"So, There!"

 

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

A False Start

Well, after having gone all of Thursday drinking only apple juice and alkaline water alternately, I woke up Friday, just in time for Jeopardy and, while in the kitchen fetching a spoon full of kratom, saw the silver can on top of the refrigerator.

"Beef," it was simply labeled, with the ingredients being listed as: "beef, salt."

I felt really great, after having a bowel movement shortly after Thursday morning's prune juice. So, I convinced myself that eating the beef would give me an opportunity to experiment with a meat only "keto" style diet. So I grabbed my can opener and some mustard, and went to work on the can.

Now, I am simply resetting things. Back to day one of the juice fast...

I did get a text from Jacob informing me that he is planning a Halloween jam session. He is back at the house he got kicked out of, about 6 months ago.

At the time I read the text, I was feeling somewhat sluggish and lazy because of the can of beef, concluding that one is never going to feel like a million bucks subsisting upon meat and meat alone; even with mustard thrown in.

I had kind of known that already, but I had caved in to hunger.

I was back to feeling pretty good again by about an hour ago when I rode up to Winn Dixie to get more alkaline water, more apple juice, and a can of tuna fish for Harold.

Harold has been a trooper; not complaining too much about the absence of Fancy Feast, and has scarfed down the dry food that I have been putting out for him, along with the words that he seems to have learned the meaning of: "That's all there is, Harold..."

The weather has cooperated with his appetite. A cold front has blown in, with temperatures barely above 60 degrees. 

The change was so abrupt that he hasn't had time to grow a heavy fir coat, and I have found him waiting right outside the door the times I've gone out to empty trash. He has darted in through the door each time the past couple days, and has had a hearty appetite from having had to burn calories to stay warm out there.

So, Now I embark upon my 3rd day without alcohol, with weed being a distant memory from what feels like another phase of my life; and no nicotine for 2 days except for a little cheating off of "Covid" butts out of the ashtray at the bar nearby.

My sense of smell has heightened the way it always does a couple days into a fast. And this means house cleaning is going on. This involves emptying the trash can as soon as the empty cans of tuna start to offend, and tending to Harold's litter box, hitting the toilet with Comet, etc. You take a lot of baths when fasting; it opens the pores and lets more toxins out through them.

The cleaning has extended to the hard drive on my computer and the little USB sticks that I had been dumping recordings of my daily practice and little snippets of musical ideas onto.

I am already aware of a certain dopiness in the guitar playing and disjointedness in the lyrical concepts from going through all my files from the past year.
I remember a time in 1991 when I had a studio in the basement of where I was living in a house with 3 gay guys, one of whom was the manager at the Dominos Pizza place where I worked. 

That's a whole 'nother story. 

Ah, Why Not...

Bozo

The owner of the house was an ambitious gay guy who drove an 18 wheeler and was an enthusiastic "player" of the stock market. His name was Louis Bazzano (but I internally referred to him as "bozo).

I was given plenty of assurances by Scott, my manager, that I wasn't being invited to live there so that they could hit on me or try to "convert" me -and I don't mean to a different religion. Louis was thinking about the 65 bucks per week that I was paying for rent. It was a win-win situation; I got to live in a nice ranch style house in a middle class neighborhood. Just with 3 gay guys.

Louis had things arranged so that us 3 roommates combined to pay off the whole mortgage on his property, which allowed him to pump the entire 600 bucks or so that he made driving the truck (that was pretty good money in 1990 and the job had probably been a plumb, from one gay to another -you know how that goes; every group in society looks out for their own except the white straight males; with them, it's every guy for himself) into the stock market.

But, I had my own bedroom, and a full 4 track recording studio in the basement, where was also a pinball machine, a suit of armor and a workspace where Louis assembled stained glass windows, out of kits that he ordered from somewhere, which he sold at a considerable markup. Add that income to the rent he was collecting, and the guy was really getting ahead, and really giving head, too, type of thing...

How gay is stained glass window making? Or a suit of armor. Or a pinball machine?! (I'm not really sure if a pinball machine is gay, but...).

And, since almost every gay guy I've ever met seems to have to have some quirky obsession, Louis was a huge fan of Lucille Ball. He had the entire series of "I Love Lucy on VHS cassettes, on a shelf in the living room that ran the length of a wall that was populated with probably every black and white photo ever taken of Lucille Ball.

He was a huge Beatles fan, and I curried favor by being overheard in the studio, playing Beatles songs frequently (in my underwear, one time lol).

His stained glass windows were just like what you would see in Catholic churches, with the jigsaw puzzle-like sections soldered together by Bozo, and the finished products being marked up something like 300% and peddled to, I assume, rich gay guys, maybe rich Catholic gay ones. 

Although, I have my doubts about that, because I've noticed that gay men are frequently atheists. 

This is probably because of the scriptures about homosexual "offenders" not being admissible to The Kingdom of Heaven. Easier to convince yourself that there is no God, and that Christians are a bunch of homophobic jerks.

Louis hated black people, though. One of the stipulations of my moving in was that I never brought "one of those 'things'" over to the house. He said that black men are always complaining. "That's all they do is complain," he complained once.

One of my take-away's from being there about 6 months; besides the fact that, promise as much as they might that they are never going to hit on you; you can't totally trust them in that regard, was that I was able to add "stained glass" to my list of gay dog-whistles (if I'm using that term right) along with suits of armor.

The Uxi Duxi kratom bar, which was a gay owned, gay (or progressive liberal female) run business, has prominently displayed right next to where you place your order; a suit of armor. That one is a replica, while Louis' was real and could actually be worn, but I digress...

Where Have I Seen This Before?

One time, about 20 years after this, I was picked up hitch-hiking in Jacksonville, Florida by a jovial, rolly-polly guy who offered to bring me to his house where, he told me, I could get a nice, hot shower.

But, the Lord spake to me through the great sign of a little stained glass ornament which my eyes beheld, hanging from his rear view mirror. Through that multicolored piece of glass the light of the sun shone, and my head became filled with light, and the interpretation of this wonder was given unto me and I was greatly moved, and when I spoke unto him, the words were not mine, but were of the Spirit, which proclaimed: "Ah, that's alright; I appreciate it, but I need to be (somewhere) by five o' clock," (for the time was nigh that hour) and it came to pass that the Lord thus delivered me out of his car and protected me from his iniquities.  

What a bozo, I remember thinking, for this was probably so...

But, back to the Bazanno residence...
One evening I was in the studio and had put my headphones on and snapped the power on which turned on the drum machine and the recorder and all the effects. I then smoked a joint and launched into creating a piece of music; getting so into it that I hadn't noticed that the "pause" button was still on on the 4 track deck.

40 minutes later, bathed in sweat and pretty excited about all the songs I was able to improvise out of thin air, I noticed it. What I take consolation in, even to this day is the fact that, had I been recording, I probably would have played it back the next day and found it to be a lot like what I am going through and cleaning off my hard drive now; dopey, disjointed, draggy and incoherent...

To The Present

I have reached the point today, at which I ate the can of beef (and salt) yesterday. I won't make that mistake again. I have come full circle to the same fork in the road, and am taking the other tine. It is 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning and my stomach is rumbling a bit.

A New Approach

When I got back from Winn Dixie, one of the guys, a diminutive black guy who goes around in a wheel chair type thing, but often gets out of to limp around a bit; asked me if I would lend him 2 dollars, promising to pay me back when he went to the bank tomorrow. He was noticeably drunk and probably coming down off a hit of crack and probably wanted the 2 bucks to get a soda out of the machine. His disability money would be "hitting" the bank at midnight, but he would have already borrowed against it, in order to become noticeably drunk and probably coming down off a hit of crack.

I almost had to turn my pockets inside out to convince him that I really had no cash at all on me. It is a common belief held by the African Americans down here -the ones over the age of 45 or so, at least, that every white guy has money. An older black lady once asked me for a cigarette down in the Quarter, after she stepped off the street car and encountered me.

"Oh, you couldn't get any with your money?!" was her response to me starting to tell her that I had just gotten off a street car myself and hadn't yet gone to the store, before she cut me off in mid-sentence. There was an angry, accusatory tone to her voice. The same tone that this guy was on the verge of.

For the first time, probably ever, I bent over backwards to explain to him, in the nicest way possible, that I really wished that I had a couple bucks to give him. "Man, I would, if I had it, I just..." but that I didn't. This actually seemed to placate him. He gathered that I wasn't just being an a-hole white guy, with a pocket full of money, but none for him...

Having no money had been by design. After enough consecutive nights of telling myself that I needed to quit everything that was holding me back, while loathing myself for having failed to do so; I had finally just spent one night running back and forth to the beer store, where I also bought what will be my last nicotine vape until further notice, until I had run out, leaving me no choice but to clean up, or to start shoplifting beer out of stores.

Between Rachael And Tucker

I am still balancing my Youtube watching of "political stuff" between Rachael Thurrow and Carlson Tucker.

Where Have I Heard This Before?

The latter is talking about the current governor's race in Virginia, while Rachael made absolutely no mention of the fact that the progressive in that race is trailing in the polls.

She focused instead upon a guy whom Donald Trump had pardoned before leaving office, who, despite that is having charges of inside trading being re-visited upon him.

There was (and usually is) a certain tone in Rachael's voice that I have finally put my finger on. It hearkens me back to the third grade.

We were out at recess, and I had strayed outside of the designated boundary of the recess yard to the side of a cinder block garage where the grounds keepers equipment was kept.

I had found pieces of charcoal strewn on the ground by one of the bare cinder block walls, which I discovered could be used to make what was probably the first charcoal drawing of my life. How cool it was that the charcoal made such bold, dark markings on the wall.

I had rendered a mountainous peak with a rising sun, birds flying in the sky, and was in the process of adding maybe an airplane in the sky when I turned to see that a particular, pudgy little blond haired classmate of mine had noticed me and walked over to see what I was up to.

She drew in her breath, upon seeing my artwork and gasped: "You're gonna get it!!" and then abruptly turned heel and trotted off as fast as her pudgy little legs could carry her, on a beeline for Sister Mary Theresa, one of the "crabbiest" nuns that ever donned a habit and served as a recess monitor.

This woman of God was by my side in short order.

I remember, for a second, half thinking that she might begin to praise my work, especially the way I had superimposed the airplane against the backdrop of clouds. 

I was just turning my face upward towards hers expectantly ...well, what do you think...? when, in a manner that any fly that has ever been caught by a frog would appreciate, she had me by the hair, and was dragging me towards the principal's office. 

The pudgy little blond haired girl had returned along with the nun and was positioned so as to take everything in. She stood with her lips pursed in smug satisfaction, seemingly as satisfied with her handiwork as I had been with my drawing.

In the principal's office, I got it, in the form of a few whacks upon the knuckles with a brass ruler, along with a lecture about the crime of vandalism -vandalism of sacred church-owned property nonetheless.

I'm sure the pudgy girl had wanted to follow along as I was dragged -into the school and down the hallway, but had probably balked at the idea because us kids were not supposed to leave the recess yard proper; otherwise, I'm sure she would have been in the hall right outside the office door, lips still pursed...

But, that is a connection that I have finally made to the tone of voice Rachael Maddow was using when talking about the friend of Donald Trump's who had dumped a bunch of stock shortly after having learned about the potential severity of the Covid-19 virus; stocks which tanked less than a week later.

Had I known what I know now, when that curly blond headed, bright blue eyed, pinkish skinned girl (I think Joyce Johnson was her name) had exclaimed: "You're gonna get it!!" and before she had run off out of earshot, I would have yelled:

"Well, you're gonna grow up to be a left-wing progressive and a member of the cancel culture!" and maybe stuck my tongue out for emphasis...

"So, there!"