2 Days Sober

• 16 Dollar Sunday With Jacob
• 7 Dollar Monday Alone
• 2 Days Of Sobriety Reached
• Home On A Tuesday Night

I picked a good night to stay in and blog...(now)

Jacob and I went out to busk Sunday night, just two nights after the episode when I fired off vicious text messages at Jacob, which I blame upon alcohol and sleep deprivation, mixed with alcohol.

The experiment with drinking was a dismal failure. By the time I have published this, I will have reached the "2 Days Sober" point.

I had a pretty strong urge to drink early Monday morning, after Jacob and I had busked for almost 3 hours, and made 16 bucks.

A woman, who looked to be in her thirties, and seemed drunk, came up to us after we had packed up and homed in upon that naive lad.

Jacob apparently didn't find her to be as homely as I did.

She had a small forehead that was covered in skin pasty enough to indicate that she might not get out of the asylum very much, or that she only comes out at night.
The forehead tapered to a nondescript head of hair that seemed like it would be dry and brittle and like a horses mane, to pet. Yet, there was Jacob, being drawn in by her conversation, which became more and more sotto voce, as she attempted to exclude me. Jacob was her mark.

She had made some disparaging remark about Lilly's house, pointing out the broken slats on the front shutters and uttering: "Does anybody even live here?!?"

This was after she had first walked up and was being cordial to both of us.
I had seen the broken slats and the sight of them having remained in that state for so long was disturbing to me.
Lilly had always been on the ball about repairing things like that. Grafitti anywhere on her house had a shelf life of less than 2 hours.
But, these slats have been broken for a while. It almost looks like it was done intentionally by someone. Lilly hasn't answered my last couple texts, and I am worried.
I have seen her Navigator parked in different spots around the block, so I know that she is still alive, and is getting out just about every day.

So, with this worry in mind, I started to vocalize that I hoped that the damage wasn't a sign that Lilly was feuding with someone, when the lady blurted out something to the effect that there was "no aunt or cousin or wife" in that house, and she became pretty vicious towards me, at that point.

That made me seriously think that she might be a skeezer.

Because, she had walked up and asked Jacob: "So, how did you do tonight?" while I was unlocking the bikes, and then followed that with "Where do you play?" after which Jacob pointed to the stoop.

But, then, after frowning at Lilly's house and doubting out loud if anybody even lived there, she spun upon me and spat out "There ain't no aunt or cousin or wife in there!"

This seemed odd because I had never said that there was any cousin "in there."

But, it is something that I have told to certain other musicians; pointing out that I had the permission of the lady who lived there to play on her stoop.

I have even had to call Lilly on a few occasions, when the encroaching buskers retorted with something like: "You don't know nobody in that house!" who had been able to scatter them with just a few words out her window.

But, it was odd, being told that same thing, unbidden, by a drunken lady with a long and straight nose whose outfit could have come from the Goodwill Store.


I wanted to hop on my bike and go home.

The woman had Jacob glued to her, somehow. The cynical side of me thought that she must have been intriguing him with the promise of good drugs. I feared that Jacob might be gullible enough to fall prey to skeezers, who might lure him with a "You want magic mushrooms? Follow Me!" type of narrative.

Then, I thought about how the guy is 21 years old, and could most likely find his way to Sacred Heart Apartments from there, without a guide.

I wound up just riding off towards home, leaving Jacob a foot away from the lady, and her face, to fend for himself. If he winds up losing his virginity to her....yikes

Jacob had been with Bobby and I, when I announced that I was no longer going to drink, and so, having him a mile behind me on the route "trying to get some" made the Big Easy store on Canal Street look pretty appealing.

I could grab a 187 ml bottle of wine and chug it down, and, Jacob would be none the wiser. Hell, he'll be congratulating me on my will power...

But, I reasoned that, at the point of being 24 hours sober after having binged for a couple weeks on it, whatever withdrawal pains I was feeling were representative of the worst of them.

I figured I could live with them at that time, and that they would be even lesser the next day (today).

Jacob texted me shortly after I had gotten home, saying that he hated all women and that he was on his way. He arrived just before the Monday sunrise.

His pendulum had swung from a pretty positive angle, to the opposite pole, and he was exuding all the signs of being in a bona-fide depression, over what had transpired between him, and the homely lady with the stocky calves in the blue dress and hideous grayish colored shoes.

I won't go into detail upon that turn of events, but it involved a few skeezers, and him discovering that the lady was most likely mentally ill.

This is something that can somehow send the kid into a tailspin