Bowling Pin-yasa

I got in touch with my inner straight man last night at a bowling alley in Greenwich Village.

It had been a long, boring day at my job and I was feeling somewhat drained. After work I raced home to eat something, shower and change clothes and hoped that I’d find the energy to stay awake and be polite for at least a couple of hours at my friend’s birthday event. I didn’t really plan on bowling myself; I was so tired I wasn’t sure I could even a lift a ball, and the joys of public humiliation are fairly limited.

Bowling seems to be the recreation of choice for the “King of Queens” demographic, so I was also feeling cautious about hanging out in such a testosterone-heavy environment, especially on St. Patrick’s Day, when perhaps some of the patrons had been drinking for hours. Nothing quite shouts “screaming queen” like prancing down the lane and awkwardly tossing the ball into the gutter.

Well, I had a blast. I decided I needed to bowl at least one game for form’s sake (you don’t go to a bowling party and just sit there, right?), but I surprised myself. Not only did I bowl 113 my first time, I won.

My second game was a little off; I only got to 89 after I unfortunately suffered through a frame where I guttered twice. The third game was quite exciting; I developed a knack for picking up awkward spares and was well ahead of the pack until this girl came from behind with a strike and a spare and edged past me by two pins in the final frame. Bitch. But losing 112-110 isn’t so bad.

Now, this might sound kind of, oh, I don’t know, queer, but I actually used yoga in my game. I found that taking a moment to stand in tadasana, or mountain pose, and taking a good long inhale through the nose helped to block out distractions, calm the body and focus the mind. Then, as with ashtanga, coordination of breathing with physical movement proved crucial: inhale through the nose long and slow, and exhale the ball down the lane. Also, never take your eye off the pin you want to hit. Forget those silly arrows on the floor and don’t watch the ball, just the pin.

Finally, I found that releasing the ball as fluidly and gently as I could garnered the best results. Any time I tried to put “strength” into it, it would go off course and end up in the gutter. I think there’s a lesson to be learned there.

Altogether I bowled three games and finished up around 11:00. Far from being exhausted, I felt exhilarated and could easily have stayed for more. We also had a good time looking over the alley’s impressive collection of autographed bowling pins: Monica Lewinsky’s was greeted with the appropriate reverence, but I’m afraid we failed to summon anything but derision for Star Jones. Everyone else’s autograph basically read “thanks had a great time” or something like that. Star’s said, “Enjoy the View!” View this, Star.