Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

topics

Hot Yoga, Good Omens, & Happy Endings

by

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.

Where Dirt Means Dirt

by

I don’t know if this is a universal experience in Philadelphia, but I spent my whole life up to this point living no more than two doors down from a drug dealer.

Visit Philly! Score some drugs!

No, seriously.

I don’t know if it was something about my choice in row homes or just something about Philadelphia, but there has been evidence of illegal narcotics distribution within a few hundred feet of my door in every place I’ve lived. Southwest, University City, West, South.

Mind you, if you are a drug dealer, or a drug addict – or, hey, even a drug mule! – I am not passing judgment on you. I can’t afford to alienate that (potentially wide) swath of blog readers. But, more to the point, what you do inside your house is totally cool. Me, I have my wife tie me to a chair in a room covered in plastic sheets, so you guys can just keep on keeping on. I’m just saying, it’s not like I’ve always lived within two doors of a police officer, or a gymnast. There’s simply something special about drug dealers.

This is maybe why I maintain a blanket approach of wary kindness to neighbors. I want to know their name in case I have to borrow a cup of sugar or talk to the cops about them, but I typically don’t want to go over for dinner or anything. I mean, you heard about the neighbor who offered teenaged me some crack to smoke, right?

When a neighbor stopped by our house to offer to cart away some of our dirt, perhaps you can understand why I immediately assumed it was code. I mean, the dirt is just dirt, but the offer must have something to do with drugs. He said he needed to fill in his yard before he put in an above ground pool, but “fill in the yard” probably meant “bury the evidence” and “above ground pool” was probably code for “massive bong.”

Right?

In this case, said neighbor showed up with an actual wheelbarrow to transport the literal dirt. I wanted to ask, “are you a drug farmer?,” because who else just shows up at your house with a wheelbarrow? Who even owns a wheelbarrow? Farmers, that’s who.

My neighbor was not a drug dealer, a drug farmer, or a non-drug farmer. He was a friendly guy who wants to put an above-ground pool in for his hilarious five-year-old daughter, who helped us shovel and then volunteered to plant flowers for E.

I realize I’ve now unwittingly befriended everyone within a two-house radius of our new house, and so far none of them have tried to sell us drugs. Which makes me wonder: is this real life?

(Although, to be fair, said neighbor did tell us about a grisly triple-murder that happened just down the block … but I have to think that’s way more common in Philly than even friendly neighborhood drug dealers.)

Next the world is going to try to convince me that if I leave our car unlocked no one is going to come by to pee in it.

It’s not going to work! I know that unlocked cars are the world’s urinal.

Remember when?

by

I remember convincing my mother to let me stay home from school to watch news coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I remember my grade school wheeling a television into our chapel, begrudgingly, to watch Clinton’s inauguration.

I remember Chestnut Street streaming with people, adults and students, on September 11.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to remember about last night, or why.

Life is binary. Someone terrifying and monstrous was alive. His ideals and goals were completely opposed to ours. Now he is dead. There is little to digest or debate.

Life is binary. Liberty is digital. Progressive. Freedom is not an on-or-off state. After slaves were freed they still lacked many liberties. Women won the right to vote but were still treated as second-class citizens. Gays and lesbians will soon be free to serve openly in our military, but not to enjoy the status of marriage.

Life is binary. Liberty is digital. The pursuit of happiness is infinite. It is endless possibility that your life and liberty help to define. It’s who you are and what you do, and how satisfied you are about doing it.

What will I remember about last night? That it concluded four days of celebration around the marriage of two of my favorite people. That the bride’s family traveled from across the country and globe to be here. People I had heard about in stories, whose sickness and health had stuck in my thoughts. All of us in the ballroom as I endeavored to steal the bride’s shoe from her foot (a tradition). Sitting in a hotel bar watching her pose with Colonial War reenactors, a perfect juxtaposition of the men who fought to secure our unalieable rights and someone who came a long way (in distance and life) to be able to enjoy them.

I will remember Elise and I, lying in bed in our own house with my laptop on my chest, exhausted from celebrating for days. Watching reaction blossom from one Facebook status to a dozen to my entire Twitter feed. Watching President Obama speak.

I woke up this morning in the same bed, next to the same person, free and content.

If anyone ever asks me what I was doing when I found out that Osama Bin Laden was dead, I will tell them it had nothing to do with death, and everything to do with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.