Some guy's doing naked yoga in my backyard!

I feel a bit green today, after excessive cheap fake champagne night, so I don't really have the heart to talk about today. Instead, I'll offer you a little gem, from my glory days in Toronto, when I dated a boy named after Dr. Zhivago, we lived in a California beach house with a cat named Eddie van Halen, and some guy did nude yoga in our backyard.



So, like many average 20-something couples, Yuri and I liked to go on roadtrips every now and again. All the usual people were commandeered for cat-sitting Eddie: Luba, Nancy, Shelton... but there was one time when none of those three were available.

It was late summer, august something of another in the late 90s. We were leaving for the weekend to go to the cottage. The problem was that everyone was leaving that weekend, and I couldn't just leave Eddie at home with a bathtub full of water and a giant bowl of food. He'd cry and barf and turn our home into a swimming pool of cat bile. So, after much hoo and haaing, Yuri suggested one of his friends, the notorious P.

I was against it from the start. The notorious P has an impressive record of socially fracturing behaviour. I think the first time we hung out, he had a rather patchouli earth mumma girlfriend, and they both decided to camp out in our living room for a couple of days, while having tantric sex. Then, on another bizarre turn, he sold all his possessions except his musical equipment, and started living in a UPS truck. That was actually rather beautiful romantic idea, except when you realized that he slept with no windows or circulation, winter, spring, summer and fall, and that he always had to stop at a friend's to take showers.

Then the notorious P got a job selling unleaven bread and sesame crackers to restaurants. He ate all the samples and quit. He also went to a music festival in Montreal, where he subsequently hooked up all the power in his truck to his musical equipment and hijacked the concert, after which the cops came and arrested him, and his truck almost blew up. There was also the really terrible raw grain wheat grass granola raspberry drinks that were supposed to be good for my colon.

He was Yuri's friend... though he was actually just a really fun homeless guy who smelled a bit.

So, since the notorious P didn't have a real home, and he really needed to shower, Yuri thought it would be a good idea for him to cat-sit. So we phoned him, at the health bar where he usually hangs out, and 30 minutes later he was over, checking out our cat, in a very exciting fuzzy dice veterinarian way. Eddie was happy. So was I. We left a note for our landlady about him catsitting, he slept over that night, and then we left in the morning.

The weekend was wonderful, as are all weekends at the cottage. When we got back, the house looked normal, the key was in the mailbox along with a couple of letters, everything looked the same. Started to open the mail, bills bills bills, then what's this? A letter, with our address handwritten but no name. I open it... it reads kind of like this (because I didn't memorize it):

You are a f&*^ng pervert homosexual! I saw you in your backyard! I know where you live! Pervert! Pervert! Pervert! If you ever do that again, I'll call the cops, and burn your house to the ground!

WHAT???!!! What on earth was the notorious P doing? We called the healthbar but they said he wasn't there. I talked to one of our neighbours who looked mystified and said he hadn't seen or heard anything? I was starting to get paranoid about having the house burnt down by raging arsonist neighbour, in the middle night, small consolation that he would at least call the cops, probably just in time to find our charred corpses. Jeez!

Finally, later on in the night, I bump into my landlady, who lived in the top two floors of the house. She gives me a rather funny look and starts laughing. "Your friend was doing nude yoga for 3 hours in our backyard! He's a very nice guy, but he certainly can get excited."

That's the explanation... P going buck naked, getting giant erections for 3 hours... it's true, he is into tantric sex and I'm sure he practises focusing his tantras, or chakras and groinal burning fire, whatever. So the neighbour sees him, freaks out and writes the mad letter. It's a bit much from the neighbour I have to say.

A couple of weeks later we meet the Notorious P on the street and buckle him down for an answer. Turns out, yes, he was doing nude yoga in the backyard, lovely day, with lots of sun and warmth, when suddenly he hears yelling from the alleyway leading out front. There's this bearded guy, standing there, yelling at him to get his clothes on. So the Notorious P, being the amazing guy that he is, walks towards the man to confront him. The bearded guy starts to freak out, telling him to back off, that he knows kungfu or something. But Notorious P keeps walking towards him, asking him what the big deal is, in his cult voice no doubt. That's freaky. Eventually bearded guy picks up a cardboard box and throws it at P's head, at which point P runs him down the street.

If we can just add a fully erect bobbing penis to this picture, I think we can understand why there is a letter in our house, written by some repressed homosexual neighbour, threatening arson. The guy really got his balls clobbered by the Notorious P, a peace-loving, wheat-grass eating nude yoga man.