I Don't Need The Jinx

Last night, I left on my bike at what I felt was an early time.

It started raining after I was about half way to the Lilly Pad, lightly first, with a few claps of thunder and flashes of lightning, and then a downpour.

I stopped under the bridge at Carrolton Street, which is one that skeezers live under and where they hold their signs.

"Watch them think that I am trapped under here, and at their mercy," I thought, as I sat on my motionless bike, guitar and pack on, and smoking a cigarette.

And, as soon as I thought that, a scraggly looking older black guy began walking in my direction, but not directly towards me. A lot of times they don't want to frighten you off by making a beeline to you, but will act like they have business somewhere else and happened to notice you, and remember that they needed a dollar and/or a cigarette, just as they were passing by you.

This guy had already skeezed a cigarette from someone else who had stopped his motorcycle under the bridge, and needed a light. On the first day of the month when "they all" get their government checks, he needed a light, I thought with amazement.

I told him that I didn't have one. It's not my fault that you're under a bridge on the first of September with no lighter; I take no ownership of that, I thought. And, if he was in the middle of spending his whole dole on crack, then he might have tried to keep it. What is crack without a lighter?

The rain eased up enough so I decided to ride on. I had been riding back and forth along the expanse of the bridge, in response to other groups of bridge dwellers that had mobilized in my direction. I couldn't really think of where a group of 3 tweaked out looking skeezers could be going to during a deluge, except to another spot under the same bridge. Or towards the skinny white guy with a bike and a guitar, and who knows what else.

The Decadence Festival experience was a repeat of last year's. It looked the same and felt the same, and after an hour and a half during which only one group of people threw me a couple bucks, I got out of there before I became overcome with hatred.

I got up this (Friday) afternoon and was putting Harold the cat outside when I encountered Rose and Ed, who had sold me the TV for 40 bucks. "Do you have the money for the TV?" asked Ed.
I was under the impression that, since they both got checks on the first of the month, that I would kind of have until the end of the month, especially until towards the end, when they might be running out of money, to pay for the TV.

Something must have happened. I can only guess. Both of them, along with their 13 year old daughter had looks about them like something bad had happened.

We had never agreed upon a time that the money for the TV would be due.

I know that it was just sitting and collecting dust at their place because, they have a brand new high definition stuff; and it had taken them a while to find the remote for the thing.

I am thinking of telling them that I am giving the thing back; I'm sure they don't want it.

I don't need the pressure of having to go out and busk because of that, especially during this festival; and I don't need the jinx that is on a busker who has pressure on him.

I might just ride down there, look at the gay scene, flip them the finger and then come back home. If I get a sense that they are all going to ignore me, as if all marching to the same drummer; I will either just sit there with the guitar next to me and not playing, and if anyone of them then asks me why I'm not playing, I will tell them "Nobody is tipping me tonight."

My food stamps come in about 50 hours. In the worst case, I would sell 80 bucks worth of food off my card to pay for the TV and then the lesson that I will have learned will have sunk in after I run out of food in the middle of the month.