(Not) Born to Run

Pamela Anderson dressed me for ballet class

My podiatrist showed me the gay smut he was reading. More on that in a moment.

The post production process for the TV show I’ve been working on for the past year (that’s what took me to NYC for production!) is wrapping in a couple weeks, so I am squeezing in as many medical appointments as I can before I am unemployed and lose my health insurance, eek! Now would be a glorious time to become a paid subscriber or to gift a subscription to a loved one!

Thanks a million! I couldn’t do it without you!

I was at a podiatrist for the first time to do a diabetes foot check (all good there!) and to get some answers on the debilitating pain I felt when I tried to go on a jog the week before.

“How long has this pain been going on?” The foot doctor asked.

“Well, it’s only when I run.” I explained.

“And how how often do you run?” He asked.

“Uh, once?”

I’ve never been a runner. Even when I was taking a dozen ballet classes a week as a teen, I had a 16 minute mile in PE class. But running is free, unlike pilates (which I deeply enjoy, but is now up to $60 a class in some studios!)

I like to move my body. I’ve even heard some crazy rumors that exercise helps your mood and sleep and health, but if that were true, I think we would have heard about it by now.

I’ve always loved dancing and long walks and tree-lined hikes, and have even gotten better at swimming, but running felt physiologically opposed to how I’m assembled.

And I was proven right! Medically!!

The podiatrist did some scans and x-rays of my feet, and turns out, I have not one but two (essentially harmless) “deformities” inside my foot that make specifically the act of running excruciating. This was very validating, especially when I was bracing myself for him to tell me to just stretch more and lose some weight, the cure-all for female hysteria.

“We could do an experimental surgery, or, you could just, not run?” The podiatrist offered.

You can guess which option I chose.

I’ve recently gotten back into taking ballet classes. It took over a decade of grieving my erstwhile ballet career to even fathom attending a ballet. Some breakups are too painful.

I used to take the city bus by myself to ballet class after school. I TA’d the little kids classes to make my classes more affordable. I was determined. It was my dream. But I didn’t have the feet. So here I am, working in TV as an assistant, and working unpaid as a stand-up comedian and writer, where the height of my foot arches hardly ever comes up.

an old social media status from 2008 (!) EIGHTEEN (!!!) years ago, telling a friend what I did after school.

I needed to get a new leotard (my body has committed the high treason of not looking like a teenager’s anymore), so in the meantime, I wore a Baywatch swimsuit and some shorts.

It’s not an allusion to Baywatch, it’s a collaboration with the beach goddess herself. I got it at an event where I got to meet the Pamela Anderson a couple years ago. Talk about a career and creative Renaissance. It’s never too late.

The Oscars are over, so don’t worry, this won’t be another think piece unpacking Timothée Chalamet’s views on ballet. To quote legend Nathan Lane on the matter, “who deemed this meeting of the minds necessary?”

It’s much more fun to celebrate Misty Copeland’s Oscars cameo and the success of Sinners. I've been a fan of hers over half my life. As a kid, I hoped her “late” start in ballet at 13 years old meant I had a chance, since I didn’t start as a tot like most professional ballerinas.

Misty Copeland (the first Black woman in American Ballet Theater history to be promoted to principal dancer) coming out of recent retirement to perform at the Oscars last night mere months after hip replacement surgery. Image from Yahoo Sports

The fun news is, I do have a chance. Likely not soloing for ABT, but a chance to achieve so many of my creative dreams, and a chance to move my body to music, which is what it’s all about anyway.

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Oh yeah, the podiatrist’s gay smut. He saw I was carrying a library book and we exchanged reading recommendations. He flipped his tablet around to show me his double screen use, my x-rays on one side, his Libby app open in the other. The Libby page I glanced at appeared to use the word “nipples” quite a few times. Now that’s a man living his dream.

From when my cousin Hope and I saw Swan Lake in New York last year. We jumped for joy from our standing room tickets behind the back row. There’s never too many ballerinas.