Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Hot Yoga, Good Omens, & Happy Endings

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A year ago if you told me I would willingly lock myself in a room heated to 105 degrees with 40% humidity to do 90 minutes of extreme stretches with a gaggle of nearly nude hipsters, dancers, and absurdly ripped gay men, all dripping with sweat…

Actually, I have no idea what I would have done if you told me that a year ago. There’s really no way to predict past me’s response. Maybe I would have asked you to mix me a stronger drink.

I have surprisingly awful balance, but I actually managed to strike this pose twice last night. The first time I promptly fell on my ass due to my complete and utter shock at getting into it. Oh, and the sweat.

Yet, there I was last night at my first Bikram Yoga class, dripping with sweat (a rarity!) and also nearly nude. Nearly nude in public! I like to wear t-shirts to the beach, people. The only time I get naked in front of other people is under carefully controlled conditions on the internet.

That was a joke; I haven’t been naked on the internet for, like, a decade.

After a few months of yoga classes at work I pestered my two fittest co-workers to tag along to a class in the outside world. Possibly as part of some form of ongoing hazing, they suggested I come with them to Bikram yoga.

There I was, half naked and sweating, at one point dropping out of a triangle pose because I was about to faint. I think at some point I also prayed to an undetermined god of yoga to strike me down where I stood. But I stuck with it the full 90 minutes.

(Don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with this. This might become a blog about homeownership or television shows from time to time, and it’s always a blog about OCD and slight social awkardness, but I swear it’s not going to turn into a blog about yoga. None of us wants to read that.)

(Unless it has to do with slight social awkwardness, in which case it is fair game.)

Nearly ten years ago I was in my first student run theatre production (and my last piece of theatre at Drexel). Being student-run means we had to do everything ourselves – sets, promotion, makeup – everything. And at the time the idea of choosing what to wear onstage seemed a bit beyond me. It had to be what my character would wear, but also say something about him.

Luckily, we had a fantastic advisor, Michelle, a Drexel administrator working on her Fashion degree. I talked out my character ideas with her, and we settled on what I ought to wear.

It turned out fine. The first time E ever saw me was onstage in that show, wearing those clothes.

Later, I had graduated and was living with E, and I decided it was time to get better at singing. I found a voice instructor I wanted to try, and headed to his house on the train. Who was sitting next to me? Michelle, who I hadn’t seen for years, and her daughter.

It turned out fine. That voice instructor didn’t work out (he was creepy), but I came away knowing what I wanted. I eventually found the ideal coach for me. My voice blossomed. My singing became healthier. Now I can rehearse two nights a week with rock bands and not get the slightest bit hoarse.

Last night. I was lying next to the window of the Bikram studio in my dri-fit shirt, already desperately sweating. I’m the kind of sweater that has to bring a second shirt to a wedding, because I will be dripping with sweat on the dancefloor … a dancefloor that’s not heated to 105 degrees or approaching some form of medieval torture.

A man laid his mat next to mine, and I was relieved to see he was not a dancer or absurdly ripped, but a normal dude in a dri-fit shirt like me. He smiled hello and set out a second mat. “For my wife,” he said, so he wasn’t gay either.

Michelle does not typically have wings or appear in a Tony Kushner play, but she still may be my guardian angel.

That put me at ease, even as I mopped the sweat from my brow for the first time and laid back into Savasana (AKA corpse pose, and even that was hard to do in the heat). When I finally emerged from it to start the class, a women’s voice called from off to the right.

“Peter?”

Yes, Michelle was in my yoga class, sitting next to her husband, the normal dude in the shirt.

Despite at points thinking I really was going to pass from this life onto the next, Bikram yoga turned out fine. I stuck it out in the room the entire time, emerging with a new appreciation of 80-degree weather, drenched in sweat on a crazy endorphin high.

Though I hugged Michelle goodbye, I’m starting to think she isn’t real. I mean, I definitely touched her (I wasn’t that high on yoga), but what other explanation is there for her appearing at important junctures in my life to signal that a major decision lies ahead, and it will turn out fine.

Even if she isn’t a Roma Downey-style angel, she’s definitely a good omen.

Joining the Boys’ Club

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I have never been “one of the guys.”

Except for live-nearly-nude-dancing-girls, apparently.

I don’t do a lot of typical dude things, like ogle women or watch sports. Most of my friends are women. Even in my dim memories of kindergarten, I surrounded myself with girls.

That’s not to say I don’t have any close male friends. We just don’t do dude stuff together, like … uh, I’m out gender stereotypes already. This is how little I am connected to my dudeness.

That said, I have found myself in the groom’s party of one of my longtime male BFFs and – unlike my wedding party – this one is a single sex affair. A fest of sausage, if you will. Which means not only am I in for some guy-on-guy quality time, but I was in for a bachelor party.

Prepared as I might be to drink other men under the table while watching sports (seriously, just try me), inherent in the looming bachelor party was a looming visit to a strip club.

I dreaded the concept. The only time I was nearly convinced to attend a strip club with friends I wound up having dry heaves before I could even get in a cab. I’m too little of a stereotypical dude and too much of a feminist. Paying to objectify strange, naked women is really low on my list of things that sound fun.

(To wit: my own bachelor party was a co-ed 80s prom entitled “Like a Virgin.”)

I can't deny it - I honestly did resemble him a bit on Friday. You know, with the unbearable hotness of me.

Yet, at a strip club is where I found myself on Friday night. Well, they had tops and bottoms on, so I guess it wasn’t a strip club. A pole dancing joint? Is that more accurate?

Hilariously, I turned out to be a live-nearly-nude-dancer magnet. E thinks it’s because I looked like Bradley Cooper in the episide of Alias where he pretends to be an Australian rock star.

She was probably right.

And, folks, point numero uno everyone failed to tell me about strip clubs? You might have to be careful how you touch the women, but they do not have any hesitations about how they touch you.

Yeah.

You know, I can’t not be polite and chat for a minute if someone is nuzzling me with her breasts, and then I feel bad for taking up her time, and then I am obligated to fold dollar bills and slip them into improbably small straps holding together even more improbably small garments.

The whole thing is ooky and disgusting slippery slope (not unlike a stripper pole … HEY-OH!)

After the first hour I was tipsy and having fun with the guys and alternatingly glowering at my cell phone in an attempt to ward off further elbow-molesting bosoms, having driven off the last woman by going on at great length about how my beautiful wife helps me select all of my fashion after she complimented my scarf.

I can't even contemplate the coordination it would take for me to be able to do this. I'm still working on mastering tree pose.

I felt another pair of breasts at my elbow (seriously, my elbow = SO POPULAR), and turned for my casual brushoff. This woman’s opening gambit was to ask me what I did for a living. When I said, “communications – marketing, really,” she exclaimed, “That’s my major! Well, really I’m journalism.” Which, as we know, I was too.

That’s when I started to have a little fun at the strip club. At first it was a room full of strange women, none of whom where even vaguely as attractive as my wife. As aerobic as their gyrations were, it didn’t feel much different than watching a class at a gym.

Then I actually took the time to meet one of the women – a perfectly sweet Italian girl – and give her advice on how database classes are going to help her if she ever has to do any direct marketing. And then I met another woman who was a fitness instructor and collected comic books.

You know what, I didn’t mind watching them dance. They were real people with great legs. And we kept chatting after they danced.

(Of course, there was still the inherent weirdness of having to tip a girl to have the sort of conversation I’d have at a networking night at a bar…)

Does this story have a moral?

I am one of the guys, even if I’m not a stereotypical guy. I can drink and carouse and have fun without being a chauvinist, so I need to get over my fear of “The Boys Club.”

Also, I was reminded of something important: attraction is context. My wife is more attractive than any stripper not only because she is smokin’ hot, but because she’s my mega-talented best friend. Similarly, I think my friends’ wives and girlfriends are beautiful. Why? I know them. They are not random pretty faces on the street – they are dynamic people with a myriad of skills and interests.

So are the women in a strip club – but you don’t really get the chance to hear about that (unless you keep tipping them). I guess most men are fine with that, but my not being fine with it doesn’t mean I am not a man, guy, dude, or boy.

Next up? I hear it’s traditional for us to kidnap the bride at the wedding and barter in liquor with the groom for her return.

That, I think I can handle.

pipes and glass

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A long time ago I had a neighbor, freebasing cocaine at his kitchen table.

That came later, though.

Curled around my first guitar on the front step, maybe? Must’ve been. I don’t remember how else he knew I could play. I remember our porch, and his hammers on Ziggy. That’s exactly what I wanted.

We became a pair in his basement from time to time, him showing me barre chords, my explaining why you might retune.

I didn’t have that in my life at the time. I had Gina, still several months of skepticism about my guitar playing before she’d be of much help. No one else to take an interest. Certainly not an adult example.

(My mother’s boyfriend had played guitar, maybe, in the 70s? Some distantly removed time. He had sliced the tendon on his pointer, and could no longer play barres. Useless to me. He had a clumsy way of making a C chord, remembering it a half-fret at a time.

Inwardly I swore: no forgetting.)

So there I was, in the neighbor’s basement. We had known him forever, anyway. He was fifteen years older? Feels like he was much older than I am now. At least seventeen, if he remembered Bowie like that.

I noodled on his ancient synthesizer and he restrung his Yamaha 12-string. “Like Bowie’s.” And he told his story.

He was heavy into music, writing his own all of the time. He went on a cruise ship or some other inane vacation, to play. And someone said, one night, to him – very serious about his music. They said to him he sounded like something or some other thing. It was probably the 80s, so probably some other awful thing. Richard Marx, let’s say.

And he said, “Peter.” He said my name in this very convivial way, like, we’re just two Italian guys shooting the shit. It was not a way men usually said my name. Still not.

“Peter, I didn’t know if it was a compliment. I hadn’t heard anything new in a year. All I would listen to was myself.”

I was incredulous, still a fan more than a musician. How could he turn off everything else? It seemed likely a lie.

I got too familiar, I guess. The whole family lived there, and I got used to poking my head in if I got home late from rehearsal and the light was on.

I put my head in, and there they were, him and his best friend. Hardware on the table, but not the tool box like usual. Pipes and glass?

Pipes and glass, and he said, “do you want any” or maybe “you don’t want any,” and I, numb, just walked back across the porches to my door.

Figures, the one guy who could say my name like that and mean it and play those little hammers. But I knew what my goal was – I would have to learn my barre chords before there’d be any excess.

I forget him for a year or so, here and there. There are other stories – driving to the music store in South Philly, the time I almost cut my finger off and he came over because my mom was at work. That bass in pieces in my closet.

I’ve still never been that freebaser at the kitchen table. I must not be good enough at barres. But, now I know what it’s like to only listen to myself, to not want or need anything else.

I understand him that much.

I Got You, Babe.

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Today Gina sent me a link to what is – in my humble opinion – the most awesome vintage video clip I have ever seen on the internet. Behold:

Aside from the utter comedy of the nun costume and feather bustiere, it’s indicative of most glam-era Bowie in that underneath all of the glamour he’s so obscenely, effortlessly talented. Yet, he was promoting himself as a character to keep the attention on his artifice and not of the technical merits of his performance.

It makes me wonder: was my glam phase artifice as well, and if so what was I using it to obscure?

Or, alternately, did I just look hot in vinyl pants?

Now With More Undergarments…

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One of the reasons I love having a blog – especially a longstanding blog that is never revised or edited in retrospect – is the hindsight it offers.

For instance, longtime readers may recall that I used to have a webcam, and on said webcam I would routinely – even frequently – appeared in the nude. Never full frontal, mind you, but everything but. Because, apparently, that’s how I spent most of my time – nude, either pretending i was in a Playgirl spread or playing guitar.

If you are one of said longtime readers, you may also recall that I archived the highlights of said webcam in a conveniently accessible gallery, where they could be viewed by all future employers or pornographic film recruiters.

Well, you may recall it, but it certainly came as a shock to me when I clicked through an old link tonight to be met with very nearly my full monty circa 2001.

Even more shocking, in retrospect my 2001 almost-full-monty was some pretty hot stuff. Like, just now I sorta gawked at myself for a minute or two.

In case you aren’t one of said longtime readers (of which there approximately four that I can think of) I’d love for you to see the hotness that was me for yourself (as long as you are not an employer! or co-worker! or one of my hypothetical eventual children!).

Except… um… actually, I’d rather you not see it.

Let me rephrase: I’d love for you to be cognizant of the hotness that was me, but I don’t necessarily want to direct you towards a venue where you can see the hotness, especially not in a form that can be forwarded via email or posted on your favorite social networking site.

In any event, thank god for my blog, or I would have tottered into my middle age having completely forgotten that I used to lounge around the apartment in the buff, strategically placing bass guitars so that they would show only the tiniest wisp of pubic hair, and that I really ought to consider taking some of those pictures down if I ever decide to run for a political office.