${gotBlog.title}

"Modern Love" reveals revenge in spin class subplot

Posted by Tom Held of the Journal Sentinel on March 30, 2011

odds & ends

In a recent New York Times "Modern Love" column, local author and spin instructor Christi Clancy reveals the subplot behind the punishing pace and bad-ass playlist from one of her Saturday morning classes.

It's actually a poignant tale, one that reminded me of a story arc for an episode of  "Thirtysomething:" a friend finding and seizing an opportunity to punish the man who done wrong.

A sample: "She and her ex had reached a certain peace I found hard to imagine. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were friends, but they got along well enough. I knew I was acting childish and petty. It wasn’t me he had left, but it felt as if he had broken a pact we had made as couples. After two years of biting my tongue, this felt necessary, cathartic."

Anyone who's looked around the room in a spin class and projected story lines onto the cast of characters will find it a good read.

Clancy lives in Whitefish Bay and studied in the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. In 2008, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, selected her work, "Little Frozen Universes," for a short fiction prize.