Yesterday, I walked into our apartment's make shift gym-slash-pool room to find a shirtless, sun-charred young guy in a strange and disconcerting posture. With his upper body bent at the waist, back straight, he had his face planted flush in the green fuzz of the pool table. He'd gathered about twenty red snooker balls up around his head and he was clutching firmly one in each hand, the tendons popping up in his forearms. He didn't seem to be breathing at first, but then after 10 seconds or so he heaved and blubbered a bit into the table fuzz.
I stood a couple feet behind him, silent, and in tri-limbo. I could: go up stairs to get my camera, walk past him and do a few sets of chest presses, or go to the front desk to tell on him.
I walked around to watch him from another angle. He didn't move but he seemed to be either dry-sobbing or forcing his face with increasing pressure into the table fuzz. I tip-toed back past him and apparently made my lame decision. How could I work out comfortably with him doing that? How can I just let this bizarre behavior continue indefinitely in a public area that I needed to use? I went to the front desk and asked my landlady to look at the security TV panel. She said, "Yi ge ren." One person/alone. I told her he was strange. And she got up and took care of it for me.
I neither took a picture, which dammit could have been amazing, nor did I just leave him alone. Nor did I even work out. I went on a jog outside.
An hour later I came back to the pool room. There in the pool table green fuzz encircled with a halo of billiard balls was a mouth-sized wet spot.
