Must… get… to… door.

The 630 muscles in my body have turned to jelly, enough sweat is pouring off my skin to fill Lake Lanier, and my heart, which could earn guest work in a Poe story at this point, is about to explode.

Everyone else is chanting “Ommmmmmm” or “Namaste.” But the only mantra racing through my head is four monosyllabic words: Must… get… to… door.

I don’t know how to speak Hindi, but I do know one thing: Bikram is another word for torture. You contort your body in enough ways to make the Kama Sutra look like child’s play in a room hot enough to overcook a sirloin. For this, you pay $15.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with your Us Weekly, Bikram, or “hot” yoga, is all the rage in Tinseltown. Everyone from Madonna to Michael Jackson to Robert Downey is doing it. And what, exactly, is it?

Twenty-six postures — with names like Balancing Stick Pole, the Wind Removing Pose and the Dead Body Pose — and two breathing exercises spread out during 90 minutes in a room heated to 105 degrees. In other words, Hell with yoga mats.

I recently experienced — or, more accurately, survived — my first Bikram class.
I never thought I’d voluntarily do anything involving stretching. My mom is a health nut — she jokes they must have switched babies at the hospital — and used to drag me to Yoga classes.

Back then, I had to watch overweight, middle-aged women bend their bodies in ways God never intended. And then, as they dripped of sweat, they would come over and coo “Isn’t he precious?” as they pinched my cheeks.

Needless to say, that was my Vietnam. Afterward, anytime Jane Fonda appeared on TV in spandex there were flashbacks. Sagging flesh! Magenta leg warmers! The Horror, the Horror!

So it took special circumstances to bring me back to the exercise room, namely my friend Cecily challenging my manhood.

Cecily is one of those people you feel out of shape just looking at. As an over-testosteroned male, this still hasn’t stopped me from bickering with her about sports. For example, we have a standing challenge to race each other in a 5k. (She notes that I mysteriously find a way to keep dodging the race.)

Our banter eventually led to Bikram, which I derided as a non-sport. Cecily disagreed, and that’s how I ended up back on the yoga mat.

You have tight hammies,” the instructor tells me mid-pose. This is another way of saying, “What in the name of Dennis Kucinich are you doing here, cow-killer?”

A Bikram yoga room is one of those places where you walk in and know that everyone is a vegetarian. The guys were shirtless, chest hairless and wearing shorts that went a third of the way down their thighs. One had on a sarong-like bikini.

I had eaten a hamburger within the past 24 hours. I stuck out like a sore thumb.

Toward the end of the session, I feel as if I’m going to pass out. After that last “Namaste,” I work my way through a maze of pink and purple mats, duck under the arm of a bare-chested guy sweating almost as much as me, and finally, I see it, gleaming in the distance. Salvation, in the form of a brass doorknob.

I paw at the knob, barely able to grasp it because my hands are near-soluble. The door cracks open, I feel a cool rush of air, and then — BOOM! — it’s slammed closed again.
Whatever water I have left in my body is about to turn into tears. I turn to face my tormenter.

“I don’t think you want to go in there,” she says. “That’s the women’s locker room.”

— Steven Stein is a College senior from Los Angeles.