Travis, Day Whichever

• $22/Hr. Friday Night
• They Didn't Hire Me, Feeling (see below)

Travis has been staying with me for maybe a week now; things are going much more smoothly this time, due to a combination of myself being conscious of, and accepting his shortcomings, while at the same time admitting my own.

He came in with a blaze of promises "Dude, if you can help me out, I'll be so grateful and I'll SO hook you up!" which is what he had said the first and second times that I have had encounters with him as a roommate.

What had happened the other times was that his inherently frugal inclinations pecked away at his good intentions like crows to a loaf of bread, making him become more chintzy as time rolled along, until, towards the end he, for example, wanted to subtract the hamburger that he had bought me for lunch at Burger King from the 20 bucks that he had promised me for letting him store his stuff at my place until he had relocated.

So, rather than hold that against him and refuse to help him this time, I made sure that I cashed in on his initial grandiose offering of "Dude, I'll give you 80 bucks!" by responding with: "How about you give me 20 in cash and then buy me 50 bucks worth of food off your food stamp card?" and then following through on it by using some of the issues that I know he has, to my advantage.

I feigned to be totally broke the afternoon that he moved in, so that he handed me the 20 dollars right away (really not until we had walked halfway to the Family Dollar where I was going to spend some of it, as if he wanted to hold it just a few minutes longer before parting with it).

I was pretty sure that he was being kicked out of the place where he was living because of the way that he can become annoying to someone who hasn't figured out a way to make these annoyances work in their favor.

There are a lot of good things about Travis, but they were throwing the baby out with the bath water. They are young and the kicked him out behind the excuse that, at 35, he is "old."

He will talk non-stop for up to 3 hours, presenting his talk as kind of a lecture, even interjecting things like: "I'm going to touch on that subject in a moment, but first, it's important to lay the groundwork for that discussion by...." etc.

But one must avoid pulling the triggers to these discussions by voicing certain keywords. If you were to mention Kurt Vonnegut, the writer, for example, then you could sit back and enjoy the hour long story about the time that Travis met the guy, even if you have already spent one or two hours hearing it once of twice, already. He might even preface something with: "I think I may have already told you this, but..." before telling you it.

The first day that he moved in, I had stuck a piece of paper to the refrigerator upon which was written:

Rules
#1. Don't hijack my life
#2. Don't make everything all about your self
#3. Don't use the same knife for the peanut butter that you used for the jelly

This was intended to be humorous, in general, but, after I had gone out to throw a bag of trash in the dumpster, I returned to find him pacing back and forth by the kitchen, as if he had read it and was chewing upon it.

I realized that it was almost an accusation of him having done these things in the past, and felt bad about it.

With him being in a situation where he had a choice between sleeping outdoors or my apartment (on such short notice; since they had summarily kicked him out "out of the blue") I kind of had him over a barrel and immediately felt bad about using this to gain leverage over him. But, I remembered having probably written something like: "Never again," would I take him in, after the past experiences.

He gives the impression that he wants a companion, just as much as a room to rent. This drove me crazy the first time he stayed with me. When I left to go to the dollar store, for example, he said: "Wait, let me throw my sneakers on and come with you, because I want to get a few things..." This had the immediate effect of slowing me down. I was going to hop on my bike and make the whole trip in about a half hour. He was on foot, so I wound up riding along next to him at walking speed. Along the way, he did all the talking about what he was thinking about buying and why. "I'll probably get the 20-pack of batteries because it's only a few bucks more, and I'm going to eventually need them....The only thing is, that would make my backpack heavier, and plus I want to get a gallon of water, 'cause why get the one liter bottle when for like 30 cents more I can get a gallon...plus, shit, that's right, I need cat litter, which will add like another 5 pounds...I'll definitely need to get a bus pass because I'm not going to carry all that all the way to the library and back....unless...I could hold off on the kitty litter and just bring Beast outside so she can do her business, but I also don't want her to run off, I don't know how she might react to a different environment....Or, ...we could walk back to the apartment and I could drop off the heavy stuff, and, by then my money will in, so we could hit the ATM and I'll be able to give you the 20 bucks, and get a bus pass and then we could take the trolley up to the Rouses to get groceries; but, wait...what time does Rouses close?"

"Travis, all I wanted to do was hop on my bike and run to the store for an energy drink and some cat food; I didn't think it was that complicated...just figure out what you need to do and then handle your business!"

"No, I wasn't asking you to solve my problems, I just thought that we...I guess I'm just thinking out loud..."

#1. Don't hijack my life

He defaults to the word "we" as a natural progression.

I can understand now, that he is just more comfortable working as a team with someone else; but it sometimes feels like he wants someone to hold his hand and walk him across the street, type of thing.
And I can understand how hard it must be for him to find someone that will be that other person, without being repelled by his incessant thinking out loud.

So, I really do feel like I have a certain responsibility, as someone who is conscientious enough to have figured out a way to not be driven crazy by him. I'm one of his only hopes of having someone to hang out with, I believe.

I also feel a kind of responsibility to be a guardian of his innocence (naivety, if you will) because I realize that he is going to have a rough go of it, and be misunderstood by 99% of the world.

So, we had a talk that night, when I admitted to him that I had a tendency to fall into thinking out loud myself. In my case it's the reason that I tend to be a loner, because other people wind up saying: "I don't know; you'll have to figure it out yourself and do what's best for yourself."

We both agreed to try to be more vigilant of this and to cut way down upon it.

I changed the sheet of paper on the refrigerator to one that read:

Rules:
#1. Realize that "I" am not talking to "you;" It's all Him.
#2. No shaming or judgemental language
#3. Don't drink out of the orange bucket by the refrigerator

It can be a good idea to think out loud because the other person might be able to help you out, like: "The library closes early tomorrow, so you might want to go there first."

"Oh, I'm glad you told me that; I would have been screwed if I didn't get those copies made!" type of thing.

But, if you're thinking about Kurt Vonnegut, stay mum around Travis.
So, I grabbed the 20 dollars and we were soon on our way to the Wal-Mart on Broad Avenue where Travis bought me the "50 dollars worth of food."

It actually amounted to $75.03. I had been just grabbing stuff and throwing it into the cart*, thinking that, at the register, I would monitor the subtotal while re-arranging things so that the least necessary items would be towards the rear. I had expected to throw some stuff back when the total hit 50 bucks (the chicken livers? the box of Raisin Bran?) but Travis said: "Dude, you're saving my life by letting me stay at your place, I want to hook you up, don't worry about it..."

"Wow, thanks, man. You can always eat some of my food too, like if I make a huge stack of pancakes you're welcome to some; type of thing..."

"No worries..."

*That he didn't grab his own separate cart is a good example "we" thing that he defaults to.

So, there we were, waiting for the #94 Broad Ave bus, with my backpack stuffed and our hands full of as many bags of food as we could carry. There was a black man standing nearby, who kept shooting us glances with a most hateful look on his face. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other and I thought for sure that he was thinking about trying to snatch the backpack and run off with it; probably lamenting the fact that one of us could remain there to watch the remaining food while the other, unburdened by a 40 pound pack full of food would easily be able to catch him.
He most certainly got food stamps himself and had probably sold his $194 worth of food for a hundred dollars in cash which was now just crack smoke in the atmosphere.

It was kind of a Norman Rockwell slice of Americana; the black man leering at the white guys with their huge load of food, his heart blackened with hatred; feeling that it just wasn't right, wasn't fair -that he sold his food stamps for crack money because this world which was created by whites, for whites, had beaten him down to the point where the only solace he could see was in the crack pipe; and here they were, gloating and taunting him; just daring him to grab a package of ground beef or something; with all that food they had; ain't no way they can eat all that, anyways..shit!

Having my cabinets stuffed with food for the first time in the 2 and a half years that I've been living there was actually amazing. I had to take a few deep breaths and calm down before trying to come up with an idea for what I might have for dinner that night. The Raisin Bran would be the quickest, but, if I was patient, I could have whole wheat and rice and flax flour pancakes, fried in coconut oil, with maple syrup poured over them, and a cup of coffee.

"I'm learning to think about food differently, now that I'm not buying it one meal at a time," I said to Travis.

"Yeah, when I lived in New York, there was this little market near my apartment and..."

[15 minutes later]
"Yeah, you've already told me that story..."

Friday night, I went out to busk, being down to about 2 dollars in cash, but having cabinets full of food.

It had been a great day.

I did a double shot of kratom, then hit the Petco pet store, where I splurged on Harold with some gourmet cat food.

Then, feeling that I had a 50% chance of getting a job at the Uxi Duxi, joined Travis in smoking a bowl of weed (no drug test for the kava kava bar job) and then went out an played the hell out of a few songs and made around the 20 bucks per hour that I had become accustomed to.
This just in:
The Uxi Duxi has hired 2 people, none of which were myself, and now I'm feeling like the black guy that was staring at Travis and I and our bags of food probably was.
I guess I'm glad that I wrote most of this post while I was still feeling upbeat and optimistic...
I don't know how I'm going to handle this news. I don't think I'll ever apply for another job as long as I live...
I'm going to smoke weed and go out and busk on this (Saturday) night.