The Revolution Will Be On Roller Skates
By: Megan Gogerty
Tags: Derby, Roller Skating, Skating, Humor, Exercise

The Revolution Will Be On Roller Skates

Me, armored up like a rollerskating Viking.

I have upsetting news: it turns out, exercise can help your body feel better.

I KNOW. It’s so distressing! What I WANT to be true is: aches and pains? Try lying down on your sofa for hours, and you’ll be good as new. It doesn’t work! I’ve tried and tried it.

More upsetting: exercise helps you feel good, but not for a while! You have to keep doing it, maybe for weeks, before you feel better! And in that time, those weeks, you might actually feel worse! Your little aches and pains get swapped out for big pains! Ibuprofen-style! It’s so dumb!

Whoever designed this system: I have some complaints.

As I wander through my Middle Ages, and I’ve been accruing more aches and pains from things like “turned my head too long to the left” and “thought about vacuuming,” I’ve been trying to exercise more as a corrective. It’s not even about sculpting the ol’ bod (why mess with glory?) or losing weight (for that, you have to stop eating so much food, and I flatly refuse to deny myself pleasure). Pre-pandemic, I had a good gym thing going. I took in a few sessions with a physical trainer, I had a little routine happening, I was going faithfully. I did a push-up once; I was making an effort.

Then the stupid coronavirus hit, and it was non-stop stress eating and blanket forts for a while. (Did you gain weight, too? Forgive yourself: eating your feelings is much better than drinking your feelings or hitting people with your feelings. You’re doing great, and those pounds make you look huggable. Just buy bigger clothes that make you feel fantastic and move on with your life.)

By the fall, I was starting to feel downright arthritic. Things rattled and crackled alarmingly. If I dropped something and it rolled under the couch, I’d think: welp. Say goodbye to that forever. If I get down there, I may never get back up.

Then I started rollerskating.

Y’all, rollerskating is so hard. Many people think they know how to do it because they went around a rink a few times in the seventh grade, but I’m telling you: it’s very different when you’re outside and every pebble looms and your hamstrings are like, “I thought we were gonna watch ‘Better Call Saul,’ who changed the plan? I want to speak to the manager” but the manager is trying to keep the whole apparatus in a more or less upright position because your FEET have WHEELS on them INEXPLICABLY, and if you fall down on the concrete when you’re north of forty, that shit has consequences.

It’s so hard, and so fun.

Do you want to feel free? Do you want to feel powerful? You know how all your yogi friends are like, “mindfulness!!!” but in practice, yoga just makes you mindful of how inflexible you really are, and when the teacher says “namaste” you mostly feel vaguely stoned after, and while it’s nice to feel elongated and a little stoned, it’s not exactly fun? I mean, there’s no disco music. There’s no exuberance. There’s very little whooping in yoga, in my experience. I like to whoop.

I want an exercise that doesn’t require glitter eyeshadow, but encourages it. I want an exercise practice that indulges in high femme iconography exactly as much as it wants to, and not a stitch more. I want an exercise that comes ready-made with a community of radical, queer-friendly, inclusive, strong athletes who understand that your body is already perfect, that you can do hard things, and that when you fall down, all you gotta do is get your ass back up.

It feels transgressive; by rollerskating, you’re getting away with something. You’re breaking the rules. Respectable people aren’t supposed to have wheels on their feet. My rollerskating friends (first tip: get some rollerskating friends!) make lists of local businesses that don’t mind if you wear your skates inside the store. They’re a band of chaotic-good sidewalk amazons. They’re here to fuck shit up, in the best way. Joy bombs.

And it’s especially transgressive since we’re skating outdoors, and it’s technically December in Iowa. We’re bundled up like skiers, dodging ice patches. We know it can’t last forever. We’re going as long as we can.

When I was a young lady, I understood that young ladies weren’t supposed to grunt. They weren’t supposed to sweat, or spread their knees apart in a squat, or get low, or holler. Rollerskating, however, demands those freedoms: Grunt! Squat! Get low! Shine on, supernova! You are magic! Sweat makes you glisten like a traveling mirror ball!

My favorite rollerskating move is called “Sparkle Tits.” I don’t know if this is an official designation (are there official designations? Feels a little too paladin for a band of rogues), but it’s what my teacher calls it. My teacher, whose derby name is Haught Plate, will yell, “Sparkle tits!!!” And we’ll all glide on one skate, our other leg hiked up in various heights of arabesque, while our tits sparkle forth. I can’t explain it: the tits have to sparkle, or you’ll fall down. I don’t know why. Must we name all the sunbeams? Just embrace the mystery.

Many of my non-rollerskating friends assume I’ll be trying out for roller derby when this cursed pandemic is over, assuming I survive it. I haven’t ruled it out, but I think those friends misunderstand my love. While I might be interested, someday in the future, in crushing bone and speeding around and throwing elbows and jammers and blockers and scoring and whatever other pleasures derby provides, what I’m primarily interested in now is Sparkle Tits.

I just want Sparkle Tits. Sparkle Tits are revolutionary. Sparkle Tits are the antidote to despair. Screw the rules: there is no clod-clung past, only the exhilarating Now. We glide on, unafraid of debris, joy beams on high, sailing exuberantly into the future.

(Yes, I’m making a Gatsby allusion. I bet Fitzgerald never rollerskated. I bet Zelda did, though. Or would have. Aren’t you glad it’s not the 1920s anymore?)