One of the things I’ve learned in my twenties is that, when it comes to personal upkeep, it takes a village…medical professionals, trainers, gyms, personal care services, the list goes on (cautionary note: don’t ask me about any of them, unless you want to kiss 25 minutes of your life goodbye…too late!). Come to think about it, this might explain why, for every raise I’ve ever gotten, I’ve never actually felt an increase in my take-home pay, but I certainly have seen an uptick in the quantity of professionals I employ to help me get through my oh-so-difficult days. So naturally, when Soulcycle came to town–with its $30, 45-minute spinning classes, I jumped.

For those of you that don’t know, Soulcycle is a “high-energy cycling experience”–started in New York, and currently invading LA and San Francisco (or as I prefer to call that collection of cities: the only part of America that actually matters). If you’re a female, you’re probably thinking “of course I’ve heard of Soulcycle, I love spinning!” Wow, congratulations–you’re so on point with your trendy fitness classes, it’s not like *every* gay male was doing that oh I don’t know, four years ago? That was in our rotation right after stand-up paddle boarding and before crossfit; need I remind you that genetically, we’ve evolved to have a predisposition to every trendy workout routine–it’s a regular agenda item in our weekly meetings, and one of the ways that we all have exceedingly nice bodies and what can sometimes seem like a limitless supply of endorphins. I digress. Anyway, I finally went to my first class last week, and before this turns into an over-hyped experience (too late), here’s my completely unhelpful review, which actually talks very little about the class and focuses mostly on (my favorite topic,) me.

Cycling by candle light
Now if we’ve ever hooked up before (and if we have, my apologies again for that mediocre-at-best experience), you’ll know that one of my (many) quirks is that I go to great lengths to set the proper ambiance in my room. Obviously a soundtrack is a key component to that, but IMO, the most important part is lighting. I will pause a hookup (multiple times) until everything is just right: it’s got to be dark enough where we don’t really see each other but still bright enough to catch the orange shimmer of my spray-tanned body and the light ripples in my abs (ha! jk. except no).

Soulcycle, fortunately, shares my lighting neurosis. The instructor was adjusting the lights throughout, based on the tempo of the song–moving from dim to dark, the exact range I would choose to live my life, if the sun had a dimmer. Not only that, but for most of it, we were cycling by candle light–the sexiest lighting of all. As you may already know, I’ve developed an obsession with expensive, masculine candles (“mandles,” we’ll call them), in part because it’s the closest I’ve come to actually being allowed to light money on fire (a personal hobby of mine). So candle-lit spinning class? Yes please.

Over-branded, in a good way.
If there’s one thing I love, it’s good branding. In fact, you’ll be excited to learn that I’m in the process of commissioning a crest for myself–need I remind you that I’m the IV? Soulcycle similarly cares about a highly branded experience. “You already have a workout tank almost identical to that one.” / “Yeah, but it doesn’t have the skull and bike wheel on it, so ultimately I think I’m going to feel empty without this.” In most places, we’d call this “SWAG” but at Soulcycle, it’s called $52.

Message apparel used to feel very Abercrombie & Fitch, circa 2005 (to be clear though: I was very much Abercrombie and Fitch in 2005): it’s just trying too hard (though to be clear again: I’m still trying too hard, I’ve just moved on from that specific genre). But, all of a sudden, its coming back again — in fact, I recently purchased a pair of black velvet message slippers, with a screw on one shoe and a “U” on the other (you might think this is because I don’t want to miss the opportunity to tell the entire world how I feel about them, but you’d only be half right; really, I got them in an effort to be even more like my idol, Scott Disick). Anywho, when I saw this shirt at Soulcycle, with “ATHLETE” tattooed across the chest, I had to have it. I enjoyed the subtle message it implied: sporty, but understated…athletic, but I don’t need to tell you that. Anyway, sure Soulcycle, put it on the card, and thanks for showing you care.

I guess in an effort to make this review somewhat useful, I should list the things that bothered me. As always, there were many:

• Good God please figure out a better way to manage that cattle call during the class switches. I’m not sure how you could have so obviously overlooked the fact that if you have back-to-back classes of 50 people each, simple math will cause you to realize that 100 people will be fighting against each other in opposite directions; a teeny tiny hallway is by no means an effective mode of ingress or egress
• I may have listed the lighting in the class as a plus, but it strikes me as odd that the blindingly bright, sterile lights that hit you the moment you walk out of the studio and into the foyer could have been so egregiously over-looked. What about a transition lighting experience? I’m happy to help you engineer that (see above for my experience)
• While I appreciate the bios of the instructors on your site, do us all of a favor and include direct links to their Facebook pages, where I expect them to have at least a dozen shirtless photos within the first hundred they’re tagged in (though really the proper ratio of shirtless to clothed pics is more like 4:1, and unless it’s not completely obvious, please do ensure that they’ve got very relaxed privacy settings) — it would really save all of us a step or two

ok that’s all.

Not yet feeling in the holiday mood, I gave myself a jolt of Christmas by going to the Nutcracker last night (and of course, I went by myself because (a) I *strongly* dislike people, (b) I wanted to be flying solo in the event that one of the male ballerinas responded positively to the intense sexual eye contact I’d be making at them throughout the performance–don’t think that isn’t the primary reason I bought a front row seat, and (c) because I wanted to be alone, so get off my nuts about it).

Fun fact: the San Francisco Ballet was the first company to perform the Nutcracker in the US, which makes a little bit more sense, given that every child in this town (including me) was dragged to it each year as a child. But good god there’s a lot going on there; what follows is my review of the plot and the performers (I’ll be using their full names in the event that they have Google Alerts setup for themselves; in which case find me here and here).

Herr Drosselmeyer
I have a very deep collection of Nutcrackers (and I don’t have to tell you, but I will: obviously they’re the handmade ones straight

Collecting prospects for his basement family.

from Germany, not the ones in the checkout stand at Marshall’s), and my favorite among them is Herr Drosselmeyer, the tallest and most expensive-looking one (coincidentally, the exact same characteristics I look for in a mate as well). But after last night’s closer inspection of Drosselmeyer’s behavior, I will certainly be reevaluating the prime placement that I’ve been giving him all these years.

Herr Drosselmeyer–played by Damian Smith (who good god is a lot sexier on Google than he was on stage, with the gray wig and makeup), bounds into what looks to be a respectable Christmas Eve party and, without a heartbeat, hones in on Clara, a child 50 years his junior (don’t act so innocent, Clara–you’ll have your day in court later, you little slut). He “forgot” to bring his wife to the party, but of course remembered his purple cape, making it obvious that Mr. Drosselmeyer clearly got the address confused for his Friends of Dorothy party down the road.

Like any rude houseguest, Herr (we’re calling him that now, even though it only means Mister; I scoured the internet and can’t find his first name, no doubt he’s deep in some witness relocation program by now) hijacks the party with a never-ending lineup of jugglers and other deviant service-industry shenanigans. Let it be known: you show up to one of my parties and pull a rabbit out of your hat, and I will shank you (and I do mean the technical definition of shank: cutting your Achilles tendon with a shard of glass).

The plot centers around a Nutcracker that Herr gives Clara, laced with what I can only imagine to be LSD, given that she spends Act II dreaming about battling mice with Class 2 weaponry and morbidly obese women who have dresses full of tiny Asian children and juggling bears. Throughout the whole thing, Herr follows Clara around, waiting for the drugs to fully kick in so he can drag her away and add her to his basement family collection (though to Herr’s credit, basement families only recently became en vogue, so he does get points for being about a century ahead of the trend on that one). I’ve since learned that Herr is also a local councilman, which puts the whole thing in startlingly-clear perspective, proof positive that politics will be politics, whether you’re in 19th century St. Petersburg or at a Ted Cruz meet-and-greet in Pensacola, Florida.

Clara
Like I said, Clara–played by “Catherine” (no last name given; either a shrewd move by her parents or an ambitious attempt at celebrity for a thirteen year old) clearly has her eyes set on a one way ticket to a shiny pole and cigarette burns on her yet-appearing breasts. In a room full of what look to be perfectly charming Oligarchs-in-waiting, she becomes obsessed with a Nutcracker–which I’d argue is *not* a gender neutral toy (hashtag daddy issues). To her excitement, that Nutcracker grows into a full-grown man, played by the dashing (if ambiguously-raced) Davit Karapetyan, and the two dance off through a series of landscapes only Bob Marley could imagine.

Which brings me to the central question I couldn’t tear myself away from: are we all just supposed to sit here and politely

Oh you know, just storing some children under this ball gown.

golf clap as a tween gets statutorily raped on stage? It’s a glaring hole in the plot, but if you’re OK turning a blind eye to the law (and I usually am, except when it comes to heterosexual dalliances like this, when I turn into Judge Judy), the dancing will take your breath away. I just couldn’t understand why no one was as outraged as me.

But the real outrage is when Clara steps into a changing room and out comes a fully dressed, more mature version of Clara…except…suddenly…she’s Asian. Yes, choreographer Helgi Tomasson decided to cast the female half of the Grand Pas de Deux with Yuan Yuan Tan (and not that you had any trouble guessing, but Yuan Yuan is Chinese). She does a phenomenal job, and I’m all for letting your imagination run wild in a ballet, yet if I had a difficult time making the jump through this transformation, you can only imagine the struggle that the children in the audience–who this ballet is ultimately designed for–must have been going through. Think about the children, is what I’m trying to say here…think about the children.

The other elephant in the room.
As mentioned earlier, one of the strong drivers for my attendance were the male ballerinas, and in that regard, this show didn’t disappoint: I spent the lion’s share of Act II with my eyes either staring up Karapetyan’s crack or–if he was facing us–glued to his overflowing package of goods in front. Even as he was standing just off stage, my eyes were fixated–hook line and sinker. It was distracting to an alarming degree, but of course in a good way; and I know I wasn’t the only one, either–they were selling “ballet binoculars” in the lobby, for God’s sake. Turns out they’re wearing what’s called a “male dance belt,” which I plan on wearing *exclusively* next Halloween.

#nuffsaid.

After the ballet, I did what anyone would do: went home and furiously researched him, focusing on sex tapes and the like. Turns out he’s married to Vanessa Zahorian, the other prima ballerina in San Francisco’s ballet, which kind of makes you vomit in your mouth a little, but in a cute way I guess (so here’s the question: what was their first dance like at the wedding? I feel like you either go balls-to-the-wall there or just sit it out). Also, I said ambiguously-raced earlier, though closer research reveals he’s Armenian, which in the context of this Eastern European play is probably more accurate than if he were white (just like how Jesus also was not white).

Foiled again by a marriage, I took to OkCupid, narrowing my boolean search terms to profiles with “dancer” “ballet” or “ballerina.” So far, no promising leads, but I spent all afternoon today at the gym focusing on my legs, and with a little bit more obsession, I’d like to hope that I am *very close* to a body where I can dawn white tights and captivate a room full of 300 close friends. No doubt you’re already aware of this if we’re friends; I routinely force people to feel my ass, though with good reason–it’s quite firm.

So to recap, if you’ve got $150 to shell out, a pension for soft-core porn and an obsession with massive quads, the San Francisco Ballet’s rendition of The Nutcracker is the holiday ticket for you!