It's Only Me

Last night, I started out flat broke, played about a half hour and some people gave me two dollars and fifty one cents.
On my way back from the Exxon, where I drank two beers, I stopped on the sidewalk in front of the swank hotel, to listen to the jazz pianist, who was inside.
A well dressed man came outside and asked me about my music. He told me that I should talk to the guy on piano because "he likes jamming with other people."
The man was pretty well "lit" on what I later discovered was wine, and was more inclined to overlook the fact that my clothes were dirty, I had worked up a sweat playing, and the fact that there is "more to it" than just breaking out a guitar and jamming along with a jazz pianist. For one thing, my (un-amplified) instrument is tuned one whole step below "concert" pitch, approximately. It is the "approximately" part which would have been an issue.
Soon, we were joined by two more well dressed people. A man and a woman whose left arm had been bitten off, half way up her forearm, by what I later found out was an alligator. Her name was Roxanne. I learned this, because she asked me to play the song "Roxanne" on my guitar, which I managed to sound out, based upon having once played it in 1979. Does she know that it's about a whore?
The four of us talked about Mobile. The second well dressed gentleman asked for a light and told me that he only smoked when he was unemployed, which he wasn't ashamed to admit that he then was. He lives in Washington, D.C., where his wife and newborn son were. He added that he couldn't smoke in front of his wife, for the sake of the baby, and because she would scold him. He was sneaking a few cigarettes, 900 miles away from her. He didn't own a lighter because it would be evidence against him if his wife found it.
They wanted to know what I thought about Mobile, which led to an interesting discussion, given the fact that I am on the verge of leaving "The Bay City," because, in my opinion, I wasn't making it there.
My answer to the obligatory "What brings you to Mobile," question, turned into a discussion about Saint Augustine, Florida. The first well dressed gentleman said that he had considered sending his daughter to Flagler College, which is there, but sent her to Tampa College instead.
The second well dressed gentleman asked me if I cared for a glass of wine. He soon emerged with a glass of what looked and tasted like Cabernet Sauvignon, though when he handed it to me, he said "All they had was pinot." After a sip I told him, "No, I think this is Cabernet." He might have been playing with me, or the bartender was playing with him.
So, There I was, the guy who comes by with a guitar on his back and picks the ashtrays, and who has been run off on at least one occasion, joining three of their well dressed patrons in glasses of "pinot," and the staff could only look on, not wanting to offend their guest by running him off.
They were very much music and art enthusiasts and seemed to accept the stains on my clothing and my unkempt appearance as being tools of my trade.
I played "Crazy About A Crazy Girl," one of my originals. Someone threw a dollar in my case, and someone else a twenty (probably the guy who had considered sending his daughter to Flagler College).
Another glass of wine was offered, which I accepted, noticing that this one was in a plastic cup and not a goblet, like the first one. This might be standard procedure for any wine which is to be consumed outside on the sidewalk, or it may have been the bartender thinking "It's just the street musician."
And the day ended, and I went to sleep with 22 dollars and 87 cents on the porch of The Christ Church, a few feet away from another homeless guy who stirred briefly when I lied down, but upon seeing who I was, went right back into a peaceful sleep, as if thinking: "It's just the street musician."