nine? Small complication is that you’ve never been in a swimming pool. Not that I don’t, er . . . believe in you.” Because it’s your job to keep them from actually drowning.

  So, back at age ten, Hannah caught the acting bug.

  In elementary school, she had been the shyest in her class. She could barely muster the courage to sing Christmas carols, Santa hat over her eyes. In dance class, if she made one wrong step, she’d collapse in the corner like a noodle, weeping.

  But for some unexplained reason, Hannah thought a “performing arts academy” for middle school sounded like fun.

  Small problem? An audition. For sixth grade.

  When I look at the audition “guidelines” my bowels turn to ice.

  In just two weeks, because we got started so late, my noodle-like daughter is expected to perform, without laughing:

  A one-minute dramatic monologue

  A one-minute excerpt from a Broadway musical

  A dance combination

  “Attach photo and résumé?” I cry out. “My God! What happened to childhood? She just wants to run around an auditorium holding a tree branch!”

  Never mind getting into the school, which is beyond our control. My main worry is that the audition itself will be a traumatic childhood experience.

  So as usual: I construct the facade of a pleasant, measured, confident person.

  I begin by giving my Gen Z daughter a crash course in The Broadway Musical. “Hannah, do you remember that Will Ferrell movie where he’s jumping through lava and singing ‘God, I hope I get it’? Or when Sponge Bob sings, ‘Where have all the staplers gone?’ Or when the Simpsons—? Anyway!” I conclude brightly. “Those are all parodies of Broadway musicals.”