154 Dollar Night Ushers In Mardi Gras
If it wasn't for a 50 dollar bill falling out of the hand of a couple of tourists, and landing on the street behind them as they were pulling another 50 and some singles out to throw them in our tip basket,
Jacob and I might not have had a falling out of sorts, over the thing.
The Drinking
Right before halftime of the
Superbowl, I left
Howard's house in
Gretna and jogged down to the store about a quarter mile away, where I bought two bottles of brandy.
They were 2 for $6, and so I had taken advantage of the savings, telling myself the alcoholics' lie that I would thus have one for that night and one for the next.
Watching the game and gulping down the brandy as if it were beer, I was soon in a haze, and it was a fuzzy apparition of Jacob that appeared at some point during the 4th quarter of the game. That would make it about 9:45 PM.
I remember, we were able to make it out to the Lilly Pad by 11:00 PM, and that it hadn't been a fruitful night, money-wise. A Superbowl between Kansas City and San Francisco had caused no noticeable spike in the amount of tourists.
I also remember falling over on my bike on the way to get out there. The brandy had hit me and I had veered off of the sidewalk a bit and somehow had snagged the top of my guitar case on a low hanging branch and I fell over.
Jacob told me the next day that I had said: "I think I'll just lay here," after I fell. He reminded me of a few more things that I had said over the course of that night.
My ribs were very sore when I woke up on Monday. So much so that I had to sit straight up, like doing a sit-up or the muscles on the side of me where I landed would flare up painfully. There was also like a spasm, like what happens sometimes when a person is tickled, and their rib muscles reflexively tense up.
I spent most of Monday becoming aware of the pain in my side, like someone coming off of Novocaine, who is, as the sensitivity returns to the teeth, gaining the sense of his dentist as being a clumsy nincompoop who probably hacked the tooth out, as if his career depended upon it.
I was having trouble remembering if I had said goodbye to Howard when leaving after the game. Did I shake his hand?
"You hugged him," said Jacob. "Then on the way out, you were saying how Howard wasn't a hugging kind of guy..."
And, so, when Bobby knocked on my door late Monday afternoon, a groan issued forth from me, as I sat up in my bed.
I then opened the door to see that it was him, and invited him in.
I was hunched over a bit and holding my side. Sudden movements that I made were prone to cause a flash of pain in my ribs. Those muscles seem to be involved in more body motions than I previously thought.
So, as I went about doing simple things, like bending down and reaching for Harold's dish, I uttered cries of pain intermittently.
I explained to Bobby that I had been "falling down" drunk the previous night, after the Superbowl; and that I had fallen down while riding my bike, and that the pain was like a giant, awakening from slumber.
I asked him if he had any aspirin.
"Come on, I got something for ya," said Bobby.
I know I have already told this anecdote, but repeating things is endemic of this whole situation I have been in, with the drinking and drugs.
So, it wasn't aspirin that Bobby gave me for the pain of bruised, and maybe slightly cracked, ribs, it was 60 milligrams of methadone.
First, there was a small clear, plastic cup with some orange brown stuff, dissolved, but resting on the bottom of it.
I swilled that down, and then, we hung out and played the guitar and, about 15 minutes later, he asked me how I was feeling. He had told me, after I drank the shot, that it would hit me within 15 minutes and I would be pain-free, I guess.
So, when, after 15 minutes I reported only a slight analgesic state, that may have been my downfall. He gave me another 20 milligrams. He pretty much knows that nobody could overdose on that amount.
But, they could get pretty sick.
I went back to my apartment and actually started to record some guitar parts on
Audacity.
The next day, that recording, which went on for 19 hours, would reveal that, after playing guitar for about 12 minutes, I emitted some kind of moan, and said something unintelligible, but probably to the effect that I was in a fuzzy and hazy cocoon, and then, the first porcelain trumpet blast is heard, as I began what would be documented on the recording as 5 and a half hours of steady puking.
I had a full gallon of distilled water, as if by some miracle, and I kept myself from having dry heaves by steadily consuming the water.
I was nodding off every time I paused for any reason. I sat down on the bed and the next thing I knew I was unconscious on the bed, nodded off in whatever position I was in.
The barfing on the recording sounded kind of like seals or whales making their mating noises. There wasn't really a lot of agony in it because, the methadone was dulling even the discomfort of vomiting. I felt like I was rinsing out my stomach, as I chugged down distilled water, only to see it come back up momentarily, still looking clear and foamy.
This seemed to have been a very cleansing process. I certainly got a very clean stomach out of the ordeal.
When I came down the next day, to the level of just feeling like I was on some good pain pills, I mixed some Arizona Energy drink with some frozen cherries and nuked it long enough to melt the latter, and found that it was quite an elixir. I felt good enough to go out and busk that (Tuesday) night.
That was last week, and the juice diet and abstinence from alcohol lasted a couple days. Then, I had a bottle of sangria, which is fruit mixed with wine, and the rest of the week is kind of a blur, except for Friday, when things blew up between Jacob and I.
The good news is that this was where I made my stand and quit drinking once again (I have 28 hours sober right now).
Friday night, I was packing up and just about ready to go out and busk.
I had only 2 dollars and 37 cents in my pocket.
I was going to ride Jacobs bike to the Lilly Pad, because mine had a soft rear tire. I was going to spend all my money on a small bottle of wine to bring there with me.
There was a knock at the door, and it was Jacob, carrying his bass and ready (and apparently anxious) to get going.
In my half drunken state, I had not noticed that he had texted me about having gotten the OK to go out and busk with me (if it wouldn't interfere with church attendance the next morning) and that he would probably be on his way.
I was thinking that he had shown up out of the blue, and felt slightly like it was an imposition upon me.
The truth was that, with our needing to transport 2 people, and with one bike having a soft tire, we would have to take the street car. I would have to spend my wine money on transportation. How dare you come between me and my alcohol, said the alcohol demon within.
 |
| Oh, no, not the alcohol demons! |
So, I actually knocked on the door of Bobby in Building C, and borrowed a dollar and some change, so I could still get my wine. Then, my buffoonery continued thus:
We got to the
Lilly Pad and began playing. That much I remember.
At one point,
Jacob got a text from a guy named
Will, who said that he would be coming by, and would have "a care package" for us.
This means that
Will was going to give us some of his weed, which,
Jacob has in his mind as being stupendously good weed. And the placebo effect has free range to work to that end, I suppose.
So,
Jacob became visibly ignited by this news and began to play in earnest.
In my drunken state, I was probably unaware of some substance on
Lilly's step which might have caused
Jacob to scoot over a little bit towards the center of the step, which was away from me. My cynical mind thought that he had separated himself from me and was content to play mostly for his own edification.
Jacob said something about being cold, during the half hour or so before Will showed up, with the promise of his care package.
Only,
Will was unable to get into his apartment, which sits on the third, and top, floor of a house diagonally across the street from where we play.
Will is a violinist. He is a very good one whom Jacob has seen in videos on Youtube, playing in Europe, and such. He is usually toting that instrument in a case when he arrives home after playing gigs all day. One time he took it out and began to jam with us before, abashedly putting the thing away while apologizing profusely for being "too drunk."
But, upon one visit, after asking us if we wanted drinks from the bar, he gave us some weed, which apparently sent Jacob right to Noodle Land.*
Ever since then, I have had to accept the fact that Jacob is at least half as interested in the care package than in any other thing we might acquire through busking, and I can't criticize him on that. It is one of the things that comes our way when we busk. This time, Will threw a 20 dollar bill in our basket. That was right before he found that he could not contact his girlfriend, and feared that she had passed out.
This was a terrible situation for Will. He didn't have a jacket and it was cold outside. Neither Jacob or I had packed an extra garment.
But, most of all, he had played "3 sets" of music, and just wanted to climb into his cozy apartment.
The gabled window, which might be called a widow's peak, opens up over the steeply sloping downward roof, that kind of spills onto the balcony a floor below.
Will said that he has been opening that window and listening to me play for the past couple years.
Now that I know who he is, I remember he even approached me a few months ago and asked me about the drop off in the amount of hours that I was playing, after I went into the slump in playing which also spilled over into blog posting; as weeks would go by with nary a post...
Well,
Will couldn't get into his apartment. He didn't know the numbers of anyone else in the building, who might knock on her door and tell her that her boyfriend was outside. He was yelling her name up at the opened window.
Jacob volunteered to use his stentorian voice in an attempt to wake her.
He certainly didn't want to see
Will have to sleep outside, but he also wanted him to be able to get inside to retrieve the care package for us. It is something that he often throws down to us, from that height of about 40 feet.
Will's girlfriend eventually poked her head out of the window, and then poked her whole body out onto the sidewalk, where she stood next to
Will, while
Jacob and I tried to play our best.
In time, they went off to their apartment, with Will promising to throw the care package down. As they were leaving and we stopped playing momentarily, I felt the chill and began to put my jacket on.
I guess Jacob took that as an unconscious signal that I was preparing to pack up for the night, maybe I was satisfied with the 25 bucks or so that we would have split, plus the care package. He bagged up his bass guitar.
Seeing the guitar packed up, as if ready to go, I made the rash assumption that it was because of the weed showing up that he had decided that it was mission accomplished, and there was no reason for being out there, which I took offense to, at the time.
It was a mess.
I was probably pretty rude in the way I accused him of only being there for the weed.
Then, a drunken couple showed up, though it would be anyone's guess if they were more drunk than me.
They requested original songs, I believe, but we were able to get them to throw a 50 dollar bill, along with a few folded up singles, into the basket.
The tourists seemed to really be enjoying our music, maybe to the point of distraction with regards to one of them dropping another 50 dollar bill onto the street.
Jacob noticed it, and, at one point, went over and scooped it up.
Returning to me, he showed it to me covertly.
The tourists went off, as we wished them a blessed evening.
Jacob was beside himself with delight "That's 50 bucks for each of us!" he said.
I somehow copped the attitude that it wasn't right to literally go behind the people's backs and snatch up money that they might feel some strain over losing.
If they are tipping street musicians 50 dollar bills, then they can afford to lose one; is what we concluded.
I reason that anyone who comes here would have to have at least $10,000 of "play money," in order to have tipped a couple of buskers over 50 dollars.
That would be after putting the tip into proportion with other expenditures.
Someone who tips the elevator guy 50 bucks, is probably going to drop a couple hundred onto the chef who cooks their meal.
So, Jacob and I getting a 50 dollar tip from them is probably an indication that their hotel rooms are $275 a night, and that is an indication that their entire vacation tab is probably a minimum of $10,000 and so Jacob and I were only putting them out .5% of their vacation money.
This is based upon the fallacy that, by not calling the tourist's attention to the fact that there was a 50 dollar bill laying in the street right behind one of them, we were preserving it for ourselves.
There was probably a 60% chance that the people would tell us to keep it "for your honesty," and probably another 20% chance on top of that of them adding to it yet a third 50 bill "for your honesty."
I would rate the chance of this particular couple of exclaiming "Oh my God, we need that money badly, thanks for looking out for us" at less than 20%.
However, a bird in the hand is worth 3 in the bush.
But, as a cranky drunken guy who wasn't seeing the forest for the trees, I thought that it had been a sin against the nature of the Lilly Pad, and that it branded us as being no better than the pick pockets at the other end of Bourbon, and, after staying up the rest of that night, and then taking a half of a gabapentin in the morning, to reduce anxiety or some b.s., and then continuing to drink brandy, off of the proceeds of what turned into a $154 night (with $104 coming from actual playing) I wound up in a very shitty mood, and I doubted that I was going to make it out to busk that night, and I guess I took my frustrations out on poor Jacob.
I texted him something like "Do not come out to busk!" which is just a slap in the face to a friend who actually had done nothing wrong.
So, I made the decision to just stop drinking again (30 hours and counting).
*No use Googling it; it's an invention of Jacob's
