8:09 AM 10/3/2017
Rose Delivers
A penitent Rose was at my door last evening, giving me 7 dollars as payback for the 5 that she had borrowed on about the second week of the month.
She expressed a hope that I felt better; as she had gotten the note that I slid under her and Ed's door.
I told her that I had made an almost full recovery; except for a lingering cough that will probably take at least a week to go away; less, if I quit smoking.
The flu episode has, at least, kept me away from smoking pot for a few days, long enough so that I have temporarily forgotten about it. I would like to forget about spending 5 bucks a day on the stuff.
When I went out to play on Saturday night, I was pretty much free of pot, caffeine, kratom and alcohol, and became so busy with playing music that it didn't occur to me until the end of the night that I had played sober. I had fun, and discovered the joy of making up lyrics over a chord progression that is so ingrained in me that I could focus upon rhyming words and trying to tell a tongue in cheek story on the subject of killing a roommate.
A Passive Aggressive Ploy
Travis had texted me: "Let me know if you go out to play, and I'll stop by."
He never stopped by the whole night, and at one point, I became glad that he hadn't.
He typically smokes a bowl of weed with me when he stops by -his calling card, in general- and I couldn't help but think that his message was intended to inflict some injury upon me, by getting my hopes up that he would visit and smoke with me.
It is pathetic and endemic in potheads like himself (I speak from experience) that eventually he will feel like he is being used by people who become conditioned to him always smoking them up because he is always smoking himself and they just happen to be around, and who develop more of an interest in his weed than his "company."
A New Sniglet Of Mine: "Pulveric" (relating to, or centering around powder)
He adheres to a pulveric dynamic, such as, how he will hold a bowl of weed before lighting it, as if making the person whom he is going to smoke with wait, and holding the weed hostage with their attention being the ransom i.e. forcing them to listen to his talking until he has given them a satisfactory dose of it.
I'm sure this dynamic has been in play several times before in his life:
Street Musician Daniel Waxes Analytic On Pulverism (right)
Someone would remark upon the fact that Travis had never made it to a given party or event; and the feeling would be mutual that it was his weed, more than his company, that was indeed missed by all, and so, in this regard, it was a shame that he had never arrived.
The one time at my apartment, when he was holding a bowl of weed with the lighter perched near it, and I was kind of in a hurry and had said: "Hey, are you going to fire that up?," he breathed a sigh of exasperation, as if annoyed by my impatience.
More likely, he was suffering from a feeling of insecurity about his ability to get people to like him in general and who would willfully sit there, engaged in a one way conversation with him doing all the talking.
I have seen other such pathetic losers who might have an "eight ball" of cocaine, along with the rapt attention of a group of people, perhaps seated around a table.
Gentlemen and ladies, some of the latter even being pretty, all with their eyes glued to him and their ears perked; intently listening to his tales of bravado, feigning interest in him and his life, waiting for his hand to go to the pocket that they all know the coke is in, after he has, along with them, come down enough to be craving another line of the stuff.
Then there is the whole ritual of him chopping up the coke into a fine powder and arranging it into rows of lines on a small mirror, while all gathered at the table cast surreptitious glances at it, gauging how much there is, and how many lines he is separating it into. A sudden hush will have fallen over the room at this point.
He might wind up cutting fewer lines than there are people there, a tacit signal that not everyone is going to get one. In this way, he would hold their destinies like the razor blade, between his fingers.
This would be the proper moment for the lesser of his acquaintances to excuse themselves and take leave, lest they betray themselves as being there only for the guy's coke, and not his company with his interesting stories about himself.
In fact, depending upon the number of lines that the mirror is short, it can often be intuited, who should do this. If the there are, say, three more people than lines, the lines would correspond to three individuals there who could be logically grouped together as being, perhaps, the three whom he had just met that night.
They would squirm in their seats and cast almost imperceptible glances to each other, as if to communicate, "I guess we are going to be cut off now." As their free falling moods, from coming down off the last round of coke are compounded by this perceived reality, they will excuse themselves, and start to get up to leave; in that way, playing their only remaining card.
They would be trying to appear as if they hadn't been just hanging around because the guy had coke, but rather, because they like him and are fascinated by his run-on stories.
This might compel the guy with the coke (who holds all the cards) to say: "Are you taking off? Sure you don't want to stick around? Want another line?"
And then, they would sit back down and rejoin the group, evincing almost imperceptible frowns from other members of it, as they see the prospect of having the same amount of coke, but less competition, diminish.
They might even fancy themselves as being better friends of the guy with the coke, having sat through more instances of him talking about himself; feigning interest and snorting his powder, than the newcomers.
Then, after the guy with the coke takes a snoot full himself, he will separate what's left on the mirror into a number of lines, corresponding to the number of people at the table, but would probably make one of them fatter. This fatter line would be used for the coronation of one of them as his "best" friend, into whose hands he would pass the mirror, and point to the fatter line with the words: "That one's you, right there, Joe."
"Aw, shucks, guy with the coke...I don't know what to say..."
This would be to reward the person's friendship, and to possibly hold him up as an example to the others of how they too, could become better friends to the guy, by being more like Joe. It might be that Joe had brought a bottle of whiskey or some weed to the guy's little party.
But, the verdict would be in, and any resentment that the guy getting the second fattest line might harbor over having been lowered on the totem pole will just have to stew in him and be addressed later, because the second biggest line will have taken precedence over any settling of grievances, or other perceived injustices.
Then, the remaining lines, all of the same smaller size will be graciously accepted by the lesser acquaintances, who had been ready to leave, but had sat back down, to hear another round of stories, told with bravado, by the guy with the coke about himself and his life.
"Know what I did next?" the guy with the coke might ask.
"No, what did you do next? I'm dying to hear, you tell such great stories!" they might all rejoin in unison, or it might fall upon the prettiest lady to voice it, with a twinkle in her eyes.
This would most likely go on, basically until the guy was about out of coke, when all would be bid a good night by the guy with coke, and then as they were all being shown out, the friend who had gotten the fattest lines would be detained by him; to stay and finish the coke, just the two of them, by another glance or motion of the head. He would retreat to a bathroom or somewhere else -out of sight, so as not to "rub their noses" in it; while the rest are ushered out.
This is why the last time that I snorted coke was in 1985, and I have never touched it since; the reason being that it always turned into the vignette depicted above (I was the guy who got the second fattest line when the mirror was passed on that particular occasion, by the way).
And this is the kind of socialization by drug culture that fits the profile of Travis, who dons dark shades in order to skulk out at night, to deal with his weed source, exchanging a few key phrases, like "just chilling," when asked what he is up to, or "working a lot," in order to hint that doing business was his reason for having put on his sunglasses and gone out to see the guy at his dealing spot. He might throw in "no worries" -a phrase I will always associate with Travis- perhaps in response to the weed guy telling him that he had run out of little baggies and had to put the dope in the cellophane from a cigarette box, or something.
No worries. I'll be locked in my room, smoking and interacting with a computer no matter how I transport.
And so, when Travis had texted me: "Let my know if you're going out to play and I'll stop by," it was part of his way of practicing passive aggression towards me for having read him the riot act over the phone, when I was on the bus on the way to Gretna, after he had apparently not seen my text to him asking for a bit of cash.
A Huge Bunch
I had berated, after all, the most important person in his life. One so self absorbed that, as I have said before, I can write anything I want about him on this blog, without fear of him ever reading it. Because he won't; even though I'm "one of only two people" that he considers friends in all of New Orleans. I wonder if he counts his cat Beast as the other...
His intention in sending the text was to whet my appetite for smoking some of his weed; which could reasonably be seen as a Pavlovian response in anyone who knows him, and who he tells "I'll be stopping by later" in a text message.
And it's a tradition in the drug culture to punish someone this way; to hit them where it hurts the most because they are using them, and seeing them as solely a drug source, and not as an interesting friend, with a bunch of interesting stories; a huge bunch, in Travis' case.
In a genuine friendship, If the latter were the case, then the punishment would take the form of worrying that something might have happened to the guy, causing him to not show up.
But, when drugs become the substitute for friendship (ala the Nine Inch Nails song about addiction where the junkie declares: "Everybody goes away in the end") well, then, you gotta hit 'em where it hurts the most
The anticipation of smoking weed but never getting any would be worse for me than if he had never texted me in the first place. And he would have gotten his revenge upon me for my having spoken badly about the one person who is his all; at the center of his universe; master of the Sega Genesis.
I saw through this ploy, after considering firstly, that he had already physically moved into his new apartment that he's renting from Dorise, and it's a few miles outside the Quarter -an awful long way to travel at night with dark shades on without smashing your face into something along the way. And, secondly, on the same note; he would have had to have taken the bus, and that would have been 2 dollars and 50 cents, round trip and, eh....2 dollars and 50 cents, mmm...that's a lot of money... It wouldn't cost him a thing to stay home, smoking weed and playing Sonic The Hedgehog.
So, I didn't look left and right as I busked, nor be distracted by any thoughts of his possibly showing up and smoking a bowl with me, and hence, never fell victim to his passive aggressiveness.
I soon forgot all about him.
Besides, he would have wound up talking about whomever artist's music I was playing; right over the song, and I wouldn't have stood a chance of getting tipped for our performance in the "spoken word over music" artform.
Honest to God, I started playing a Stone Temple Pilots song the one time he had "stopped by," and, as soon as he recognized it, he launched into something like: "Yeah, The Stone Temple Pilots...they were kind of...I don't really consider them grunge because they kind of came at the tail end of the whole grunge movement....but they do have some grunge elements; and, it's interesting that you were playing that Zepplin song right before it when I walked up, because the Stone Temple Pilots actually covered that song; so the two songs are kind of linked that way; in fact, when I saw them at the Beacon Theater, and they've actually only played one show there, and I just happened to get tickets to it; which was another bizarre thing -how I got free tickets; I'll have to tell you that story some time, that was when I was working at a radio station in New York, which was kind of like THE rock station in New York the 90's, now, but they were more of a classic rock station, and so the Stone Temple Pilots were kind of on the borderline of what they would play...but, anyways, the night before they were supposed to play their show there, the power went out and....etc. etc. etc. etc..." all this, while I simultaneously played the song; making me wonder if he thought I could play the guitar, sing AND still hear him. I don't think it mattered. I think he speaks for mere catharsis.
"That don't confront me none, as long as I get my rent."
So, believe me, his failure to show up was no great disappointment. No worries, at all.
If I wanted to, I could tell him that some guy came by with some really good weed and gave me some, and he had missed out, but I don't even want to waste that much breath on the matter...
He is supposed to take me food shopping, when he gets back from some video gaming convention in New York, on the 10th of October. I suppose I could hold the last of his stuff hostage at my place until after we have done that.
11:31 AM 10/3/2017
Rose Delivers
She expressed a hope that I felt better; as she had gotten the note that I slid under her and Ed's door.
I told her that I had made an almost full recovery; except for a lingering cough that will probably take at least a week to go away; less, if I quit smoking.
The flu episode has, at least, kept me away from smoking pot for a few days, long enough so that I have temporarily forgotten about it. I would like to forget about spending 5 bucks a day on the stuff.
When I went out to play on Saturday night, I was pretty much free of pot, caffeine, kratom and alcohol, and became so busy with playing music that it didn't occur to me until the end of the night that I had played sober. I had fun, and discovered the joy of making up lyrics over a chord progression that is so ingrained in me that I could focus upon rhyming words and trying to tell a tongue in cheek story on the subject of killing a roommate.
A Passive Aggressive Ploy
Travis had texted me: "Let me know if you go out to play, and I'll stop by."
He never stopped by the whole night, and at one point, I became glad that he hadn't.
He typically smokes a bowl of weed with me when he stops by -his calling card, in general- and I couldn't help but think that his message was intended to inflict some injury upon me, by getting my hopes up that he would visit and smoke with me.
It is pathetic and endemic in potheads like himself (I speak from experience) that eventually he will feel like he is being used by people who become conditioned to him always smoking them up because he is always smoking himself and they just happen to be around, and who develop more of an interest in his weed than his "company."
A New Sniglet Of Mine: "Pulveric" (relating to, or centering around powder)
He adheres to a pulveric dynamic, such as, how he will hold a bowl of weed before lighting it, as if making the person whom he is going to smoke with wait, and holding the weed hostage with their attention being the ransom i.e. forcing them to listen to his talking until he has given them a satisfactory dose of it.
I'm sure this dynamic has been in play several times before in his life:
Street Musician Daniel Waxes Analytic On Pulverism (right)The one time at my apartment, when he was holding a bowl of weed with the lighter perched near it, and I was kind of in a hurry and had said: "Hey, are you going to fire that up?," he breathed a sigh of exasperation, as if annoyed by my impatience.
More likely, he was suffering from a feeling of insecurity about his ability to get people to like him in general and who would willfully sit there, engaged in a one way conversation with him doing all the talking.
I have seen other such pathetic losers who might have an "eight ball" of cocaine, along with the rapt attention of a group of people, perhaps seated around a table.
Gentlemen and ladies, some of the latter even being pretty, all with their eyes glued to him and their ears perked; intently listening to his tales of bravado, feigning interest in him and his life, waiting for his hand to go to the pocket that they all know the coke is in, after he has, along with them, come down enough to be craving another line of the stuff.
Then there is the whole ritual of him chopping up the coke into a fine powder and arranging it into rows of lines on a small mirror, while all gathered at the table cast surreptitious glances at it, gauging how much there is, and how many lines he is separating it into. A sudden hush will have fallen over the room at this point.
He might wind up cutting fewer lines than there are people there, a tacit signal that not everyone is going to get one. In this way, he would hold their destinies like the razor blade, between his fingers.
This would be the proper moment for the lesser of his acquaintances to excuse themselves and take leave, lest they betray themselves as being there only for the guy's coke, and not his company with his interesting stories about himself.
In fact, depending upon the number of lines that the mirror is short, it can often be intuited, who should do this. If the there are, say, three more people than lines, the lines would correspond to three individuals there who could be logically grouped together as being, perhaps, the three whom he had just met that night.
They would squirm in their seats and cast almost imperceptible glances to each other, as if to communicate, "I guess we are going to be cut off now." As their free falling moods, from coming down off the last round of coke are compounded by this perceived reality, they will excuse themselves, and start to get up to leave; in that way, playing their only remaining card.
They would be trying to appear as if they hadn't been just hanging around because the guy had coke, but rather, because they like him and are fascinated by his run-on stories.
This might compel the guy with the coke (who holds all the cards) to say: "Are you taking off? Sure you don't want to stick around? Want another line?"
And then, they would sit back down and rejoin the group, evincing almost imperceptible frowns from other members of it, as they see the prospect of having the same amount of coke, but less competition, diminish.
They might even fancy themselves as being better friends of the guy with the coke, having sat through more instances of him talking about himself; feigning interest and snorting his powder, than the newcomers.
Then, after the guy with the coke takes a snoot full himself, he will separate what's left on the mirror into a number of lines, corresponding to the number of people at the table, but would probably make one of them fatter. This fatter line would be used for the coronation of one of them as his "best" friend, into whose hands he would pass the mirror, and point to the fatter line with the words: "That one's you, right there, Joe."
"Aw, shucks, guy with the coke...I don't know what to say..."
This would be to reward the person's friendship, and to possibly hold him up as an example to the others of how they too, could become better friends to the guy, by being more like Joe. It might be that Joe had brought a bottle of whiskey or some weed to the guy's little party.
But, the verdict would be in, and any resentment that the guy getting the second fattest line might harbor over having been lowered on the totem pole will just have to stew in him and be addressed later, because the second biggest line will have taken precedence over any settling of grievances, or other perceived injustices.
Then, the remaining lines, all of the same smaller size will be graciously accepted by the lesser acquaintances, who had been ready to leave, but had sat back down, to hear another round of stories, told with bravado, by the guy with the coke about himself and his life.
"Know what I did next?" the guy with the coke might ask.
"No, what did you do next? I'm dying to hear, you tell such great stories!" they might all rejoin in unison, or it might fall upon the prettiest lady to voice it, with a twinkle in her eyes.
This would most likely go on, basically until the guy was about out of coke, when all would be bid a good night by the guy with coke, and then as they were all being shown out, the friend who had gotten the fattest lines would be detained by him; to stay and finish the coke, just the two of them, by another glance or motion of the head. He would retreat to a bathroom or somewhere else -out of sight, so as not to "rub their noses" in it; while the rest are ushered out.
 |
| OMG! Then what happened?!? |
And this is the kind of socialization by drug culture that fits the profile of Travis, who dons dark shades in order to skulk out at night, to deal with his weed source, exchanging a few key phrases, like "just chilling," when asked what he is up to, or "working a lot," in order to hint that doing business was his reason for having put on his sunglasses and gone out to see the guy at his dealing spot. He might throw in "no worries" -a phrase I will always associate with Travis- perhaps in response to the weed guy telling him that he had run out of little baggies and had to put the dope in the cellophane from a cigarette box, or something.
No worries. I'll be locked in my room, smoking and interacting with a computer no matter how I transport.
And so, when Travis had texted me: "Let my know if you're going out to play and I'll stop by," it was part of his way of practicing passive aggression towards me for having read him the riot act over the phone, when I was on the bus on the way to Gretna, after he had apparently not seen my text to him asking for a bit of cash.
A Huge Bunch
I had berated, after all, the most important person in his life. One so self absorbed that, as I have said before, I can write anything I want about him on this blog, without fear of him ever reading it. Because he won't; even though I'm "one of only two people" that he considers friends in all of New Orleans. I wonder if he counts his cat Beast as the other...
His intention in sending the text was to whet my appetite for smoking some of his weed; which could reasonably be seen as a Pavlovian response in anyone who knows him, and who he tells "I'll be stopping by later" in a text message.
And it's a tradition in the drug culture to punish someone this way; to hit them where it hurts the most because they are using them, and seeing them as solely a drug source, and not as an interesting friend, with a bunch of interesting stories; a huge bunch, in Travis' case.
In a genuine friendship, If the latter were the case, then the punishment would take the form of worrying that something might have happened to the guy, causing him to not show up.
But, when drugs become the substitute for friendship (ala the Nine Inch Nails song about addiction where the junkie declares: "Everybody goes away in the end") well, then, you gotta hit 'em where it hurts the most
The anticipation of smoking weed but never getting any would be worse for me than if he had never texted me in the first place. And he would have gotten his revenge upon me for my having spoken badly about the one person who is his all; at the center of his universe; master of the Sega Genesis.
I saw through this ploy, after considering firstly, that he had already physically moved into his new apartment that he's renting from Dorise, and it's a few miles outside the Quarter -an awful long way to travel at night with dark shades on without smashing your face into something along the way. And, secondly, on the same note; he would have had to have taken the bus, and that would have been 2 dollars and 50 cents, round trip and, eh....2 dollars and 50 cents, mmm...that's a lot of money... It wouldn't cost him a thing to stay home, smoking weed and playing Sonic The Hedgehog.
So, I didn't look left and right as I busked, nor be distracted by any thoughts of his possibly showing up and smoking a bowl with me, and hence, never fell victim to his passive aggressiveness.
I soon forgot all about him.
Besides, he would have wound up talking about whomever artist's music I was playing; right over the song, and I wouldn't have stood a chance of getting tipped for our performance in the "spoken word over music" artform.
Honest to God, I started playing a Stone Temple Pilots song the one time he had "stopped by," and, as soon as he recognized it, he launched into something like: "Yeah, The Stone Temple Pilots...they were kind of...I don't really consider them grunge because they kind of came at the tail end of the whole grunge movement....but they do have some grunge elements; and, it's interesting that you were playing that Zepplin song right before it when I walked up, because the Stone Temple Pilots actually covered that song; so the two songs are kind of linked that way; in fact, when I saw them at the Beacon Theater, and they've actually only played one show there, and I just happened to get tickets to it; which was another bizarre thing -how I got free tickets; I'll have to tell you that story some time, that was when I was working at a radio station in New York, which was kind of like THE rock station in New York the 90's, now, but they were more of a classic rock station, and so the Stone Temple Pilots were kind of on the borderline of what they would play...but, anyways, the night before they were supposed to play their show there, the power went out and....etc. etc. etc. etc..." all this, while I simultaneously played the song; making me wonder if he thought I could play the guitar, sing AND still hear him. I don't think it mattered. I think he speaks for mere catharsis.
"That don't confront me none, as long as I get my rent."So, believe me, his failure to show up was no great disappointment. No worries, at all.
If I wanted to, I could tell him that some guy came by with some really good weed and gave me some, and he had missed out, but I don't even want to waste that much breath on the matter...
He is supposed to take me food shopping, when he gets back from some video gaming convention in New York, on the 10th of October. I suppose I could hold the last of his stuff hostage at my place until after we have done that.
11:31 AM 10/3/2017
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