...I am communicating this the old fashioned way; since it seems that yet one more Sunday has gone by without myself having shown up to join in the dinner, as per the much appreciated invitation to do so, which you have extended on more than one occasion.
A few weeks ago, it was the fact that I was "fasting," i.e. consuming only apple juice and spring water for a few days, followed by a couple days of consuming only lemon juice squeezed into spring water with cayenne pepper added (dissolves any hardened matter which might be clogging digestive tract), and that these days overlapped a particular Sunday when I just happened to be awake in the morning and could have made it over there to visit.
But, I figured that a fasting person and Berta on a Sunday afternoon would be like oil and water. Plus, an encounter with a drunken Ken always spawns its own apprehensions...
But, this letter is to inform you that you are still in my thoughts. It just might be that football season will be the ultimate impetus for me to get over there for a visit.
It always seems a bit daunting to try to get a bike on a bus which is headed over the river. It seems like a world apart, since one cannot legally ride a bike across the bridge there is always the fear of becoming trapped over on that side. A nightmare where every hour arrives a bus with 2 bikes already on the front rack, type of thing.
I hope this letter finds you in good health and spirits, my regards to the turkey, and I will either try to make a copy of this, as I am writing it on my computer, or will transcribe it by pen onto paper before mailing it.
I find that my mind races faster than I can write using cursive, and, only with the keyboard do I stand a chance of keeping up.
Still, I think "great writers" like Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, and Steven King, even, have the ability to slow their thoughts way down, put them in order and then capture them on paper...kind of like staying in the fictitious moment.
Hope your novel is coming along; mine has been stuck at around 21% complete since 1987...
-Daniel
New Pseudo Direction For Blog
OK, without further ado, this blog about busking will henceforth and effective immediately, start at the center of the onion and peel outward...
This is an experiment, and a departure from what I had been doing, since time immemorial, which was to start with the present state I was in as I blogged, and only get to the kernel, which was the busking itself, if and when it impacted that present state of mind. By then the glitter had worn off the evening, and it had probably been distilled down to the material aspect of having been essentially an x dollar night.
That would represent the outer layer of the onion.
At the center, though, would be the moment I was sitting at my spot and playing, and then the onion would be constructed of rings outward, to ultimately be encased in whatever mindset I was in as I sat down to blog. About busking. Ostensibly.
OK, so, without further ado [chiming sounds and the image of me sitting and blogging dissolving away and being replaced by me sitting at the Lilly Pad]...
I am sitting at the Lilly Pad.
It is Saturday night.
I have foregone singing "Piano Man," by Billy Joel, because I usually start that off by substituting for the "It's nine o' clock on a Saturday," part with something like: "It's 10:38 on a Tuesday!" Which is funny on a Tuesday night, But on a Saturday, nobody will realize that the lyrics have been altered to reflect the current time and date. The song is cool to begin at exactly nine o' clock on a Saturday, though. Some astute passersby might want to show that they are on the ball, "know what time it its," to use a hip-hop cultural phrase, and might tip a dollar for the cleverness of it . Beginning "After Midnight," by Eric Clapton at exactly midnight, also cool to do, if you are aware of the time enough yourself to notice that it's midnight, that is...
But, a woman came along and sat on the stoop.
I had been in the middle of doing one of my weird songs where I try to make up most of the lyrics, over chords that I am very (maybe too) comfortable with.
The setting of the chords to "auto-pilot" to free the mind to compose lyrics using, I guess, a different lobe of the brain, which can be focused upon a little more, since the hands are on autopilot, is one of the "techniques" I use," I told the woman, who was probably around 30 and had the look of those pale skinned reddish-brown haired people who are very prone to having freckles. Reddish brown ones.
She wore glasses and had the slightly chubby aspect of someone who might sit and read for long hours. Not with a dish of ice cream by her side, but maybe some potato sticks, or something else that's caloric value would slightly outpace their expenditure in the turning of pages. She wasn't blatantly overweight, but just seemed like a person who probably didn't like rock climbing or jogging or swimming, but was an afghan crocheting fool who has read every one of the New York Times Top Ten list, and would even like to sit down and listen to a guy playing guitar and harmonica.
This was probably the reason that I thought she might enjoy my more intellectually challenging lyrics, such as the ones I was singing in my "David Adam Murray" song, about the *fictitious* murder of a former roommate of mine, and continued to do so after she had sat down.
"It being Florida, I strangled him with a flamingo, gagged him with an orange, conked his head on a palm tree then threw him to the gators..." I sang.
I heard some giggling coming from the stoop during it.
I still had only 3 one dollar bills in my tip basket, a half hour in.
When I stopped, the lady, whose name wound up being Danielle, told me that my music had evoked the essence of Neil Young to her.
I started to tell the story of how, in the blissful ignorance of my youth, I was just trying to sing whatever lyrics I was, and play the guitar at the same time, and that left no room for the consideration of exactly how I was going to sing the song, and so I just sang, unconsciously, and invariable, people in whatever coffee house that I had enlisted myself to play at behind the promise that I actually knew what I was doing, would tell me that I sounded like Neil Young.
When Danielle told me that she was from Canada ("West Canada, like British Colombia but even further west, on British Colombia Island [or something]") I drew the connection to Neil Young based upon his being an export of that country, or at least someone who is claimed as such by many of the people of that great, yet stingy, nation.
She could have more completely embodied that particular stereo-type of Canadian by adding: "...or some John Mellencamp" to her request for more Neil Young songs.
She had phrased the question in a very ambiguous way, something like: "If you weren't planning upon doing something different, could you play any more Neil Young?"
This made me think that she was probably a practitioner of some kind of psychologically driven approach to life, whereby you don't encroach upon a person's freedom to do whatever they will, by pressuring them with a request to do something different. I'm OK, Daneille is OK, and it's OK if I do one of my own songs instead of more Neil Young, type of thing.
Her telling me that she worked as a "youth counselor" affirmed this impression.
I started to wonder if she wasn't perhaps a nice person who was going to wind up throwing me a 50 dollar tip, but only if I didn't betray my disinterestedness in the whole matter by squirming over the fact that, after a half hour of her having occupied the stoop, with other tourists passing by and treating me as if I was already engaged with a person, who was probably requesting songs and would tip me, she hadn't thrown me anything.
I was kind of in a pickle because I was truly trying just to enjoy the present moment and it just seemed like I would have to make the whole world stop for a second to broach the subject of, hey I do kind of need to make at least enough money for toilet paper, cat food and, maybe kitty litter (although I could fill Harold's box with a bunch of sand from outside for free) and, of course a shot of kratom the next day would probably be nice.
I played my "Computer Geek Blues," which is basically a song written from the fabricated perspective of: What if I had a really fine girlfriend and Travis Blaine stole her heart from me, with lines like
I was having trouble reading her at that point. Did she think that she was being supportive of me by being there and responding positively to my songs?
I couldn't assume that she had noticed that not a dollar had gone into my basket throughout the twenty minutes or so that I had played at that point, though I had noticed smiles on the faces of some of the people walking past, especially after some of the funnier lines, because she is not a busker.
I was still playing well, during the third song that I was playing while she sat on the stoop.
There was a danger though, that if I started to build up animosity towards her, it would taint my performance and be disastrous all the way around. better to settle the matter, by trying to intimate that her sitting there was interfering with my "business," but I decided to just keep playing as well as possible and to let the tips take care of themselves. It was a test of my ability to live in the present moment.
It crossed my mind that the lady might have been attracted to me, whether drunk or not, and might have been hoping that she could hang out the entire night and then maybe join me for a cup of coffee at an all night place later, or something like that.
Maybe she read a lot of Danielle Steele -or maybe her name of "Danielle" was a cosmic signal to me that she was a hopeless romantic who believed in fairy tales..."I met this guy who was sitting on the street playing music, and something inside of me stirred, my heart felt like a canary that has just noticed that the door to its cage is wide open" type of thing.
A bit of relief came when I explained: "That last song is a kind of a 'what if' song, written from the perspective of, what if this certain guy I know ever stole my girlfriend; what kind of song would I write about it."
"Oh, so it's not about something that actually happened," she sighed with a noticeable amount of relief in her aspect.
Then I had to wonder why she felt so much better knowing that Travis Blaine, the guy in the song who "feeds his cat the worst dollar store dry food," and "sits in front of a laptop all day getting stoned," had not actually stolen my girlfriend.
Was it because that meant that there was no girlfriend that I was heartsick over or otherwise?
I decided not to tell her that I needed to get back to my hustle and that by sitting there she was interfering with my business.
She had seemed kind of slow on the uptake of a few things that I had said, as if missing the point I was trying to make, like when I was telling stories about being homeless and "having it made," under the wharf, grilling lamb and drinking red wine and watching the stars twinkling off the waters of the Mississippi, with my pet rats who would frighten off strangers for me, etc.
She had kept shaking her head with pity as if unable to get past the concept of homelessness being terrible.
"No, I loved it!" I had to say to her at one point, in lieu of shaking her by the shoulders. "That's why it took them so long to coax me into my apartment through a voucher for 'disable veterans.'"
I'm really not closed to the romantic notion of meeting the love of my life while busking, but, she had just seemed a bit too obtuse, and took things too literally for my tastes.
I was happy to be able to play at my highest level for a while longer, as tourists passed by, seeing that I was "already busy" with someone.
But, finally, I decided to pack up and take "a 15 minute break" at which point she threw what appeared to be a dollar in my basket, and said that she needed to use a restroom herself.
I directed her to the one in Lafitt's Blacksmith shop, which she left for, while I headed to The Quartermaster for a cup of coffee, a can of cat food, and a roll of toilet paper.
Ladder Man
Sidebar to video: The true talent of Ladder Man is not evident in this short clip, as, he is able to hold still enough so that the lumber on his shoulder stops moving entirely, making him a pretty impressive human statue, indeed. -the message about him working for tips being written in the 3rd person is almost certainly designed to convey that the guy can't read or write, and had somebody else make his sign for him, or to imply that the sign was written by some undefined family that had sent him out to work, with his tools, his lunch pail, and his sign.
Last night had been my first interaction with Ladder Man, who has been here at least as long as the 8 years that I have. I have kept my distance from him after hearing a few stories about "how crazy ladder man is," along with the advice to me to never, ever, piss off ladder man.
I guess I figured that the best way not to piss off ladder man could best be effectuated from a mile away.
As I rode my bike, sipping on the coffee, having decided that 4 dollars just wasn't enough money and that I would just play longer, this time not hindered by the well meaning but kind of obtuse Danielle, I encountered "Ladder Man," who was bent over at the waist and groaning.
"Ohh, do you have any paper?" he asked.
Usually this meant that a person wanted to roll a joint and was asking for rolling paper.
I had already "rolled" past him, but the way he had been bent over and clutching his belt, the one that he had his hammer and his tape measure hung on, made me pause.
"What kind of paper?" I asked.
"Toilet paper, I..I just got this pain..that shit's gotta come out..."
I had just bought a brand new roll of toilet paper 2 minutes earlier. It seemed too much ordained that I stop and fetch it out of my backpack and offer him some, which I did while he tried to apologize for having eaten whatever it was that he had eaten.
I unrolled maybe 8 feet of it, thinking the whole time how visible the lily-white stuff must be to anyone who might look to see me unfurling it, and how the picture, with him standing there bent over at the waste and groaning, would say a thousand words, so that I tried to hide what I was doing, out of consideration for the poor guy and his embarrassing situation.
Plus I do respect the guy because he works, as Ladder Man, putting in at least as many hours as I do.
There are plenty of skeezers who I turn down, even those -especially those- who lower their skeeze to "I just need 4 cents" or something, just to test me to see "where my heart is," or maybe just to satisfy themselves that they had gotten me to give them something.
But, I figured if I was ever going to give to a skeezer, then Ladder Man had truly lowered his skeeze (along with his trousers) to something that was a genuine test of "where my heart" was.
He couldn't wait any longer, and grabbed the wad of it as it was, handing me a dollar, to my mild surprise; then made off for a spot between two vehicles, one of them being Lilly's Navigator (Of course, Lilly's Navigator, I thought. Who could ever argue that the universe isn't cosmically connected in some way, as if by invisible wires? He was leaving something that was going to draw a sardonic smile from Lilly in the morning ...oh, great...the same animals that leer at my daughters, I'll bet... I could hear her Manhattan accent in my head: "You should have told him you weren't gonna give him the paper if he was going to shit right there! Tell him to go between some other cars, like my neighbors that are trying to sue me over my alley!").
I stayed where I was and, taking advantage of a parting of the Red Sea type of gap in the passing traffic, was able to unroll another 10 feet of paper, which I tossed in a wad onto Lilly's hood in front of him as I rode past. He then knew that I knew that I hadn't given him quite enough but that he hadn't had the luxury of standing there, waiting on me.
"Thank you. God bless you. You see me out here all the time, thanks for having my back!" was what I heard as I continued to the Lilly Pad.
The more street people that might tell other street people: "No, he alright, don't mess with him none," the better.
I unpacked and noticed that what Danielle had thrown must have been the 5 dollar bill that had somehow taken a weird hop and stood itself up right against the edge of the basket that had been invisible to me.
I played for about another hour and made the lion's share of the 15 bucks that made up that Saturday night.
A few weeks ago, it was the fact that I was "fasting," i.e. consuming only apple juice and spring water for a few days, followed by a couple days of consuming only lemon juice squeezed into spring water with cayenne pepper added (dissolves any hardened matter which might be clogging digestive tract), and that these days overlapped a particular Sunday when I just happened to be awake in the morning and could have made it over there to visit.
But, I figured that a fasting person and Berta on a Sunday afternoon would be like oil and water. Plus, an encounter with a drunken Ken always spawns its own apprehensions...
But, this letter is to inform you that you are still in my thoughts. It just might be that football season will be the ultimate impetus for me to get over there for a visit.
It always seems a bit daunting to try to get a bike on a bus which is headed over the river. It seems like a world apart, since one cannot legally ride a bike across the bridge there is always the fear of becoming trapped over on that side. A nightmare where every hour arrives a bus with 2 bikes already on the front rack, type of thing.
I hope this letter finds you in good health and spirits, my regards to the turkey, and I will either try to make a copy of this, as I am writing it on my computer, or will transcribe it by pen onto paper before mailing it.
I find that my mind races faster than I can write using cursive, and, only with the keyboard do I stand a chance of keeping up.
Still, I think "great writers" like Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, and Steven King, even, have the ability to slow their thoughts way down, put them in order and then capture them on paper...kind of like staying in the fictitious moment.
Hope your novel is coming along; mine has been stuck at around 21% complete since 1987...
-Daniel
New Pseudo Direction For Blog
OK, without further ado, this blog about busking will henceforth and effective immediately, start at the center of the onion and peel outward...
This is an experiment, and a departure from what I had been doing, since time immemorial, which was to start with the present state I was in as I blogged, and only get to the kernel, which was the busking itself, if and when it impacted that present state of mind. By then the glitter had worn off the evening, and it had probably been distilled down to the material aspect of having been essentially an x dollar night.
That would represent the outer layer of the onion.
At the center, though, would be the moment I was sitting at my spot and playing, and then the onion would be constructed of rings outward, to ultimately be encased in whatever mindset I was in as I sat down to blog. About busking. Ostensibly.
OK, so, without further ado [chiming sounds and the image of me sitting and blogging dissolving away and being replaced by me sitting at the Lilly Pad]...
I am sitting at the Lilly Pad.
It is Saturday night.
I have foregone singing "Piano Man," by Billy Joel, because I usually start that off by substituting for the "It's nine o' clock on a Saturday," part with something like: "It's 10:38 on a Tuesday!" Which is funny on a Tuesday night, But on a Saturday, nobody will realize that the lyrics have been altered to reflect the current time and date. The song is cool to begin at exactly nine o' clock on a Saturday, though. Some astute passersby might want to show that they are on the ball, "know what time it its," to use a hip-hop cultural phrase, and might tip a dollar for the cleverness of it . Beginning "After Midnight," by Eric Clapton at exactly midnight, also cool to do, if you are aware of the time enough yourself to notice that it's midnight, that is...
But, a woman came along and sat on the stoop.
I had been in the middle of doing one of my weird songs where I try to make up most of the lyrics, over chords that I am very (maybe too) comfortable with.
The setting of the chords to "auto-pilot" to free the mind to compose lyrics using, I guess, a different lobe of the brain, which can be focused upon a little more, since the hands are on autopilot, is one of the "techniques" I use," I told the woman, who was probably around 30 and had the look of those pale skinned reddish-brown haired people who are very prone to having freckles. Reddish brown ones.
She wore glasses and had the slightly chubby aspect of someone who might sit and read for long hours. Not with a dish of ice cream by her side, but maybe some potato sticks, or something else that's caloric value would slightly outpace their expenditure in the turning of pages. She wasn't blatantly overweight, but just seemed like a person who probably didn't like rock climbing or jogging or swimming, but was an afghan crocheting fool who has read every one of the New York Times Top Ten list, and would even like to sit down and listen to a guy playing guitar and harmonica.
This was probably the reason that I thought she might enjoy my more intellectually challenging lyrics, such as the ones I was singing in my "David Adam Murray" song, about the *fictitious* murder of a former roommate of mine, and continued to do so after she had sat down.
"It being Florida, I strangled him with a flamingo, gagged him with an orange, conked his head on a palm tree then threw him to the gators..." I sang.
I heard some giggling coming from the stoop during it.
I still had only 3 one dollar bills in my tip basket, a half hour in.
When I stopped, the lady, whose name wound up being Danielle, told me that my music had evoked the essence of Neil Young to her.
I started to tell the story of how, in the blissful ignorance of my youth, I was just trying to sing whatever lyrics I was, and play the guitar at the same time, and that left no room for the consideration of exactly how I was going to sing the song, and so I just sang, unconsciously, and invariable, people in whatever coffee house that I had enlisted myself to play at behind the promise that I actually knew what I was doing, would tell me that I sounded like Neil Young.
When Danielle told me that she was from Canada ("West Canada, like British Colombia but even further west, on British Colombia Island [or something]") I drew the connection to Neil Young based upon his being an export of that country, or at least someone who is claimed as such by many of the people of that great, yet stingy, nation.
She could have more completely embodied that particular stereo-type of Canadian by adding: "...or some John Mellencamp" to her request for more Neil Young songs.
She had phrased the question in a very ambiguous way, something like: "If you weren't planning upon doing something different, could you play any more Neil Young?"
This made me think that she was probably a practitioner of some kind of psychologically driven approach to life, whereby you don't encroach upon a person's freedom to do whatever they will, by pressuring them with a request to do something different. I'm OK, Daneille is OK, and it's OK if I do one of my own songs instead of more Neil Young, type of thing.
Her telling me that she worked as a "youth counselor" affirmed this impression.
I started to wonder if she wasn't perhaps a nice person who was going to wind up throwing me a 50 dollar tip, but only if I didn't betray my disinterestedness in the whole matter by squirming over the fact that, after a half hour of her having occupied the stoop, with other tourists passing by and treating me as if I was already engaged with a person, who was probably requesting songs and would tip me, she hadn't thrown me anything.
I was kind of in a pickle because I was truly trying just to enjoy the present moment and it just seemed like I would have to make the whole world stop for a second to broach the subject of, hey I do kind of need to make at least enough money for toilet paper, cat food and, maybe kitty litter (although I could fill Harold's box with a bunch of sand from outside for free) and, of course a shot of kratom the next day would probably be nice.
I played my "Computer Geek Blues," which is basically a song written from the fabricated perspective of: What if I had a really fine girlfriend and Travis Blaine stole her heart from me, with lines like
"He came into our domain, she hosted him; he looked over her configuration. Now he's changed her location, deleted my image from her memory; she seems to love his application..."Which had the bookish looking woman from west Canada laughing away at some of its lines.
I was having trouble reading her at that point. Did she think that she was being supportive of me by being there and responding positively to my songs?
I couldn't assume that she had noticed that not a dollar had gone into my basket throughout the twenty minutes or so that I had played at that point, though I had noticed smiles on the faces of some of the people walking past, especially after some of the funnier lines, because she is not a busker.
I was still playing well, during the third song that I was playing while she sat on the stoop.
There was a danger though, that if I started to build up animosity towards her, it would taint my performance and be disastrous all the way around. better to settle the matter, by trying to intimate that her sitting there was interfering with my "business," but I decided to just keep playing as well as possible and to let the tips take care of themselves. It was a test of my ability to live in the present moment.
It crossed my mind that the lady might have been attracted to me, whether drunk or not, and might have been hoping that she could hang out the entire night and then maybe join me for a cup of coffee at an all night place later, or something like that.
Maybe she read a lot of Danielle Steele -or maybe her name of "Danielle" was a cosmic signal to me that she was a hopeless romantic who believed in fairy tales..."I met this guy who was sitting on the street playing music, and something inside of me stirred, my heart felt like a canary that has just noticed that the door to its cage is wide open" type of thing.
A bit of relief came when I explained: "That last song is a kind of a 'what if' song, written from the perspective of, what if this certain guy I know ever stole my girlfriend; what kind of song would I write about it."
"Oh, so it's not about something that actually happened," she sighed with a noticeable amount of relief in her aspect.
Then I had to wonder why she felt so much better knowing that Travis Blaine, the guy in the song who "feeds his cat the worst dollar store dry food," and "sits in front of a laptop all day getting stoned," had not actually stolen my girlfriend.
Was it because that meant that there was no girlfriend that I was heartsick over or otherwise?
 |
| "That's kind of funny, 'cause I did once kind of steal a girl from a guy because she was so impressed with my knowledge of computers, what happened was, well, first I have to give you some background on how I met this girl and this guy. At the time, I was working for this software company, and I don't know if you know much about software companies, but, at the time, this company was one of the cutting edge developers of new software, I mean this was some pretty high powered stuff...and the only reason I got the job was because; check this out, you're not going to believe this story; then I'll get back to the guy and his girlfriend, 'cause you're gonna want to hear that story, too. There was this Korean restaurant right near where I was staying, and a lot of people think all Asian food is pretty much the same, by the way, but there are subtle differences, like, you could blindfold me and I would be able to tell the difference between a Korean dumpling and a Laotian one, not many people could do that, I could probably become a master chef if I wanted to, just based upon my experience...so I would go to this restaurant when I was in that particular phase of eating. Because, interestingly, I find that I basically have maybe 4 different dietary phases that I go through, and sometimes I won't eat Asian food for months and then I might eat Korean food every day, or almost every day, for a couple weeks; and I'm not really sure what they coincide to, but that's another thing about me; and, that might have something to do with my mother. My mother has Puerto Rican blood in her, but she had this one favorite Korean dish that she used to bring home sometimes when I was a kid, and you have to imagine...we were living within a quarter mile of at least fifty different restaurants, so as a kid I kind of developed the ability to distinguish between a lot of different ingredients. Most American kids never got to taste duck, for example, but I was exposed to cuisine from all over the world; and...I'm gonna get back to the guy and his girlfriend...I'm leading up to that....I'm gonna tie it in with that particular restaurant..." |
I decided not to tell her that I needed to get back to my hustle and that by sitting there she was interfering with my business.
She had seemed kind of slow on the uptake of a few things that I had said, as if missing the point I was trying to make, like when I was telling stories about being homeless and "having it made," under the wharf, grilling lamb and drinking red wine and watching the stars twinkling off the waters of the Mississippi, with my pet rats who would frighten off strangers for me, etc.
She had kept shaking her head with pity as if unable to get past the concept of homelessness being terrible.
"No, I loved it!" I had to say to her at one point, in lieu of shaking her by the shoulders. "That's why it took them so long to coax me into my apartment through a voucher for 'disable veterans.'"
I'm really not closed to the romantic notion of meeting the love of my life while busking, but, she had just seemed a bit too obtuse, and took things too literally for my tastes.
I was happy to be able to play at my highest level for a while longer, as tourists passed by, seeing that I was "already busy" with someone.
But, finally, I decided to pack up and take "a 15 minute break" at which point she threw what appeared to be a dollar in my basket, and said that she needed to use a restroom herself.
I directed her to the one in Lafitt's Blacksmith shop, which she left for, while I headed to The Quartermaster for a cup of coffee, a can of cat food, and a roll of toilet paper.
Ladder Man
Sidebar to video: The true talent of Ladder Man is not evident in this short clip, as, he is able to hold still enough so that the lumber on his shoulder stops moving entirely, making him a pretty impressive human statue, indeed. -the message about him working for tips being written in the 3rd person is almost certainly designed to convey that the guy can't read or write, and had somebody else make his sign for him, or to imply that the sign was written by some undefined family that had sent him out to work, with his tools, his lunch pail, and his sign.
Last night had been my first interaction with Ladder Man, who has been here at least as long as the 8 years that I have. I have kept my distance from him after hearing a few stories about "how crazy ladder man is," along with the advice to me to never, ever, piss off ladder man.
I guess I figured that the best way not to piss off ladder man could best be effectuated from a mile away.
As I rode my bike, sipping on the coffee, having decided that 4 dollars just wasn't enough money and that I would just play longer, this time not hindered by the well meaning but kind of obtuse Danielle, I encountered "Ladder Man," who was bent over at the waist and groaning.
"Ohh, do you have any paper?" he asked.
Usually this meant that a person wanted to roll a joint and was asking for rolling paper.
I had already "rolled" past him, but the way he had been bent over and clutching his belt, the one that he had his hammer and his tape measure hung on, made me pause.
"What kind of paper?" I asked.
"Toilet paper, I..I just got this pain..that shit's gotta come out..."
I had just bought a brand new roll of toilet paper 2 minutes earlier. It seemed too much ordained that I stop and fetch it out of my backpack and offer him some, which I did while he tried to apologize for having eaten whatever it was that he had eaten.
I unrolled maybe 8 feet of it, thinking the whole time how visible the lily-white stuff must be to anyone who might look to see me unfurling it, and how the picture, with him standing there bent over at the waste and groaning, would say a thousand words, so that I tried to hide what I was doing, out of consideration for the poor guy and his embarrassing situation.
Plus I do respect the guy because he works, as Ladder Man, putting in at least as many hours as I do.
There are plenty of skeezers who I turn down, even those -especially those- who lower their skeeze to "I just need 4 cents" or something, just to test me to see "where my heart is," or maybe just to satisfy themselves that they had gotten me to give them something.
But, I figured if I was ever going to give to a skeezer, then Ladder Man had truly lowered his skeeze (along with his trousers) to something that was a genuine test of "where my heart" was.
He couldn't wait any longer, and grabbed the wad of it as it was, handing me a dollar, to my mild surprise; then made off for a spot between two vehicles, one of them being Lilly's Navigator (Of course, Lilly's Navigator, I thought. Who could ever argue that the universe isn't cosmically connected in some way, as if by invisible wires? He was leaving something that was going to draw a sardonic smile from Lilly in the morning ...oh, great...the same animals that leer at my daughters, I'll bet... I could hear her Manhattan accent in my head: "You should have told him you weren't gonna give him the paper if he was going to shit right there! Tell him to go between some other cars, like my neighbors that are trying to sue me over my alley!").
I stayed where I was and, taking advantage of a parting of the Red Sea type of gap in the passing traffic, was able to unroll another 10 feet of paper, which I tossed in a wad onto Lilly's hood in front of him as I rode past. He then knew that I knew that I hadn't given him quite enough but that he hadn't had the luxury of standing there, waiting on me.
"Thank you. God bless you. You see me out here all the time, thanks for having my back!" was what I heard as I continued to the Lilly Pad.
The more street people that might tell other street people: "No, he alright, don't mess with him none," the better.
I unpacked and noticed that what Danielle had thrown must have been the 5 dollar bill that had somehow taken a weird hop and stood itself up right against the edge of the basket that had been invisible to me.
I played for about another hour and made the lion's share of the 15 bucks that made up that Saturday night.
I remember something being mentioned about Ladder Man, that he could be a mean customer etc. But it sounds like you're in his good books now. Frankly I'd have given him the roll and considered it a tip of a dollar as 1 roll = 1 dollar is the rule where I am.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, though, I dunno ... if I thought I might have to shit in the street, I'd keep one or more of those bags you put your vegetables in at the supermarket stashed about my person, ready to receive my butthole's bounty with room for TP too. You can just take a few, look around for ones people took and decided not to use and left around because nobody wants those; they want one off of the roll, or I've had good luck just asking someone for the whole roll if it's down to where there's not much left.
But maybe there's a rule that if you have some "good citizen" ideas about how to shit in the street, you're probably not going to end up in the street...
But good for you for helping out Ladder Man in a pinch, when he had to pinch ... off a loaf.
Funny shitting story: I was on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz doing my awareness ribbon hustle, and the nice gal at the hot cocoa and cider booth made me up a nice hot cocoa with a marshmallow on top etc. Well! I didn't normally go after sugary things even then, but it was so nice of her, and it was a little bit cold, so why not?
ReplyDeleteWell, the standard cup of hot Swiss Miss or whatever they're using is a concentrated cup of sugar, SALT, yes it's quite salty, plus the chocolate and milk etc. That stuff went through me like Liquid Plum'r For Hair Clogs. I suddenly had to shit, and bad. Fortunately Book Shop Santa Cruz keeps their bathroom open and after a short wait it was my turn. I was sitting on the bowl saying stuff out loud like "Oh, lordy!" and there were plenty of sound effects. The next guy waiting said something like "Sometimes you just gotta let it out!" it was pretty funny.