jeff yen

I’m still back, and not as blue.

This is partly due to the herbal concentrate coursing through my bloodstream. I'm happy to report that "Kava," a long-used herbal remedy for people susceptible to migraines, stomach cramps, and being boring, actually does work.

While I'm a little skeptical of the list of things it's supposed to do (two of which are: "Cause relaxation and sleep" and "Relieve fatigue"), I do feel quite relaxed. My fatigue, incidentally, is still going on all cylinders. Which is probably a bad metaphor to use; however, the beauty of writing a weblog is that I can afford not to give a shit.

At any rate, for those of you who might worry about my well-being, don't. I'm not huddling alone in my apartment, trying out random psychoactive herbs in some kind of self-destructive downward spiral. Ned's here. He's the bad influence.

Him, and the polka-dot rabbit that's inside my nose. It tells me to burn things.

InsaniTwo.

Still can't talk about it. Oh well.

Insanity.

Well, I nearly have a new roommate. He's a cool guy, who I actually (almost) know. Several years back, seven of my friends rented a house for a year as they went to school. The house was pretty rickety, and had some interesting quirks; namely, one of the "bedrooms" was a poorly converted garage, two others had ceilings about 6 feet off the ground, and there was a totally badass cat named Tank that came with the house. Well, this guy comes over to look at the apartment, and we're just chatting about our mutual renters' histories, when he starts talking about this crazy house he shared a few years back with six of his friends.

"Clearly illegal... seven rooms... I lived in this drafty garage... two rooms had really low ceilings..."

My jaw drops.

"No. Fucking. Way," I interrupt, exhibiting my usual savoir-faire. "Was it on [XXXXX] Street?"

He looks at me with his mouth open.

We gape at each other for a minute, as crickets chirp outside in the darkening twilight.

"Bullshit!" We chorus, and bust up laughing. Turns out, he and his friends moved into that house the year after my friends lived there. This was hilarious, because he had also lived in two of the same apartment complexes as I had, at about the same times as I had. This last coincidence was almost too much to bear.

He said the house was just as full of character (read: sketchy) as I remember it, and the cat was healthy and as badass as ever when he moved out.

After such a seemingly predestined set of discoveries, you would think that this guy would be a lock for the room. And he more or less is, in my mind. But there are some issues that need to be worked out first, all but one of which are enormously boring, and one of which I can't talk about right now with any specificity at all. I should have an update tomorrow. I can tell you this, though: It's nothing good.

On a lighter (and dumber) note, I had another entertaining moment at the gym tonight. You'll probably think it's stupid, and it really is. On the other hand, when you're on an elliptical machine for 45 minutes, and the televisions are all tuned to 10 o'clock network schlock, you tend to manufacture your own entertainment.

I'm starting to hit my stride, right in that meaty middle section of the cardio routine, when a stunning brunette glides past my field of vision. There are hardly any adjectives to describe the way she moves that would not conjure up visions of great cats stalking prey through the jungle, so I won't even try to attempt it.

She stops at a weight machine, one of those twisted, Inquisition-esque devices that you only ever see attractive women using. They grimace slightly as they spread their legs wide against the tension, and we men within visual distance practically screw the heads off our necks in an effort to appear casually aloof.

Most of us, anyway.

I check the clock on the far wall of the room, and since I have no interest in watching the latest screeching refrain of the "Ohmygod, the Michael Jackson verdict...." discussions that pass for local television news these days, my eyes wander across the room on the way back to their usual fixed, glazed position, dead center on the far wall. On their journey home, they manage to intersect the path of a paunchy, pleasant-looking man, probably mid-40s, with salt-and-pepper hair and enormous sweat stains fanning down his torso. He's strolling past the brunette's weight machine on his way to the locker room, just as she's bending over to drop her magazine on the floor.

I see his eyes flicker.

"Don't do it, man."

This is the message I try to force through my eyes, into the air between us, to hammer at his hindbrain. Even as I will it, I know exactly what's going to happen next. Possibly my talents lie in precognition rather than telepathy, but I guess we'll never know.

The tendons on his neck flex, and his head starts to pivot, as if he was a bull with a rope threaded through his nose.

At this point, all I can do is watch and grin.

For every step the man takes, his head arcs smoothly in the opposite direction. This goes on for a good nine or ten steps, until I almost expect him to start vomiting split pea soup all over the nearest priest. After a few more steps, his torso actually starts to twist, until he's turned sideways, a crab scuttling for safety among the waves.

My grin has stretched to show my teeth, now, and I'm choking back a laugh, wheezing with the effort of simultaneously keeping my speed up.

By the time the side of the man's foot catches the corner of a rubber mat, and a hand meets the ground as he stumbles with eyes still riveted on the brunette, I can't help it. I'm laughing and panting at the same time, wondering at the miracle that is my gender.

The punchline: a woman of about his age is watching him too, from across the room, with a decidedly serious set to her lips, and a gold wedding ring on her finger.

I imagine the conversation the man will have with his wife in the car ride home, and I have to grab at the stationary handlebars for balance as I snicker and pant.

The guy on the machine next to me shifts a wary eye over to me a couple of times, but other than that, faithfully observes the Code of Beefcake Gorilla Workout Etiquette which, after a long study of my fellow primates at the gym, I figure include the following:

1) Any activity that might be construed as homoerotic (i.e., anything) must be compensated for with ultra-masculine grunts, grimaces, and unequivocally heterosexual gestures, like slapping each other on the ass or teabagging your buddy's face while he's benching.

2) Look straight ahead whenever possible, preferably into a mirror as you admire yourself while you pump those guns. Attentional wandering is allowed, to follow T&A of reasonable caliber.
2a) Prolonged eye contact with another male is punishable by immediate death.

3) Women must either be studiously ignored, openly gawked at, or totally rocked out of their senses by old T-shirts with the sleeves raggedly cut off.

4) When greeting another male friend, the accepted custom is a curt nod and "Sup." Other acceptable methods include: Firm handshake, slap on the ass provided there is no lingering contact, or an A-frame hug with backslaps of unsurpassed violence.

5) When listening to music, one's brow must be furrowed, and the lips pursed slightly, as if in deep appreciation. Gentle but firm nodding to the beat is encouraged. Singing or humming along is strictly forbidden, lest your peers discover that your iPod has Cher's "This is a Song for the Lonely" set on repeat.

What? I don't make the rules. These are all applicable in their form as written only to the True Beefcake Gorilla archetype of gym guys, but they all apply in varying degrees to most guys I see there regularly.

I'm no special exception, so you know, but I tend not to talk or look at anyone, male or female. Way I see it, I'm there to work out and go home, so that's what I do.

The end of an era

Well, John's pretty much all moved out. It's weird. After about 6 years of living in the same space as each other, we developed an interesting friendship. We pretty much exhausted all topics of idle conversation a while ago, so there usually existed between us an easy silence. He'd be doing his own thing, I'd be doing mine, and we just happened to do these things in the same apartment. Neither of us are confrontational people, and neither of us have super freaky habits -- unless you count John's rampant turd-eating, and my habit of dying my skin yellow and making my eyes all slanty -- so there wasn't any tension. In fact, I can remember a few weekends where we hardly exchanged more than a handful of words. I don't know about John, but for me, it wasn't anything *bad*... it was just that there was nothing pressing that needed saying, and that was fine.

Like I said, an interesting friendship. With most people, I feel a need to at least try to make idle chatter, which usually leads to me making stupid comments, and annoying everyone around me. With my closest friends and acquaintances, I find that I can comfortably indulge my natural tendency to just lean back and not say anything, unless I feel there's something interesting to be said or talked about. It was a good run; despite the mail addressed to us as if we were a married couple, and all that stuff, it was a fun time. John, you can be my wingman anyday! (salute)

So now, it's weird as shit. Coming back to the apartment, it feels... cavernous. There have been many weekends where John's been gone doing whatever, and I've been here alone, but this is different. It's like every sound is magnified slightly by the empty space that used to be his room. I suppose chaos physics theory would say that they probably, in fact, are, since his furniture is all gone, so the sounds echo around in the room a little, but that would be a hell of a geeky thing to say.

But, yeah. It's just as quiet as it used to be, no more or less, but it's different. It's like trying on an old pair of leather gloves, that have been soaked in the blood of a murdered loved one. They used to fit perfectly, but now the fit is just... off. Who can tell whether it's because the blood shrank the gloves, or it's the latex gloves you're wearing underneath them, or what? Either way, you're going to end up playing golf in Florida for the rest of your life, dodging the Paparazzi.

At any rate, now I'm (still) searching for a new roommate. This is a fucking pain in my ass, too. I mean, it's awkward, since I'm meeting people I don't know (though by and large, everyone I've met is cool), and it feels like I'm simultaneously giving a job interview and receiving one. Throw in a little dash of a blind date, and you've got it down. Now include the fact that the other person is just as likely to be a guy as a girl, and there's your final "weird" factor. It's really only the first 10 seconds or so that are awkward, then I give the apartment spiel, and we settle down to a little chat. No sweat. But then, the waiting game. People are always looking at a bunch of places, so I need to give them time to decide; then, they know that I have a bunch of people coming by, so there's weirdness on their end, and... well, it usually ends up like this.

1) E-mail dialogue in response to my "roommate wanted" ad.
2) Face-to-face meeting.
3) Nothing.

I don't know whether I should be e-mailing them a follow-up, or they should be calling me, or what. I've gotten to the point where I just want someone I can get along with to just move in already. I'm tired of stretching my face into a smile when I greet strangers at the door. To be honest, though, I think it'd be entertaining to live with a girl for a change. If nothing else, it would encourage me to continue my new practice of wearing pants.

It's surprising, too, how many of my respondents seem to be female. Something like 80% of the respondents to the newest ad have multiple X chromosomes... possibly more, if I've managed to meet a Kleinfelter's in the past week. Take a look at my ad and tell me whether there are any cues that would attract females specifically; I'm baffled.