Yesterday morning I spent about an hour watering my garden, and it was bone dry by the time I stopped by after work.  And, as sometimes happens, the water was shut off.

There was a guy trying desperately to get water out of the spigot in front of Tony’s gate when I got there. He was cute – small (and as I've said before, small things should be cute, whenever possible) – but I knew there was something off about him immediately. I thought maybe by the way he was moving — with jerky, repetitive motions — that he had a CNS disorder, possibly degenerative.  Whatever it was actually looked like a combination of schizophrenia and St. Vitus' Dance, with a little OCD thrown in for good measure. 

Or he was on something – crystal meth was my guess. I immediately thought, “awwwww! Poor cute, grubby, little meth-head!” and wanted to take him home for a cuddle. I was almost just as immediately repulsed by this impulse.

But I could not help but stare.  I pulled out my lawn chair and sat and watched him.  He was all crouched down trying to get a dribble of water from the spigot to fill his water bottle.  His aura of jittery energy made everything he did look nervous, sketchy and skitzy.  Wobbling around and standing up and pulling off his shirt and putting it back on and taking it off and putting it back on, like, at least ten times, and with those weird, jerky, Parkinson’s movements. Scratching and tugging and pulling on his loose-fitting clothes.

After about twenty minutes of this, I guess he was finally able to fill his water bottle, drip by drip (impressive stick-to-itness), and he jerked past, brushing himself, and obsessively pulling and tugging at his tee shirt and shorts.

He lurched past my gate, looking back, and went all the way around my section of gardens, watching me watching him over the other gardens as he lunged, snapped, twitched and jerked his way back to where he'd started — a wide, torturous circle.  (Giving new meaning to the phrase "circle jerk," for sure.) 

Finally, he stopped at my gate, and you could tell he had it in his head to play it casual and cool.  He leaned on it with a mighty jerk, and nearly fell over.  Pure slapstick.  I was pretty sure now that he was tripping, because people with conditions know they've got a condition, usually, and don't try to act like they don't when they obviously can't.  People on drugs are the opposite.

We chatted a bit, he told me his name was Aaron, and he asked if he could come in.  He'd been very polite up to now, and like I said, he was cute, in a medieval peasant with dyskinesia sort of way, and I was mildly intrigued.  At any rate, he was small enough that I could chuck him over the fence into the Special Needs Garden if he started seizuring. 

He asked if he could sit on my bench and I said yes. He asked me what I was doing. I said I was just sitting. I said, and you? Have you been here all day? (He had that ruddy look that goes with heat exhaustion.) He told me he'd been around awhile.  Seen any action? I asked.  He shrugged. Or it may have just been a spasm. He was sitting on my bench, trying to be still, but kept heaving his shoulders and scootching around, knocking my water bottle off three or four times.

I was like, “so Aaron, you seem a little fidgety.”

He said, sort of wistfully: "yeah.  I'm partying.” Which I guess means crystal meth. “Thus,” he said, jerking his already almost empty water bottle up to take a swig, “the frantic search for water.”

Then he started babbling about how he’d just spent several days in a room with eleven other guys, but the room was only really made to fit seven. But it was cool because he found a couple guys he liked, and that’s sort of unusual.

You know, sometimes people talk and it takes you a minute to get what they’re saying. Especially when they leave out key words and concepts. At first I wasn't quite following.  Then I realized "a room with eleven people" = orgy. All I could think was, Ewww. 

I'm not an orgyist.  If you can stomach it, go for it.  I can't.  I mean, sure, there were those spontaneous group romps after the football game with the varsity team, but it wasn't like it was this big planned thing.  And of course anyone who's ever been to a bathhouse has had the orgy option available to them, but it's never really appealed to me.  Too picky, probably.  (And just for the record: sex on a beach in Costa Rica in front of other people is not an orgy.  In fact, I think it's a mixed drink.)

Anyway, no wonder he was tweekin'. Some stinky little room in some run-down little row house on the wrong side of Mass Ave. in the South End with a dozen desperate, drugged-out pigs.  It sounds about as exciting as a bowl of oatmeal.  Don't get me wrong.  I have nothing against oatmeal.  It's probably just a tad bit too much of a good thing here. 

Aaron concurred.  “Yeah, it was a little unusual for a Monday. More of a Saturday thing.”

We had a lovely little chat then about his double life, and I gave him directions to the nearest working spigot.  He thanked me — as ever polite — and lurched off. 

When I got home, my mother had called.  She'd gotten my big coming out email, and said that sure, she had suspected.  You know, twenty years without a girlfriend is kind of a long time.  "But since it didn't make any difference to me," she said, "I was waiting until you brought it up.  I never wanted to pry."  Then she called me "a wonderful human being," and told me she loved me.  (She said she'd wait until we saw each other to ask whether I was "the man" or "the woman" — but mothers always know.)

After all that was out of the way, her true motives came out. You'll recall, my ex had offered to treat us to dinner, which is why I'd decided to fill her in on the back story there.  Mom was like: "I'm with you, a free meal's a free meal." And when you're paying a grand for a long weekend at the Omni Parker House, every little bit helps.

As you can see, the apple didn't fall far from the tree.