My back is feeling a lot better today. The pain is still there, but when I woke up, it wasn’t nearly as intense as it was yesterday morning. So that’s progress. It gives me hope that I’ll be better by Tuesday. :)

Last night, I emailed the adviser for my university’s Convergence Publishing class (aka the school magazine) asking to be blue-slipped into the class. Because one cannot simply sign up for COM-446 (Meme reference ftw). I sent a copy of my resume and an article I once wrote for the first newspaper I ever worked on, and I made sure to mention that I have ample experience as a journalist, an editor, and a photographer (because I do. I’m not gonna be as modest as I usually try to be; this is like a job interview, and I have to sell myself because let’s be honest, I’m probably the most qualified person to have applied for their staff in quite a while. And if I’m wrong on that one, I’ll gladly eat those words.), and that I also had physical copies of every article I’ve ever written, as well as an entire creative writing portfolio that I was willing to show the adviser at any time.

I’m really hoping I hear back with positive news. I heard good things about the class from a friend who was on the staff and recommended it, so I really wanna try it. Plus, it’s only 2 credits and from what I understand, it’s a lot like working for the first paper I was on, in a sense. That, and it sounds like an appropriate amount of work for the amount of credits offered (2), unlike the most recent newspaper class I took here.

In other news, my online shopping addiction is starting to rear it’s semi-attractive head again. I just found a cheap copy of the UK version of Last Window: The Secret of Cape West for the Nintendo DS (the sequel to Hotel Dusk: Room 215, which is one of my favorite handheld video games ever), as well as 4 volumes of (supposedly) translated Phoenix Wright graphic novels. There appear to be even more of them on Amazon.com than there are on Court-records.net (and for under $10 each, too!). I must control my urge to buy these items immediately. And at least wait until my next payday or something.

Wait a week. Sounds easy enough. 

Edit: 12 hours later, I’m experiencing back spasms again. FUCK.

So today, I was hit on by a boy at the gym.

It was kinda weird. 

And for any readers out there who know what I look like and are about to give me shit for thinking this kind of thing is weird, you can stfu because you don’t understand—this never happens to me. Like, ever.

First time for everything, I guess.

Here’s how it went down, y’all*.

So I was at the gym (obviously); today was back/abs day. I went over to the part of the gym where they have the torso rotation machine** and was gonna use it, but I couldn’t since someone was using it already. So instead, I started doing bent-over dumbbell rows on a bench, and then went to use the rowing machine*** after I knocked out 3 sets of 10 reps with a 40lb dumbbell. 

(Since I’m sure you wanted to know that part. But now we’ve got the story set up for the main part.)

Anyways, so I had just finished a so-so set of seated rows on the machine when this kid using the dip machine next to me started talking to me about something. Now, my initial reaction was one of confusion and suspicion, since as we all know by now, I like to put up walls and maintain a sort of “intimidating” air to keep people away from me, especially at the gym****. But I guess this kid was different and didn’t notice or something. 

This is how it went down:

Him:(something I didn’t hear because I had my headphones on, but I noticed he was looking at me and his mouth was forming words)

Me (pulling out headphone, likely looking pretty cautious): huh?

Him: what’s your name?

Me: Uhhh… (What the fuck?!)

Him: I’m [his name. We’ll call him Jim]. (he extends hand here)

Me: ……….[my name] (slowly reach out and shake hands******)

Jim: (starts spouting out things I’ve already sorta forgotten about him being new at uni and then asks if I’m a freshman or sophomore)

Me: Junior. (I would hope I don’t look like a freshman or sophomore!) You’re…..?

Jim: Freshman

Me (smirking?): (Knew it.) Thought so.

If anything else was said after that, I’ve already forgotten it. I know it ended with me going back to my workout though. I wasn’t really in the mood for being distracted in an area where there were signs telling gym-goers not to rest on the exercise machines between sets. That, and I’m not interested in being hit on by people who are potentially the same age as my younger brother.

God, my therapist was right. I am an asshole. Good thing I don’t have a grindr anymore; I’d probably end up on “d-bags of grindr.com.”

In retrospect, I suppose I probably should’ve been a little more welcoming to the kid (although the fact that I said anything at all in the conversation is, in my opinion, a pretty big step for me, especially given the context of the situation), but I was kinda caught off guard by it all.

I was just working out, minding my own business, and then out of the blue, some kid who I’d caught looking at me out of the corner of my eye just comes up to me and asks what my name is. Freaking initiated a conversation without even starting it off with a “Hello”; He skipped the first step and went straight to the introductions!

This kid clearly had an agenda. I’m not so sure how I feel about his forwardness, but the word “refreshing” is one of the first to come to mind. :p

Anyways, like I said, this never happens to me. Nobody has ever randomly initiated a conversation with me before. And when I say that, I’m not counting people who knew me prior to the conversation, or situations where I was in class, or people at the gym asking me how many sets I have left on a machine or if I’m using such and such equipment or whatever.

I mean in real life, nobody I didn’t already know on some level has ever come up to me and initiated a conversation with me and asked me what my name was.*******

Hell, even when Alan******** and Staring Guy********* talked to me, they did so after I initiated the conversation (except that one time at Fred Meyer)!

So then do I know I was being hit on? 

Simple: I don’t really know for sure. 

BUT. What Jim did was the same kind of thing I did when I tried talking to Staring Guy last year. And sorta with Alan, too.

So I’m 99% sure that Jim here was trying to hit on me. The only thing he didn’t do “right” was make repeated attempts at conversation. Although that definitely would have freaked me out even more, so it’s probably good that he didn’t. Besides, it probably took a lot of guts for him to even introduce himself to me. I know it took me a long time before I could ever approach Staring Guy…

Therefore, I have a new goal: next time I see Jim, I’ll say hello and try to be friendly. He could probably use one, and I might actually benefit from it. Practice making social skills/friends/whatever, potentially get a workout partner, do my “community service”**********, you know.

My therapist would be proud.

Now I’d better get off the throne of my ivory tower and go to bed, since my roommate’s been asleep the whole time I’ve been typing this shit. Here’s hoping I actually run into the kid so I can have the satisfaction of achieving this new goal I’ve set for myself.

Footnotes:

*If I say “y’all,” and I’m a white man from the west coast, is that an act of racism on my part? Or am I just being offensive? D:

**Look it up. It’s fun. :p

***Which was right next to the torso rotation machine

****Excluding the two days a week I have team training, I go to the gym after 8:30 pm because any other time of day is too much of a hassle. WAY too many people there working out, getting in my way, making my workouts last longer than they need to. The gym is the one place where I consider people to be nothing more than a nuisance because they are always fucking getting in my way. I’m there to work out, get in better shape, and achieve my fitness goals so that I can one day like what I see in the mirror and experience self-actualization. I prefer to do this quickly because I try to be efficient in everything I do***** and because I’ve read that if your workout lasts longer than an hour, your body can start to produce cortisol, which apparently can hinder your progress (although I may be wrong on that one).

*****I think it may be a result of stuff that happened in my childhood (my therapist would have a field day with that one)— when I was a kid, my mother was always rushing us in the morning because we were always running late. She was perpetually late to work because she had to drop us off at day care before school every day and she worked at a hospital in the city before she met my stepfather and got a way better job years later. Even now, I have a reputation for being the one who’s always late to things (I’m working on it, I swear!).

******I dunno why, but unless I’m in a formal kind of situation or I really have to, I prefer not to shake people’s hands. I just don’t like it. 

*******I said “IRL” because when back during my Grindr days, I would occasionally get hit on by people within the app, although it was usually older men or people who just wanted to see dick pics. -_- 

********See post titled “Memory Lane 1: Alan”

*********I can’t remember if I have before, so I’ll explain later. Staring Guy is another story for another time.

**********A term I learned recently after coming to university. In the gay world, “community service” is basically helping people come out of the closet and adjust to living their new gay lives. I’ve sorta done this with a couple people already, but not completely, and not enough to count, so I guess I still have to do it. :|