[5] Tournelle du Soleil: Intake (Patreon)

15 May 2023: First Day at Cirque IHQ; Intake

The mens' locker room.

Mercifully, there’s no one there when I go in.

I peek my head around a corner and see that there’s a SAUNA IN THE CHANGEROOM.

A SAUNA.

Mental note: use the sauna.

Edit to the mental note: that's probably not a good idea.

Comment to the edit on the mental note: god damn it.

I choose a locker close to the door, far away from the main area where the showers, urinals, and the bulk of the rest of the lockers are.

It dawns on me that I’m probably going to have to make similarly fraught decisions all week about which group bathroom I’m going to use. It's always a toss-up for me, and the process takes up an oversized amount of space in my brain: is someone coming in or out of one of the bathrooms? Are they going to clock me one way or the other, if so? Which one looks emptier? Which one is cleaner? What do I look like today? Is there anyone around who might've heard me or seen me behaving in a way that aligns more with one binary gender than the other? I haven’t seen any single-stall accessible ones the entire time I’ve been in the building. I'm going to be running mental wind sprints every time I have to go pee. Maybe I just won't go pee. Yeah. That's rational. Very rational.

I peel off my pants and hang up my coat.

They must not have to accommodate non-binary artists very often, rolls through my head.

Or ... is that true?

There were ones before you, I tell myself. There were definitely ones before you, you silly goose.

I smile. Then stop when I remember that I’m wearing bike shorts. Damn it.

They’re skintight. My t-shirt isn’t long enough to cover them. All the guys out on the floor are wearing loose shorts or trackpants. It’s a big tell.

Fuck it. Can’t do anything about it now.

I stride out of the changeroom purposefully and make a beeline for an open area of the gym floor, resolutely avoiding eye contact with a mile-long store towards the rack of foam rollers.

I begin some gentle stretches and mobility drills on the floor, off to one side and praying that my physiotherapist shows up soon for the intake. I watch the others, their interactions, in the meantime.

Everyone else present is mostly doing their own thing, but it’sclear that most of them know each other somewhat well. Some of them go around and say hello to each other and shake hands and offer claps on backs before they head over to whatever weight they want to start with. Everyone has a purpose and is getting to it: there’s a couple artists who are  rehabbing shoulder surgery or knee surgery. Some are doing strength and conditioning. There’s playful banter and chatter, some laughter and challenges.

A giant of a man walks around the room, and he stops at me, too. He bends all the way down with an extended hand and kisses me on the cheek.

I’m  a little shocked but instinctively return the gesture and reply with my name. “Ess. Nice to meet you.”

In a low rumble I swear he tells me his name is “Quadrigo” (which, of course, makes far less sense than something like ‘Rodriguo’ or even ‘Gonçalo’ as I now write this out, but hey – what my ears thought they heard actually fits the description of his leg musculature quite well anyways, so it's staying) and then he’s gone.

I realize he shook the hands in the men in the room but kissed me on the cheek.

It dawns on me. Ah, the girl stamp. I’m not fooling anyone in these bike shorts, my mind mutters.

I suffer in my self-inflicted mental purgatory for 20 minutes before a harried looking woman, curvy and short with a big ponytail of bouncing curls, hustles out onto the floor from an unseen back room.

I hear her say “Ess” into a walkie-talkie and quickly jump up.

“It’s me! I’m Ess. It’s me,” I say with relief.

"Great! Let's do your intake evaluation."

I gratefully follow her.  We pass the intimidatingly muscular Russian swing team doing their morning training into the very back area of the space. Behind a low half-wall are 4 physio tables and computer stations, a bank of metal cabinets stocked full of every kind of bandage, dressing, tape, chalk, and medical supply you can imagine, and an array of fancy looking measurement and medical devices.

I spot that my physio has a thermos covered in anatomical diagrams perched on the edge of her desk, and a second cup of coffee next to it. Cute.

My mind starts indexing all the parts of my body that I’ve done terrible things to, or that have had unfortunate fates befall them. What if this joint or that joint is too mobile? What if something is painful in a range of motion that I don’t know about until she tests it because I don’t usually put it in that position and so I’ve missed it? What if I fail this test? Do I just drive home tomorrow? Do I get disqualified forever from Cirque?

Mireille starts with a visual inspection. “Are you wearing a sports bra or anything underneath there?” she asks, nodding towards my baggy black t-shirt.

“No,” I reply. “I don’t have breasts.”

She looks at me, clearly unsure how to respond to that.

She’s been referring to me with neutral pronouns and confirmed with me on the intake sheet starter questions –

“Gender – I should mark ‘Other’, yes?” Mireille asks.

“Do you need to see my body for this part of intake?” I ask. “Is it better if I take my shirt off for this part?”

“Uh, yes, if you’re, uh, comfortable with that…?” she says, voice rising.

I take my shirt off.

The world doesn't end –

But the intake gauntlet is just beginning. 

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Your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil will land after the weekend at 7am EST / 1pm CEST. Until then, stay strange & wonderful~ XO - ess