Some lazy, hazy days out there.  The view of Back Bay and the business district from the bike path this morning...


It's been stiflingly humid, but it usually breaks late in the day.  And let me just say: riding home along the Charles River Path is better than porn on days like these.  The ROTC boys from BU on the jungle gym.  Joggers stripped nearly naked and literally glistening.  (In an inversion of the old adage, when it comes to joggers, men glisten, women sweat.)  Fact is, if you're not sexy on a day like today, you're just not sexy.  Sorry. 

I don't ogle, but I do tend to ride a little slower, and stop along the way to take in the view.  Sometimes you can't help but marvel, though.  Days like these put you in that Walt Whitman frame of mind. 

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long hair,
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

If Uncle Walt were around today, you know he'd have been classed a Level Three Sex Offender long ago.  Because nowadays people tend to mind who seizes them, and they want to know who's puffing on their bending arch (or whatever), and you'll want to sign a prenup before sousing anyone with spray. 

I think the absence of clear boundaries is always a good thing, but ours is a time (it, too, shall pass) where our mania is for defining boundaries — — physical, psychical, spiritual — to more and more insanely precise degrees.  It's that old taxonomical urge gone haywire.  But it also gives us a safe and easy way to feel we are transgressing in a culture of malaise (and the nature of change today does not, curiously, preclude cultural malaise).  Even our transgressions are very clearly prescribed and defined.  

Of course, there are still skirmishes at the borders of the acceptable.  I had this weird thing happen at the gym the other day.  There's a trainer there.  Total extrovert.  You can hear him all over the gym whenever he's working with someone. 

"PUSH!  COME ON BABY!! BREATHE!!! THAT'S IT!! YEAH!!"

He probably moonlights as a doula.

I'm usually in The Zone at the gym, but he's always been friendly (FRIENDLY!!! in fact), and we greet each other by name and chat sometimes.  Well, I say chat.  I should say CHAT!!!  He comes over and shouts at me, and I chuckle and nod until he goes away.

It's like:  "HEY MIKEEEE!  MIKE-OHHHH!  DUDE!!!  WASSUP BRO!!!  My DAWG!!!  MIKE DAWG!!!"

He reaches out his hand, and I never know if I'm supposed to grip it, shake it, slap it, bite it, fist-bump it, Fist-bump with mock explosion at the end it, or what. 

We both pretend this is not totally awkward.  After which he shouts something like: "WORKIN THEM GUNS!!! YEAH DUDE!!!  LOOKIN GOOD!!!"

I usually have mild PTSD and ringing in the ears after an encounter with him.

So the other day he was between clients, and came over to CHAT!!!  I was wearing shorts and he commented on how white my legs are. 

"DUDE!!! YOUR LEGS!!! THEY'RE BLINDIN' ME, DUDE!!! NO-O-O-O-O!! I'M BLIND!!! DU-U-U-UDE!!!"

He's one to talk.  He's this Black Irish type (his skin is white — and I do mean white — his hair is black, his beard is russett).  I'd be lying if I said I didn't like his looks.  But it's the kind of admiration you have of a purebred basenji.  I have never had an impure thought about this guy.  Would I like to see him naked?  Of course.  And why not?  But not in a prurient way.  A magazine centerfold would suffice.  I have absolutely no interest in his interior life. 

Anyway, so he's banging on about how proud he is of his calves (every part of him is sculpted to perfection out of lean muscle, of course), and what his exercise regimen for them consists of (I mean, he is a personal trainer, after all) and I'm just sort of looking at him, going over my to-do list for the day in my head, nodding and chuckling occasionally, when suddenly he takes a giant step backwards, grabs his dick with an evil glare, mumbles his goodbyes, and stalks off.

I thought, hmph.  What was that all about?  The dick grab is something I've noticed some guys do to reinforce that they identify as straight (whatever that means these days — I'm sure I don't know).  It's not a subtle move.  It's a big, brash display of primitive proportions that says, "me have BALLS!  Me have BIG BALLS!  GRRRR!!"  When the move is directed at another male of the species it usually means something like: "Me have BIGGER BALLS than you! Come closer and me HIT YOU with my BIG BALLS!!  GRRR!!!"

Since then not a peep from him.   Not even a "DU-U-U-U-UDE!!!!"

People are funny.  I wasn't even looking at him that way.  Or if I was I didn't realize it, which is disturbing.  Do I always look like I'm making eyes at people?  I do look people in the eye.  I'm not one to be staring off into the middle distance like some people do when they talk to you.

And even if I was enjoying the view while he banged on about his calves, who cares?  he'll live.  Extroverts.  So needy.  Look at me! What are you looking at? Don't look at me!  Look at me!  Enough to make your head spin.  You know, it's like Jonathan Rauch says in "Caring For Your Introvert":

The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves.

Do dogs listen to themselves barking?  I mean, those yappy dogs.  The ones that are always barking. 

I understand, though, and I forgive.  It's summer.  The heat messes with your head.  You get all worked up and glisteny but you don't want to get soused with someone else's spray.  You gotta be careful.  Big balls are your first line of defense.

The thing with the Marine is another one that's gone slightly hazy.  Seems we're in the Last Tango stage.   You remember what happens at the end of Last tango in Paris.  They venture out of the little apartment, and it's this big existential crisis. 

Well, I've been with my Marine over four months now, and we have yet to venture out of the bedroom, and hardly even out of bed.  It seems inevitable we'll have to leave Little Eden at some point, but there's a pall of doom over the thought.  I think Adam and Eve just got bored is what happened.  They finally had to go out looking for a good sushi spot.

Meanwhile I go about my day-to-day business.  When I'm at work in the South End I have lunch either at Emilio's or Billy's.  All the guys at Billy's are related, I've come to realize, and they are all adorable, each in a new and different way.  But Emilio's chicken salad beckons.  I'm a chicken salad zombie.

Despite the summer smog, the sun shines through.  Sunflowers are exploding all along the path through the South End from work to the garden...


As for the garden.  The Executive Board of the Garden Society is making mischief again, and my neighbor in Row E, Tony, is hopping mad.  It's hard to get hopping mad when it's so hot and humid out.  I admire Tony's ability to do it.  He's threatening to call it quits after this season.  All I can say is: this, too, shall pass.

The situation reminds me a little of the current one in Washington.  I'm like: Tony, there are over three hundred of us and three of them. 

"Well," girlfriend snaps, "We can't get rid of them.  There's no provision in the by-laws that allows us to kick out a sitting board."

Well, that's what angry mobs are for, sweetie.

So stop hopping up and down.  And whatever you do, never let 'em see you sweat. 

Remember, baby: you glisten.