for those about to rock

mister fishy-gerbil face/captain insane-o

ok, this comes as a response to this here post. kind of story that begs its own entry, and i'd rather offer it here than clog up jesse's comments section.

anyways, my brother and i were waiting for the train at the cleveland circle on a sunday afternoon about a year ago, having just come from touring our current abode. this old guy in a suit comes sauntering over to where we're sitting. he looks, as justin has aptly described, kind of like a cross between shrek and ronan tynan, the fat pantload/doctor of eating who sings "god bless america" at yankee stadium, and he's clearly in some kind of old guy fog, wearing a thousand-yard stare as he putters by. he approaches a bunch of kids who are sitting on the bench next to us smoking, and i figure that he's just asking them for a cigarette or maybe the time. the train arrives, and we end up sitting in front of said group of kids and diagonally across from said old man.

the first thing i notice is the big bag of chex mix. the old guy is attacking his snack, feeding handfuls of the stuff to his twitching gerbil mouth. the next thing i notice is that he is looking in our general direction, making weird faces -- fish faces with pursed lips -- and making these vaguely menancing gestures with one of his hands, forming it into a pincer and opening and closing it in such a manner one would use to mock someone who just keeps talking. i overhear the kids behind us talking about the old dude in hushed tones, so i turn around and ask them what he said when he came over to them.

apparently, he told them that he was on a gram of ecstasy. i'm not sure how much that is, i'm not sure how it would affect an old man and i'm not sure what would compel someone to share such information with strangers 50 years younger than him, but i do know that we've spotted this guy subsequently in the allston area, and that the last time he was seen -- it was by my brother a week ago-- he had coralled a visibly-frightened college girl on the train into talking to him, and was overheard saying "don't be afraid. i'm very, VERY gay."

posted by jomilkman @ 10:36 AM