The Wrong Half of You
The gym is in an old paint factory in Leeds, and it smells like chalk and rubber and the inside of a shoe. Tariq hands you a harness and watches you put it on the wrong way round.
“Other way,” he says. “Buckle at the front. Yeah. Now pull that strap.”
You ask him what happens if you fall.
“You fall,” he says. “That’s the whole design. The rope catches you, you swing about a bit, you say a bad word. Everyone says a bad word.”
The wall is fifteen meters high and the holds are yellow, which apparently means this route is for beginners. Nothing about it looks like a beginner’s wall.
The first four moves are fine. You’re quick, you’re strong enough, and you pull yourself up with your arms, because that is what arms are for.
By move eight your arms have opinions.
“You’re climbing with the wrong half of you,” Tariq calls up. “Stand up. Push with your legs.”
“There’s nothing to stand on.”
“There is. Look down. Left foot, further left. That little yellow one, near your knee.”
It isn’t a hold. It’s a bump. But you put your foot on it and you stand up, and your arms go quiet, and you understand something you won’t be able to explain to anyone at work tomorrow.
You ask, from twelve meters up, whether this ever gets easier.
“Strength helps,” he says. “So does intelligence, a bit — reading the wall, working out the order. Mostly it’s your feet. That’s the key. People spend a year finding that out.”
The last hold is a big one. You get one hand on it, then both, and then there is nothing left above you to climb.
“Now what?”
“Now the hard part,” Tariq says. “Let go.”
So you let go, which everything inside you says is a stupid idea, and the rope takes your weight, and you come down through the middle of the room in long slow swings, saying a bad word.