Boilerplate

Today’s episode of Surviving Leg Day was brought to you by OutOfYourLeague.com, the dating site where everyone else is half your age and going through life on a supermodel scholarship; the How Not To Light Your Gym Selfies podcast, which we promise to listen to one of these days; a grant from the Black El Camino T-Shirt Badassery Council; the words “abductors” and “lumbar region”; and the generous support of thousands of don’t-skip-leg-day memes posted by social-networkers like you.

#WhyImStillSingle

I would have called this download Sleep APPnea

but nobody asked for MY freely offered marketing expertise. Rude.

Anyway.

In the absence of a patient but long-suffering boyfriend to keep awake with my woodchopper snoring, I’m forced to sleep—IN SIN!—with this not-creepy app running in the background to record and chart my snoring so my doctor can monitor the efficacy of my super-expensive anti-APPnea (SEE HOW CLEVER THAT IS?) custom dental appliance.

So I’ll be sleeping with a mouthful of jaw-realigning plastic while my phone secretly records every noise in my bedroom. WHICH ARE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF ALL LEADING WHAT-ARE-YOU-LOOKING-FOR-IN-A-PARTNER CRITERIA ON EVERY DATING SITE ON THIS AND ALL OTHER LONELYHEARTS-COLONIZED PLANETS EVER.

Indignities. They never end.

#GymTales: Pipes And Tats Edition

There’s a guy at my gym who looks like this photo except he doesn’t totally look like this photo because he has a head and one of those ridiculous disgusting long Millennial goatherder beards but anyway he has massive pipes that are covered in tattoos which is total catnip to me but he always wears a hat and earphones and stares at the floor which are all international gymbro code for leave me alone so I always leave him alone because I’m a total gymbro but I still totally want to be his boyfriend just so I don’t have to be secretly subversive about using the mirrors to stare at his arms when he walks by me staring intently at the floor as if he’s fascinated by a sprinting ant or something but since I clearly will never be his it’s-not-creepy-to-stare-at-his-arms boyfriend I’ve always been at least hoping to get one of those imperceptible gymbro nods from him where your eyes accidentally meet so you do that a tiny spasm in the back of your neck that lifts your face one degree as if to say hey gymbro I acknowledge your existence gymbro and I guess I don’t totally secretly want you to die gymbro so here’s a perfunctory hey gymbro and now get the hell out of my way and never lock eyes with me again gymbro but my muscle tattoo pipes gymbro dude here never even gives me that polite gymbro courtesy so I assume I’m totally invisible to him so anyway I was minding my own beeswax doing deadlifts today while he was doing chest things halfway across the room and I was on my fifth rep when I heard someone shout hey from his general area and it had to be him because the only other person in the gym was a woman who clearly had done her hair up fancy and nice just to get it all sweaty on the treadmill which isn’t my problem but seriously what’s the point of going to all that trouble to fix your hair up nice in the morning only to ruin it a few hours later in a deluge of head sweat but like I said not my problem and anyway that big bellowing manly hey clearly wasn’t from her so oh my god my muscle tattoo pipes gymbro dude not only noticed me but he was actually heying me which made me panic and do a quick mental inventory of how my butt and lats might look in the gym clothes I was wearing because that was the view he had and if I had on my especially cool gymbro shoes which I did so thank goodness for that small miracle but anyway he was actually heying me and play it cool Jake play it cool because he probably wants a date so don’t look too eager or excited and even though it was technically rude and distracting and uncool and even kind of dangerous to hey me in the middle of a set of deadlifts he gets a pass because I mean just look at him and then he said hey again and I knew here comes the marriage proposal because he’s totally impressed with my butt and my lats and my especially cool gymbro shoes and my form which is especially hard to maintain when you’re doing deadlifts and he clearly thinks I’m a rockstar at it and play it cool Jake play it cool because at this point he’s all yours and there’s no way he’ll ever say anything bad or critical about you and here comes the marriage proposal here it comes here it comes but instead he yells pull your shoulders back you’re gonna hurt yourself in a voice that had the subtext of you’re a stupid idiot and stop it with your stupid idiotness and that’s pretty much the opposite of a marriage proposal and even though technically this meant he’d noticed me I was crushed and well shit.

Proposed taglines for trump.dating

StrKKKts only!
Taking sheep breeding to the next level!
Swipe Reich!
Take a break from inbreeding!
Have sex for less than $130 million!
Three-wife limit!
Where “happily married people” count as “local singles”!
Date local married singles!
Grab him by the bone spur!
Red hats, white sheets and who cares if you’re already married?
A new way to fuck the whole country!
Where it doesn’t matter how small your hands are!
I do-tard!
Where shitholes meet!

Pulling the rug out

I’m sorry to kick off Valentine’s Day with news of a failed relationship—especially a new one like this that held such beautiful promise—but the side rugs I bought for my bedroom just aren’t working out with the giant Oriental rug I already have. I thought the minimalist pattern of the side rugs would create charming opposites-attract interest, but the reds just aren’t compatible. They’re not even trying, in fact, and they fight so much that they can’t even be in the same room. So the side rugs are moving out before they’ve even really moved in.

The rugs have agreed to do everything they can to keep this from being awkward or upsetting for everyone. Please try to respect our privacy as we work through this difficult time.

#RelationshipGoals

When your date has to cancel on you because he has the flu ...

You logically deploy your emergency I-suddenly-don’t-have-a-date contingency plan: Get a flu shot.

 

Also: get a bright red post-flu-shot souvenir band-aid > take a flexy shoulder selfie to post on Facebook

Also: post a flexy shoulder selfie on Facebook > score yourself a quality boyfriend

Also: stagger through the aisles of Walgreens in crippling, bewildering, post-flu-shot pain with no boyfriend on any radar anywhere anyway > wander innocently past the cookies

Also: discover you have enough Walgreens rewards points for three virtually free packages of Oreos > it’s none of your damn business what I’m having for my dateless dinner tonight

A Men Venn!

So many exciting things happened tonight:

The show sold out, our audience laughed and cheered and then laughed even more, I got my part in my hair combed perfectly straight, one of my secret straight crushes was in the audience and said hi to me afterward and I was able to not melt, and taking my lying-down selfie last night eliminated so many lines and wrinkles in my face that I did it again tonight just in case any secret straight crushes missed it last night and there was a chance I could yet convert them with my appearance of dewy youth tonight. Just let me know, fellas! My unhealthy obsession with you isn't going to ask itself on a date, and despite my lying-down millennial supermodel appearance, I'm not getting any younger.

I'm off to bed after another awesome day. By the time I wake up, the Chicago Marathon will be well underway or even over for many friends who are running it. Best of luck to all of you, and know that you're being cheered for from Iowa both during your highs and when you're pushing through your walls. I can't wait to hear your stories and see your pictures.

This could be us. But I'm gay.

Pro tip: Use pink and glitter if you're gay

Outdoor children's theater

A terrible place to find a gay boyfriend. But a powerful inspiration to get your tubes tied.

I just want someone to hold me and love me and never spill me the way Chris Christie does his nachos

Current dating strategy

Cedar Rapids PrideFest!

Our humble city's pride celebration is 1,000 mph slower than what I experienced for 15 years in Chicago. And it's totally my speed. One complaint, though: I'm all for the all-families-welcome spirit of inclusion, but it makes husband shopping exponentially more challenging in our city's not-so-populated gay population. Adorable Charlie the dog DID make it way easier to meet women and children, though. So there's that.

Happy Father's Day/Sister's Anniversary/Delicious Mystery-Flavored Brown Bread Impaled On A Freakishly Fat Knife Day!

We had a wonderful, charming and relatively efficient waitress tonight at the venerable Cedar Rapids Outback Steakhouse, but I wanted the scruffily handsome dude serving the table next to us. And I never know the etiquette in these situations. Do I fire the waitress personally and demand she bring me the scruffily handsome dude in her place? Do I ratchet it up a level and have the manager fire her? Or do I skip the middlemen entirely and throw a slab of steak at scruffily handsome dude's head to strike up a conversation?

Sigh. Dating is so hard.

Selfie therapy

So when there's suddenly a handsome new pharmacist at the drive-through and he sees your tattoo and asks you tons and tons and tons of questions about it even though there's a HUGE line of cars waiting behind you and then he makes what you hope is more-than-just-chatty small talk as he rings up your four prescriptions and then he proceeds to ask you the perfunctory questions about each prescription that you and he both know only get asked when your dosages change which you and he both know they haven't and as he finally puts the bags of your meds in that little drawer that slides out to your car he brings up the tattoo again and you look and he doesn't have a ring but he does have a pretty spectacular smile and wow does he have a cheerful buoyant personality and you think if he just trimmed his beard a little he'd look great in the wedding pictures and he clearly already has all the information he needs to figure out you're bipolar so he'd know what he's getting into and then you're both totally out of things to say short of one of you awkwardly blurting out an invitation to dinner so you have to drive away and you have no reason to hopefully see him for another month, would you go get back in line for the drive-through and throw caution and possibly even dignity to the wind and awkwardly blurt out that invitation to dinner? Because I sat in my car in the parking lot for a while seriously thinking about it.

But instead I came home and took a shamelessly flexy selfie of the tattoo that started the conversation that got me all aflutter because I don't know why because I didn't know what to do. Sigh.

Oh, nothing

Just hanging out with my lobby girlfriend (I have a lobby girlfriend) after my standing ovation. How was YOUR afternoon?

A needle in the haygurl

I am fully aware that the "people you may know" Facebook feature is not a poor man's Match.com. Nevertheless, I persist at treating it as such and I greedily swipe through it every time it appears on my feed in the hopes of finding the one local age-appropriate reasonably athletic show-tune loving human non-sequitur needle in the cliché-loathing haygurl who I know Facebook will deliver to my screen if I look just THIS ONE LAST TIME.

But Facebook keeps showing me in random order the same people I clearly after all this time STILL DON'T KNOW: local women, long-bearded undergrads who live 45 miles away, guys in Venezuela I share one friend with, and people who use Nell Carter for their profile photos. Plus my psychiatrist from Chicago who I had to leave for a different psychiatrist because not only was she mortally opposed to the very existence of Diet Coke but she didn't inform me of this fact -- and, granted, she didn't yet have a reason to -- until I brought a large McDonald's Diet Coke to her office and after I learned she really didn't want me even having it in her office I reached over to pick it up so I could pour it in her little office sink but instead I bumped it and spilled it all over her couch, throw pillows, artfully draped pashmina and carpet and neither of us had any way to clean it up except for the box of Kleenex on her table and the sweaty gym clothes in my bag and I was dying by fiery degrees inside as I simultaneously struggled to clean it up, apologized profusely, and marveled at the sheer liquid volume of seepy, drippy horror that a larger-than-I-thought container of delicious carbonated chemicals could inflict in mere seconds across the entirety of this poor woman's office furniture, décor and feng shui. Needless to say, I could never face her again and I began the hunt for a new in-network, geographically desirable psychiatrist almost as soon as I got in her elevator. So yes, Facebook, she technically IS a person I know. Score one for you! But under the circumstances, she is currently a poor dating choice for you to repeatedly offer me in the poor-man's Match.com you so misleadingly call "people you may know."

Oh -- and aside from any oblique references to show tunes or spilled liquids, the attached picture has almost no relevance to this post. I just thought it was funny. And you should find me a boyfriend.