The Chalk Comes Off Eventually

October fourteenth. I put my card in at nine-seventeen on a Tuesday three weeks ago, and I have been quietly dreading this evening ever since in the specific way you dread something you voluntarily signed up for and cannot blame anyone else for.

The clinic was two neighborhoods over, at an actual climbing gym, high ceilings, walls textured with holds in colors that are supposed to mean something about difficulty, the very specific smell of chalk and rubber and other people's effort. Simone met me outside at six-thirty. She had the same expression I probably had, which is the expression of someone who is committed but not yet certain. We went in anyway.

I made it approximately four feet off the ground on my first attempt. That sounds dismissive but I want to be accurate: four feet off the ground is not nothing. It is also not the top of the wall. The instructor, a very patient person who has clearly watched a lot of adults discover their upper bodies are decorative, talked us through footwork, which I understood, and then grip technique, which I understood less because by that point my forearms had already decided they were done for the evening. Simone got higher than I did. I am choosing not to make anything of that.

approximately four feet off the ground and fully regretting it

We sat on a bench near the water fountain afterward in the complete silence of two people whose arms have filed a formal complaint. I don't know if I will go back. I think I might. The flyer said six weeks; I've used one. The chalk does come off, mostly, I still found some on my wrist in the shower this morning, which felt like the gym making a point.

the bench. the silence. the complete inability to lift anything.