Hateful Comment Retracted
I have gone back to yesterday's post and edited out the comment that I made about running down the queers on Bourbon Street with a vehicle. In this day and age, that is not something that should be "joked" about.
The comment provoked a comment from Alex of California, who has probably, at last, stopped reading this blog.
The gist of his comment was, ironically: Daniel is full of hatred, so fuck him, I'm full of hatred for him."
Well, here it is:
I can only take the high road in saying that, anyone (sight unseen) being murdered is a tragedy, but...
I lived in Charlottesville for a couple of years. I blogged about the dwelling that I constructed on what I believed at the time was city property.
It was on a hill overlooking the reservoir, and I assumed that the land would never be developed and I would have a covert (and free) home for years to come.
The blog post, I placed in its proper chronology of 2001, where more details are.
One of the most noticeable things about Charlottesville in 2001 was the fact that a huge proportion of young white girls had black boyfriends.
I worked in a gas station overnight, and when the clubs let out at about 1 AM, I would see car after car pulling into the station for gas and whatever, with the majority of them being driven by white girls (who owned the cars and had licenses) with the stereo pumping out rap music and a young black guy in the passenger seat; bobbing his head to the music and telling her not to forget the Philly Blunt or whatever, as she stepped out to pump the gas, pay for it; and grab a pack of Newports and a Philly Blunt, very often.
The girls were not all of the typical "heavyset and homely" variety commonly seen to migrate away from their own race, who disparage them as being unattractive, and go to the blacks, who apparently just want white girls for the "optics" of it, and aren't very critical of their looks
But, it seemed to be a fad in Charlottesville, Virginia (like the hula hoop, the yo-yo or a certain kind of hairstyle) for a high proportion of the young white girls to find a black boyfriend, any black boy, like most of their friends had.
Selective Breeding
Some of these white girls were stunningly beautiful. I suspect that the same kind of selective breeding that the Virginians used to produce the biggest and strongest slaves (by forcing the strongest men to mate with the strongest women) was also practiced upon white women in some capacity; because nowhere else I've ever lived have I seen such pretty faces attached to such perfectly shaped bodies, as in Charlottesville, Va.
And, some such specimens would show up at my gas station booth window requesting a pack of Newport cigarettes and a Philly blunt cigar and maybe the rest of a 20 dollar bill on pump number 6, and I would therefore already know what I would see if I looked to the passenger seat of the car that the young beauty was driving. And it would often be a pretty expensive car.
I evolved a theory that the white men there, in that sequestered neck of the Virginia woods treated their women pretty poorly.
When I worked at the Wendy's right next door to the gas station that hired me after Wendy's fired me; my manager was a woman named Dixie, who was right around my age of 35.
Dixie had the lowest self esteem of any woman that I had ever met to that point in my life.
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| My Charlottesville Home |
The comment provoked a comment from Alex of California, who has probably, at last, stopped reading this blog.
The gist of his comment was, ironically: Daniel is full of hatred, so fuck him, I'm full of hatred for him."
Well, here it is:
He has also expressed how delightful it would be to take a car and plow though the crowd of gay people who are in New Orleans right now. I keep forgetting how hate-filled he is underneath, and I'm sure if he voted, he'd have voted for Trump, and probably thinks the Charlottesville murder was hilarious.
Seriously, fuck that skeezer.-Alex In California
I can only take the high road in saying that, anyone (sight unseen) being murdered is a tragedy, but...
I lived in Charlottesville for a couple of years. I blogged about the dwelling that I constructed on what I believed at the time was city property.
It was on a hill overlooking the reservoir, and I assumed that the land would never be developed and I would have a covert (and free) home for years to come.
The blog post, I placed in its proper chronology of 2001, where more details are.
One of the most noticeable things about Charlottesville in 2001 was the fact that a huge proportion of young white girls had black boyfriends.
I worked in a gas station overnight, and when the clubs let out at about 1 AM, I would see car after car pulling into the station for gas and whatever, with the majority of them being driven by white girls (who owned the cars and had licenses) with the stereo pumping out rap music and a young black guy in the passenger seat; bobbing his head to the music and telling her not to forget the Philly Blunt or whatever, as she stepped out to pump the gas, pay for it; and grab a pack of Newports and a Philly Blunt, very often.
The girls were not all of the typical "heavyset and homely" variety commonly seen to migrate away from their own race, who disparage them as being unattractive, and go to the blacks, who apparently just want white girls for the "optics" of it, and aren't very critical of their looks
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| A self-described "good looking heavyset woman." |
But, it seemed to be a fad in Charlottesville, Virginia (like the hula hoop, the yo-yo or a certain kind of hairstyle) for a high proportion of the young white girls to find a black boyfriend, any black boy, like most of their friends had.
Selective Breeding
Some of these white girls were stunningly beautiful. I suspect that the same kind of selective breeding that the Virginians used to produce the biggest and strongest slaves (by forcing the strongest men to mate with the strongest women) was also practiced upon white women in some capacity; because nowhere else I've ever lived have I seen such pretty faces attached to such perfectly shaped bodies, as in Charlottesville, Va.
And, some such specimens would show up at my gas station booth window requesting a pack of Newport cigarettes and a Philly blunt cigar and maybe the rest of a 20 dollar bill on pump number 6, and I would therefore already know what I would see if I looked to the passenger seat of the car that the young beauty was driving. And it would often be a pretty expensive car.
I evolved a theory that the white men there, in that sequestered neck of the Virginia woods treated their women pretty poorly.
When I worked at the Wendy's right next door to the gas station that hired me after Wendy's fired me; my manager was a woman named Dixie, who was right around my age of 35.
Dixie had the lowest self esteem of any woman that I had ever met to that point in my life.
A Salad And A Job
I met her the same night that I arrived in Charlottesville.
I met her the same night that I arrived in Charlottesville.
I had stopped for a salad and had mentioned out loud that the store was "just like the one that I worked at in Jacksonville."
"Really, what can you do?" asked Dixie.
"I can run the grill, I can make fries, I know how to close..."
"I have an extra uniform, do you want to clock in? We can do all the paperwork later," Dixie had said.
So, I finished my salad and began working at the Wendy's, 10 minutes after arriving in Charlottesville. It's really surreal being in a brand new city. Every time the person on the radio which was playing near the sink where I was washing dishes, whose voice was unfamiliar to me, would say something like: "Charlottesville weather, mild tonight with light breezes" It would be like: How did I get here?
In the course of covering all of my training, Dixie kept harping upon how inept she was; at everything. "You can probably do this a lot better than me; I'm terrible," she had said about the tomato slicing machine. She was terrible with math, couldn't do a very good job of, say, tearing open a bag of french fries and loading them into a fry basket, nor much of anything else..
In her own esteem, that was.
I came to the conclusion that Dixie had somehow had the belief instilled in her that men could do everything better than women.
I should have asked her out on a date, in retrospect, because that is a very attractive trait to me to go with her Shirley (of "Laverne and Shirley" fame) looks; but that is water under the bridge.
Dixie and I were the only white people on a typical crew of about 12 people.
I witnessed the young black workers doing things like the young men coming up behind the females and humping upon them in plain view of any other crew members; being lazy, as in, if a bus full of people pulled into the parking lot and they ordered say, 32 hamburgers, 32 fries and 32 cokes, but no frosties, the guy who had been assigned to the frosty machine would lean there against it, lending no help to the others, as they scrambled to complete the order; and stuffing 10 pound boxes of frozen ground beef along with bags of frozen fries into their duffel bags (that they probably brought to work for that purpose) at the end of a given shift.
3 or 4 of them were receiving rides to work from another manager, a white guy named George, who lived in the same town of Waynesboro, about 40 miles to the west of Charlottesville as they did, and was nice enough to have been giving them an opportunity to work by providing them with transportation.
George probably lost some sleep wondering why his inventory kept coming up short; putting his job in jeopardy, while never knowing that he was transporting about 50 dollars worth of stolen food right along with his lazy workers on his trip home every night.
The young black workers would say things like: "White boys can't smoke Newports; their lungs aren't strong enough," while we sat in the break room. And, when I had gotten some poison ivy on my arms while clearing the spot where I was to build my covert dwelling by the reservoir; some of them voiced concerns about catching the "poison ivory" from me.
I was fired by one of the black managers over something trivial; but it was probably because of the poison ivory scare that I had thrown into the black crew.
The gas station right next door to the Wendy's, where I often went after work hired me right away after I had told them what had happened at Wendy's
Ironically, it was managed by a black guy.
But it was a black guy who had come directly from The Ghana (formerly the "Ivory" Coast).
His name was Modou, and he hated "niggers."
"These niggers here in this country; they are all teeves (thieves) every one of them. I tried to hire some of them and all they did was steal. They think that everything is owned by the white man and it's OK to steal; and that's not right!" said Modou.
So, once again, in life, the color of my skin helped get me a job -go figure...
Modou and I got along just fine; he spoke impeccable English, learned in school from a young age from British (I assume) instructors.
This is where I met a woman whom I did date.
She was of similar mind to Dixie.
Her name was Xanna and she had been abused and belittled by her father since she was born as the less preferable, to him, of the sexes.
"He kept calling me the runt of the litter, and he would beat me and throw me down the stairs." Xanna had lost the vision in one of her eyes as a result of one of those beatings early in her life.
But, Xanna was about my age also, and dated only white men; and only ones who wound up beating her. I guess she wanted to marry a man like mother did...
And so, before I fall too far off the chase...
There was another whole set of people in Charlottesville.
They were the mustache wearing men who were huge NASCAR fans. One of them owned a bar called The Winner's Circle.
You would never see a black man at that bar; just white men; every one of them sporting a mustache, just like Dale Earnhart and Rusty Wallace and Richard Petty. All lined up at the bar.
Their offspring would gather in the parking lot almost nightly. Every one of them driving a Ford Mustang.
They had their own corner of the parking lot, from where they kept a leery eye on the spectacle of white girls pulling in to gas up with black men in their passenger seats.
They would each come to the window and each buy a variation on a pack of Marlboro's and a Coke-a-Cola. They would hang out and enjoy their Mustangs, and their perfectly beautiful girlfriends. I think the most beautiful girl I've ever seen was with a rather ordinary looking guy with a mustache, who, after a while wouldn't even have to say "and a pack of Marlboro's," as he placed his bottle of Coke (and a diet one for the lady) on the little shelf; I would have had them ready upon seeing his Mustang pull in.
"You don't mind us hanging out in the parking lot, do you?" he asked one night.
"Oh, hell no. I actually feel safer with you guys there," I had said, giving a quick nod of my head in the direction of the nearest car with a white girl behind the wheel and a black kid in the passenger seat, rolling a blunt.
We became kindred spirits then.
How low must be the self esteem of that beautiful girl, to have considered a Mustang and a mustache as being enough for her, I couldn't help thinking. He was just a regular looking guy.
So, fast forward to 2017, and some guy plows into a crowd of "black lives matter" protesters, killing a white girl who is among them.
And, no. I don't think it hilarious, just sad.
The whole thing, that is, dating back to the 1800's. Sad.
And, yes, I would have voted for Trump.
That's just the flavor of Kool Aid I chose, but it's all Kool Aid, being ladled out by someone or other...
I am starting to think that the election really was rigged, because only Jay the loud singer and I would have, it seems, voted for the guy.
I wish people would look at results. The stock market hitting record highs, the fact that he was here, pronto, promising the 108 billion dollars to rebuild flood ravaged areas, while it took president Bush 17 days to come here after Katrina, and when he did, his speech from Jackson Square had to be broadcast using generators because the power was still out, almost 3 weeks later; and would dismiss his tweets.
Isn't it ironic that the first president that America has ever had who was not a politician, turns out to be the best politician of them all?
And, to be honest, I look at life kind of like a movie. If you bought a ticket to see a movie and nothing had really happened a half hour into it, you would either fall asleep or go to get a refund.
This (presidency) is very entertaining, in that regard, at least.
I have no trouble with the "us" vs. "them" thing, because I'm one of "us," I believe.
I do fear that Trump might rally the army overseas somewhere and convince them that they need to come over here and put things to right (beginning with seizing all the guns and knives) but that is my imagination running wild again...
But, back to the post...
One of the drawbacks of kratom that I noticed shortly after having started taking it, was a certain feeling of "alienation" from my fellow man, that crept into my psyche.
One of the fruits of my victory over alcoholism (which I didn't realize until about the 9th month "dry", when I had become convinced that sobriety had reached a plateau and had no room for improving my life further) was when I began to let go of the fear of not having the means to feed my addiction and its companion stress, when busking and not making a dime.
I reached the point where I sat down to play and became immersed in it, and truly, didn't pay attention to the tip jar.
I played for reasons such as: "This person walking past might not have any money, but maybe could use some uplifting by hearing a joyful song, sung by someone who was genuinely feeling it."
And, lo and behold, tips were finding their way into my jar.
After a week or so using kratom, I discovered that it focused me in, the way I assumed ritalin was intended to do for kids with "attention deficit disorder," and that I was able to play more precisely and overcome technical obstacles by doing things such as envisioning the bones in my fingers and wrist and arms as being the levers of a machine, and then being able to figure out a way to better employ them in cranking out fast and accurate music.
It reminded me of the way Tanya Huang, the violinist plays, and made me even wonder if it is something in the soil of Taiwan, where kratom comes from, that gives Asians that proclivity for working hard for long hours, like robots (a stereo-type, I know).
But, along with that, I had experiences such as one night, when I was playing a song and hitting every note, and a couple of ladies came by, with one of them commenting in a pleasant nature about my "tiposaurus."
"The tiposaurs rarely bites," reads the sign next to the tip jar which is "guarded" by a little plastic replica of a dinosaur.
In the past, I had always maintained a sense of humor and would have said something like "It hasn't bitten since December 9th, 2009," or something, which might have gotten them to smile or a laugh, and that might have broken the ice; they might have sat down on the stoop to converse further with me; and that was where the $175 tips have stemmed from.
I remember looking at the lady kind of coldly and only mumbling something, while thinking: "It's obviously just a plastic replica, and can't bite you..." I couldn't think of anything humorous.
This was so out of character for me that I decided that that might indeed be the downside of the kratom. I had no warm and fuzzy feelings for people; but I could think and react more quickly.
Kratom's main "use" is to help people kick opioid addiction.
Since I had no such addiction, I became, I suppose, like people who take pain pills, but aren't in pain. It gives them a high which feels like it isn't going to go away any time soon.
And, yeah, feelings of not being connected "cosmically" to mankind, nor being able to imagine what it might be like to see the world through someone else's eyes intensified into anger and/or hatred at times; when coming down off the stuff, I guess.
I stopped to talk to Jay the really loud singer (who makes no secret of the fact that he uses crystal meth to boost him, so he can play for long stretches of time; to make enough to pay for the crystal meth, so that he can play for long hours, to make enough to pay for more meth...etc.).
Jay has often suggested that I try the stuff too, telling me that it would definitely make me play for a lot longer than the 2 and a half hours that I average. Like all night until the sun comes up and and maybe all day the next day, and then why not all the next night, since it would be dark again and tourists would be out again....
Jay usually breaks 100 dollars each night, and is the type who will whip out a wad of 3 or 4 hundred bucks in order to brag about it, on occasion.
Johnny B., who was on methodone, and professed a hatred of everyone whom he saw in his daily walk, would also pull out his money and count it in front of everyone on the trolley for example. And then get off the thing and walk through the dark, pulling his expensive equipment behind him in a little cart to his apartment, which he hated the location of because it was in a heroin neighborhood, and that put temptation in his way. I don't think he owned a gun, because he would have shown it off
at every opportunity if he did.
So far, all of the meth heads or methadone addicts that I have met liked to show off thier money; but I digress.
I always basically saw Jay as being a very cranky and angry musician who played in a very utilitarian way, without much "feeling." He just put in the hours, playing the same six (and now nine) songs repetitively.
I always assumed that he and Johnny B. were pissed off at some level because of the monkeys on thier backs, even though they would seem happy as larks and in the mood to play all night a lot of times when I saw them.
Jay is the textbook redneck. He openly hates "these foreigners," and "these niggers," and, more recently "these faggots," who don't tip. He will often use his microphone to insult people, when he's not getting tipped.
Jay is a pretty large and imposing guy, and so he can get away with that, sending things echoing down Royal Street like: "My wife is so fat she can hardly get in the Mazda," if a guy happens to be assisting his wife in doing just that nearby, or maybe adding: "We're gonna go home and eat some refried beans and rice and then some ice cream..." if they happen to be Latino and overweight.
He was very excited about the prospect of a Trump presidency, in the months leading up to the election, asserting that "things are gonna get a whole lot better once he gets in.."
So, I found a sympathetic ear when I arrived and complained that the Southern Decadence people just didn't tip, period.
He smiled when I mentioned running them all over.
I was kind of surprised, though, by the reaction of Tim, my caseworker (whose job it is to see that I am happy and well adjusted and that the "permanent assisted housing" program that I am a beneficiary of, is working) when I told him about the same thoughts.
"Oh, I'm not into that at all," he said dismissively.
I felt kind of ashamed upon waking up the next day.
There is enough of that kind of talk uttered at Sacred Heart apartments, usually by drunken and, presumably mentally ill residents, when they are pissed off at the world.
Part of Tim's job is to assess the "risk" of me just up and leaving my place to become homeless by choice, again.
I do worry that kratom is making me more cranky and hateful; I'll have to monitor that, and maybe alternate between it, and kava or CBD dabs, which are more mellowing.
Sunday, September 3rd, 2017
It is Sunday night, and I have, for the first time, taken a whole weekend off from busking. It was just too trying of my soul, and I kind of lost my cool and became angry and bitter.
Who knows what goes through the mind of a tourist who walks the length of Royal Street during the day and then Bourbon Street at night and never throws a dollar to any of "the jugglers and the clowns" who all do tricks for them.
But there is a definite mob mentality at work. When the tips rain, they pour and when they don't, they don't.
I might be wrongly assuming that every tourist knows darned well that I have to live off whatever tips I make; and that they are, knowingly starving me to death.
It calls to mind the infamous New Yorkers who would walk past a guy who is bleeding to death on the sidewalk, never stopping to help, or even bothering to phone 911?
That is the deep, underlying and unsettling crux of the matter.
Even when the occasional one says something like: "I wish I had some money, I would throw you a couple bucks," that goes a long way and is so much better than the "total ignoring" thing.
It is now Monday night; less than 3 hours before my food card will be charged with 137 bucks.
Lilly called me as I was walking back from the plasma donation place this afternoon. Walking because I had miscalculated the number of donations that I have made in the past 7 days, having been befuddled by the changing of the month and having flipped the leaf of my calendar over.
I was headed towards Howard's residence to borrow the 80 cents that I was short on a bus fare. A 5 mile walk through the heat, rather than ask any stranger for money. If Howard wasn't home or something, I was prepared to walk another 3 miles, over the bridge and up Canal Street to my apartment, where I would check the couch cushions for change and then try to get back the next day to sell plasma. With the food card having money put on it at midnight, I also considered offering to buy someone a 2 dollar item in exchange for the buck I would need to ride the bus.
Lilly asked me where I was. After I explained that I was in the middle of a 5 mile walk through Gretna, I could hear a concern in her voice and thought that she was about to offer to come pick me up in her Navigator, but I quelled this by telling her that I was almost to Howard's house.
She told me that most of the gay guys at the Southern Decadence festival were in town trying to make money "not to tip anybody else." I had thought about that, but Lilly articulated it very well. There were the 1% of millionaire gay guys, whose old, fat, flatulant bodies wouldn't attract a young gay stud, but their millions do. And there are the 99% who are there to dance and entertain and do whatever else. It's almost like a big convention of young gay prostitutes in a sense, the way Lilly explained it, and she would know, because she has lived in New Orleans since she was 6 years old, and is in the know, just in general. As Bruce Springsteen sings: "We take care of our own."
So, that explained being overlooked by 99% of the crowd at the festival. I feel better now. But, as Mae West said: "It's better to be looked over than overlooked."
I told Lilly that I had thought about busking in a thong with my body painted pink.
"No, don't do that," she said firmly. Not after all the nice things that she had to say about me to get the committe to approve me as the official neighborhood busker.
I bought an ounce of kratom to get me through the 2 days that they are closing the Uxi Duxi for renovations.
I'm sitting outside Harrah's Casino, using their wi-fi with a tight grip on this laptop, because of the high concentration of "casino skeezers" around.
More Job Talk From Me
The manager of the Uxi Duxi, Nathaniel, is openly gay, and I have gotten to like him very much for the intelligent conversation that he is capable of holding, and his sense of humor. And, he treats me very well.
I am usually twice as old as everyone else in the bar.
This is actually the first time that I have been in the society of people half my age since I was in Saint Augustine, Florida in 2009, at the age of 47, and 19 year old Brittany was my girlfriend. Until she found out that I was 47, that is...
But, in the meantime, I was hanging out and partying, surrounded by teenagers, with the fact that I was a musician being the common denominator.
Then Karrie came along, 10 years my junior, and from yet another totally different culture.
But, having ingratiated myself with the millenials, who frequent the kratom bar has been rejuvenating.
More Job Talk
I am about to ask Nathaniel about the possibilty of my getting a job there.
If it would require getting a haircut and some nicer clothes, and boning up upon kratom and kava and coca leaf and CBD dabs and herbs and mushrooms and divination and Kabalah and witchcraft and insence and sitar music; then I would be willing to go that extra mile.
Whatever they pay is supplemented by a big fish bowl of a tip jar which, I have noticed, can fetch what looks like 35 to 40 bucks by the end of a shift.
Nathaniel would be brutally honest with me, I have little doubt, in pointing out whatever might have kept him from offering me a job already. (maybe he reads this blog -d'oh!)
They are open 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, and that many hours must be hard to fill.
One of them seems to always be taking time off to travel the world. Michelle recently returned from a trip to northern Italy and southern Switzerland, where she met some of her relatives, whom I guess she found using the Internet; Satori has just left for a vacation in California, and that seems to leave only Kia, Michelle and Nathaniel himself to run the place.
It is a good sign of the lucrativeness of the place that the employees can afford to take off for weeks at a time to travel the world.
Satori was a busker and a living statue in the French Quarter before, I guess, becoming frustrated with the diminishing wages "I used to be able to count on at least a hundred bucks a day, but then there just started to be too much bullshit involved..." he said.
"I can imagine," I rejoined.
To say that it would be a dream job for me would be pretty accurate. It would be magical on the order of how I discovered kratom in the first place.
"Really, what can you do?" asked Dixie.
"I can run the grill, I can make fries, I know how to close..."
"I have an extra uniform, do you want to clock in? We can do all the paperwork later," Dixie had said.
So, I finished my salad and began working at the Wendy's, 10 minutes after arriving in Charlottesville. It's really surreal being in a brand new city. Every time the person on the radio which was playing near the sink where I was washing dishes, whose voice was unfamiliar to me, would say something like: "Charlottesville weather, mild tonight with light breezes" It would be like: How did I get here?
In the course of covering all of my training, Dixie kept harping upon how inept she was; at everything. "You can probably do this a lot better than me; I'm terrible," she had said about the tomato slicing machine. She was terrible with math, couldn't do a very good job of, say, tearing open a bag of french fries and loading them into a fry basket, nor much of anything else..
In her own esteem, that was.
I came to the conclusion that Dixie had somehow had the belief instilled in her that men could do everything better than women.
I should have asked her out on a date, in retrospect, because that is a very attractive trait to me to go with her Shirley (of "Laverne and Shirley" fame) looks; but that is water under the bridge.
Dixie and I were the only white people on a typical crew of about 12 people.
I witnessed the young black workers doing things like the young men coming up behind the females and humping upon them in plain view of any other crew members; being lazy, as in, if a bus full of people pulled into the parking lot and they ordered say, 32 hamburgers, 32 fries and 32 cokes, but no frosties, the guy who had been assigned to the frosty machine would lean there against it, lending no help to the others, as they scrambled to complete the order; and stuffing 10 pound boxes of frozen ground beef along with bags of frozen fries into their duffel bags (that they probably brought to work for that purpose) at the end of a given shift.
3 or 4 of them were receiving rides to work from another manager, a white guy named George, who lived in the same town of Waynesboro, about 40 miles to the west of Charlottesville as they did, and was nice enough to have been giving them an opportunity to work by providing them with transportation.
George probably lost some sleep wondering why his inventory kept coming up short; putting his job in jeopardy, while never knowing that he was transporting about 50 dollars worth of stolen food right along with his lazy workers on his trip home every night.
The young black workers would say things like: "White boys can't smoke Newports; their lungs aren't strong enough," while we sat in the break room. And, when I had gotten some poison ivy on my arms while clearing the spot where I was to build my covert dwelling by the reservoir; some of them voiced concerns about catching the "poison ivory" from me.
I was fired by one of the black managers over something trivial; but it was probably because of the poison ivory scare that I had thrown into the black crew.
The gas station right next door to the Wendy's, where I often went after work hired me right away after I had told them what had happened at Wendy's
Ironically, it was managed by a black guy.
But it was a black guy who had come directly from The Ghana (formerly the "Ivory" Coast).
His name was Modou, and he hated "niggers."
"These niggers here in this country; they are all teeves (thieves) every one of them. I tried to hire some of them and all they did was steal. They think that everything is owned by the white man and it's OK to steal; and that's not right!" said Modou.
So, once again, in life, the color of my skin helped get me a job -go figure...
Modou and I got along just fine; he spoke impeccable English, learned in school from a young age from British (I assume) instructors.
This is where I met a woman whom I did date.
She was of similar mind to Dixie.
Her name was Xanna and she had been abused and belittled by her father since she was born as the less preferable, to him, of the sexes.
"He kept calling me the runt of the litter, and he would beat me and throw me down the stairs." Xanna had lost the vision in one of her eyes as a result of one of those beatings early in her life.
But, Xanna was about my age also, and dated only white men; and only ones who wound up beating her. I guess she wanted to marry a man like mother did...
And so, before I fall too far off the chase...
They were the mustache wearing men who were huge NASCAR fans. One of them owned a bar called The Winner's Circle.
You would never see a black man at that bar; just white men; every one of them sporting a mustache, just like Dale Earnhart and Rusty Wallace and Richard Petty. All lined up at the bar.
Their offspring would gather in the parking lot almost nightly. Every one of them driving a Ford Mustang.
They had their own corner of the parking lot, from where they kept a leery eye on the spectacle of white girls pulling in to gas up with black men in their passenger seats.
They would each come to the window and each buy a variation on a pack of Marlboro's and a Coke-a-Cola. They would hang out and enjoy their Mustangs, and their perfectly beautiful girlfriends. I think the most beautiful girl I've ever seen was with a rather ordinary looking guy with a mustache, who, after a while wouldn't even have to say "and a pack of Marlboro's," as he placed his bottle of Coke (and a diet one for the lady) on the little shelf; I would have had them ready upon seeing his Mustang pull in.
"You don't mind us hanging out in the parking lot, do you?" he asked one night.
"Oh, hell no. I actually feel safer with you guys there," I had said, giving a quick nod of my head in the direction of the nearest car with a white girl behind the wheel and a black kid in the passenger seat, rolling a blunt.
We became kindred spirits then.
How low must be the self esteem of that beautiful girl, to have considered a Mustang and a mustache as being enough for her, I couldn't help thinking. He was just a regular looking guy.
So, fast forward to 2017, and some guy plows into a crowd of "black lives matter" protesters, killing a white girl who is among them.
Isn't it ironic that the first president that America has ever had who was not a politician, turns out to be the best politician of them all?"You want to fuck niggers, well, this is what you get!" was all I could imagine the guy yelling from behind the wheel as he punched the gas. (I can't Google right now, but I'll bet he was driving a Ford, like Greg Biffle).
And, no. I don't think it hilarious, just sad.
The whole thing, that is, dating back to the 1800's. Sad.
And, yes, I would have voted for Trump.
That's just the flavor of Kool Aid I chose, but it's all Kool Aid, being ladled out by someone or other...
I am starting to think that the election really was rigged, because only Jay the loud singer and I would have, it seems, voted for the guy.
I wish people would look at results. The stock market hitting record highs, the fact that he was here, pronto, promising the 108 billion dollars to rebuild flood ravaged areas, while it took president Bush 17 days to come here after Katrina, and when he did, his speech from Jackson Square had to be broadcast using generators because the power was still out, almost 3 weeks later; and would dismiss his tweets.
Isn't it ironic that the first president that America has ever had who was not a politician, turns out to be the best politician of them all?
And, to be honest, I look at life kind of like a movie. If you bought a ticket to see a movie and nothing had really happened a half hour into it, you would either fall asleep or go to get a refund.
This (presidency) is very entertaining, in that regard, at least.
I have no trouble with the "us" vs. "them" thing, because I'm one of "us," I believe.
I do fear that Trump might rally the army overseas somewhere and convince them that they need to come over here and put things to right (beginning with seizing all the guns and knives) but that is my imagination running wild again...
But, back to the post...
One of the drawbacks of kratom that I noticed shortly after having started taking it, was a certain feeling of "alienation" from my fellow man, that crept into my psyche.
One of the fruits of my victory over alcoholism (which I didn't realize until about the 9th month "dry", when I had become convinced that sobriety had reached a plateau and had no room for improving my life further) was when I began to let go of the fear of not having the means to feed my addiction and its companion stress, when busking and not making a dime.
I reached the point where I sat down to play and became immersed in it, and truly, didn't pay attention to the tip jar.
I played for reasons such as: "This person walking past might not have any money, but maybe could use some uplifting by hearing a joyful song, sung by someone who was genuinely feeling it."
And, lo and behold, tips were finding their way into my jar.
After a week or so using kratom, I discovered that it focused me in, the way I assumed ritalin was intended to do for kids with "attention deficit disorder," and that I was able to play more precisely and overcome technical obstacles by doing things such as envisioning the bones in my fingers and wrist and arms as being the levers of a machine, and then being able to figure out a way to better employ them in cranking out fast and accurate music.
It reminded me of the way Tanya Huang, the violinist plays, and made me even wonder if it is something in the soil of Taiwan, where kratom comes from, that gives Asians that proclivity for working hard for long hours, like robots (a stereo-type, I know).
But, along with that, I had experiences such as one night, when I was playing a song and hitting every note, and a couple of ladies came by, with one of them commenting in a pleasant nature about my "tiposaurus."
"The tiposaurs rarely bites," reads the sign next to the tip jar which is "guarded" by a little plastic replica of a dinosaur.
In the past, I had always maintained a sense of humor and would have said something like "It hasn't bitten since December 9th, 2009," or something, which might have gotten them to smile or a laugh, and that might have broken the ice; they might have sat down on the stoop to converse further with me; and that was where the $175 tips have stemmed from.
This was so out of character for me that I decided that that might indeed be the downside of the kratom. I had no warm and fuzzy feelings for people; but I could think and react more quickly.
Kratom's main "use" is to help people kick opioid addiction.
Since I had no such addiction, I became, I suppose, like people who take pain pills, but aren't in pain. It gives them a high which feels like it isn't going to go away any time soon.
And, yeah, feelings of not being connected "cosmically" to mankind, nor being able to imagine what it might be like to see the world through someone else's eyes intensified into anger and/or hatred at times; when coming down off the stuff, I guess.
I stopped to talk to Jay the really loud singer (who makes no secret of the fact that he uses crystal meth to boost him, so he can play for long stretches of time; to make enough to pay for the crystal meth, so that he can play for long hours, to make enough to pay for more meth...etc.).
Jay has often suggested that I try the stuff too, telling me that it would definitely make me play for a lot longer than the 2 and a half hours that I average. Like all night until the sun comes up and and maybe all day the next day, and then why not all the next night, since it would be dark again and tourists would be out again....
Jay usually breaks 100 dollars each night, and is the type who will whip out a wad of 3 or 4 hundred bucks in order to brag about it, on occasion.
Johnny B., who was on methodone, and professed a hatred of everyone whom he saw in his daily walk, would also pull out his money and count it in front of everyone on the trolley for example. And then get off the thing and walk through the dark, pulling his expensive equipment behind him in a little cart to his apartment, which he hated the location of because it was in a heroin neighborhood, and that put temptation in his way. I don't think he owned a gun, because he would have shown it off
at every opportunity if he did.
So far, all of the meth heads or methadone addicts that I have met liked to show off thier money; but I digress.
I always basically saw Jay as being a very cranky and angry musician who played in a very utilitarian way, without much "feeling." He just put in the hours, playing the same six (and now nine) songs repetitively.
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Jay is the textbook redneck. He openly hates "these foreigners," and "these niggers," and, more recently "these faggots," who don't tip. He will often use his microphone to insult people, when he's not getting tipped.
Jay is a pretty large and imposing guy, and so he can get away with that, sending things echoing down Royal Street like: "My wife is so fat she can hardly get in the Mazda," if a guy happens to be assisting his wife in doing just that nearby, or maybe adding: "We're gonna go home and eat some refried beans and rice and then some ice cream..." if they happen to be Latino and overweight.
He was very excited about the prospect of a Trump presidency, in the months leading up to the election, asserting that "things are gonna get a whole lot better once he gets in.."
So, I found a sympathetic ear when I arrived and complained that the Southern Decadence people just didn't tip, period.
He smiled when I mentioned running them all over.
I was kind of surprised, though, by the reaction of Tim, my caseworker (whose job it is to see that I am happy and well adjusted and that the "permanent assisted housing" program that I am a beneficiary of, is working) when I told him about the same thoughts.
"Oh, I'm not into that at all," he said dismissively.
I felt kind of ashamed upon waking up the next day.
There is enough of that kind of talk uttered at Sacred Heart apartments, usually by drunken and, presumably mentally ill residents, when they are pissed off at the world.
Part of Tim's job is to assess the "risk" of me just up and leaving my place to become homeless by choice, again.
I do worry that kratom is making me more cranky and hateful; I'll have to monitor that, and maybe alternate between it, and kava or CBD dabs, which are more mellowing.
Sunday, September 3rd, 2017
It is Sunday night, and I have, for the first time, taken a whole weekend off from busking. It was just too trying of my soul, and I kind of lost my cool and became angry and bitter.
Who knows what goes through the mind of a tourist who walks the length of Royal Street during the day and then Bourbon Street at night and never throws a dollar to any of "the jugglers and the clowns" who all do tricks for them.
But there is a definite mob mentality at work. When the tips rain, they pour and when they don't, they don't.
I might be wrongly assuming that every tourist knows darned well that I have to live off whatever tips I make; and that they are, knowingly starving me to death.
It calls to mind the infamous New Yorkers who would walk past a guy who is bleeding to death on the sidewalk, never stopping to help, or even bothering to phone 911?
That is the deep, underlying and unsettling crux of the matter.
Even when the occasional one says something like: "I wish I had some money, I would throw you a couple bucks," that goes a long way and is so much better than the "total ignoring" thing.
It is now Monday night; less than 3 hours before my food card will be charged with 137 bucks.
Lilly called me as I was walking back from the plasma donation place this afternoon. Walking because I had miscalculated the number of donations that I have made in the past 7 days, having been befuddled by the changing of the month and having flipped the leaf of my calendar over.
I was headed towards Howard's residence to borrow the 80 cents that I was short on a bus fare. A 5 mile walk through the heat, rather than ask any stranger for money. If Howard wasn't home or something, I was prepared to walk another 3 miles, over the bridge and up Canal Street to my apartment, where I would check the couch cushions for change and then try to get back the next day to sell plasma. With the food card having money put on it at midnight, I also considered offering to buy someone a 2 dollar item in exchange for the buck I would need to ride the bus.
She told me that most of the gay guys at the Southern Decadence festival were in town trying to make money "not to tip anybody else." I had thought about that, but Lilly articulated it very well. There were the 1% of millionaire gay guys, whose old, fat, flatulant bodies wouldn't attract a young gay stud, but their millions do. And there are the 99% who are there to dance and entertain and do whatever else. It's almost like a big convention of young gay prostitutes in a sense, the way Lilly explained it, and she would know, because she has lived in New Orleans since she was 6 years old, and is in the know, just in general. As Bruce Springsteen sings: "We take care of our own."
So, that explained being overlooked by 99% of the crowd at the festival. I feel better now. But, as Mae West said: "It's better to be looked over than overlooked."
I told Lilly that I had thought about busking in a thong with my body painted pink.
"No, don't do that," she said firmly. Not after all the nice things that she had to say about me to get the committe to approve me as the official neighborhood busker.
I bought an ounce of kratom to get me through the 2 days that they are closing the Uxi Duxi for renovations.
I'm sitting outside Harrah's Casino, using their wi-fi with a tight grip on this laptop, because of the high concentration of "casino skeezers" around.
More Job Talk From Me
The manager of the Uxi Duxi, Nathaniel, is openly gay, and I have gotten to like him very much for the intelligent conversation that he is capable of holding, and his sense of humor. And, he treats me very well.
I am usually twice as old as everyone else in the bar.
This is actually the first time that I have been in the society of people half my age since I was in Saint Augustine, Florida in 2009, at the age of 47, and 19 year old Brittany was my girlfriend. Until she found out that I was 47, that is...
But, in the meantime, I was hanging out and partying, surrounded by teenagers, with the fact that I was a musician being the common denominator.
Then Karrie came along, 10 years my junior, and from yet another totally different culture.
But, having ingratiated myself with the millenials, who frequent the kratom bar has been rejuvenating.
More Job Talk
I am about to ask Nathaniel about the possibilty of my getting a job there.
If it would require getting a haircut and some nicer clothes, and boning up upon kratom and kava and coca leaf and CBD dabs and herbs and mushrooms and divination and Kabalah and witchcraft and insence and sitar music; then I would be willing to go that extra mile.
Whatever they pay is supplemented by a big fish bowl of a tip jar which, I have noticed, can fetch what looks like 35 to 40 bucks by the end of a shift.
Nathaniel would be brutally honest with me, I have little doubt, in pointing out whatever might have kept him from offering me a job already. (maybe he reads this blog -d'oh!)
They are open 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, and that many hours must be hard to fill.
One of them seems to always be taking time off to travel the world. Michelle recently returned from a trip to northern Italy and southern Switzerland, where she met some of her relatives, whom I guess she found using the Internet; Satori has just left for a vacation in California, and that seems to leave only Kia, Michelle and Nathaniel himself to run the place.
It is a good sign of the lucrativeness of the place that the employees can afford to take off for weeks at a time to travel the world.
Satori was a busker and a living statue in the French Quarter before, I guess, becoming frustrated with the diminishing wages "I used to be able to count on at least a hundred bucks a day, but then there just started to be too much bullshit involved..." he said.
"I can imagine," I rejoined.
To say that it would be a dream job for me would be pretty accurate. It would be magical on the order of how I discovered kratom in the first place.
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