My Shifting Autumnal Gorge

There are signs all around us and I have a new one. Global warming is a fact my friends. It's a factoid. Book it. Obviously, the rising global temperatures, the melting poles, polar bears dying of exhaustion as they have to swim for miles and miles before they can find an ice pack to rest on, these are signs. As is the fact that a bald man hasn't worn his winter hat once this year, and it's Christmas. If all that wasn't enough, I just began my autumnal gorge. Sad but true.

I always thought it was curious. I'd wake from slumber like its any old day and I'm still a rational three square meals type of guy. However, it isn't and I'm not. Like a dog shoveling dirt on a hot steamer he just clipped, it has to be instinctual, a matter of survival. While I'm rummaging through the fridge like a bum in a restaurant dumpster, I understand that my steady stream of caloric intake will remain steady and I can go ahead and push myself away from the frightened appliance. Yet, I can't halt the intake.

I’m like an ape and hors d'oeuvres party, minus some of the hair. I have dessert and dessert-breakfast, then a mid-morning snack. I take a lunch break and am thinking only of my next meal immediately after unbuckling my belt, at work. Dinner is more like a food-filibuster then a meal with the only thing standing between my mouth and more consumption is sleep and/or a shit. And, oh man, are those things healthy.

It may very well be confined to areas with harsh winters. I've had a few confabs with those possessed by the affliction and they've confirmed it's real. Aside from ogling breasts, I can't think of any other truly instinctual actions in which I partake and over which I have no control. I'll eat until my back hurts and I can't find a comfortable position to sit in and that is when I'll crack open the cookies. I'll smack my gut aghast at the lengthy flab-reverberation and then I'll pull out the squeeze cheese.

It's seasonal since there is the reverse affect when the weather warms. It just isn't as sudden or dramatic. It's the seasonality that has me thinking. I remember the days when the autumnal gorge came at the fall/winter transition. As the last leaf fell from the last tree with a leaf, I would start pudding-pounding like a fat sixth grader. It was then that McDonald's once again became a viable dining option. It was then that I could convince myself of a french-fry's nutritional value. It was then that the idea of lettuce or vegetables became repulsive without the latherability of butter or rich cream based toppings. It was then that words like rich cream based toppings caused delicious imagery and leaked saliva from my glands.

Then was before who-knows-how-many more millions of cubic centi-feet-meters of fossil-fuels have been burned into our atmosphere. Then was once in early November. Now the autumnal gorge doesn’t fatten me until late December and it’s accompanied by fifty degree winter days. Both are oddly enjoyable. A fifty degree winter day rings as eerie on my internal register. An entire box of chocolate donuts is just plain wrong. Still they’re sinfully enjoyable even though I’m clearly borrowing upfront to repay with interest on the backend.

I once listened to a futurist discuss the fact that the internet has enabled instant access to so much information that it's accelerating our evolution exponentially. Because of this, in the near future, humans will evolve during their own lifetimes. The same must be true for global warming. The compounding of effects have shifted the climates just enough so the cold weather hits slightly later nudging my annual gullet stuffing a little further down on the calendar. I’m making the claim that it’s the first tangible affect global warming has had on me personally. Me and the polar bears are feeling it. Anyone else?

The Idea of Entitlement as Applied to Old Age and the Gym

There are a lot of less-than-interesting things about getting older. I know. I have grandparents who love to discuss their maladies. Through them as well as some of the other elderly types I've come across, I've noticed that there are also some interesting things about growing old. Wisdom, contentment, sense of accomplishment are all some of the positive vibes an elderly person can radiate. What I find interesting about getting old is the idea of entitlement as it relates to time served on earth. I see it in every interaction. When you're old you feel entitled. You think simply because you are old that you are entitled to certain things in life. Health care. Social Security. Discounts at movie theaters. Quick service at your local diner. Patience from the frustrated drivers pushing Cadillac sedans towards speed limits all across the country. These are just the tip of the entitlement iceberg. The bottom line about getting old is that if you are old, you're lucky to be old even though you don't feel lucky because you are old. Therefore, when dealing with an old person hop-to-it, because they don’t have the time to be fucking around with anything other then the next thing on their to-do list. After all, they have their pills to take.

Don't get me wrong, I think they deserve every bit of it. I guarantee that if I'm lucky enough to get old, I'll be waving my entitlement wand as feverishly as the best of those that came, and went, before me. I'm sure I don't completely understand the physical, mental and emotional changes and challenges that each and every old-fart faces. However, I stand here in my thirties making a bold entitlement claim. I will never ever become that guy who feels he's entitled to walk around the gym with his sixty year old nuts flip-flopping around for all to see. I fully understand that when you’ve reached a certain age there isn’t any more embarrassment because you’ve been everywhere and done it all. Still, I’ve learned so much from the older generation that I think it’s time to give back. Dear old-men everywhere, when in a gym don’t fear the towel. Embrace your underwear. Hide your balls.

I first discovered old-man-naked-entitlement as a fourteen year old in the locker room at the YMCA. I nearly sat down on the naked chair before some other gym-going teenager rescued me. "That's the fucking naked old-man chair. That seat has handled more balls than a quarterback." That was the warning. The lesson came about thirty seconds later in the form of an old timer. Hairy as hell and naked as a jay bird, he rested his old-man ass on the old-man seat and sat there splay-legged flashing his old-man nuts like they were on the Carnegie Hall marquee. My god! Like being caught by an unexpected camera flash, I could only see the negative image of a pair of nuts blinding me for minutes. From then on, I avoided that chair like a thief ducking a surveillance camera. I also never looked anywhere below the ceiling. If I did: old-man-nuts.

That was twenty years ago, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. Every night at the gym is old-man-entitlement-hour. There is a nightly celebration of nuts and gruesome ass. Fucking peripheral vision. Not a help. Old-man-ass is like a fully squeezed tube of toothpaste. Sadly, the gruesome ass is infinitely more palatable than the two prunes jiggling mid-thigh two lockers down.

That's a sweet pair of balls you got on you sir. Those things look like they've done some work. Some creatin’. Could you lift those things up? Let me check out the undercarriage. See how you're holding up.

That may seem ridiculous, but it's what I think is running through the Mr. Naked-Entitlement roaming my gym. Opening the shower door is like ripping back the shower curtain at the Bates Motel. Only, instead of being hacked to death with a knife, you're getting stared down by an eighty year-old one-eyed monster. Not fun.

Eye level. That's the worst. If things continue down this road I'm going to start changing while standing on the benches. Every time I sit down it's like Russian Roulette. You don't need a bullet in the head. A pair man-nuts eye level is just as life-altering.

Wow. Great circumference. You still have those things, huh? I thought that by your age they sort of fell off like acorns.

I don’t know what it is about a naked man with his junk dangling like a worn out pair of sneakers from an electrical wire, but if there’s even the remotest opportunity for a conversation, he’s taking it. Go ahead, lean or look away. Cower if you want to. It won’t matter. Naked old men in the gym can’t read body language. If they could they’d have a fig leaf to cover that ball-park frank they love to twiddle while engaging you in some light banter about the delicious tuna sandwich they had for lunch.

No seriously. Don’t shower. Don’t get changed. It’s much more comfortable for all involved when you mill around aimlessly. Stand at your locker. Bend over if you could. There’s nothing more awe inspiring than the rear view of a ball-bag that’s been battling wear and tear for six or seven decades.

I’m not sure if Murphy’s Law has a nut clause, but it should. Why is it that the very person who should be naked for the shortest amount of time is always the person who is naked for the longest amount of time? Why is he always holding a towel rather than mercifully putting it to use. Why is it that a man who loves to parade around forever naked needs to wear a pair of flip flops? And why is he always at the locker directly next to mine?

I look forward the day when I’m commendably still grinding it out at the gym earning the admiration of all my peers. I look forward to the day when there is nothing left to register on my embarrassment meter. I look forward to the day when I’ve done so much in life that I could care less about who sees what and what it looks like. I hope I last long enough to earn some of this entitlement. But rest assured, even when the day comes that I’m entitled to endlessly display my old-man-nuts to all the world, I won’t. Just because you earn a buck, doesn’t mean you have to spend it.

The Bus Stop

The Bus Stop Stop is the very first thing I do when I get to my spot at the stop. I have one. It’s a specific spot that I’m intrinsically drawn to due to its intangibilities. My spot has a daily standard deviation, but it’s certainly negligible considering I could successfully catch the bus while standing anywhere on the block. It’s a long block. But I’m there. Some days it’s sunglasses and some days it’s Sunday. Hat and scarf or depressingly tired, I spend time on my spot at the bus stop like a television being on in your apartment. I spend less time in the shower than I do at the bus stop. Not that this is mind-boggling, but it’s an illustration of the fact that the bus stop is more routine than the gym.

And still I find that impeccably placed inch on the square of concrete to do my bus-stopping. Standing there on that supremely preferred concrete slab – that one – is measurably and increasingly more preferable the further away I’m forced to stand. The others do it to. Them. The people I loiter in anticipation with. They choose their spots too, these strangers.

What is stranger than strange is the odd strangers-among-familiar-faces feel and reality that the bus-stop purveys. I’ve seen them enough to at least know their names, though I don’t. I’m with them enough that I know if I’m out the door at 8:00, I’m seeing group A. If I’m out at 8:10, I’m seeing group A stragglers and group B. If I’m out at 8:15, it’s the core of group B. And if I’m out the door at 8:20, I’ll be getting a nice nap, because traffic is going to you screw you.

I’m thinking that everyone has to realize, perceive, notice. I’ve pretty much deduced where at least 10 people live from their bus-stop to-and-fros. Most definitely I would certainly freak out this lucky group with the information that I know this person is roommates with her, in that building, likes to get to the bus-stop at 8:10, even though the roommate tends to trail behind by five to ten minutes. Oh, and how about the girl with the guitar? I know she works on 43rd and 5th. And the other bald guy, I’m 100% sure that he’s the type of guy that would complain about your ipod blasting too loudly next to him in a cab, even if it was five a.m. on a Saturday morning. I’m 100% sure.

I can’t possibly be the only one who is aware. Surely, someone is pretty sure that I live above the Indian restaurant. They’ve seen me through the nail salon window as I fumbled with me keys and disappeared. They know that I carry two bags once a week or that I can quite often be inappropriately dressed for the weather. They must realize that I’m thoroughly inconsistent with my shaving, face and head. They must be able to place me when confronted with my face in out of context situations, because I can them.

They should. We’re bonding. We bond as our days begin the same. We bond as we handle the morning’s hurdles with differing levels of patience. We bond as the morning’s circumstances toy with us equally despite our day’s unique set of pressures because late is late, early is early and the bus is anything but consistent.

We bathe in inconsistency like our pants and shoes bathe in a torrential down-poor, even the guy with the obscenely large umbrella and floor-dragging trench. As a unit we fend off the seasonally adverse weather conditions that challenge us on all but the top percentile of comfortable days. Uniformly compacted and intimately coalesced under the bus-stop-weather-shelter-thing dodging the dodgy weather. Under that shelterish apparatus which almost blocks a dramatically-small fraction of the wind that bears down upon the one or two square inches of skin brazenly and nakedly facing it. The stalwart blockade-like structure that nearly successfully protects you from upwards of ten to fifteen potential pant-sopping rain drops. The cauldron of warmth that valiantly shaves at least a tenth of a hair of a degree off the temperature, more or less. We’re under it and thankful!

Mostly, I opt for my spot in all but the most inclement of days. It’s where I pause and crane my neck, staring relentlessly above the line of parked cars hoping to catch sight of the rolling rectangle lumbering uptown. Still, whether it’s directly or peripherally, my vision isn’t distracted by the tracks of tunes playing in my ear. I see without looking. I notice without observing. It comes to me even as I read my book, a morning rarity that must send a beacon announcing – he actually got to bed at a decent hour – loudly to all that notice such things. I sense I might be the only one.

Our stop is interesting. It’s interesting in the way the Spanish Channel is interesting when holed up in a hotel room in Podunk, Kansas. It’s also comfortingly haphazard. We all find our spots and stand there anxiously still, then move methodically towards the arriving bus in a first-come first-serve arrangement where internally you’re dying to get on and secure a seat while your outward appearance belies anything near that notion. You’re cool. You’re calm. You’re the BMOC where C = B.S. and B.S. is not equal to bull-shit. I’ll be honest. The difference between securing a seat and standing is roughly equitable to those extra fifteen feet Evil Knievel could have used as he flew over the Caesar fountains. That’s why I like my spot. It gives me a good angle of entrance.

Catch a glance as it approaches. Is it empty or full, or is it near capacity and a sit-or-stand gamble. Are there more on the way? Are you late or early? Were you late yesterday or any time this week? How tired are you? Many considerations made in a matter of moments like a batter deciding whether to swing at a ninety mile an hour fastball, because once you’re on and standing, you’re on and standing.

I’ve seen other bus stops; the next couple on the route. Lines rule their stops. Those people, they stand in line like bunch of cold war communists waiting for some t.p. for their a-s-s. That’s not my style. That’s not our style. We’re more like cows grazing in a fenced off area. We’re just looking for the greenest grass, man. And a seat. Just one fabulous seat with an armrest and reclinability so we can all deal with the traffic in the way traffic was meant to be dealt with, laid back. Chilling. Cold chilling. Hopefully, because being hot on the bus is as frustrating as taking a standardized test on a Saturday morning after about 12 drinks the night before. I should know.

It’s not about the stop or my spot at the stop. It’s not about the bus or the commute. It’s about them, my cohorts, my gang. We’re neighbors. Why else would we choose 13th street? It’s not lucky. It’s not preferable since the number of seats available in the course of a morning is in inverse proportion to the count of the streets. Still, we’re there because we’re neighbors. A fact confirmed as I literally ran into one girl on my way out of the voting booth. Not the one who read Bergdorf Blondes. Not the one who loves to yak it up with the Asian guy who is always in a suit. The one with the killer collection of high-heels and the mole on her face. The one with the cute little wire-haired puppy. I don’t know her, but I know her, you know?

Does she know me? It’s tough to tell considering the communication is less than forthcoming at the bus stop. The Bergdorf girl, we’ve talked. It was about the bus, but still it was a break through. She even defended me by calling a driver a dick as he callously left me despite my arrival at the door in ample time. I agreed he was a dick and she is cute, but she read Bergdorf Blondes, and while I don’t know what it’s about, I can assume. So that is that.

It must be really hysterical to an outsider to see when the block is barren of buses. Sometimes, indiscriminately, busses cease to appear. Like ghosts in ghost-towns they just don’t show. Caravans of busses are soon replaced by a sinking feeling in your stomach as your earliness regresses, your lateness is delivered and you become more frantic than the mother of a lost child. It’s like keeping calm on a plane that’s experiencing brutal turbulence when the person next to you is sweating like a pig at the butcher and losing control of his emotions like a chemically-imbalanced brain. At first, everyone is curious. Some people just take a seat on the bench. The trips to middle of the street, a better vantage to see six to eight blocks down the avenue, grow more frequent and furious. Heads shake and palms turn up. Annoyance is displayed through communication. “What’s going on?” Anger actually grows like a plant from a pot of dirt. From a seedling to a stem to a furious fern of combustible frustration and anger.

I watch the action like I watch a fish tank of territorial and tenacious Sicklets. It would be more entertaining if I wasn’t emotionally invested in the trauma and drama. I’m in the middle of it like a belly-button. Sure, someone died in an accident corking the traffics’ flow, but none of us know. If we did, I’m sure we’d be calmer or look for alternatives. Alternatively, we feed off each other like an army going into battle. He grows impatient and paces next to her who now fishes fiercely for her phone and shouts recklessly into the receiver. The energy is transferred like the word in a game of Pass It Down the Line. This proves that we are a group, a community of neighboring bus-riders who are united by the universal oneness of a morning commute and geography.

We’re tied together by the bus, the bus stop, our spots at the stop and the ever increasing compendium of knowledge that we passively compile while standing there daily trying to do what comes naturally. And what comes naturally is the collective state of being that causes that odd strangers-among-familiar-faces feel and reality that the bus stop purveys. Oddly, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Roundus Amongus

Up the stairs released from the subterranean bob-and-weave, I’m fresh off a middling six hours of sleep, trudging along. The sun leans between the buildings, stares squarely into my eyes. I squint like a motherfucker. I’m not in the hurriest of hurries, but still, I like to move at a good pace; even when I’m navigating against a wild rush of oncomers rolling shoulder to shoulder at least twelve deep.

I use the subway grates as an express lane. It eliminates the chicks with the shoes. Dodging his and her suits galore, my bags swing widely if I cut hard right or left. And I do. Smokers eye me as I maneuver circles around a fair portion of the commuters herding right at me. I think moo-ve when one clogs an opening or beats me to it.

I wade through the initial onrush catching a respite after reaching the second level. With a few more strides the stream switches and I’m walking with the flow of foot traffic and against the flow of car. I slash across the street at an available opening. I’m making solid time, nothing to write home about. Still, I’m always looking to steal a tenth of a second wherever I can. Often I can with a quick skip or a corner cut.

I use guile when walking to work. I tap into agility. I’ll lean into turns. I jut off the balls of my feet. I’m not O.J. in a Hertz commercial, but I have moves. Combine that with shiftiness and some yoga classes and you have yourself a professional marketer walking to work professionally. For that reason, I’m shocked that I’m consistently foiled by a waddling round person.

They appear like a chess piece suddenly dropped with expert precision. They waddle like a penguin sporting a winter coat. They are rotund and a tough pass. Their clothes are comfy and their shoes are of the good walking variety.

Roundus Amongus, they seem to damn the flow by forcing both directions of traffic on a collision course as we all try to pass. My pace is such that I’m on top of them before I can react. Braking like a speeding driver approaching a red light, a blink and I’m engulfed in back-flab, searching for an off ramp. This morning I tripped right over the top of the little waddler as she dodge my line of sight for just long enough to damn near cause a pile-up.

We walk in lock-step. I’m smushed into her back like Wile E Coyote sliding down a tunnel-painted rock wall. Peaking, I peer and crane my neck. Under the armpit, over the shoulder, I’m scouting opportunities like a model scout in a mall. I edge out to the right but scurry back like a prairie-dog with hawk-fear. We seep down the street trailing a molasses glaze. I escape to the left skirting a meat-filled arm. Quick choppy steps speed me around and one long stride leaves the waddler fading in the distance like an astronaut jettisoned from her ship. Freedom.

As if unified by army technology, another one crystallizes and plugs the traffic as I reach the corner. Like a robot dance party, we shimmy mechanically sorting out the congestion ourselves. The orderly interchange disperses as does the round person. Whoosh.

Long-striding, the foot-parade is thinner than Grandma’s hair as I approach the final leg of my trip. I can see down the long avenue to the horizon far in the distance. I can also see the unmistakable visage of yet another Roundus Amongus dawdling down the street. Like the Maverick on a mig, I have a bead on him half a block away.

Shoulders like ham hocks. Neck like an alligator. The fact that he can’t see behind him is as much a strength as a weakness. His arms rest on his side-boobs as if he was hiding a football in each armpit. His legs don’t bend as much as he tilts onto one side and rotates his hip-socket to move forward and his movement barely outpaces the earth’s rotation.

Like a stallion down the stretch, I’m getting the whip and storming the final furlong. I’m bearing down on the waddling wide-man like and officer in hot pursuit. A stride behind and I realize we’re fast approaching my building and my building’s entrance. I contemplate a pass around the wide side. I contemplate a sharp cut to the inside. My indecision costs me like a tell at the poker table. From full speed to full stop, my window of opportunity vanishes like sock in the dryer.

I call off the dogs and go into coast, positioned to the posterior of the round person. As I wait for him to pass, I realize he’s heading where I’m heading. We share a destination on this day if not most days. With a quick calculation, I think it’s worth the wait. I lay back and scope him work the revolving door. I’m early anyway.

In Line to Hell

I slosh in the sweat induced sock puddles covering my feet. My watch ceases as a time piece; succeeds as an antagonist. Boredom shifts my weight like a four-foot gymnast anxiously working the balance beam. I beam a supple rouge from my flushed cheeks. A toe-tap. A sigh. The alternate stick and unstick of my rubber soled shoes placates my mind, then annoys. For fleeting seconds I can visualize time passing. I can see it clearly, clownishly standing before me. Clowning me like a birthday clown. The type of clown whose routine causes instant wonderment as to the person’s background and means. It’s the type of wonderment that occupies my inner dialogue a second, seemingly minutes, breaking me from the negative cycle of dwelling on my current linear realities.

We move forward as a collective. Guide ropes usher us through systematically meandering corridors. We creep at a crawl’s pace. Awkwardly leering at the various creeps crawling by at their creep’s pace. I hear a cough behind me, a sigh elsewhere. Frustration echoes like a scream in a guano-filled cave. I shout internally. It reverberates. The sharp sound pings my ears like the high pitched tone of a wayward fax send. I grimace. The line groans, moves forward.

The fact that the beginning of the line, the end of my wait, is within sight counter-intuitively adds to the anxiety a stagnant line can create. Now that I can see the front of the line, movement is a measurable and quantifiable data. If one foot, mine, equals nine-inches, and I’ve moved three steps in the last thirty minutes, then it would take four days to stand in line for a mile.

I’m with someone. She stands to my left and leans in intermittently flashing puppy-dog eyes. I respond with sympathetic face gestures. Her experience is the same as mine. She stands in the same line. We’re both tapped into the current of frustration that is pulsing up and down with the electricity of the third rail. However, the collective experience is trumped by the interminable inner experience ruling my every breath. She stands alone. As I do. Together.

Ding! Or was it Ting? I analyze the next-bell feverishly. I watch the light, light – a secondary announcement curtly preceded by the Ding! The light-bulb above the attendant’s cage catches my gaze. Line-lulled, catatonic, my thought process has an outward manifestation like a book with the first chapter on its cover. No reaction. Delayed reaction. Action. Next. Ding! Shuffle. Shuffle. Wait.

I peer behind me at my peers. They’re peers in the way traffic school students are peers. They’re peers in the way that a condo association is comprised of peers. I peer back over my shoulder but my view is obstructed by light. The front of the line is lit like a late night talk show or a play. The illumination of the front of the line is at expense of the back. I shade my eyes relentlessly and do a double take. It’s chin-scratchingly perplexing. As far as I can tell I’m at once in the front and the back of the line. Those ahead of me have been mercifully moved through the way-station between where they are and where they’re headed. Those behind me have been shaded out of my waking life. I’m next, standing both at the front and the back of the line. Bing!

I approach the attendant. She is behind glass. Her movement is like watching water evaporate. Her features are horrid. She’s waist deep in indifference. She wears a nametag inscribed clerk. She doesn’t look a day younger than eighty. Neither does her cleavage. My toe cracks. My knee aches. My back howls. I walk toward the attendant like I’m walking to my coffin with a pillow in hand and a night-cap on my head. I’ve waited in perpetuity; perpetually pushing towards the completion of my to-do list. A list of one. A lengthy line of many.

I feign a smile. She doesn’t look up. Her gum pops. Her glasses sit at the end of her nose like a basketball sitting on the end of the rim. She is still life in action. A painting in motion. I make eye contact only to instigate some recognition. She raises a brow and flips a palm. That was as much of an inquisition as I could expect. She would wait for me to state my business until the cows came home, assuming they were traveling by line. Finally, after a lifetime passes, I lean in and say, “I’d like to send this certified.”

Me Problemo

It’s astonishingly clear. I’m a drooler. I’m currently sitting on the couch that I absconded from my grandparents’ old home. At their place, once, I was awoken from a nap on this very couch. My grandmother, the culprit, woke me while shimmying a towel under my chin. At the time I thought; must be an expensive couch. Now I think; nobody wants spit on their couch.

The alarm sounds on mornings and sometimes startles me. I come to and sense the soppiness. I think; I’m a drooler. Next I think; must have been a good sleep. Finally I think; I now correlate a good drool with a good sleep. Then I shower and get on with my day.

Intermittently I’ll toss from left to right and right to left. I play a strange game falling asleep. Start on one side until I’m damn near asleep. Then react to the overwhelming urge and roll onto the other. As I roll, I wipe the corner of my mouth. I wipe not to remove drool. I wipe to remind myself that I drool.

Quite often I fall hard asleep immediately. It’s probably the forty-five best minutes of sleep I get on most nights. Consistently, I’m thrown awake by some REM-fueled happening. As I gather myself, I readjust my pillow to offer a new corner for fouling. Fresh turf.

It’s not an epiphany. I didn’t just realize. I’ve simply accepted the challenge at this point in my life. I fall asleep nightly with my mouth shut, breathing through my nose. No prob. I awaken nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand with my mouth closed. I lack a good seal, clearly. And it’s not every night. That’s as far as the analysis has gone and as far as the analysis has gone is probably as far as it can go since I’m asleep the while. I focus on not drool during the times I don’t drool. I drool when I can’t control my focus. A conundrum.

Have I ever drooled while sleeping on someone else’s bed or couch? Sure as shit I have. Have I ever done it while sharing the very pillow I’m pumping full of my unique brand of saliva? You bet your balls I have.

I realize that nobody cares if I drool. I’m well aware that it’s not as dramatic as wetting the bed. I understand it’s the least imposing of all the bodily fluids. Still, leaving a trail of spittle like the oil trail left behind a ghetto jalopy isn’t something I want as my calling card.

The curiosity is not on the mornings when I turn my pillow into a down puddle. It’s on the mornings when I awake on a pillow as dry as the Martian surface. It’s when I wipe my chin dry and my chin needs no wiping. It’s when I wake, mid-morning, to flip that soaking corner I’ve covered with spit. Only, there isn’t any need to flip.

Is it position? Is amount of time asleep? Does it occur during different times of the week? Is there any consistency to the seepage?

I wrestle with this problem like a dog wrestles with a bone. I chew on it for a while, then I forget about it. But when I see it, or feel it, I remember it’s there and chew on it some more. There are worse problems in the world. I have a few of them. So, I probably shouldn’t dwell too long my drool problem. Not when I could dwell on my egregiously small penis.

It’s the teeniest.

I Yogi

Yoga. I’ve done it. Four times. And sure, I’ve enjoyed it each time. Taking a class once a week isn’t turning me into a Yogi anytime soon. I’m not quitting. Don’t fret. Don’t get your little leotard in a bunch. Don’t go all warrior pose on me. I like it. It makes me feel longer. It gives my third eye purpose. It offers glimpses towards the day when I will have control, somewhat, over my branium. It gives me the faintest notion of what mind, body, soul could mean, possibly, at some point in the terribly distant future

Understand, I’m inflexible to say the least. I’m like elastic if elastic was concrete. I’m malleable like a church pew. My hamstrings creak like an attic floor board at the slightest folding of my waist. And while the waist doesn’t fold as neatly as it once did, it doesn’t need to because the hammies won’t allow it. My hips give ball-and-socket joints a bad name. My shoulders should be called levers and my back, well, I just discovered I have one.

As much of an obstacle as my rigidity presents to my yoga progression, it is the reason I’m taking classes. And so I diligently grunt and grind almost and nearly into these alien-like positions. And as a newbie, I scope the room for guidance and direction in my feeble and ill-fated attempts at mimicking poses that themselves mimic every creature that’s every walked the earth. I know I should be breathing deeply and putting all daily-inspired thoughts aside, but I’m still at the stage where I can’t help but think that child’s pose would be more aptly named The Fart Cannon. As much as I should be focusing on a spot in front of me and timing my movements to start and finish along with my inhales or exhales, I can’t help but think that down dog could come in very handy, but she’d have to be strong and on the shorter side.

If you’re not familiar with yoga, you should know that for the souls-of-stiffness blocks are supplied that save you those extra six to nine inches of lean giving beginners a much needed break from the inevitable muscle-ripping that would ensue had you jumped head first into the deep end of the yoga pool. These blocks are no saving grace, but more like a “rubba-dub-dub thanks for the grub” before dinner at a god-fearer’s home. In other words, you still hurt even with a block under your arms, elbows, ass or back – the side of my body I recently discovered.

As I said, I’ve been to Yoga four times. More than enough visits to the temple for my ego and competitive nature to take hold. Granted, it might be akin to a kindergartener’s determination solve that F’ing bitch of a riddle that is the shoelace, but I entered this class determined to make progress. Not leaps or bounds. No breakthroughs or momentous strides forward. But progress as defined by me – mind, body and soul.

Class beings with a directive. Directive number one, find yourself in starting position – Succasunna, otherwise known as Indian style. Mind you, the last time I successfully folded myself into this position was within a stone’s throw of the fourth grade. Maybe sixth. Certainly no later. Say, some twenty-two to twenty-five years ago was the last time anyone has ever seen yours truly sit Indian style and I can bet I was none-too-happy about it even then. In the ensuing decades, it isn’t like I haven’t tried, attempted, struggled, to fold leg over leg, widen the hips and sit for more than one millisecond with heels tucked. One millisecond being a lofty goal to shoot for even as my twenties approached. With my failure grew indifference and with age grew my inability to even conceptualize my hips and hammies allowing this position, let alone achieving it.

Oddly, this is a classic position of which everyone knows and one in which most every girl is able to sit in, seemingly comfortably. I suspect no balls has something to do with it. In any case, the oddity of Indian style is that it is semi-entertaining to watch uber-taut guys at some degree of advanced age attempting to conjure their days of yore by landing, if ever so fleetingly, in the Indian Style position. Trust me. Ask your dad or husband to do it and try not laughing. That’s just how it is with Indian Style.

As was the case on Yoga class visits one through three, I sat with a block under my “sit-bones” to ease the stress on the hips and reduce the angle of incidence necessary to get one leg over the next and heels locked in. This was not the case on Yoga class four.

You’re doubtlessly getting whiffs of the odorific stank of break-through wafting towards you from the end of this tale. Inhale deeply my friend and smell the smell of break through.

Forged with determination and focus, I placed my “sit-bones” directly on my yoga mat and demanded of myself that I get into fucking Indian position even if it meant tearing ligament away from bone. As I always have done, and has always come naturally, I folded my left leg easily into position. Sure, I hadn’t done anything, but it was a start. Next, I lifted my right leg and bent my knee. It was folded into a position that would sure have tucked neatly into place, if my hip would have cooperated. Plan b involved lifting my right heel and forcefully pulling it towards my pelvis. And while my hip flinched a millimeter or two, my knee yelped audibly and the outside of my hamstring mocked me by sending a warm rush of pain from hip to ankle.

Sweating. Hurting a bit. Plan C was hatched. With left leg folded and heel in hand, I rocked back, leaning deeply onto my left hip and pulled with all of my focused, third eye inspired strength. Need I say the only success I had was in rolling myself onto my back? Need I describe the reaction of the others?

Yes, I had given up. Though I wasn’t upset about it, nor embarrassed. Not after class three when The Fart Cannon got its name. I was simply satisfied with my effort and we were about to move onto the next position I didn’t have a spec of a chance at landing.

However! And whether I had subconsciously connected with the earth’s energy, or whether it was my body lending my mind a hand (figuratively), I don’t know and I don’t care to know. Because just as we were about to move to the next pose, my legs inexplicably repositioned themselves. I watched with a disconnected curiosity as my right leg folded itself first and my left leg lifted easily over it and slid into position. Heels locked. My heels fucking locked! What the fuck? And I was only in moderate pain.

Now, I’m sure this is not the essence of yoga or maybe it is. I truly have no clue. What I do know is that from the sixth grade on I’ve tried unsuccessfully, several times, to sit Indian style and I’ve attempted it the same way each and every time. Right over left. Right over left never worked and I never even contemplated that their might be a different way. Say, left over right? Maybe that would work?

Mind you, I had nothing to do with it other then the fact that these were my legs involved. It was voluntarily involuntary. It was consciously unconscious. And I’m not saying it was a greater power lording over me. I’m not saying that I’m the Zen Buddha. I’m just saying that it’s amazing the level of stupidity that I can sometimes attain. This time, pleasantly so.

Smell the sweet scent of breakthrough, do ya?

What if I interviewed Dan Rather about his comedy career?

The sun, fading into the night’s mystery, silhouetted a man, a funnyman. Home to fat women and Dan, Wharton, Texas is where this comedic genius began cultivating his career. Walking towards me, Dan’s bulbous head shaded the sun from my eyes. I was in the midst of my comedic hero.

Scantily clad, Dan was wearing tight fitting cut off jeans that hugged his sadly sagged rear. His legs, cleanly shaven, donned thigh highs, and the pumps, mauve, really accentuated his calves. His shirt, sporting the logo of his favorite diner, The Greazy Urn, was a boy’s size medium. His nipples, thanks to an “accident” at the cleaners, shone through to the world and spoke volumes about Dan’s comedic bravery.

Starting sometime last century, Dan did his version of “the news” for local radio stations. Quickly gaining notoriety, it was his brilliant timing, his dashing looks and his irreverent rendition of an Asian man using a fork that burst him onto the national scene. It was a tough act to follow as Dan quickly found out in what he later called his dark days. Remaining experimental, Dan worked new routines such as, “The Dirty Finger,” “Anus and Andy” and “Food is Good Food” to no avail.

Soon after, the car was invented and Dan returned home, dejected. With his career in peril, Dan drowned his sorrows in Boonesfarm, the affordable wine. Drunk, depressed, Dan married Bessy, his family’s best looking cow, at the local convenience store where he and the ushers milked the bridal party in celebration. This stunt, as he later called it, rejuvenated the funnyman back into action.

Working the local Tan and Feed stores, Dan fine-tuned his act in front of the bronzed locals and the farm animals enjoying a snack. Though no one in the audience related to his high brow humor, he learned his most valuable comedic lesson, the straight face. It was this knowledge and Bessy’s recent tryst with Shwumpy, the three-legged goat, that empowered Dan to be! He packed his things and headed for bright lights, big city.

It was March 9, 1981, that Dan, caught in the rain and fearing what it might reveal under his tapered pair of white pants, was discovered. Finding shelter in the closest building, Dan and his straight faced antics, immediately upon entering, chased the urine from everyone within earshot. Hired on the spot, he has been delivering his off beat brand of humor ever since. Following it up with his book, “I Remember Afghanistan,” a playful look into the hotbed of hilarity, Dan cemented his spot in the comedic hall of fame.

As I sat there, pen in hand, expecting to laugh, I realized Dan was much deeper than a simple joke, a simple eye poking. I could tell as we delved into my question that comedy was simply the by-product of a man who has lived an interesting life.

I asked, “Dan, did you always think you would be a comedian?”
Dan, replying with the scowl I’ve come to know and love, “what the hell are you talking about?”

Dan, you said a mouthful.