Phish Freebird

 I forgot which band I imagined going into a version of "Freebird," the Southern Rock standard, which has a slow part for couples to hold each other, while they ponder the antagonist trying to explain to the girl that if he surrenders his freedom and settles down with her then it won't work, because his whole appeal is that he is as free as a bird.

I suppose the girl wanted to "tame" the guy in the way which is probably as old as the hills, she wants him to stop searching for the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, and to settle for her not-bad-at-all, actually, ass.*

But, the song became etched into my musical psyche in the sense that, when I first started playing the electric guitar, it was one of the first hills in front of me to climb.

Other kids, like Joe Carbone, played the electric guitar, having taken it up maybe 3 or 4 years prior.

Our first inkling that anyone in our high school played anything was when Joe, along with a few other kids from our school formed a band, called "Polarity."

They played at one of our school's idea of talent shows, a rousing, perhaps 20 minutes long, until Mrs. Gorton, an English teacher told them to stop.
Joe later told me: "Oh, that was all just a pentatonic scale," after I had asked him the sophomoric question of something like, where did he learn how to play the lead for Freebird on the electric guitar.

Sure enough, I found I could learn the chords and actually the slide guitar part, due in large part to its slowness, and then, I found that, if you did indeed play (mostly) notes from a certain pentatonic scale, you could assemble the phrases that the Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarists played. They probably played it the night before their plane went down, and were probably planning on playing it the next night.

The song can give you an 8 minute or more break from having to decide what songs to play; but the busker always has to read the listeners for signs, such as singing along, or fidgeting indicating if you should sing all of the slow part, or just cut to the fast part.

I was busking in Mobile, Alabame, sitting at a certain spot which was about 2 blocks away from where a busker "should" have been sitting, which would be somewhere along the short drag of clubs and restaurants that thrived on weekend nights.

Instead, I played in front of a clothing store that had two huge glass display cases, behind which were mannequins adorned in different guises of the clothes they sold inside. You actually had to walk down about a 30 foot hall, which narrows as it goes, with the glass cases on each side, to get to the front door of the place. The floor was marble.

They existed to keep Mobile in pace with New York, fashion-wise, and, the acoustics of the place were pretty amazing, and people returning to cars which they had parked past where I was could hear me because it was comparably quiet to the main drag. 

People would ask: "Why don't you play up there, where all the people are?" but they would also be dropping enough tip money while asking to allow me to continue where I was.

"I get so much enjoyment out of the sound here, I'm willing to sacrifice anything I might gain by being in a spot where there are a lot of people but they are drowning you out." A lot of those people might throw you a dollar, but that is because they are only getting a dollars worth out of you; like the guy telling the dirty limericks gave them. 

I've done that kind of busking before, the couple times I forayed onto Frenchmen Street, which is like a counter culture to the French Quarter, sitting just outside of it, touching corners where Checkpoint Charlie's bar is located. 

You have to have your guitar around your neck and be ready to play for people standing right in front of you. It's a different kind of entertainment, you are going for content over quality of sound. I've thought about setting the dirty limericks to some simple chords and going back to Frenchmen Street some night...

But, I wish I could remember which band it was that I chuckled over the thought of them doing "Freebird" in concert. 

 

*ass refers to the entire person, as in "I'd better get my ass down there before they close." This, I may be appropriating from African American culture, as that is really where I got if from,

The Sun Has Set

 The saga continues with the bike locks. The second one got caught between the spokes which pulverized it, sending the little plastic pieces in every direction.

This was because I had the lock in the opened position. In that position it is possible to open the lock, so you can make your own combination. It must have hit the spoke just right; I still think it is a freak accident and now I am just going to get a key lock and just carry the key on my ring, which I never leave home without after locking the door behind me.

So, now the sum of money spent on bike locks will be equal to me having just gotten a really good U shaped lock in the first place.

But, when I returned to the scene to look for pieces of the lock is when I found a whole box of meals ready to eat.

And, Sunday morning, when I went to buy 2 Guiness Stouts at nine in the morning on church day, I bought a large can of Bush beer for Freddie.

He is the guy who smeared black greasy handprints on the wall just inside my apartment one day when I had left my door propped open while I took the trash out.

He also asked me to pick him up the same beer a couple months ago, saying "I'll pay you," and then just taking the beer and not paying me. 

I hadn't confronted him, just walked away thinking that I would have the last laugh by being able to say: "You never paid me back for that one beer 2 months ago," or something and would have insurance against Freddie beer for the rest of my life.

But, practicing The Secret and that do not go together, and I just bought Freddie a cold large can of Bush, and handed it to him as I walked in the building.

There were a couple pairs of brand new jeans on the table, with the labels still on them and one was a pair in my exact size.

Life in abundance...

The Secret About Money

 So, I've reached the chapter in "The Secret," which discusses using the Law of Attraction to basically attract money to yourself.

There is an anecdote given from a man who had wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars per year. He started practicing the technique of feeling grateful for the money, as if he already had it. He made a check for $100,000, and stuck it somewhere where he would see it every day, and used it to do "visualization" exercises, as outlined in the book. And...

For about a month, nothing seemed to happen, but after that, he just got a "hundred thousand dollar idea" out of the blue as he was walking down the street.

I've always had mixed feelings about churches that preach a "name it and claim it" philosophy, which draws upon the same wisdom as in "The Secret," but takes it from the bible, instead. Jesus told us to pray for things as if we already have them, and to feel so much like we already have them that we almost don't even need the brand new Range Rover, or whatever the item. We would have convinced ourselves that the Pinto we are driving is that Range Rover, and this would attract the vehicle into our lives.

I think it ridiculous to be praying for a million dollars or a new car, when it is clear that one could gain those things, yet lose their soul. But, there the "testimonials" are on the leaflet that a certain church down the street hands out (not to myself, I've noticed, for some reason) to passers by. 

"I said the Prosperity Prayer, over and over, and then, one day I looked out the window to see a brand new Cadillac in my driveway, in the exact color that I was praying for..." type of stuff. There are prayers for healing relationships, to, but what is that worth, in dollars and cents?

But, I still followed the advice in the book in order to "attract abundance," which is based upon the conclusion that to be lacking in money means that one is blocking the money from flowing to them, because of negative thoughts. It is necessary to think thoughts of "more than enough money," and none of "lack of money."

So, I spent a few minutes applying "the secret" to that task.

Five minutes later, my phone rang, and it was the FEMA inspection lady, telling me that she was 8 minutes away. She met with me, and set it up so that I will be getting, not a loan, but a grant, for "under 4 thousand dollars."

She was a Latina, and I got to try out some Spanish on her. "Hola, mi nombre es Daniel." Her name is Damaris Deliz. This intentionally loud exchange that I initiated served the dual purpose of currying favor with her and oiling the 4 thousand dollar check machine, plus, having me be overheard by the Latino family that has moved into one of the houses across the street from the Sacred Heart entrance. I have tried to be friendly with them, but, for some reason, the man of the house has muttered things like "white oppressor!" at me the few times I have been close enough to him to hear it.

The news of the FEMA grant stirred mixed feelings in my breast; awe over the expediency of The Secret, in all its applications, tinged with the fear that is roused in any addict, when he receives a windfall of cash.

It is Sunday morning, and I think I have slept about 4 hours in the past 24, but am high on kratom and looking forward to the football games coming on later. I, of course, wish I could drink a 6 pack of beer to go with the game watching, but there be dragons there... One drop of alcohol and the odds are tilted in favor of my becoming sloppy drunk and maybe succumbing to the temptation of just one little 5 dollar hit of crack, er, to go with the porn that my drunk self might download.

Yesterday, I had one beer all day. It was a Rolling Rock, and had a slight aftertaste of the "buck," that we used to brew in jail, using orange juice, raisins and a crush of bread, for the yeast to kick off the brew. I have spoiled myself by drinking Guinness Draft Stout recently, I suppose.

I am happy and grateful for the unlimited data I am getting for free through the government phone, the 4 thousand dollar pending grant, and the fact that my latest departure into the learning of finger picking style guitar has gone swimmingly, so far. I guess I learned how to learn, at some point in my life. Playing like Chet Atkins, seems to me to like riding a unicycle, or perhaps juggling. Once you "get it," then you can ride a million miles or juggle for an hour straight without dropping one bowling pin, type of thing. Have you ever seen anyone just suddenly fall off a bike they were riding, because they "had it," for a while there, but got distracted, lost focus, and fell off?

Steve Morse said an interesting thing about his unique style of playing. He said that it can't be practiced, because, when you first start out, you aren't doing it right, so why practice that; you are only practicing how not to do it. 

You just have to wake up one morning to find that your subconscious mind has been busy while you slept and you can now play like Steve Morse. It's because you have been grateful and happy and looking forward to playing like Steve Morse, expecting it to happen. Thanks for this great gift of being able to play Dixie Dregs songs, in advance, type of thing...to travel to a future when you have the technique mastered, then to come back to the present all excited about what is to come, type of thing.

I still haven't gotten the jab. Bill Gates has said that the world's population needs to be reduced from 7 billion, back to about 2 billion, or we will all be in big trouble, if you know what I'm saying. Plus, Joe Biden has told me to get vaccinated, admonished me to, as a matter of fact....Every thing out of his mouth has been a lie. He even lied about how many aides his dog has bitten in the White-house. Like he actually wants "Trumpers" to get vaccinated? Give me a break...It's so that they won't be a danger to infect The Woke, that's all, right Joe? They can die and go to hell with the rest of the domestic terrorists who pushed the wrong button in the voting booth, just don't infect his flock, is I guess the reason.

I can't say any more, because I'm not quite ready to have this blog taken down by Jeff Bezos. I don't have a second phone and a whole new identity online yet..

When I do, I'm going to just export this whole blog into a whole new one --one administered by someone who hasn't been shadow banned by the Google algorithm, nor has ever been accused of having child pornography in his possession (Guilt by accusation, is alive and well in this generation z driven cancel culture) and I will be like the hydra, cut off my head and a new one grows back. I am considering having the head grow back on a Wordpress, or 4 Square, body though...or something.

Procrastination Dragon Slayed

 Yesterday, I woke up and discovered a flat tire on the back of my bike. It was only 1:30 p.m.

I got right to work, removing the tube that had been inflated with its stem at an angle, which told me that this day was coming, and put in a new one, which had the little ring that you could screw down to keep the stem in place, and pushed the bike to the gas station, after having found some change to go with about 13 bucks that I had on me.

I got to the gas station and bought a Guiness Stout, and gained the last 2 quarters that I needed for the machine.

The little ring that goes over the valve stem and screws down to keep the stem perpendicular to the rim is a marvelous invention. I rode off towards the Office Supply store, hoping to get a new lock, to replace the one that I had to bust with a hammer at the bike rack in front of Whole Foods about a week ago.

At Office Supply, I learned from a helpful worker that they had more locks than were displayed where I had gotten the cheap "speedy" one that relied not on a key or a combination, but on moving a nub a combination of left, right, up or down.

This can be done quickly, and even with one hand.

But the lock could jam in the middle of this operation, and you might have to carry 40 pounds of groceries a mile, after leaving your bike locked somewhere, as you hope there will be more than just a bike frame locked to the rack the next morning.

Then, you might have to go back to Whole Foods with a large hammer and smash the lock off, while every customer in the parking lot wonders whether or not it is your lock or your bike, while you perform this surprisingly loud activity (makes me think that it would be a good busking spot the way the hammer against the metal rack resonated).

They had more locks, and the most expensive one was around 12 bucks and had the thickest hasp of all of them, which was labeled "hardened steel." But, due to the purchase of the Guiness Stout, I was just about 60 cents short of the cash for it, so it was back to the house to grab the next 100 dollar bill to be broken, and to return to get the lock.

Today, it is off to Webb's Bywater Music, about a 4 mile ride, with my guitar in bag on shoulder and to see if Paul Webb can fix the problem that started when Bobby replaced the existing nut on it with one made of bone.

He had sent off for some genuine bone nuts for acoustic guitars and had ordered an extra one, for me as it turned out, and had followed instructions off a Youtube video entitled something like: "How to replace the nut on an acoustic guitar."

Although I did achieve that distinctive bone tone in my music, the nut was a bit too high, and I wound up compensating by putting a capo on the first fret and tuning the instrument down a step. This worked and, since I was busking just about every night, I never seemed to find a time when I would have, say, 48 hours to let some glue dry, after filing the thing down.

Well, it's off to Webb's I had better go, he closes is 2 hours and 45 minutes or so...

The Path To Inner Peace

 I got up this morning and struggled with coming up with "the 3 things that I am happy and grateful for."

But, that exercise actually gets easier with each morning that it is done. 

For one, you learn how to set the bar very low, to avoid having to think too hard. Or to have to re-interpret some "bad" thing that is looming in your consciousness, to make it a good thing "in disguise" and then be happy and grateful for it.

I felt very physically off and remembered the "meals ready to eat" that I had eaten. This is better than the army food that I had been subjected to back in Basic Training, whenever we went on bivouac, which we called "sea rations."

Those had been left over from the Vietnam conflict, and every once in a while some Private would open his "rats" to discover a cigarette had been included, which meant that his box was even older. I would imagine they stopped putting the cigarette in there around the early 1960's. You almost had to have a smoke if you ever made the "coffee" that came in the things, using water that had been treated with sulfur dioxide in your tin cup, then heated over a fire.

But, those sea rations made me get eczema so severe that I was offered a chance to get out of the military, before I had really even started. Eczema, I was informed by an army doctor, is on the list of "profiles" that, while not disqualifying one from service, gave the guy or girl a choice of whether to stay in, or not.

I just couldn't let a thing that wasn't killing me, stop me. I was thinking that if I quit, then I would be a quitter the rest of my life, type of thing. There is no way I could remain motionless, up to my neck in water as I squatted in a rice paddy, my helmet and weapon covered in moss as camouflage, with mosquitos landing on my face, if the eczema was flaring up; I could see the doctor's point on that..,but, once a quitter, always a quitter...

So, fast forward to 2020 and not only can you be a transgender drag queen in the army, you will be fed banana and sweet potato puree, maltodextrin, sugar, whole milk solids, apple juice concentrate, water, fully refined soybean oil, all in a packet labeled as a "Banana Apple Smoothie." Having your body ripped apart by shrapnel in some desert ten thousand miles away never tasted so good.

So, after getting a bottle of fine wine and deciding that I wasn't going to go near any drugs like pot or cocaine that night, my biggest concern was that I would throw that thinking out the window after consuming enough of the bottle. 

This didn't happen, but I did start to rip apart the meals ready to eat packets and unleash cookies, crackers and, sure, smoothies upon my digestive tract near the end of the bottle. I found red wine and papaya to be an excellent pairing, but not as good as slices of plantain, fried in olive oil, and red wine. That was divine. 

I was drinking a Bogle "old vine" red blend that boasted, along with being a "top ten for the money" value, the use of grapes from some of their outlaying vineyards in varieties that normally don't make it into wines because of their extremes, in the areas of acidity, tannin quality, etc. By making the blend maybe just 5% of some of these radically flavored grapes, Bogle has made the perfect complement to plantain slices fried in olive oil with salt and a dusting of black pepper. 5 stars!

Unless You Know The Secret

Pardon Any Redundancy

This post was patched together out of at least 4 different writing sessions. Though, it was begun on Monday morning, after I sat up at the sign spot, with about 3 hours to spare before Sacred Heart Apartments were to open again...

Sunday Morning 9 AM

Staying at Bobby's for what I think amounted to 6 days, taught me at least one thing; and that is that two older gentleman can go from being happy friends, to brandishing knives against the other, in a span of 6 days.

I am happy and grateful for the fact that Sacred Heart apartments rather unceremoniously opened a bit before noon today, after being deemed habitable by the city. 

Before noon, buses began to pull up, letting off people who were full of stories about the shelters in Shreveport, and Alexandria where, according to one man they had been "treated like a king." They were giving away a lot of clothing, up there, one guy added.

"Yeah, but was there a dope man there?" I half joked.

That was where I would have wound up, had I not made that fateful call to Bobby, asking him if he had electricity.

"Yeah, I do; come on over!"

That was Saturday Afternoon, about a week before the knife would come out....

Sue Knew 

I am right now, at the sign spot, after having slept outdoors in the upper 70's temperature air, taking advantage of that amazing discovery of Sue the Colombian lady, which was this ultra secure spot for up to 2 homeless people to sleep at.

Basically, it sits between the Saenger Theater, and the huge "event parking" lots, with their half dozen levels of parking.

It's going to be so nice to get back to normal around here, after the devastation of the hurricane...

So, right off the bat, the property is under heavy protection, as it would not be good to have a nice family, on their way to see Donny Osmond at the Saenger be carjacked, or mugged, etc.

The sign itself takes silhouettes out of the picture...

The actual spot where Sue and I slept was fairly well illuminated, being in a stand of trees that blocks some pretty high intensity lights as bright as a night football game in nature. 

The average homeless guy might think the spot is too bright and might feel exposed and likely to be seen. 

But, Sue somehow figured out the physical laws of light, and the biology of the human optical system, and knew that the light bouncing off the trees and the grass all around a person who is nearby the spot, is actually so bright that the human eye adjusts for it; and when they look under the canopy of trees, it looks especially dark under there.
It just works that way. Sue knew. 

So, I trudged there, after getting kicked out by Bobby, and after busking for the first time in over a year at the Lilly Pad. I fell asleep about 11 PM and slept off and on, until the definitive wake up at around 9 AM.

It's hard to describe the sleep one gets, in a situation like that, when you are using your backpack as a pillow and have your guitar case tied around you somehow. You just lay there for a while, listening and being very still; resolving to just lay there and relax, and not actually go to sleep, if need be. If there are threatening sounds and movement. But then, you become like a cat, able to sleep through a noisy truck passing by and not even stir, but to wake up instantly at the sound of a lighter being flicked a hundred feet away, or some other "human on foot" sound.

You have to think of the picture you present, though.

Immediately upon sitting down at the spot, I buried the envelope full of hundred dollar bills that were from cashing the stimulus check. But, even if someone was stealthy enough to get my backpack and guitar case, at least there wouldn't be over a thousand bucks in either of them. This left me about 12 one dollar bills in my pocket; in the extreme case that someone would hold a knife to me, demanding whatever money I had. This wasn't likely, given the food items I had strewn around me...

I started taking all the food out of the backpack -everything of mine that I had hastily grabbed from Bobby's kitchen on my way out.

If you are a homeless guy and don't want anyone to think you might be worth robbing, just surround yourself with food. Many homeless people do this unintentionally, like the ones under the bridge to whom a lot of people do the "I don't have any money, but; are you hungry?" thing, and that food can come in faster than a homeless guy can eat.

So, I started munching on cooked shrimp, covering it in Vidalia onion sauce, and soon the hummus was open. I instinctively looked to the spot where I would have had stashed a few plastic eating utensils, 7 years ago, but wound up using the lid from the hummus as an eating utensil. I chucked away the part of the shrimp that I held in my fingers, since I didn't have any sanitizer. 

Certain birds, who were there, 7 years ago will enjoy them, or perhaps those birds grandbirds, in the morning, I thought. It's the mockingbirds who are vegetarian during the summer months, but eat meat in the winter, I thought, after I lay back with my head on the backpack, knowing that the huge football stadium lights were right in everybody's eyes, blinding them from the sight of me, through Sue Science; and that the security guy who worked the condo building across the street had had his booth conveniently placed right by the entrance to its bottom level garage; most likely so as to put yet one more set of eyes on the Saenger.

This arrangement meant that he had a clear view of, you guessed it, the stand of trees, that I was sleeping unseen under. 

Sue, the Colombian lady had gone as far as befriending the night watchman there at the time, who began to take notice of anyone going near the spot. Add to that the ubiquitous cameras that the city has installed to watch that parking garage in cracktown, and Sue's genius becomes even more apparent.

I knew the bottle of apple juice, and the jar of olives, the hummus, etc. would protect me from anyone who might think he could rob me of something. There was my guitar case, but what would be the worth of a guitar carried by a guy who "eats out of the garbage," if appearances don't deceive, type of thing....

Bobby might have thought he was tossing me to the wolves in kicking me out. I slept like a baby and woke up with heightened senses, and a clear focus upon the great day to come...

Written Monday Morning

This is 3 hours before Sacred Heart is to open up, as I write, and as promised by a piece of paper taped to the front door. 

I happened to see it Sunday, after I had fed Harold a couple cans of good food and petted him a little bit. 

He seemed pretty shell shocked. 

If it is easy to tell when a human is stressed out, by noting the tension in their faces or a certain hunched over posture, as if said person is bracing himself for the onslaught of negative events; then if is also possible to detect the same state of mind in a cat, I have found. 

Harold was as jumpy as ever, and looking over his shoulder as he ate the Fancy Feast food that I had opened for him and slid through the front gate. Then, I saw the piece of paper which announced that in a mere 24 hours from when I was reading it, the building would be opened up. 

And then, not long after I arrived back at Bobby's, I found that individual, to be in a highly agitated state and seemingly angry.

It was over something that he had forgotten saying, which I paraphrase as: "Listen, you don't have to give me that money (that I told him I would) just pick up some chicken thighs, some Lactaid, a couple potatoes a couple onions, and a bag of baby carrots."

So, I had picked up all those items; miraculously it seemed to me; since the shelves were so bare in Rouses...
And, there was the moment after I had gotten back, having found the store totally out of the Lactaid whole milk that Bobby puts in his coffee, along with a few spoons of brown sugar.

Tampering With An Addiction

What had happened was, I had grown spiritually while in Rouses Market.

First off, I had the epiphany that, with a mask on; a person loses a whole arsenal from his emotive vocabulary, and this could be detrimental.

For example, I like to joke about things, and when people notice that I am smiling when I say something, it tips them off that I'm just kidding, or being sarcastic.

I had entered the sugar aisle, to get a bag of brown sugar for a man who had never pulled a knife on me; and I beheld there, a woman of color with a daughter who stood only to her waste.

The girl noticed me right away; and began to smile and wave to me. I value innocence such that I was compelled to respond, but not before pulling my mask down. Otherwise, I would have felt like a rattlesnake or something that all you can see is its pair of cold reptilian eyes staring at you. You never know what a rattlesnake, or a Gila monster, for that matter, is thinking; because they can't smile or frown. Is that snake scowling at me? type of thing..

She wasn't wearing a mask; good for her.

Dan's Transparent Mask Company
I, then and there, resolved to start a company that makes transparent masks, so people will once again be able use the full range of facial expressions that set humans above the other animals, even more than the fact that some of us pole dance, does..

So much can be communicated that isn't when everyone has on masks.. Are we developing an adroitness for hearing things in people's tones of voice, and taking meaning from it?

So, after seeing that Bobby's exact brand and style of milk was sold out; I turned to a skinny guy to my right and, taking the risk that he might be an Ignorlean and would just ignore me; I asked him if he knew where "skim" milk fell on the spectrum of milk, like, was it more than 2% and less than whole?

In a cautionary tone of voice, he began to give me the skinny on skim milk.

He was skinny, himself, with short black hair. He looked like kind of an intellectual. At first, I hadn't noticed his rather apparent homosexuality. I was all about finding out if I could bring Bobby back something that wasn't "whole" milk while sacrificing the least amount of fat. ...fat, sugar, caffeine...the guy wakes up looking for a buzz first thing...pathetic...

The young guy warned me quite adamantly me that "No, Skim is even less than 1%!" 

I then noticed that he was wearing a transparent Covid mask. I could see his lips moving and would be able to read them if I knew how to. The things have been invented...

I told him about how I had just decided to invent the transparent mask.

The guy recommended to me another brand of "lactose free" whole milk. He said that it was "delicious." 

Sometimes in life, you just have to make your most educated guess about things; and, all things told, I was betting that a gay cow's milk drinker probably knows what he is talking about. I added a half gallon of the different from Lactaid stuff to the load that I would carry home.

"Nonesense, Son!!"

Before I quit drinking cow's milk entirely, at the age of 16, I believe it was; I had never like the taste of it. To me, the point was to drink it so cold that it goes down your throat representing more of a texture, than a flavor. The only time milk became flavorful, I thought, was when it was sour.

Gosh, thank God, my body alerted me to the fact that I wasn't set up to digest cow's milk. Either that, or the amount of growth hormone in it, engineered to double the weight of a calf every 4 months, or something, was wreaking havoc with my glands.

I was told, by a fellow soldier in Basic Training that some day I will be walking down the street when my legs are just going to snap in half. Because I had told him that I didn't drink milk.

What They Say About Cow's Milk Is Bull Crap!

This (me telling him that) was probably because his face was ravaged with eczema. I had taken pity upon him. His face looked the way I imagined mine would, had I listened to an elderly doctor of dermatology when he said: "Nonesense, son. You drink all the milk YOU WANT!" after I brought up the subject of dairy allergies. ...Nonesense, you keep showing up here and paying me for cortisone shots, antihistamines, and lotions; for the care for your skin, son....

He was going to keep shooting me up with cortisone shots which would cool down the whole inflammatory system, excuse the corruption of medical jargon, but, yeah, I would stop itching for a while after the shot, but it would also come with kind of a cost in that, I would kind of have a sensation of chills running down my spine.

And, like so many other "drugs," the shots seemed to do progressively less with each administration of them, which was something like every two weeks.

Doctor LeDonne, the dermatologist, had a membership at Oak Hill Country Club, where his bag of clubs collected dust, and he was something like a 42 handicap. I'm pretty sure he recognized me from there, as I worked there over the summer vacations just a couple years prior.

I had kind of chosen him as a skin doctor based upon that solitary connection, thinking he might care more about my skin, since he knew me from the golf course.

But, since there are only 18 holes on a standard course, the doctor, whom I paid good money to demonstrate how I should pat myself dry with the towel after a shower, and never rub the skin; and to tell me that that shower should be lukewarm and never hot in the first plalce, was getting at least 2 strokes per hole, and 3 strokes on a handful of the most difficult.

That kind of skewed the dynamics, though, because here, coming into his office, was a guy who knew how much he sucked at golf; that might have been embarrassing to him.

Being terrible at golf, and not much better at treating eczema; his one moment of redemption came, during one of my latter visits to his office. It's building sat by itself in the middle of a huge square lots; as if the practice of skin care must take place in a void or that skin diseases are contagious. He may have been guided by a black plague/small pox mentality in the decision to lease the place...

There were rarely more than a couple cars in his parking lot. This made me wonder how he could afford a membership at Oak Hill. 

But, to his redemption: He did, during one of my visits, probably at the point where the cortisone was giving much-diminished returns, kind of wink at me and say: "What you really need is just a couple weeks on the beach in Key Largo, Florida, *wink*wink*"

And that was probably something that could have gotten Doctor John LeDonne in some hot water, had the American Dermatological Society gotten wind of it. This was 1979, and "sun therapy" would have been labelled a crack pot remedy, especially by the manufacturers of cortisol shots and all the other drugs that dermatologists prescribe. "How dare you suggest something that is a free gift to all from God, LeDonne!"

So, I turned to this guy at the milk rack in Rouses, who didn't seem to look at me suspiciously because of my ignorance about milk, and he wound up recommending the other brand.

I felt there was a congruence to the way that he had described it as "It isn't Lactaid, but..."  So I decided to give it a chance. Sure, I could have gone across the street to see if the Winn Dixie had Lactaid, but I really thought I might have found a diamond in the rough, or at least was going to be expanding Bobby's horizons, turning him on to another brand of milk that he can fall back on when the Lactaid runs out; or maybe even switch to.

I knew of the dangers of messing with a person's "first thing upon waking" ritual, though. And I know people's brains aren't sufficiently in gear to undertake the task of explaining things like: why they just don't like butter that's been in the refrigerator (the cinnamon sugar distribution gets thrown off, and it's enough to skew the whole day towards the shitter, type of thing).

I knew there was a chance that Bobby would freak out and, he almost did. When I first took the bottle of milk out and explained that I had made a judgment call and decided to trust the endorsement of a gay guy.

He seemed believable.

So, the spiritual growth I realized was, I was able to talk to a gay guy without judging him; and basically not even noticing his gayness until his boyfriend walked up; having had an intelligent, friendly conversation about milk and masks and so on.

I had brought Bobby a half gallon of "delicious" milk. I felt like that was as much as I could have done. My bike is still locked to the Whole Foods rack by a cheap lock that is jammed; and so I am still on foot. There comes a limit to the distance a man will walk through the heat in order to placate a fussy roommate.

He stared at the half gallon of milk; and I could tell he was getting angry. It was a sign of things to come. Our relationship had deteriorated over the week that I stayed there, and this was about half way through the slide. Somehow, he was able to calm down, after noticing that the milk was "lactose free," just like his trusted brand. He might have been thinking I got the kind with lactose that was going to give him indigestion, based solely upon a recommendation of it being delicious. "I don't drink it for the flavor; I can't digest lactose, what are you, retarded!!"

It dawned upon me, after seeing how Bobby would wake up with a lot of anger and negativity each morning, that there was a connection to that, and his espresso from a special machine he paid a lot for, along with the generous amount of whole milk, and a couple heaping spoons of brown sugar. It's like his first order of business, upon waking is to get a buzz of some kind. The coffee does the trick.

But, in tempting fate and buying a different brand than what he is used to, I was kind of tampering with his whole addiction thing. It would be like if I wrapped a tourniquet around his arm an unusual way, preparing to shoot him up with heroin; I'm sure he would correct me. It's as if drug related rituals can be sacred, in a way.

And I'm sure that was running through his mind, at least for a while, before he calmed down.

"It was either that, or skim milk," I tried to joke.

But, I believe Bobby is falling down the rabbit hole, and is probably dipping into a little bit of heroin. I think he said that it, combined with the methadone is a jolly good combination.

I think he wanted to get me out of the picture, so as to not have anyone to feel ashamed of himself in front of, type of thing.

He had promised me that there would be no repeat of certain events, like the skinny woman stripping naked, in order to demonstrate to her boyfriend that she didn't have any heroin on her, so as to cast the blame upon Bobby ("so, it must be him that took it") or another appearance from a certain older black man who has shown up a few times with a pipe already loaded for Bobby.

Those evenings ended with Bobby, in the coming down phase, in tears and beating up on himself, and guaranteeing me that it will be no more. "I'm just not gonna answer my door; I'm through with that poison!"

So, I think that, after coming into the windfall which was the FEMA check; Bobby want's to break his promise to me and open the door and let them all in, with their needles and their pipes and their peep shows. "I never learn," he lamented.

I guess not.

And, well, there I was, heading out to busk at the Lilly Pad for the first time in over a year. I had all my stuff in my backpack and the guitar with me, so why not go to the Lilly Pad, where I had seen Lilly's daughters, Angelique and Chantilly, earlier that afternoon, painting the doors of their house a vanilla cream color.

Lilly had admonished me to get the vaccine, promising that we could barbecue and swim in the pool together. Her girls, whom she has raised to be ladies and to marry well, looked the worse for the wear. They were still pretty, or at least the part of their faces that showed around their masks was. But, Angelique especially had the "black hole in the sky" look in her eyes, as if she has recently been dropping a lot of acid.

The girls have just each started college, a couple years apart. It would be their first severing of the tether that has attached them to Lilly, since their births. Never in their lives have they ventured forth out into the Quarter without Lilly or someone else, chaperoning them.

Lilly has probably sent them to schools full of girls of the same station, who might be getting their first tastes of freedom, also. 

I can imagine whole study halls full of kids tripping their teeth out on acid especially kids with mothers like Lilly.

Back to Bobby

After Bobby had told me not to worry about the money but to instead get him the food that cost me about 20 bucks, he woke up Sunday morning and greeted me, not with "Good morning," but with something like: "We need to talk about you giving me some money for staying here!"

When I pointed out that I thought the food was in lieu of that, he snapped back that, since I got the food for free "I mean I've got food stamps, I can get food" that it didn't "count."

Yeah, but you sold all your food stamps for heroin, and then were trying to sell mine to the same guy....

Bobby came into his $999 check for "disaster assistance" from FEMA and his decline from that point has been precipitous. He has been living high off the chemical hog.

During his last trip to the methadone clinic, he brought along extra money and was able to purchase some wafers from people who sell them outside the clinic. They are 15 dollars for one wafer. I believe that is 20 milligrams.

The clinic has Bobby's dosage set at 40 milligrams. He was padding this to 120 milligrams, which is a "decent" amount, he told me.

 I slept alright at the sign spot, but did have one “bad” dream that woke me up.

It is a spot where I have slept maybe a hundred times, often with Sue the Colombian lady in my company. 

Great memories came back to me, and I once again had to admire the ingenuity of Sue in finding that sleeping spot. I can remember having to walk up to within about twenty feet before I could tell if Sue was “home” when I would go there, about seven years ago, now. 

I suppose I will find the check from FEMA in my mailbox, unless there is still something I need to do online or somewhere. 

The Land of Gwen

I am trying to get the “one time” check of about a thousand bucks that took Bobby all of 24 hours to procure for himself. 

Gwendlyn was a very nice sounding elderly white lady, I’m guessing; based upon her name. 

After she had come on the phone and said something like “Hello, my name is Gwen” and gave me her employee number, I asked her: “Oh, did you say ‘Gwen,’ as in ‘Gwendlyn?” “Yes,” she said and even spelled it for me.

I mentioned that one of my favorite singers was Gwen Stefani, to which she returned that she was also one of her own favorites. But, she was biased because she comes from the same home town in Oklahoma as the former lead singer for No Doubt...then even started telling me about her wedding to Blake Shelton that I guess my FEMA operator attended. Small world. Unless you know The Secret...

Why Am I Procrastinating?

 ...over calling the toll free number and giving them some information and then getting a thousand dollars from FEMA?

Every one of us who were mandated to leave our dwellings are "entitled" to it. To cover the food in our freezers that we lost, and compensate us for the inconvenience. I haven't been able to practice on my piano for 3 weeks; and I'm thinking of suing the state over that; for psychological abuse and setting my musical career back irreparably.

Bobby called them 2 days ago and gave them his bank account number, routing number and then identified himself by answering a few questions. I guess his favorite city is Alexandria. I could only hear his end of the conversation, but I heard him say that, so I figured it was the "favorite city" question that is used for those purposes.

These FEMA people also have access to other particular personal information and the lady on the other end mentioned a series of addresses and asked him if he had ever lived there, or worked there. Most of the answers were "no" from him, so I guess it is an attempt to trip up a fraudulent person, who might have hacked his numbers and his favorite city, but who might not know which apartment he stayed in in Baton Rouge 22 years ago. I'm guessing they have public records like utility bills or maybe former addresses listed on former licenses.

He only had to hold for less than ten minutes and the whole call lasted maybe twenty minutes. The next day the thousand dollars was in his account.

I could do the same, and today is the last day. Why haven't I done it yet? Do I miss busking so much, and see the thousand dollars as something that will postpone my return to it, so I am going to let it slip my mind until it is too late, and will be back out on Bourbon Street in no time?

That's really insane, because I could get the money and still go out and busk. What if it is miserably slow out there. I don't think that is the case because, according to one guy, people are tipping like crazy out there...

I have to log off the internet so I can use my phone to call them. I'm using it for the hotspot connection. And I am avoiding it out of fear of something going wrong, like my numbers not being in the system. This must be one of the roots of procrastinating behavior.

 

Stay In Your Room!

My curiosity about Google's algorithm never ends.
I'm starting to wonder if Google is dividing the web according to politics, and creating echo chambers of like thinking people, while preventing any cross pollination of ideas; so that nobody's mind will be changed through their coming across opposing opinions.

Like, when the Antifa guy goes to Youtube, there is a whole screen of recommended videos, with each one only affirming the world view that has been revealed as his via the videos he chooses to watch, and to like and to subscribe to.

I keep getting a stream of Fox News recommendations.

But, if I watch one Eckhart Tolle spiritual guidance video, then the recommendation area becomes repopulated with more of the same, but also a few others that are never recommended after me watching a Fox News one.

Youtube never recommends a Breibart News video; I would have to manually type that exact name into the search box to get to one. But while I'm watching it, the recommendation strip will show some totally different topics, but ones that I have, in the past been interested in, like gold prospecting, boxing, and Kentucky Derby race broadcasts.

They never recommend, for example, anything gay. If I want to watch a live stream of a Pride Parade, I would have to manually search for it. I wonder how many such videos I would have to watch in succession and like and comment and subscribe to the channel, before Youtube would start suggesting stuff from the Entertainment Tonight channel, for example.

I think the algorithm operates under the premise that no harm can come from showing people things that only reflect one side of any argument. Maybe you are a climate change denier; that's OK, they might suggest videos from other like minded "kooks," so that your beliefs will be reinforced; but at the same time will prevent all your other activity from being seen by the other side. That way nobody's beliefs will be changed.

Like, right now, if I let Youtube autoplay, I will see video after video ripping Biden over his handling of Afghanistan, while the feed to any account holder who has, say, donated to his campaign might never know that there is any dissent anywhere out there, over the guy's actions.

It' like everyone is being kept in separate rooms, so that everyone is "preaching to the choir" with any comment they might make. Only people who already agree with them will see what they write. Nobody will see anything that might make them think; or reconsider their beliefs.

You can't go into the next room and argue with the people in it.

I suspect this is true because out of a hundred comments made after, say, the above video, not one of them will say anything contrary, like "This is a bunch of B.S. fake news."

When the Antifa guy logs on, there will be no evidence on his screen that former president Trump was interviewed, if he was, for example. This may have been accomplished by his hitting the thumbs down on anything positive about the guy, or it may be baked into the algorithm.

So, I want to examine my stats surrounding the above video and see if I gain any unique visitors to this blog. Like will it become accessible to the however many million people who "also" like Greg Kelly?

I think they are doing a good job of separating everyone into the correct rooms.

Then, tomorrow, I might watch, like, comment, subscribe and share to here maybe a video of the statue of Robert Lee being torn down, and the time capsule that was under the pedestal and filled with artifacts of the late nineteenth century being replaced by BLM stickers and gay pride flags, and pictures depicting the "insurrection of January sixth."

Then I will check the stats and analyze the results.  

The mantra of "be sure to 'like' and subscribe" would be the engine that drives this. When someone who likes the same stuff I do does a search on a topic I may have written about, then they would see this blog amongst the results.

My Problems Have Problems

The Things I Should Have Done 

Sometimes you get to what seems like a fork in the road, where there is a great blessing one way and a great curse the other; but yet there is no actual fork to the left and right. It is the same straight path, divided as such through your perception of it.

I woke up this Thursday morning, and had to force myself to do the exercise out of "The Secret" which is to think of 3 things that you are grateful for before getting out of bed each morning. One guy went so far as to report that he thought of the first one as he sat up in bed and the other 2 with each foot that he put on the floor.

Yesterday, I left on the bike to try to cash the stimulus check at WalMart.

I was worried about the fact that my ID has me listed as "the third" with the "III" designation after my name, but the stimulus check doesn't have that on it.

I had been told a teller at Chase Bank that she couldn't cash the thing because of that. "Why don't you just go to WalMart," she had said.

Does that mean that WalMart doesn't pay attention to such details? 

I thought about that as I pedaled the bike, aware that the front tire is pretty soft and the back one, softer than it had been when I pumped it up 2 weeks ago. I could buy a decent bike tire pump if I could cash the check.

It was a pretty hot and sweaty ride out to the WalMart about 4 miles from here. I arrived there at 4:46 p.m.

"We're closed!," said a skinny young black guy in some kind of uniform at the front door, before I had even gotten off my bike. That last part would turn out to be a blessing perhaps.

 

I started to wonder about how I have been practicing "the law of attraction" which states that, whenever you think of things that you don't want, you are attracting more such situations to yourself. 

 

But I also wondered if the calmness of mind I have been able to achieve has been preparing me to deal with the inevitable circumstances that are on the horizon that I'm unaware of, but are coming anyways; or if they are a result of that calmness, which would make them blessings in disguise.

 

"What time do you close, just so I will know for tomorrow," I asked him.

This was mostly because I wanted him to look at his watch to see that it was still 14 minutes before the next hour (it seemed unlikely that they would set their closing time at a quarter til). 

He had to admit that they were closing early "we're short staffed," and so, I had ridden the 4 miles just for exercise. 

Before I might have said "for nothing," or that it had been a waste of time. But that would only attract more nothingness and more wasting of time into my life. So, I had to come up with some way to complete the sentence "I am happy and grateful right now for ______" as I pedaled back towards Bobby's with a little over a dollar in change on me; and a check that I've had since March which has been hard to cash to say the least...

I got to the Whole Foods, which was kind of on the way back, and decided that I would go in there to look for food that both Bobby and I would like to eat, though none came to mind as I stood out front. Nothing worse than overpaying for some organic grass-fed free ranch gummy worms from that store, only to have the "beneficiary" of it say "These things are nasty," upon biting into one.

 

It's a situation that is similar to the one with Harold the cat, whom I once spent about thirty bucks on a bag of food that boasted no filler, no grains, real meat, etc. and was probably even edible by humans, though they probably couldn't boast that on the bag: "You can eat it too!!"

That time, I would have been better off buying 3 times as much of the cheap Friskies brand that Harold seems to like, because he had turned his whole body away from the bowl of the thirty dollar stuff.

I was aware that the same thing could happen with Bobby, should I spend 11 bucks on a super healthy frozen pizza, rather than trying to get a DiGourno (sp?) one for half that.

 

I came out of there right before they closed, with 4 of their paper bags with the flimsy paper handles, laden with heavy items such as bottles of juice, and a "Hummus and Kale" wood fired pizza, which was about 11 bucks. I had grabbed a pork tenderloin as insurance against "this is nasty" on the count of the thing.

 

The bags were way too heavy to even think about getting the food home in them. If the paper handles didn't break after I rode over the slightest bump in the road, the refrigerated items with their condensation moisture would make the paper soggy and fall out of the bottom. Perhaps the two things would happen simultaneously. I would have to grab some plastic bags somewhere to switch the stuff into.

The idea of the recyclable paper bags is supposedly an ecological one. Jeff Bezos can put a man in space (himself, and his underprivileged son) but he can't figure this one out? First off, they always have to double those bags; probably more to double the flimsy handles than the soggy bottoms; and so to avoid using plastic they have to use twice the amount of paper. The only sense I can make of it is that Jeff knows that most people, after having their expensive wine bottles shatter in the parking lot after the frozen whole hen has eaten its way through the bags they are in, are going to make it a point to bring their own reusable with them every time, so maybe there is a method to his madness.

 

I got to my bike outside and was unable to open the cheap lock that I had gotten at Office Supplies. The thing wasn't closed all the way, nor was it open, and it wouldn't budge from that position. I had to leave the bike locked there, as the sun was an hour from setting, and begin to walk through the heat, carrying the 4 heavy bags, trying to make it to the next place where there might be plastic bags. This turned out to be the Fresh Market, about 2 blocks away. It had crossed my mind that I should have gone there, instead of Whole Foods, for the savings, the more portable plastic bags, and the fact that I am friendly with the staff there. Had the cheap lock jammed there, I could have easily explained the situation to them, something I failed to do with the Whole Foods people. Now it is going to look like I am stealing a bike if and when I return to their rack with bolt cutters and attempt to cut the lock off. That was what I should have done...

 

I suppose if they see that mine is the only bike locked to the rack over the course of a few nights, they might believe that I own it. But I really should have told the security guy who sits overnight in their parking lot about it.

 

Then I saw a bus coming, and thought that I might use the dollar and change to ride it to within a block of Bobby's, but as I was thinking this it's sign changed from "#39 Canal/Harrah's" to "Out of Service" right before my eyes. 

Between the bike tires and the check and the bike lock and the paper bags and the buses going out of service, it would have been easy for me to think "what else could go wrong?" but this would invoke The Law of Attraction in a negative way, and I might find out in short order "what else" could go wrong.

 

So, after lying to the manager of Fresh Market: "I didn't know you guys were open; I would have come here, instead of there, with their paper bags and their high prices!" when I noticed a frown on his face as he watched me switching the ninety dollars worth of Whole Foods food into his plastic bags, I began the mile walk back to Bobby's, racing against the setting sun. It had been a "white" lie, since I really didn't know for sure they were open, and had they been closed, I wouldn't have had time to double back to Paperbagland.

 

So, this morning, I woke up at eight o' clock when Bobby emerged from his room and asked: "So, are you gonna go get your bike?" I suppose in the fogginess of his just woken mind, he didn't realize that I couldn't really get my bike because I don't have any bolt cutters.

So, the first of the three things to be grateful for before getting out of bed came to mind: "At least that cheap lock doesn't have a hardened steel clasp," I remarked, after reminding him that I didn't have bolt cutters.

 

The most speculative option I have is to use the dollar and change to take a bus to WalMart, where, if I can cash the check, many problems will be solved.

If I can't cash it, I would be walking the 4 miles back to Bobby's, or maybe the 4 miles to where Harold is still living outside Sacred Heart, to give him whatever tuna, salmon or chicken breast meat that I can acquire off my food stamp card along the way, and then the 2 miles back to Bobby's.

 

Then the next step might be to just wait until Chase Bank opens its branch where they know Bobby and then deposit the whole check into his account, then go back there with him the next day when he could withdraw it in cash and hand it to me. Then, most likely, try to borrow some of it. 

I suppose I should think of this as only being fair, since I'm staying at his place, and not try to "paint it black," thinking that he is going to then be shuffling back and forth between here and the crack dealer until such a point when he would come out of his room and say: "Daniel, I need another fifty bucks; Don't worry, I'll pay you back!"

Bobby's own check that he usually gets on the fifth of each month has been delayed this long; with the word being that the mail isn't going to start running again until next week. 

I would have to find some hiding place within the apartment to stash the money, maybe even going as far as unscrewing a light socket, wedging it in behind it, then screwing it back. An addict will look inside an acoustic guitar for an enveloped taped to its inside, and turn a backpack inside out.

Bobby has gone off to the clinic. His hip is inflamed and he is limping along very slowly. I couldn't even lend him my bike this time, as I had yesterday.

 

Part of me just wants to walk to Sacred Heart -the temperature is a merciful 76 degrees outside now- and feed Harold the cans of tuna and salmon that I got at Whole Foods, and then just patiently wait for something to happen. Like Bobby's check coming, or maybe my mom being able to wire me a little money so I can at least take the bus to the WalMart and not be vulnerable to having to walk all the way back if they don't cash mine.

 

If I can get some cash, I could buy a set of bolt cutters for 34 dollars, or whatever, and then list them on Craig's List for 24 dollars, "brand new, used only once," and recover some of the money. I wanted something that would open and close quickly. I didn't want it to need a key, and I didn't want to have to spend a half a minute going left-33-right past zero to 21-then left to 44 every time I wanted to run into a store for a minute.

Now, my bike is locked to Whole Foods and I'm about to start walking towards Harold with a can of tuna and might consider hopping on the bus to WalMart on the way back from that. It would be easy to paint it black and think that some teenager of color is going to stare at me in the customer service area, with her mouth half open, while thinking of some pat excuse for why she can't cash the thing. "We don't have enough cash in the drawer...the manager isn't here today...we need 3 forms of ID...etc."

But that is just based upon my past experiences with them..."You need to fill this out."

"Do you have a pen?"

"No." type of stuff...

While other people of color in line start to complain behind me: "Man, I don't have time for this; they ain't gonna cash that here, now move out the way!" type of stuff..like they somehow know everything about what you are trying to do; and can already tell you that the answer is "no."

The Things Addicts Go Through

Yesterday morning, Bobby returned from the methadone clinic, upset that they had cut him down to thirty milligrams of the stuff "because I missed a couple days."
He was very upset about that, but, through the serendipity of the addict, had run into a guy named Bongo on the way back from the clinic.

Bongo used to live at Sacred Heart in a small apartment that was so crammed with stuff that he had horded, that, the one time I visited him there, most likely to smoke a joint with him because he seems to be a pot addict, I had to move stuff around in order to create a place to sit.

When he was evicted from Sacred Heart, the stuff that had been cleaned out of his apartment ran about six feet wide and fifty feet long, along the sidewalk in front of the building. It had been packed almost to the ceiling of his place over the course of about a year, during which he never paid rent. It looked like a yard sale, and Bongo hung out nearby the pile for a while selling off as much of it as he could, before abandoning the rest to the trash collectors, then moving himself to the steps of the Sacred Heart church.

He hadn't paid rent, choosing to spend his money on stuff to horde instead, it seems. 

This is because he is a transvestite type gay guy who always had his hair dyed yellow or orange and who wore flashy women's clothing. He was a huge fan of Liza Minelli, and he was actually the guy who had commandeered one particular meeting of the short lived Sacred Heart Choir, which was an attempt by some volunteering organization to bring culture to the residents by sending in a choir director to train the half dozen or so of us, who had signed up, to sing choral music.

Bongo arrived at the meeting, carrying a Bluetooth speaker and some kind of device, and immediately hijacked the attention of the nice woman of color who was the director of all of us, talking her ear off and brooking no resistance from anyone else who might have wanted to get a word in; a word like: "Can we get started on rehearsal?"

But, we didn't get started on rehearsal, instead we sat there for the next ten minutes listening to LIza Minelli, from a live Broadway show recording of some kind, bringing the house down, and Bongo to tears, with the closing number from some show.

He also didn't pay because he thought that Sacred Heart should have paid him to stay there, because he was "the real deal," a guy who dressed in woman's clothing, worked as a hairdresser -to "the stars," to include the owner of the New England Patriots wife, if he is to be believed. 

And he was a flamboyant and fabulous ray of light, sight to behold, and representative of the LGBQ community, and as such, had been duly beleaguered by a homophobic society his whole life, so he thought Sacred Heart should have been honored to have him as a resident and not charged him. It is a little bit of the attitude that some women have that think the gentleman should hold open the doors and foot the bill for everything, and should feel honored to be able to do so, type of thing...

When he was tossed out, and resorted to sleeping on the steps of the church next door -until he had horded so much stuff that it looked like someone had just been evicted from the same church and the cops moved him on. It was perceived as a slight against the LGBQ community. In Bongo's esteem, you just don't treat a lady like that.

This was about the time when I was playing my guitar and harmonica on the corner a block away from the building, and was approached by an effeminate looking skinny young black guy/girl who was wielding something like a broomstick.

He walked up the sidewalk towards me, staring at me the whole time and swinging the stick from side to side "threateningly." He was a young man of color who was not only smaller than me, but had the daintiness of a female. You would think that he wouldn't be swinging a cudgel out of fear of breaking on of his fingernails.

But he was fresh from encountering the scene of the police kicking Bongo off the church steps and was outraged over an action that he deemed clearly a homophobic hate crime against Bongo. Forget about the heap of garbage that he slept somewhere in the middle of, to the point where he eventually couldn't even be seen from the road, this was clearly gay bashing by those same police who go out hunting for young men of color every day -even though the cops that kicked Bongo out were cops of color.

So, he had come across the street and stuck the end of his stick in my tip basket, overturning it, and then asked me: "Do you know how many trans men are murdered every year?!" followed by "Do you know how many Bob Dylan imitators there are?!"

As I prepared to sacrifice my guitar, if I had to, by using the neck of it like a baseball bat against his face "Do you know what lipstick mixed with blood looks like on brown skin? Do you know how hard it is to find teeth mixed in with gravel?!" type of thing; he began walking off. When I turned to see him doing so, still considering whether or not I owed him a beating, I noticed that another cop had parked about a block away, and seemed to be tracking the guy. He must have made some kind of vague threat against "the next straight person I see" after he had left the site of Bongo's eviction, and the cops were probably going to follow him in order to be in position to arrest him as soon as he stepped out of line; which they probably wanted to do after what he had probably said to them back at the church steps.

I'm not sure whose side they would have taken had I pummeled him, though; the busker, or the freak of nature that will not ever be fruitful, nor multiply, in direct opposition to the commandments of God.

But, now Bongo just sleeps on the sidewalk nearby the apartment of Bobby, who encountered him there, after having found the methadone clinic to be closed for Labor Day, and who was already feeling the encroaching sickness of withdrawal.

This is a state in which the addict can become pretty resourceful and it wasn't long before Bobby had a hundred dollars of Bongo's money after promising him a sack of weed.

Bongo's sack of weed would have to wait, as would the answering of any of his phone calls because Bobby had to get right first before he could help anyone else.

Pretty soon he was back in the apartment after having made a run somewhere, and had a forty something slightly built man of color with him, along with an even skinnier young white lady who was of the type that starts out as a pretty teenager, as her face was pretty, albeit with something wrong with it that was hard to place, and then ages at about three times the normal speed of a normal girl.

Her body had the skinny as a rail, but still flabby in a way, body that comes when women "diet" by going days at a time on crack without eating. Or nod for whole days on heroin after having spent all their food money on that.

I know all this about her body because, after the three of them had gone into the bathroom to fix up their spoons of heroin and tie tourniquets around their arms, then shoot them up, and not long after the two of them had left, there was a knock at the door.

Bobby answered it, and it was them returning.

The skinny girl with the pretty face was beside herself with shock and outrage.

She had had more heroin in the pocket of one of her shirts or somewhere, and it was missing.

Bobby's was the only place they had been, and so the missing heroin must be there somewhere. When she was in the bathroom doing her spoon with the rest, someone must have gone into Bobby's room and stolen the stuff out of the pocket of her shirt; and I guess that meant me; who was just kind of staying out of the way and praying for them to leave, and for Bobby to be normal for at least that day.

The girls was almost in -fake?- tears as she recounted how she had almost fifty dollars of the stuff in the pocket of the shirt she had strewn on Bobby's bed. The guy was up in arms, too, because half of that had been his.

Then the girl began to strip out of her clothes to prove that she didn't have it on her, even going so far as to bend over and spread her butt cheeks in the bathroom for the edification of anyone who cared to look. "I don't have nothing on me, I swear to God!"

And then it was the guy's turn to attest that he really didn't know Bobby that well, nor the girl, and he didn't know who to believe.

The way I interpreted things was; the girl had loaded the whole fifty dollars worth into herself, probably by snorting the rest covertly, after having shot up her spoon, and she knew she was guilty and was offering her body up for sex in exchange. She was so doped up, she would probably be barely aware that she was engaged in it -a small price to pay for getting a lot of heroin in her. Either that, or she thought her little peep show, displaying the flesh of a seventy year old adorning a body barely out of its teens -although, if you just saw her face, you might think her beautiful- was reasonable payment in exchange of fifty dollars worth of drugs. Maybe ten years ago she would have an argument there, but time plays tricks on the heroin addicts.

She was swearing to God that she had just seen the extra stuff in her pocket, and that now it was gone. Bobby was swearing to the same God that all he had done was his spoon and he hadn't gone into the bedroom.

This left me to stare at them with a "Don't even try me," look on my face.

This made sense of the fact that the girl had opened the bathroom door and asked me, basically, if I messed with the stuff, and did I want any. This probably would have led to her realizing, once I got in there, that she didn't have as much as she thought, or she might have given me a half a spoon -I don't know how that works- but that would have established me as a suspect in the heist; a heroin user certainly would hurriedly scour shirt pockets, just in case there might be something in there.

But, Bobby had affirmed to them that no, "He doesn't f#@ with it." 

Darn, now they couldn't play Bobby and I against each other. And now they couldn't show up with a couple goon addicts, demanding my guitar and my laptop to pay for what was "stolen."

And, so, that was yesterday. 

Today the clinic was open and Bobby stood in line for 2 hours and got forty milligrams.

I left on foot and headed for the Chase Bank, seeing Bongo asleep on the sidewalk in front of The Saenger Theater -Liza had sung there, afterall- and I took pity upon him. I said a little prayer for him, knowing that he had been screwed over for a hundred dollars at that point and resolving to try to do something for him.

I got the to the bank, which still had the "temporarily closed" sign, but was informed that WalMart will cash the "economic impact" check for 14 hundred dollars that I had stuffed in a Perl Programming book back in March when I got it, which I was just now getting around to cashing.

Better WalMart cashing it for a fee of eight dollars than me depositing it in Bobby's account and then relying upon him to hand me over the cash the next morning when it appeared on his balance, taking that balance up to 14 hundred dollars and ten cents, perhaps.

If he was dope sick; how would I be able to take the cash from him and then sit in his apartment on this laptop with it in my pocket while he writhed and suffered on the bed? It would have cost me perhaps more than eight dollars to cash the thing that way. I had seen how Bongo had been treated, whose last couple calls to Bobby have gone to voice mail, while Bongo writhes and suffers in front of the theater where Liza sang..

Then, I took my food stamp card into Walgreen's where I saw an older white gentleman of slight figure grabbing two large bags of cat food, along with a couple racks of Gatorade. I offered to pay for his Gatorade in exchange for him paying for one can of food for Harold.

"Why don't I just give you a couple dollars for the food?" he asked.

"Because that would make me a beggar."

I haven't begged anyone for anything since two thousand and five, when I had just gotten out of jail in Culpeper, Virginia, released in November on a 24 degree day, wearing the shorts and tank top that I had been arrested in, in Florida back in April. They had extradited me to Virginia, because the Virginia license with a different name that I had only constituted a misdemeanor in Florida, like a college kid using a fake ID to get into a bar. But, in Virginia it was a crime against the state and a felony and they could get me for a lot more there than they could in Florida. 

So, they had spent about 3 thousand dollars to fly 2 FBI guy's to Jacksonville to fly me back there, stopping over in Charlotte, N.C., where I was allowed to order anything I wanted off the menu of one of the restaurants in the rotunda area.

$3 thousand, only to have me get up in front of a judge on Thanksgiving morning as snow fell outside, and explain to his satisfaction that I had only gotten alternative ID's in order to work and be a productive citizen; there were no other instances of "fraud" in my file. With an alternative ID one could open a checking account and then write hundreds of checks in order to buy anything he ever dreamed of, before tossing the checkbook and burning the ID and keeping the stuff. Plus, one could be receiving welfare under one name while working a good job as another guy, open an insurance policy as one guy with the other guy as the beneficiary, and then have that guy fall into the ocean on a deep sea fishing trip, his body never recovered -admittedly that last one would be very hard to pull off because insurance investigators are some of the sharpest tools in the toolbox; I've thought of becoming one before, actually.

The thing that tempted me most was becoming a Mexican citizen under one name and owning a fabulous ranch with a gardener and a cook, and paying for it all by driving across the border into the U.S. and working a good job as an American citizen and being paid in U.S. currency that's value would quadruple during my ride home from San Diego to Enseñada, Mexico. I seriously thought about that. I love Latinas...and gardens.

But, none of that showed up under that ID and so the judge believed me, probably low-key admiring my ingenuity. I imagine that most of the criminals in that redneck jurisdiction in Virginia are candidates for that America's Stupidest Criminals show.

But, once out of jail, I asked a guy if he would buy me a cup of coffee -and ruined my record of never panhandling in my whole life. He had made me promise that it would be for coffee, and not beer, after asking me why I was dressed in summer clothes when it was 24 degrees and snowing off and on out. It was. 

Then, I started walking towards where there might be a payphone that I could call my mother on, and found a dollar bill on the ground on my way there. They still had payphones in Culpeper in two thousand and five...

I will have to tell that story on this blog; now that I think of it; it involved all kinds of stuff, like me borrowing a truck, and being chased by, but evading, the police in Raleigh, N.C. then managing to physically disguise myself in order to hop on a Greyhound even though cops had been posted at the station, as well as at the Amtrack, looking for me. The truck ran out of gas on an incline, so I let it coast backwards into a parking lot, which happened to be the prison parking lot, where there were a few news trucks with their satellite dishes aimed skyward, and large groups of people gathered holding various signs. It happened that upon that evening, at midnight, the thousandth invocation of the death penalty was to take place, and it had been the occasion of much protest and attention by the media. And, here I come, backing a pickup truck loaded with debris into the same parking lot, getting out, and informing a concerned looking Lieutenant who resembled Gavin McCleod -the captain of the Love Boat, that I had merely run out of gas going up the hill, and was going to grab an empty milk jug out of the back and go fetch some.

"I just think it highly interesting that, on the night of the most publicized execution in recent history, you just happen to run out of gas right here," he said, while no doubt imagining which item of debris in the bed of the truck might be the shrapnel that was going to kill him after my bomb-of-protest-against-the-death-penalty detonated.

"You're sure you're not one of these protesters that came down from (whatever state the 999th one was, I forget)?"

"No, I just ran out of gas..."

I had known enough to run out of there, as soon as I was out of his sight, and stay one step ahead of the cops and a team of sniffing and barking dogs that were dispatched after me, involving my walking through a little creek a hundred feet upstream before emerging onto the opposite bank. I learned that trick from watching some movie as a kid.

 

But, I had at least changed the oil in the thing, and had left the receipt on the passenger seat, I wish I could remember the name I gave the Jiffy Lube type place, it was something humorous, I recall...the name of the Judge that had released me? I forget...darn...it will come to me hopefully by the time I render that story, before fitting it into the 2005 section of the blog...now that the statute of limitations is up on the "unauthorized use of a vehicle" charge that some blog reader might turn me in on...

I strove to get back to Florida, where I had a drivers license under a different name that I just had to go to the DMV to replace because they had my picture on file. This is a way to facilitate getting an ID without having to produce ID to get it, avoiding the Catch-22 that exists. "If I had ID, I wouldn't be here trying to get ID!" Just another example of the common sense that Florida government exhibits, even to this day.

That way, I was able to crumble and toss any paperwork telling me that I had to report to a probation officer in Culpeper and/or pay fines, or anything linking me to a truck that disappeared from Culpeper the day I was released from their jail; or an attempted terrorist attack upon the Raleigh prison a week or so later.

I had been left to fend for myself in a tank top and running shorts in the middle of winter, and had gone off into some woods that turned out to be a snow covered golf course, where I had built a fire and was cooking food that I had bought with some money that my mom had wired, and sipping wine. Soon, I was craving a cigarette, as more snow began to fall upon and sizzle in my cooking fire. I remembered passing by the pickup, which had been left idle, probably for the whole winter, by the greens keeper.

I wondered if there might not be a bunch of sniped cigarettes in the ashtray, and was bolstered by the fact that the door was open. By the dim yellow-orange dome light I slid the ashtray open. Darn, not one cigarette! It was a clean ashtray, with the only thing in it being the key to the ignition...darn!

And, in an adventure like the one I was on; of course there had to be just enough juice in the battery to start the thing, after the dome light pulsed with every sluggish turn of the crank. "They'll have their truck back in time for the opening of the course in March, or whenever," I reasoned. I would pick up cigarettes in Charlottesville, at the gas station that I worked at for about a year in 2001, before I was found living in an underground dwelling that I had built by the nearby reservoir and arrested for "suspicion" merely because in the opinion of the sergeant "Nobody lives like this unless they're on the run from something.." But that is another story that I believe is already in the 2001 section.

 

So, that was the only time I ever panhandled anyone. It was somewhat a reaction to the treatment of being kicked out of the jail -told that I couldn't hang out in the lobby, "You need to leave!" And that, no, they didn't have any winter jackets that were left behind by someone who was incarcerated in the winter, then released the next summer when it was a hundred degrees outside- and the attitude I had fomented that had me ready to break some rules to counter the ones that had been broken against me.

The guy gave me a couple bucks for the cat food, which left me enough change to take a bus to the WalMart, which is where a security guard at the Chase Bank told me I could go to cash the economic stimulus check that I have been sitting on since March. This, after I had just uttered a prayer for Bongo as I walked past him -the Liza Minelli thing notwithstanding- and decided that I was going to try to do something for him; probably give him some weed so he will not have been totally screwed out of his hundred bucks. Do you know how many trans men get scammed out of money every year? Do you know how many Bob Dylan imitators there are?

 

So, now I go to ring my keys at the gate of Sacred Heart to hopefully produce Harold and give him a couple cans of food. I'm going to spend the bus fare on an additional can, and then just pay for it by riding my bike to the WalMart. There might be an open spot on the bike rack of a returning bus, should I succeed there in cashing the stimulus check. I'm almost out of kratom, so the time to act is now...

 

Bobby ran into Tim the guard who works at Sacred Heart and who apparently is on methadone treatment himself. Tim told him that S.H. apartments are going to be closed "indefinitely." Darn. I might have to capture Harold and bring him here.

 

 

We Have A Buffalo Slut

 Not quite a "buffalo butt," Hailey is only slightly plump, enough to make all of her jeans fit tightly. Bobby said she was fifty one years old, when I had listed her at "thirty something," I think it was, a couple posts ago.

I had kind of reassessed her as 43 before being corrected by Bobby. She has a pretty enough face that it is easy to believe she has had a lifetime to learn how to cash in on that face, and at least figure out how to crash for free at a guy's house who is proud of the fact that she could trust him; even enough to sleep on the same bed without her having to worry about any him making any untoward advances upon her honor.

Bobby seems to be doing more heroin with her around, willing to share it. Ostensibly this is because the methadone clinic has shut down, due to the hurricane, with clients instead being told to check into one of the shelters that have been set up to house people who have been forced to evacuate, with the reasoning being that, while the power is out, it is going to be dangerous to be in the city.

So, in order for Bobby to get his doses, he would have had to check in for a minimum of seventy two hours into one of the places.

Call me cynical, but it sounds to me like some organization is in line to reap some of the FEMA money, and it is probably based upon how many heads they have under their umbrella, so to speak. The Fed probably provides them x amount of dollars, for the care and maintenance of each recovering heroin addict, and so they are trying to pack them in, so as to have a larger top to skim off of.

I can understand them offering that service to the homeless. But Bobby, whose electricity has been on for a couple days now, refused to check into the place, relying instead upon friends who might have "wafers" of methadone for sale, or more direly, the guys who sell heroin on the corner right over there -I'm pointing to my right-.

And, somehow Hailey is nodding out on Bobby's bed right now, as that individual walks past me muttering: "She's gonna have to go..." on his way to the bathroom.

Hailey is a pretty lady, as stated. She has kind of an exotic look like she might be French mixed with something, that gives her a striking look. She lives at Sacred Heart on the 3rd floor, next building over from me, and always seems to be very clean and have nice clothes on.

She suffers from "seeing things that aren't there," and will, at times, go on at length about the dragons and demons that she had seen that day. I wish I could think of specific examples, but the gist of it; is that she is so convincing that I guess it keeps guys from trying to have sex with her; or at least requires of them a transaction of substance, to bring it about.

I guess Bobby was unable to get much more heroin than to keep himself from getting sick, and so Hailey just put on some nice clothes and went for a walk, to return very much high and ready to flop onto Bobby's bed, where she is safe from being molested.

So, as it stands now, I guess I will stay here, with the option of showing up at the Convention Center to board a bus to wherever. That would leave Harold in a bind.