Sweating Through Decades for the Teacher’s Admiring Nod

The purest flashes of joy from my 20s had nothing to do with sex or drugs. They didn’t involve exotic foods or career advancement or any kind of micro-brewing operation.

No, true bliss came straight from Molly Fox, the proprietor of a once-thriving aerobics studio on 20th Street. (Now defunct, it was replaced by a gay bathhouse in the mid-’90s, where euphoria of a different stripe is presumably on offer.)

Back then, in the late ’80s, I would sneak from my office, just a little too early, to take my place on the sprung-wood dance floor of Molly Fox studios. There were dozens of us, mostly women, ranging from firmly committed to downright crazed.

And since we were surrounded by mirrors on every side, we could (through cagey reflection-management) keep tabs on everyone in the joint.

“How does that one always get a spot in the front row?”

We stood on painted numbers that corresponded to the numbered lines of a strictly limited reservation sheet, which we procured by calling relentlessly at the crack of 9 every morning, punching redial on our chunky portable phones for what seemed like the thousandth time, until we made it past the busy signal and on to a harried receptionist.

“Six-thirty class, please?” Like most beggars, I was careful to be pleasant. Those receptionists could spell the death of you. Stick you in a back corner or keep you out altogether.

And it wasn’t just me. Laurel Henschel, a legal executive (with an awesome high kick), can vouch for that. “We wanted to be part of a group,” she said. “And the more that other people wanted to be part of it, the better we felt about being in it ourselves — and the more obsessive we became.”

So we marked our territory and changed into outfits that shined like Lycra oil spills. Then we waited, hopped up and buzzing. Enter Molly Fox, a tall woman with short dark hair, powerfully built and vaguely androgynous.

She took her place, front and center. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, which was lucky, because once the music started (Sylvester, anyone?), keeping an eye on Molly was strictly required.

We mirrored her movements with our own. She started slowly, to stretch us out, but we were already revved up and ready to go fast, ready to grapevine, ready to groove. It was thrilling and perfectly ridiculous. But there I was, night after night, leaping and twirling to Molly’s exact specifications, panting and sweating like a third-string “Solid Gold” dancer. But why?

“Beautiful, Lia,” Molly called. And there it was, my stomach dropping like a stone. It was always Lia or Flory or Mark. How badly I wanted to be the special one. We all did.

“Getting a shout-out from Molly was one of life’s great achievements,” Laurel remembers with a laugh. “Proof that we knew the steps, that we weren’t impostors. We actually belonged.”

And eventually, we got our turn. “Go, Philip!”

But we paid for the privilege — really. It was the regulars who were singled out, and those classes weren’t cheap. Shout-outs were merely good business, simply giving the customers what they wanted.

But even though we paid for our moments in the sun, they were still euphoric, like winning an Emmy while running a marathon. We went for the workout, but stayed for the compliments.

How do I know?

Because after Molly came Melora Griffis, the lovely yoga teacher of my 30s, whose “Beautiful chaturanga!” was all I longed for, class after class after class.

Until I noticed one evening, half-dead on my sweaty yoga mat from a brisk series of sun salutations, that Melora was just as likely to compliment the folks who could scarcely touch their toes as she was to praise the ones who could go full-pretzel. Call me churlish, but that sounds like a shout-out welfare state to me.

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