Lemme Tell Ya About The Time .... #3

or, EvilMister Couldn't Save The World If He Tried

EvilMister is not above a little ... skullduggery ... in an effort to make ... friends with women. Now, this sounds much worse than it really is, but I am willing to put in a little extra effort. With that in mind, let me tell you about Ashtanga Yoga, and the evil it represents. Okay? All right.

There was a girl I worked with who was into yoga. I was into the girl. I'm not even going to discuss with you the numerous and plentiful warning triggers sound whenever I start dating, or trying to date, someone I work with. I assure you that those stories will be covered when I'm certain that the women involved are either dead or out of the country. This particular girl was, and I am sure still is, incredibly sweet natured. Just the sort of thing a crank cantankerous moody SOB like myself needs to keep from stabbing people in the neck. She suggested that I come to yoga with her, and me, being the fool I am, said 'uhuh'.

Why is Ashtanga Yoga evil? What, for example, makes it so different than the others? Well, besides my not really knowing about different yogic paths, I can tell you what Ashtanga Yoga involves.

• You are in a room. This room is hot. Hot enough to melt fingernails and make you seriously consider moving to Alaska. If Eskimos came into this room unprepared, they would turn into puddles of icewater.
• There is no way for the heat to escape this room. Someone, somewhere, had devised a room to keep great escape artists from escaping and turned it instead into a meditational chamber. When you start to exercise, there is no where for the additional heat to go.
• Because it is, literally, an airtight room, there is also nowhere for the stink to go. An Ashtanga room smells much like I imagine a musk ox would reek after a really good what-the-fuck-ever a musk ox does for exercise.

With that out of the way, I now move on to the fact that it's co-ed. Ordinarily, this ain't a problem for me. I mean, people are people, right? You gotta run into the opposite sex sometime sooner or later, right? EvilMister is not ashamed of his body, not by any stretch of the imagination (especially since he's lost 45lbs in the last five months) but still, I don't subject my oddly shaped body to unsuspecting people, even if they don't stop right there, shriek loudly and pass out. (I mean, come on, I'm chubby, I know it, I and I alone can make fun of myself). It took a major effort to pretend I wasn't wearing a pair of shorts and a tight shirt that, sadly, informed everyone I should be wearing a manzeer.

So there I am, trying to a) impress the girl I like with how amazingly awesome and willing I am to try new things, b) trying to not look like an out-of-shape porn star who is literally sweating his life away and c) trying to be more bendy.

Yoga instructors might not look like Drill Instructors for the Marines, but they are. Ohhhhh, they are. Even in the beginner's class, they rifle through their commands like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman bawling out Private Pyle. If you don't know what any of the various positions are, you're s'posed to, y'know, follow along with the rest of the class, only a few seconds behind so's you can see the pose. But all these motherfuckers do all day long is drink wheatgrass and practice bending.

To a guy who's spent his entire adolescent and adult playing video games and eating potato chips, even the most basic move is reminiscent of Marquis de Sade's favorite torture/sex devices. And while EvilMister is into weird shit, sweating that much and posing like that without someone directly involved other than someone who's the younger cousin of Gumby and ten feet away from me is a little much.

I learned two very important things during my time with Yoga. One is that I am about as flexible as spaghetti. They say flexibility increases with time and patience. I'm sure it does. But I am a man with little patience, and even less time in a room full of stinky sweaty, moaning people who aren't naked and violating at least three Commandments. The second is that I am a person who couldn't balance to save the planet.

The aliens from ID4 could show up tomorrow, point all their big guns at the planet, and demand to see me. After some hilarity involving a cross country chase, some FBI agents, several timely explosions and at least one hot sex scene with me and Kristin Kreuk, I would be taken before these aliens, at which point I would be told the following;

"If you balance for ten seconds on one foot, your planet will be spared, and you will be a hero to them. If you fail, the world shall be destroyed and you will be thrown out the nearest space lock."

Let me tell you something.

If that happens, we're all doomed, DOOMED I say. Half the time I can barely balance on two feet. It's a miracle I don't fall over walking down the street. And that's why I don't 'do' yoga.

What happened to the girl? Well, I met her boyfriend, and in an extremely uncharacteristic burst of bonhomie, I backed off from the front lines and went a different direction. I think my doing so pissed her right the fuck off, 'cuz she doesn't talk to me anymore. I'll never learn.