What a Fool Believes

I went ice skating for the first time in, I don’t know, eighteen years or something, two weekends ago. It was an ideal day for it at Bryant Park. The NYC area was having its first snowfall since the weekend of Halloween—freakish conditions that made me believe tiny ghosts were floating down from the heavens. The snow, cool temp, and jazzy tunes of the ’40s and ’50s—only interrupted by a pair of songs: the always-welcome “Do It Again” by Steely Dan and the less-welcome-but-preferable-to-the-bygone-blah “One of These Nights” by the Eagles—had fluctuated my space-time continuum into thinking it was the Christmastime of a month earlier. But, thanks in part to the Rollerblade-like design of modern skates, much better than the old Chuck Taylor’s-with-a-kitchen-knife-on-the-bottom, I kept my bearings in space-ice-time.

While I was coasting round and round the rink (barely quelling my desire to body-check the “Official Kodak Photographer”, who was walking into oncoming traffic, and say, “Ya bankrupt!”), I realized a couple of things: 1.) Skaters in a state of constant-near-falling are always having the best time, and 2.) I don’t know the etymology of any of the figure skating terms (Axel, Lutz, Salchow) and I don’t wanna know.

I’m a competent skater so I can slide around those unfamiliar to the ice, but am I, in my little thought rink, having as much fun as the incompetent as they totter and slip? Definitely not. They’re laughing their asses off in the somewhat-secure grasp of their guide. I’m bored or dissecting myself or trying to reach some blissful non-thought which leads me sliding back into the first two. Let me skip right to it: never learn to skate. Just when you’re about to get the hang of it, get off the ice. Preferably by a fall. When that wobble in your ankles is about to stop, when the comfort of learning something new is about to warm your bones, do a face-plant. It’s the very best when you can get some momentum and target yourself at the exit so that you face-plant and slide across the ice and out the rink. Wait a decade and do it again. Repeat until death (by Zamboni).

The Axel, Lutz, and Salchow—they’re probably just names. But goddammit don’t you tell me. I wanna maintain the mystery. If I wanna believe that, back in the Middle Ages, some Merlin-like high wizard, in an emerald unitard rather than a cloak, magically leaped and spun upon a frozen moat, running his sharp fingers through his long white beard in contemplation after landing before saying, “I shall deem that the Lutz!”, then that’s what I wanna believe. ‘Cause if we’re being honest, though technically impressive, figure skating’s pretty boring. Telling me that a Double Axel comes from some eastern European dude named Axel who could jump and spin around in the air twice is not gonna help it. However, thinking that it was created as an ode to Eddie Murphy’s character from Beverly Hills Cop? That’s interesting.