- 2 Hours, $44
- When One Door Slams, Another Opens
- Weight Up 9 Pounds
- Travis Past 10 Days
Sweat will flow into my eyes on humid nights; usually the left one, for some reason. I will continue to play the guitar and harmonica, trying to focus upon music, in order to block out the stinging sensation.
It used to be from liquefied hair gel when my hair was short enough for that, 9 years ago.
Now, I'm convinced that the air quality is such in New Orleans that airborne stuff (exhaust fumes, spores, yeasts and diseases from every country from which tourists hail) will stick to the forehead, and then be washed down, like a polluted river, during times of exertion, into the eyes.
But, as I had become accustomed to and had realized that I had taken for granted during the slow weeks of August and the dismal 5 days of "Southern Decadence" after I wiped the sweat out of my eyes with a spare tee shirt that I had brought for the purpose, I opened them to see money in my tip jar.
After one particular stretch, when I had been thinking: "I don't care what anyone thinks; I like this original song of mine and I'm going to play the hell out of it," there was a 20 dollar bill on top of a stack of about 12 ones when I looked.
Since I made 43 bucks in exactly 2 hours, it occurred to me that I had basically put in almost a full night's work in the form of perhaps a one minute harmonica solo; over some chords that were tailor made to suit that instrument. The song "Her Thigh Said Sublime," that I wrote, became composed using every available note on the C major harmonica, no more...
If the song ever became well known, I'm sure that it would go down as "a great song to play harmonica over," because all the notes are just "there."
I started playing at exactly midnight.
This was after I had gotten all the way to the Lilly Pad at 10:36 PM, only to discover that I had left my harmonica at home.
"You've really got to be shitting me!" I said to myself.
That's like the bag lady forgetting her bag somewhere, or like Harry Houdini forgetting to conceal the paperclip in his eyebrow that he used to pick the lock before being sunk to the bottom of a pool... I thought.
I packed up my stuff and then walked past swarms of potential tippers, the 9 blocks back to the trolley, got on it; rode back to the apartment, grabbed the harmonica (which I had thrown onto the top of my brown hat which sat on a black chair, camouflaged it amazingly) and returned to the Lilly Pad.
The clock struck 12 as soon as I got there, so I rationalized that there was some kind of cosmic reason for my having forgotten the harmonica; rather than see myself as having pissed away a chance to make 30 bucks in the hour and a half that it took me to retrieve the thing. "I would have been shot and killed in a freak incident; my life has been spared and I have whatever forces collaborated in making me forget my harmonica to thank..." At least I wasn't at the bottom of a pool.
After stopping once, at the first sign of fatigue, and then forcing myself to play another set, I saw my phones clock strike 2 AM in front of my eyes when I consulted it. This reinforced the sense that I was adhering to some esoteric timetable, driven by benevolent spirits.
On my way out to play, at 10:30 PM, I had walked by Tanya Huang, who sat alone on the corner of St. Louis and Royal Streets, playing along with pre-recorded tracks that are sounding more and more like recordings of Dorise Blackman, rather than the classical piano tracks that she had been playing over immediately after she and Dorise dissolved their partnership.
She might be conceding that it is the Hotel California's of the musical lexicon that pay the bills and keep her in high style.
She brings enough seating for about a dozen people in the form of a plastic bench and a few folding chairs and sets up her table full of CDs for sale right in front of her and the effect is that of building a wall around herself.
A couple of the chairs are permanently occupied by, I'm assuming, skeezers who, in exchange for always being there, ready to chase down a thief who might try to grab a fistful of cash from her basket and run, or to say "Man, leave the lady alone, she's trying to play!" when appropriate; always have a drink in their hands and are well fed as they sit there. I'm sure that they have a crisp 20 dollar bill in their pockets when they wake up in the morning after having capped off the night by lugging a plastic bench and a few folding chairs, to a waiting SUV.
She also raised an eyebrow when 40 minutes later, I passed again in the direction of the Lilly Pad, wearing a tee shirt of a different color. I wonder if she thought that I had gone all the way back home to change my shirt, and if so, if this fit her internal model of me in some way, and didn't surprise her.
"No...I just can't see working with a guy like that, nothing against him, though..."
I wasn't blaming Travis for the fact that I forgot my harmonica. Even so, after having packed it up, I had taken it back out to play something for him, and then had set it on the brown hat for reasons that I still can't fathom. I'm sure he was distracting me at that particular moment; almost like the disc jockey conditioned to avoid "dead air" who will interject something, anything, over every instance of silence.
"You came all the way back for your harmonica; that's dedication!" he gushed. I couldn't help thinking that most of his elation was due to the fact that he could see that I was just grabbing the thing and changing my shirt and would momentarily be leaving him in cloistered bliss.
"It must be nice," I thought, as I closed the door, leaving him to a long hot shower, pizza, movies, his bong and the elation over having found a place that he thinks is going to wind up costing him only 3 bucks a day to stay at.
I was going to wind up walking 36 blocks before the night was over, that was certain. Whether or not I would make any money or would return in one piece is the uncertainty that I live with; and it's possible to resent a guy who is kicking back and enjoying my place, while I drag myself out there to "get her done."
I got back at about 3:15 AM. I was hungry and had pancakes with blackberry preserves and real butter on my mind.
Travis woke up and only grunted and squinted, as if the kitchen light that I had snapped on so I could see to make pancakes was offensive to him; and maybe that he thought that 3:30 in the morning was not the time to be making noise in the kitchen.
He had closed the door to my room. This was probably so that the air conditioner could more effectively reduce the temperature in that room to a comfortable level. It would, oh by the way, allow my room, where Harold my cat had been imprisoned, into a 90+ degree hell.
These are small things that, taken as a whole, soon led to me having slammed the door on my way out, a couple hours ago, and left him in the apartment, on my phone.
He borrowed my phone this morning; he also has bummed 2 cigarettes. He doesn't have cigarettes because he hasn't gone out. He is trying to fool the security people into thinking that he hasn't reached the limit of 10 days allowed to a guest, by staying inside, 24/7.
He doesn't seem to realize that the security people are not his only obstacle in being able to stay for more than the allotted time.
For one thing, it is stated in my lease that I can have no guests for more than 10 days per month.
I've gotten free rent for the rest of my life.
Louise, a past failure of a guest, chastised the government for being "stupid enough" to pay the rent of an "alcoholic veteran." She would have loved to have joined the military, she said, and killed "camel riding women abusers," but she couldn't pass the physical for some reason. People like Louise have always got some friggin' problem.
Of course she had varicose veins at the age of 19, or flat feet, or wait...it was arthritis, now I remember...Louise had "arthritis" which had kept her from joining the military at the age of 19...
Of course she did. People like Louise just have to have something wrong with them; they are raised that way.
But my point is that; I'm in a situation that a lot of people would do anything possible to not mess up.
Bobby might have given Travis a lecture of his own on the lax security at Sacred Heart Apartments and maybe even told him about the ways other people are "getting over" there, but the long and short of it is that; I'm in violation of my lease agreement and putting my whole situation in jeopardy by allowing him to stay for more than 10 days. There is also a prohibition against "subleasing" a unit (i.e. accepting the $75 worth of food, which is all that I've gotten from him in the last 11 or so days).
And, he is bumming cigarettes now.
In his defense, he has offered to pitch in some money, if I would pick some up when I go out; to work, while he stays in and works on his laptop and tries to gaff the building management.
There is also the fact that, apart from making the place feel more claustrophobic (even married couples need some time away from each other to maintain a healthy relationship) he is breathing the air in there, 24/7. The ventilation is not great at Sacred Heart, at least on our floor.
My neighbor, Wayne, has emphysema, and so is more aware of things like ventilation. He has said that "there's no ventilation at all," and I can kind of see what he means.
Entering the apartment from off the street, as bad as the air quality "out there" might be, after there has been someone inside, along with 2 cats, breathing and re-breathing that stagnant air is noticeable.
So, on my way out this morning, I slammed the door pretty hard.
He had borrowed my phone.
I felt kind of like I was being held hostage in a sense, while I waited for him to finish with it and hand it back to me.
As he talked and talked into the thing; it dawned on me that I was, once again being inconvenienced and at the mercy of hoping that he would stop talking sometime before the end of the day, so I could go on with my life.
I propped the door open to allow fresher and cooler air into the place.
Travis has a fear that his cat is going to escape through the open door. The cat would have no place to go, except for the hallway, where it would be trapped and easy to retrieve. Unless, of course, someone just happens to be opening the door to the outside, while someone else is at the same time keeping the second door to the outside open. Then the cat, who is afraid of strangers, might still run right by these two and escape to the outside. Whenever there is a loud noise from the hallway, she runs the other way to under a bed or something. If the cat wants to escape from Travis that badly, then I say, let the thing go.
So, I had propped the door open to let in fresh air. I went over to look out a window.
Travis, seeing the door open; made a "tsk" sound of annoyance, and walked over, still talking into my phone and closed it. That's when I kind of snapped.
I said "You're cat isn't going to get outside!," then went out and slammed it pretty hard behind me.
"He can't leave yet, I've still got his phone, there are still things I want to tell him," he might have thought.
"The hell I can't," I thought; refusing to be held prisoner by him for as long as he wanted to talk on it.
Every time I go to check the time and remember that I don't have my phone, it will remind me of the inconvenience that he had wrought, and the little talk that we are probably going to have, but not in an hour when I go back. It's a Saturday and I don't need any emotional baggage. I certainly don't need to forget any detail like fresh batteries for my spotlight, because of my roommate.
I want to go out tonight with a positive frame of mind, and a whole discussion about why he has an irrational fear about losing his cat, or about air quality or feeling claustrophobic, or being distracted to the point of forgetting to put a paper clip in my eyebrow can all wait...That's a 5 hour lecture from him waiting to happen...
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