Diet Log for today:
Breakfast: 1 slice dry, whole wheat toast with scrambled egg whites.
Lunch: The Joel Wyatt Power Salad of Destiny, one can of albacore tuna (dry)
Snack: Ants on a Log (Celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins)
Dinner: Smothered burrito, nachos
Dessert: Three donuts I swiped from outside the manager's meeting this morning
(Because I earned it, that's why.)
Today, my ass was completely, totally, unequivocally kicked. And then handed to me. What's more is, I actually sort of liked it.
I took a half day today so I could meet Kyle at the gym for a quick, full body workout. After I changed into my sweats, I was left to wait for about 30 minutes after our agreed-upon time. I didn't want to start without him, since I was anticipating the eventual whooping I received, so I just sort of hovered around the weights, looking over those old workout charts that have been hanging up since aerobics were all the rage, which was probably looked only slightly less sketchy than if I waited in the locker room by the showers.
Finally, Kyle strolled into the workout area,all decked out in his courier gear. It occurred to me for the first time that the getup is virtually interchangeable with the standard superhero uniform; all light weight, tight fitting spandex and mystery gear strapped strategically along his body.
"All right, man. Shall we?" He said, tousling his hair from its helmet-flattened state to its natural droopy-poof.
"Hey, you're the pro. Lead on..."
He proceeded to drop his torso down to his knees, effortlessly grabbing onto the soles of his shoes. For like, a whole minute. When he whipped back to his full height, I turned to head over to the weights.
"Where you going? Aren't you going to stretch?"
"Oh. Yeah, no, definitely." I layed down on the exercise mats and began tugging my limbs away from their sockets, while Kyle worked his way through a series of downward-facing animals and sun-salutations. I don't usually like to stay at the gym for more than an hour, but having promised myself that I'd follow his lead, I attempted to match his deceptively simple movements; for the next 10 minutes we were in the corner, balancing on the smalls of our backs, breathing out like we were about to deliver babies
Kyle walked over to the squats rack, where a couple of guys in those MC Hammer workout pants were standing, congratulating each other between sets.
"Hey, you guys mind if we work-in here?"
One of the guys huffed out a non-committal grunt, clearly worried that this wispy little thing was going to move their weights without setting them back up afterwards. I haven't really decided yet if Kyle is completely un-self conscious, or if he's so hyper aware of only his body that he has no idea what else is going on around him; but he leaped up and grabbed onto a bar at the top of the rack, executing a set of gravity-defying pull ups.
He landed, thanking the two weight lifters, then looked at me, "Oh, did you want a go?"
"Ah, no, I'm good." I didn't see any reason to completely humiliate myself with my standard three-and-a-half chin ups. Besides, my muscles were still quivering from the stretches.
We headed over to the weight rack, and he started in with some curls. I glanced around to make sure no one's listening in, and asked him, "So, that yoga stuff, did you learn all that while you were training?"
"Nah," he said, with only the slightest hint of strain beneath his voice. "that all came about after I retired."
Retired. All the same questions raced back into my head. "So, then, what really is the training? What's it like? I mean, how exactly does one get into your line of work?"
He just looked at me for a moment. I could see he was considering his words, wary of potential eavesdroppers, or letting me in on something that was still a closely guarded secret. "Well, my benefactor... there's a foundation, see? A group that tracks potential candidates. Psychological profiles are drawn up, based on their surveillance. If you're a tough kid, naturally athletic, with an I.Q. of 139 or above, you're off to a good start." He offered this without a hint of humility, but that's okay, because I sort of felt sorry for him. "There's all these grants and scholarships that just sort of find their way to you through anonymous channels. My parents died when I was young and my aunt didn't have a lot of money, so she wasn't about to question it. But ultimately, it's all science camps and summer programs. You stay in public school - inner city, every one of us - just to keep that 'edge'. That way you're already pretty tough by the time your real training begins."
Okay, so that bugged me. I got an edge: Englewood High, yo. "What about the ones who aren't chosen? Do they just wind up working at Home Depot, or something?"
"From where I sit, it's a pretty sweet deal. The scholarships will eventually sort of fade out, but the candidate's file is destroyed, and they just move on with their lives, none the wiser. They miss out on the insanity; the attempts on your life, and the mad scientists and alternate dimensions..."
Yeah, about that ... "And time travel?" I ask.
"That, too. Not that I've ever done any, myself. The Agency has a special task force of heroes to deal with space-time anomalies."
"But it's a real thing. Like, people going into the past, or the future?"
"Not as much as you'd think. Nobody wants to take the chance of wiping themselves out of existence. Too risky - even for the bad guys."
I thought about telling him my experience at work the other day, but I decided against it. I've pretty much written the whole thing off to stress. Besides, I was still too focused on his "retirement" comment. I mean, you wanna live like common people, you wanna do whatever common people do, okay, fine, but...
"...why Denver?" I asked, looking at his upside-down face, as I was spotting him on the bench press. "You could've done anything. Gone anywhere. Why here?"
He stood up and waved me to the bench. "Your turn."
Looking down at me from above the barbell, he lowered his voice and said, "Alright, keeping in mind that pretty much everything you know about me is top secret information, I'm gonna ask that you keep this to yourself. Not as a matter of national security, but as a personal favor to me." He accepted my grunt of compliance. "Have you ever heard of the Green Lama?"
Oooh, tough one. Obscure. Of course I have. "Wealthy American Jethro Dumont travels to Tibet to become a monk, winds up discovering all sorts of Buddha-riffic super powers. He was the token mystic for the Allied Force during double-u double-u two. Am I missing anything?" I sat up and awaited his point.
"Well, when the Allied Force turned into the Agency after the war, the 'Lama retired to the mountains just outside of Boulder. He lived the ascetic's life for a few years. The rumor among superheroes is that he made some amazing realization, that he witnessed the malphysical nature of the universe itself."
Huh. "More amazing than the ability to levitate? To cloud men's minds? So, what, you want to find him and become his pupil?"
He looked uncomfortable with this. "Yeah, I guess so."
"You think he's created some bad ass martial arts style or something?"
"No, it's nothing like that. It's just," he looked a little sad, just then, "doing what I did... you see some weird shit. It'd just be nice to get some perspective."
"So, you left the biz so you could become one with everything?" It came out harsher than I'd intended.
"It's not a religious pilgrimage or anything. Stupid, I know. Anyway, I'm over it. He pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth in the 70's, after a bunch of hippies came and tried to get him to set up an ashram. He could be dead, for all I know." He sort of faded out for a minute, there, lost in his thoughts. Then: "Hey, I'm not really feeling this. You want to get some margaritas or something?"
I most definitely was feeling it, so a drink sounded just fine to me. Enough margaritas will bring about their own kind of enlightenment.