Spin Shop - The Short Story That is Like a Hardcore Workout

Make it stand out

I take a line of cocaine off my spin instructor’s bra strap in Spin Shop’s bathroom, an initiation. The instructor, Nikki, is probably a size 34C or 32D. The line of her cleavage is pale from where fake tanner was either washed or sweated away. 

Since I’m new, I get the biggest bump. I sniff hard and leave nothing behind. 

The bathroom is the only room in the studio that isn’t heated to 90 degrees. There’s a poster above the toilet that says, Every brunette needs a blonde best friend. Nikki is blonde. She’s wearing all white, the only one of us in the color. I got an email 48-hours ago that listed Spin Shop’s rules, which included a strict, all-black dress code. The teachers wear white, the front desk staff wear red. There’s another poster over the sink, no mirror, that says, Happiness is a choice! A pile of before and after pictures sits on a small wooden table between the toilet and the sink; it is where magazines would’ve gone in another place, another gym. On top: a picture of a white woman’s toned stomach exposed by pulled-down black leggings. 

I’ve been on the waitlist for Nikki’s class for six months. I sold my car to pay for the monthly membership.

The front desk girl is next in line; she props the door open with her white TIEM cycle shoe on my way out. On the door, another poster: Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired. There’s a line of twenty women out the bathroom and into the lobby. We’re not allowed to talk to each other, only to Nikki and the desk girls. 

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

In the bathroom, vague French music plays. In the lobby, Skrillex. The lobby is poster-free and shaded in red. Everything is made of a bleached-white wood—the desk, the cubbies, the benches. There’s a small display of diamond jewelry above the wooden waste basket that holds no trashbag, no trash. A red, neon Spin Shop sign hangs behind the desk and front of house girls. Both women are petite, white, and red. Hair so blonde. 

The desk girls unlocked the front door fifteen minutes before the 7:00pm class—me and the other women were waiting outside, silently, in the moderate Los Angeles weather. The desk girls took me aside. I would not be allowed in if I did not oblige by their dress code, they said. My hair was not blonde. I’d missed that note in the email. Luckily, they had bleach on hand. I asked them if it would take too long, if I’d miss the class—my eyes began to well up, but they told me the class wouldn’t start without me. By the time my hair was the appropriate shade of white, it looked close to midnight. There are no visible clocks in the studio, and watches aren’t allowed.

I walk through the lobby and to the spin room. A front desk girl shows me to my bike. The cycle studio is pitch black, my eyes don’t adjust, but she knows the room and guides me efficiently. There are mirrors on all walls. Massive black speakers dangle from the corners. A disco ball hangs from the center of the ceiling. I’m in the front row on the middle bike. 

Oh, I should be in the back. I’m new, I say. 

We like the new people in the front, she says.

She adjusts the bike to fit my height and the length of my arms—I’m tall, lanky, narrow, within the height and weight requirements their email specifies. I lost thirty pounds to be here today. 

We’re so happy you’re here, she says. She gestures to the bike, for my feet. I sit on the pommel as the other women file in, each accompanied by a front desk girl. I don’t remember there being so many staff members. My girl slides my black cycle shoes into the clips. A hard metallic click. She takes a key from her pocket and slides it into the bottom of the shoe. I wait until I feel the final lock click into place. She tries to yank my shoe off the bike. Unmovable. She looks me in the eyes for the first time. The whites of her eyes are unnaturally pale. She says, You understand you can’t leave, correct. I nod, though she didn’t ask a question. The email came with a waiver I signed but didn’t read. 

She stands to leave; I ask for a boxed water. She shakes her head. We don’t do that here. 

The rest of the women file into the room. None of them have towels, water, or belongings. Each one looks at my face, my newly bleached hair, with little interest. But all of them look. No one else appears to be new. No one else gets the same talking to. No one else is allowed to speak as much as I have. I hope Nikki didn’t notice my questions. I hope the front desk girl doesn’t tell her. I consider calling her back to threaten her but decide against it. I don’t know her name. 

Once all the women are clicked into place, locked into place, the music picks up to a suffocating notch. Nikki is still absent. The only door to the windowless room is still open. The red from the neon sign filters in. 

There’s no dust in the air. It’s perfect. My eardrums pop, pulse; I’ll be permanently marred by this place. I will have tinnitus along with the rest of the women. 

Finally, Nikki comes in. It feels appropriate to clap, to cheer, but no one does, so I do not. I can see them, the twenty or so women, behind me, next to me, in the mirror, but I don’t turn in my seat to look. No one makes eye contact with me, or each other, in the reflection. 

Nikki hops onto her bike and clips in. She holds a small black remote in one hand—at first glance, it looked like a foldable knife—and points it at the door. The door slides shut, leaving us in the pitch. The music pulses, deadens, and turns into a whine, a dial-up tone. 

The pedals start to move. Not of my volition. I’m being controlled, perhaps by Nikki, her remote, maybe by the front desk girls. I don’t care either way. I’ve been ready for this. The music starts to pulse. The beat in the hundreds. 

The room is now ninety-six degrees. The temperature is the only light source in the room—a red number on the thermostat by the door. No illuminated EXIT sign. 

Nikki starts to yell to the silence of the women. We are allowed to breathe. 

I want each of you, right now, to take all the tension you feel from your day and give it to this bike, she says. Give it. Give it. Pull that tension from your body.

Go, yes. 

Go. 

Fuck yes, get it, fuck yes. 

Way to bring it today, Monday. 

Do you feel it? Do you feel it? 

You look so fucking good.

She starts to hop up and down off the pommel, pumping her body over the bike. The room agrees, joins. I join. My feet are moving faster than I can control. I don’t control. There’s no resistance knob on this bike. 

The woman to my left screams as her hip pops. She goes flying forward over her bike, her feet still clipped in. She lands in a contorted puddle in the front aisle, at Nikki’s feet, her bike over top of her. Her feet have stopped moving, as one of the pedals has broken off the bike.

Fuck yes, Barbara. Nikki points at the now bleeding woman. Way to give it your all.

Barbara smiles, a bleached white. A red light comes on where Barbara’s upright bike used to be. The other women in the room squint at the light, I squint, and squint again when another woman collapses in a heap over her handlebars in sweaty exhaustion. Her feet still move, but she’s otherwise unconscious. Another red light. 

Nikki points again. Keep it up, Jan. Jan doesn’t seem to notice Nikki’s praise. But I look at Nikki, try to catch her eye. My name on her lips, I want it. 

Push harder.

Push.

Claw through it. Claw, bitch. 

Hammer this. Kill those fucking pedals. Burn your legs. Your legs should be on fire.

The song changes. A remix of Katy Perry and Tiësto. The pedals quicken. 

Kill it. Kill it. Kill it, says Nikki. Shut your body up. Shut it the fuck up. You don’t answer to your body, your body answers to you, you fucking whore. 

Two more women pass out. Two more red lights on. The room is now visible from front to back, but it’s impossible to tell how the room ends, if it ends, where it ends, the mirrors reflecting back and forward and side to side in an endlessness reminiscent of the three-way mirror my mother installed into her bedroom closet to motivate her during a juice cleanse. 

There’s still a woman spinning to my right. Still a woman spinning behind me. Nikki is still spinning. Sweat pours from her chin in one stream. Nikki’s sweat lands on the black floor and mixes with what is likely Barbara’s blood; it’s hard to say, what with the red light.

Fifteen women remain. I take the time to count them as the song changes to Don Diablo and Galantis. Song transitions are the only time the pedals slow down a few RPMs.

Nikki screams, Let the music take you. Feel it. Feel it. Let it transport you. You are Galantis. You are up on that stage. You are dancing. You are free. Fly! Fly! 

We are introduced to choreo for the first time. Three pumps against the handlebars, three shifts side to side. My pedals pick up faster. My legs start to burn in earnest. Or they already were burning, but I notice it for the first time. Nowhere on the email or the sign-up link did someone say how long this class would last. 

I almost miss a piece of the choreo—Nikki locks eyes with me and licks across her teeth. A woman two rows back pumps too hard and smacks her face against the handlebars; she loses a few teeth but doesn’t fall off her bike. Her legs don’t stop. Nikki points at her and yells, Fuck yes, Margaret. 

Fuck yes, says Nikki. She counts down from three, counts up from five. I don’t miss a single pump, a single lean. One woman leans too far and topples into the woman next to her. Their bikes go crashing and take out the entire middle row. Three more women out. The room is now so well lit, I can confirm that Barbara is in fact, unconscious and bleeding out.

Nikki yells, Last time through, let’s fucking go. Feel it, feel it. Accelerate! Work for that recovery. 

The pedals pick up. Another woman flies forward off her bike, Barbara-style, and takes out the girl behind me. Her blonde hair gets caught in my pedals—my pedals skip, I feel the first hint of panic I’ve felt tonight, I look down and glare at the intrusion—but the bike rips out a chunk of her hair and the pedals, my legs, keep the pace. Blonde hair tickles my exposed ankle. 

More than half of the room is out, bodies strewn across the handlebars, seats, other bodies. 

There’s no clock. My legs burn to the point of wanting it to stop. All of it. But I don’t want Nikki to say my name, I take it back. I want her to look at me, I want to know what it’s like to be the last one, the best one. I want the number of the place where she gets her fake tans. I want her to spray me down with the fake coloring, and I’ll spray her down, too, until she’s that perfect shade of orange-brown. I want her to take lines of coke off my bra. My 34A chest. I want her to pulse along to my cues. My motions. My fuck yeses. 

Everyone else is sitting in the saddle, panting, even Nikki. I grip the handlebars and stand on the pedals, third position, my legs moving so fast my hamstrings rip. I bite my lower lip to hide the pain. I’m the only one standing. If it’s against the rules, no one strikes me down. No light turns on. Nikki looks at me, tilts her head, spits in my general direction. It lands on Barb. I grimace. She smiles.

But a moment of tension, it’s what we’re building for. 

At the sound of a siren, the rest of the red lights come on. The legs do not stop. The music gets louder. I sit in the saddle and continue sweating, pounding. I’ve made my point. Nikki turns on the disco ball with her little black remote, and white balls of light circle around the room. 

Nikki screams. The women scream. Scream as if they were being attacked, stabbed, beaten, lit on fire, burning from the inside. They scream at me. I see them in the mirror. Screaming, looking at me, their legs and my legs rotating at an unnatural pace. Even the semi-conscious women on the ground scream, pound their arms, twist their broken and bent legs. Except Barbara. She might be dead. 

I should scream, too. I don’t have anything to scream about. I have nothing to scream about. Except the girlfriend who almost crashed my car after drinking too much. Which reminds me of time when I accidentally hit a sorority girl crossing the street when I was high on meth after my twenty-first birthday. But that’s not the right kind of fear to scream about. That’s not what the others are screaming about. 

But I fake it until I make it. I become a motivational poster. I start screaming, quiet and uncertain, too self-aware. I scream until I feel it in my guts. Our legs spin faster. Of their own volition. Nikki smacks her face, yelling, Woo, woo! and, Almost there. The girl next to me, pelvis bouncing up and down on the pommel, reaches over and slaps me straight across the bicep. I open my mouth to protest, but the surviving women behind me are slapping each other, too. The women who are passed out on the ground get spit on. I look at the woman next to me for the first time. She’s white and blonde. She widens her eyes in a Yes, do it. I smack her across the face so hard her spit flies; she falls off her bike. Nikki yells my name. Yes, Christine! Fuck her up! And the rest of the room yells my name, too. I scream and shake my head, split flying. Everyone screams. The smell of bleach fills my nose.

The music fades, the screams fade, and the red lights turn to a soft yellow. They slow our legs. The pedals stop. I hear no sounds of metal unlocking, but the remaining women un-velcro their shoes and slip out their black-socked feet. They step off the bikes, avoiding the bodies. I slip my feet out of my $250 shoes and dismount. I’ll have to leave those shoes behind and buy new ones; the blood stains will never come out. My bike is one of seven with shoes left behind, unattached to a woman’s body. 

The seven of us stretch right arms behind backs, left arms behind backs. Nikki takes us into a calve stretch, a quad stretch, a booty stretch, as she calls it. We are laughing, now. Talking about creams, tightening, plucking. Nikki claps, we clap, the class is over. The door opens. 

Nikki walks me to the lobby and tells me I have a lot of promise. She invites me to come again. I tell her I absolutely will. The desk girls serve us “potions” made of ashwagandha for stress, maca for libido, and CBD for wellness as gurneys come in empty and leave filled.

Words: Emily Unwin | Illustrations: Sateen Howland