Fly Girl
A few hours underthe small top sends one writer (and her nerves)
soaring.
. Photographs by Justin Steele
With just two rungs to go, I'm stuck. The ladder, the sort normally
propped against a house by a painter, is leaning against a
blue-carpeted platform that is 23 feet in the air. The platform has
no walls and, aside from a wobbly looking (or so it seems) black
metal thing sticking up from it, offers no apparent place to hold
on.
"What do I do now?" In my
not-panicked-but-not-exactly-clear-thinking state, it seems like a
perfectly reasonable question.
"Keep climbing," says the instructor, peering down at me with a bit
of an amused grin from atop the platform.
Gee, thanks.
"Can I grab that?" I ask, pointing at the black metal thing.
"Yes."
Well, that's really all he had to tell me in the first place.
I have been at trapeze school for less than 30 minutes, and already
I have dealt with my two odd fears: stepping over the top of a
ladder and anything that reminds me of grade school gym class (just
the thought of the President's Challenge Physical Fitness Test is
enough to send this 35-year-old back to bed with a pretend
fever).
Before you consider me brave for challenging my fears, let me admit
to one thing: Going to trapeze school was not my idea. But when my
editor asked if I would, the I'll-do-anything-for-a-story part of
me (coupled with the lingering determination of a younger sister
who, as a kid, was constantly challenged by her older brother)
kicked in, and, within minutes, I was on the phone with Trapeze
School New York, setting up my high-flying lesson.
The school is one of those funny
New York City things. Everybody I
mentioned it to had seen it - you pass right by it when you drive
down the
West Side Highway or toddle down the riverside jogging
path - but nobody I knew had actually scaled that ladder. There's a
chance my friends just prefer earthbound activities, but I think
there's something more to it than that. It's like an of-the-moment
NYC restaurant: Some New Yorkers are dying to go but never get
around to making reservations, while others just don't see the
need. Well, it's time they (and anybody visiting NYC) get off the
jogging path and scale the ladder.
WHEN TRAPEZE DAY arrives, I am tempted to skip out on my
flying lesson. But spurred on by the contract for this article and
my need for the money it will bring, I head toward school. Usually,
trapeze students learn alfresco when the weather cooperates, but I
am happy to see that the school's tent is up when I arrive. I've
made a fool of myself in lots of different ways and always shirked
it off with an attitude of, "Well, I won't see most of those people
ever again." But I quickly realize that if I fly under the clouds
instead of under the tent, I'll be on display for thousands of
gawkers in their cars, along with walkers, joggers, cyclists, and,
since it's New York, probably a unicyclist or two and maybe even a
guy with a parrot on his shoulder or a woman with a boa constrictor
wrapped around her waist. And, honestly, I really don't want a boa
watching me on the trapeze.
Two women step through the tent door just ahead of me. My
classmates. I cross my fingers that they are also first-time
flyers. They are. Hey, things are looking up.
After making sure we've signed the requisite
death-and-dismemberment waivers we were all given, school founder
Jonathon Conant gives us a rundown of the rules and then walks us
over to the low bar. That's where thoughts of Mr. Malcolm's
fourth-grade gym class rush in. While the flying trapeze is mostly
a momentum thing rather than a muscle thing, the low bar looks a
bit too much like the pull-up bar that brought on so many tears
when I was a kid. Within seconds, I convince myself that I can't do
it, that I won't be able to get myself up to the bar, let alone
hang upside down from it. Naturally, my classmates end up hanging
by their knees in true trapeze style - the knee hang is the basis
for the 150 or so trapeze tricks. As for me, I knuckle my way
through a few seconds of hanging straight down.
And then it's time for the climb.
Rung by rung I go, 23 feet into the air. After reaching the trapeze
platform and stepping over the top rung, I hold on tightly to a
metal bracket, dipping one hand at a time into the bucket of chalk
that I hope will dry up the worry that is beading on my palms. The
instructor unclips the two safety lines from my belt that would
have kept me from falling to the ground if the ladder climb hadn't
gone well and clips on the lines that an instructor down below will
pull to help me through my flight.
What happens next goes against anything the brain should allow the
body to do.
With the instructor tugging on my belt from behind, I grasp a pole
on my left side, step forward until my toes are hanging off the
platform, lean my hips forward into space, and grab for the bar
hanging out in front of me. I have to believe that the grab is a
bit easier for people taller than my whopping five-foot-three self.
And then, with a person I have just met still holding on to my
belt, I let my left hand go and grab the bar.
"One. Two. Hep!" Conant yells from below.
There's only one real skill that first-time flyers need to succeed
in trapeze school: the ability to listen. While your body wants to
do one thing, the only way to fly safely and successfully is to
follow the instructions shouted up to you. In trapeze, timing is
everything. You become a living physics experiment.
I take a small hop off the platform. For a split second, I am just
falling. Then, as I become engaged with the bar and start to swing
in an inverted arc, I feel every fiber of the grip tape pressing
into my fingers. My arms are stretched as far as they can go. I
hang straight down, my toes pointed. I feel like gravity is
stretching me instead of pulling me down toward the ground.
Mr. Malcolm has been pushed out of my thoughts completely, as I now
have much greater issues to deal with. As I get to the top of the
arc, clear on the other side of the tent, I hear another "Hep!" I
let go and fall backward, my legs together and pointed toward the
front of the room, my arms in front of me, and my eyes looking
ahead so that I fall in a sitting position. The bar falls away and
I drop into the net. And then everybody is clapping. I am not dead,
after all.
During the next 90 minutes, I take four more trips up the ladder.
Each time, I swing a bit longer. It turns out that, with the
thrills of the initial leap and dropping to the net, I could
happily swing forever. Though my hands sting like I have been
gripping a
tennis racket for an entire summer's worth of matches
and I never really fully get over my ladder issues, the swing's the
thing - even though I am the only student who never makes it to the
upside-down position.
By the end of the fifth flight, I am about as tired as I have ever
been. With each trip up, the adrenaline goes full tilt and then
drops as you await your next turn. It's a supercharged sugar rush,
no dessert necessary. I will fly again.
The Trapeze School sends people flying in three cities. Depending
on the day and time of the class, a two-hour session costs from $47
to $75.
Baltimore (410) 459-6839,
www.baltimore.trapezeschool.com
Boston (781) 942-7800,
www.boston.trapezeschool.comNew York City (917) 797-1872,
www.newyork.trapezeschool.com