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Saturday Night

Saturday night; and it is 77 degrees inside.

Walking back in, after a ride to the store and back, for kratom, it felt kind of frigid, compared to the 97 degree outside. But, enough about the weather... 

Jacob and I were out there at the Lilly Pad probably as early as 6 pm. last (Friday) evening. We were kind of in search of a happy medium between the later times that people will leave to go out, because of the daytime temperature; and the earlier times they will go back in, because of the nighttime crime -or at least a perception that things get worse after midnight. When all the pedicabs turn into pumpkins, type of thing... 

We wound up playing from probably around 6:15, until 9:50 (I think it was) and coming away with 89 bucks. 

This amount is not indicative of "business as usual," as about 70 of it came from just one lady named Desiree (or at least the name that she strips under, as that is what she told us her profession is). She appeared to be in her early to mid 30's, and maybe in the twilight of her career. I thought, from looking at her, that she may have been born a biological male. Jacob said that that idea had never crossed his mind. She told us about having been on her way to meet friends, or something, and getting a text from them when she was 5 blocks away; but then having gotten so drunk that she passed out somewhere before ever finding them. She had gotten to Lafitt's to find her friends long gone, but Jacob and me nearby, ready to play music and chat. 

As the chatting went on, Desiree at least became conscious of the fact that, by getting us to stop playing and talk, she was in effect, putting us out of the business of busking for anyone else. To her credit, she put a decent tip in the jar, at about the 10 minute point. A wad of crumbled together one dollar bills for both Jacob and I. I carefully un-crumbled mine, thinking that it wouldn't be out of character for a drunken stripper on her night off to have, at some point, bought some weed and wrapped in a dollar bill that might have been handy, to keep it from going everywhere in her purse. This was not the case, but what she gave us, at probably around 7:30, had just about doubled the 12 dollars that we had made in about an hour and a half. The heat had been brutal, but was becoming less so by the time 8 pm. arrived. 

In a stroke of genius, by one of us, it was decided to pass the little plastic shaker that I often bring along, to Desiree, who acquitted herself quite well as a percussionist and, by adding a 5th instrument to our Bass, guitar, harmonica and vocal ensemble, gave the appearance that she w

The addition of this thirty-something stripper playing the shaker had the effect of shaking a few 5 dollar tips out of the tourists. This wound up to be quite lucrative, since she was already tipping us for putting us out of business. And the bills were getting progressively larger as she went. I guess, after she ran out of ones, she turned to her fives, and then 10's; and on upward...

This dredged up a long-buried memories from my childhood -my parents giving my sister and I ten bucks each to spend any way we wanted at The Landing -a little general store in Eastham, Mass., on Cape Cod. This store was right down the sand and crushed seashell road, from the cottages we rented for a week or two each summer from 1967 until I think 1972. 

By '72, an "energy crisis" had started to drive gas prices up from the 27.99 cents a gallon that I remember as a 6 year old, as being what we paid when filling up before embarking upon the 3 and a half hour ride in 1967 to "the cape," as we called it.

Everyone was thinking, in 1973, that the whole earth was going to be sucked dry of all its oil in just a few year. Maybe my parents kind of felt guilty about us running our '69 Pontiac Bonneville that got something like 13 miles to a gallon (but more like 16 "on the highway") all the way to Cape Cod and back, just so we could enjoy a vacation while in the process, expediting the drainage of the world's oil reserves with our gas guzzling Pontiac, with the electric aerial and the defogging windshield that you could squirt windshield wiping fluid on with the turn of a lever.

Somehow, that memory came back as I was taking the ten dollar tip from the hand of Desiree, after Jacob had gotten one -which he put in the communal jar, to be divided later. 

She was probably 16 years older than Jacob, whom I was surprised to learn has reached the age of 25 (and a week). Time is flying by, I thought, upon hearing him tell Desiree his age. 

I was being as friendly to her as I could manage, trying not to give her the impression that Jacob and I were gay and that I was threatened by her talking to him. 

We do play in "the gay section" of the Quarter -where well-to-do older gentlemen regularly walk exotic dogs past us, with their "I like your hair," type comments to Jacob sounding rehearsed. 

It's not just the dogs that are a tip off to their probably gayness. I would also point out the half pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream that are often being toted by them, in a bag that is also loaded with doggy treats... 

Suffice it to say that, Desiree was surely warranted in thinking we might be gay. That was becoming more and more of a moot point, though, as Jacob started to become smitten by the lady (and perhaps even was fantasizing about becoming like the 6,447th man to ever see her naked). 

This increasing infatuation drew him deeper into conversation with her, and at some point, I decided to stop playing and join in.

We talked for a while, after which Desiree gave us each one final 20 dollar bill and then, myself having not drank all day, I decided it was a good time (10 pm?) for us all to walk to the Quartermaster.

There, I was ripped off by a cashier who had rung up my Modelo "Chelada" at the $3.43 or so that it always was, but instead of it "taxing up" to $3.78, like always, she pressed an additional button, whereupon $4.99 became displayed on the register. I handed her a 5 and put the penny in her "tips" jar next to the register. I thought about telling her that she could shove the Modelo Chelada up her ass, but wasn't sure if this was grounds for being barred from The Quartermaster these days. I just weighed the loss of a couple bucks against the 70 dollars in tips we had gotten from just one stripper.  

Desiree had started "trouble" immediately upon seating herself at one of the tables, then placing her shoes, which she had apparently taken off to rest her feet, upon it. "Could you get your shoes off the table?!" asked the cashier while ripping me off. She sounded incredulous, as if outraged over the thought of anyone putting shoes on the table at such a classy place. 

Once outside, where Desiree opened the bottle of "Simply Orange" juice which, a victim of the button, she had paid God only knows how much for, and then remarked: "The Quartermaster's whole attitude changed, after they put in a couple tables..." I had to agree that, since having undergone quite a remodeling, "It seems like this new store isn't even at the same location as the old one; like we're standing a few blocks down and a couple over, right now.." It's all a matter of perspective, I thought. Now that they have tables, the place is too classy to allow shoes to be on them; but apparently they are now also "too classy" to lower themselves to cussing out a busker for borrowing their milk crates. I had been banished for something like 2 years for that offense. 

But those days are gone -they have 2 tables now. And a crooked overnight cashier... 

Jacob exchanged phone numbers with Desiree, whom he seemed to have developed quite the crush upon; even if being about 15 years her junior -still young and naive enough to not have picked up on her thinly veiled suggestion when, after saying something like: I guess this is where we split up; I have to go that way; my place is just a few blocks down; on Elesian Fields Road.." and him not taking the bait; she came out and asked him, point-blank, if he was a "coffee in the morning" type of person; giving a slight glance towards The Quartermaster, as if to signify: I could grab a jar of Nescafe Colombian while we're here... But, I suppose that, since Jacob's mother (who is curiously about the same age as Desiree...same hair color, height..brown eyes..but I digress) was slated to give him a ride home from Sacred Heart (and may have canceled other plans in order to be available to) he had kind of locked himself into that agenda, and wasn't thinking outside the box in that instant. "I'm really not an any time coffee drinker," he said; without the "Why do you ask?" line of thought having come into play. 

So, we returned to Sacred Heart, with myself having inexplicably beaten the street car there, even after having walked about 4 blocks in my new boots that are a size too small that I will either eventually break in, or as the pace of my stride might portend; will break me in. 

I got there to find that Jacob hadn't yet arrived, so I ran to the store with my share of the $90 that we had split burning a hole in my pocket, so to speak. I got a bottle of Modelo Negro, found a still cold unopened can of "Holy Roller" IPA laying in the parking lot, to go with it, then returned, pedaling and sipping, to Sacred Heart. 

Jacob had arrived by then and the scene that greeted me was a skeezer sandwich right outside the front door of the place (if skeezers were slices of bread and Jacob was a slab of ham, covered in mayo and mustard). Within minutes, his mother Desiree er... I mean Donna, arrived and whisked him away, and it was the perfect end to a perfect day; except perhaps for Desiree... 

I'm still doing this blog by typing into a word processor type app offline then running the finished product down to the Sacred Heart computer lab on a USB stick. This makes it so I have to wait until Monday through Friday between 8 and 5 to post anything. This has often resulted in me reading, say, Friday night's blog post Monday morning and feeling like it is old news; or in many cases, the circumstances have changed so that I already know whether or not something I was speculating about has come to fruition or not, and I am inclined to delete things that have become moot after ensuing events have taken place... 

I might be getting free unlimited data once again beginning on August 14th. That is the day my monthly cycle begins with Assurance Wireless, and the day that they can restart my enrollment -kind of like if you get off a roller coaster you have to wait until it has run its whole coarse, then get back on once it has stopped in front of you again. There is no way to jump onboard while the thing is in motion. At least that's the easiest way to look at why I have to wait until the start of my next monthly cycle before I can have Internet again.

A Higher Purpose

But, now that I view life through the lens of having surrendered my authority over it to an all-understanding cosmos; I tend to see there being a higher purpose behind my having to go one whole month without Internet. 

Another manifestation of all things working towards the good of those who love God might be seen in the fact that the clinical study that I had signed up to be a guinea Pig in requires that I have a working smartphone that I can load an app of theirs onto, described to me by the person I spoke with as a "diary" app. 

Apparently, had I my phone on me when I arrived 15 minutes late for my appointment, they would have walked me through installing it, and then instructed me in how I was going to use it every day for the next 12 weeks or something, to apparently allow them to monitor my "condition,"On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst, how would you rate the pain at the injection site... type of thing, I imagine.

I can't help think that the same universe that I live in, where (for just one example) I let go of all anxiety over not having toilet paper, nail clippers, dish washing soap and toothpaste; and replace it feelings of happiness about what I do have and nurture an intuitive sense of gratitude over the way all those have materialized, seemingly out of thin air; even before they have; and at just that instant a vision impresses itself in my mind and I picture the heating and air guys not having locked the door to Carlos' apartment, followed by me going in there and finding those exact items, in the spirit of: You see, there was never anything to worry about; you have everything you need -that same principle may have arranged for my smartphone to have no data going through it; as part of the bigger picture.

I have replaced the old habit of starting each day by visiting the usual websites and squandering attention on them, with things that seem to be more in line with my "deepest dreams," to quote one of the self hypnosis, guided meditations for "energy and abundance," "manifestation" or what have you. I can still listen to these offline, because I saved them before losing my connection. I saved a lot of other things, thinking: "This will improve me," that I never got around to because I might have been busy dereliction myself; with the morning YouTube click bait being the portal, leading me down a rabbit hole and steering me in an entirely different direction from where listening to a Charles Dickens audio book, instead, seems to take me. 

And so on Monday I got to the Touro Hospital to participate in this clinical study that I was made aware of through a Facebook ad. I was hoping to get 50 dollars upon "qualifying" for the study. I was at least 15 minutes late, behind kind of a bizarre twist which might have been one of the indications that there are some higher powers at work here. I mean, if the "shingles" vaccine that they are still testing, and need more human guinea pigs for is something that is going to f*** me up royally so that I go into a coma and then come out of it but can't use my right arm, or something like that; then maybe everything, beginning with me being late is conspiring to protect me. 

I had been convinced that the Touro Hospital was just about 3 blocks off of Canal Street. I have to conclude that this was because of a dream I had. 

I left on my bike with 45 minutes to spare, which would have been plenty, had the place been 3 blocks off Canal, as I "remembered" it being. I was recalling, a few days beforehand, riding my bike down that way, maybe to snipe tobacco, and seeing the hospital. 

I remembered it as being where the ambulance had taken me that one time in 2013, when I was struggling to breath. I still think that that was because I had breathed in the dander from a black capped night heron that had shown up under the wharf where I was living, after having migrated from somewhere.

There The Bird Was

It being August when my feathered friend arrived, it begged the question of: Where is the weather so bad in August that New Orleans in the middle of summer would be a respite from it? I guess if it's 120 degrees in August somewhere further south, then a bird might fly a thousand miles or so seeking the 95-degrees-and-muggy-as-hell solace of NOLA. (Note to self: Research the migration patterns of night herons as soon as Internet becomes available) 

For the purpose of this post, let's just say, there the bird was. And, as we grew more comfortable with each other the bird started to move closer to where I slept to hunt for its prey of the swimming variety of rats that were there in abundance. They had become like my pets, and would raise a din of chirps and squeals upon my returning from busking at around 2 each morning. I always took them into consideration whilst dumpster diving for my own meals, grabbing things like crackers and cheese and would lay it all out on one particular flat surfaced table-like rock. They would already be gathered around that rock, chirping away, by the time I reached it and started doling out of "their" bag from out of my backpack. By observing what they set about eating with relish (enthusiasm, not the condiment) as opposed to what they left on the rock, I was eventually able to refine my dumpster acquisition to just the foods loved by swimming rats. 

The black capped night heron was such a magnificent bird, though, that I never discouraged it from coming into my area, despite knowing that it would then be hunting for food out of my pets. There is a hierarchy of animal pets in which birds are just "higher up," is all I can conclude...

Eventually I would wake up one beautiful sunny morning and roll over on my cardboard to come face to beak with the great bird, which had moved to within an arm's length. It just fixed my gaze with the one eye on my side of its head as if to inquire: "What?" A couple of thoughts came to me in that instant. A; The magnificent bird sure does look a whole lot bigger from 2 feet away than it does from a distance...much like seagulls when you see them a ways off on the beach but then you start to throw them french fries or something and they wind up hovering in front of you, close enough to eat out of your hand. And B: He could probably pluck one of my eyes out with that razor sharp looking beak, faster than I could blink. I'd seen his lightning quick neck muscles in action, when after standing totally motionless for hours on end, he would suddenly spring like a mouse trap and have a squealing rat by the tail -in the blink of an eye. I put my glasses on. You never know when a heron might be having a bad day... 

It continued to do the standing totally motionless thing, I guess after having sized me up as not being a threat. Two feet away; what a magnificent creature, I kept thinking. So, as much as I liked my little rat buddies, they seemed, by way of comparison to the heron to be like really cool cars; while my new black capped buddy was a really cool plane. I fished a few crackers out of my backpack and dropped them into the cracks between the rocks where the heron had been staring (before briefly casting me an eye that had a "What are you doing?" expression on it) and in less than a minute the heron struck, and had a wannabe cracker eater by the tail. In the ensuing struggle, as the rat thrashed to and fro trying to shake free, the heron used its wings, which were a whole lot bigger looking up close, to maintain its balance, actually swiping me in the face a couple times, and this, I believe, was the source of the inflammation I developed in my lungs, to the point where it was so hard for me to breath that I couldn't sleep because I had to stay awake and work at breathing. 

At the very peak of it; when my legs and arms began to tingle, signifying that I wasn't getting enough oxygen, I imagine. I stood up and decided that I was going to go out to Decatur Street and flag down a cop or even an ambulance if I saw one. I'm the last person who would ever tie up a resource that might be needed elsewhere, but I figured I was close enough to dying that if I ever was going to be a burden on the health care system, this should be the one time. 

I could only take a few steps before having to squat down and struggle to "catch my breath" before trying to walk further. At this point I decided to jettison my backpack. As much as I would have hated to lose it; I felt like the difference between life and death might be whether or not I tried to bear the extra weight of it. My arms and legs were starting to feel cold along with tingling. I was becoming scared -the whole dying thing being new to me. This fear made my heart rate speed up, which required even more oxygen. The thought that my obituary would read that I had died in the city of New Orleans -the birthplace of rock and roll and where Louis Armstrong used to walk the streets blasting away on his trumpet and all that; all seemed trite to me in that moment. I would rather live right now then to die; even if my body would be found right in front of a house where Lee Oskar once stayed. 

So, for the first time in my life, as I was about halfway out from under the wharf, after I had stood up to try to walk some more, I prayed out loud: "God help me!" 

Immediately there flashed through my mind, on the same "screen" where I would later see the image of the heating and air guys leaving Carlos' apartment without locking the door behind them; I saw a scene from a TV show that I last saw as 13 year old. I think the show was just called "Emergency." It followed the adventures of a team of paramedics in California. Their "handles," when they used their radios, which weren't even digital because this was back when I was 13, was "Rampart." As in: "Rampart 4, do you read me over your primitive analog transistor radio?" type of thing.. 

The scene that flashed through my mind, immediately after I had prayed: "God help me" out loud, to at least the heron, if not god. was one in which the paramedics were treating someone in a state of emergency, and they were telling the patient to "relax" The thought of: "They always say that to someone in distress, don't they?" crossed my mind, and like other things that I'd heard so many times that they had become reduced to being the kind of meaningless cliches that you utter, but don't really think about, like when one guy say's: "How's it going?" and another replies: "Not much," which suffices because the first guy might as well have said: "What's up?" for all the meaning that is conveyed by such platitudes... So, I relaxed. 

Right away it became easier for me to breath. I traversed the last few steps over the slippery slime covered rocks and was soon out from under the wharf, where the air seemed more fresh. I soon had regained enough energy to walk out to Decatur Street where I spotted a cop van and was able to get him to call an ambulance, which took me to Touro Hospital. Which now takes us back there...

I could swear I remembered riding my bike just a few blocks down Magazine Street off of Canal, where I saw the hospital, and had made a mental note of its location; and that is what I'd used to calculate that I would need no more than 45 minutes to get there. But, on this 100 degree early afternoon, as I turned onto St. Charles Ave and started heading "that way," I couldn't for the life of me remember why it was that I would have ridden down there in what I had to conclude was only a dream. And, I had never had a dream so vivid that I recalled it as actually having occurred. There would have had to have been a reason for me riding down that way; sniping for tobacco was the only plausible one. 

But, after not seeing the place where I "remembered" it being, it became obvious that I had dreamed it; and that I was going to be late for my appointment with the shingles vaccine people. 

"About 3 miles down," was the direction I was given by the second person I asked. He looked like a millennial. 

He was wearing earbuds that he removed after seeing my mouth moving and me looking him in the eye. He reminded me of a millennial that I know named Travis Blaine. Travis would usually wear dark sunglasses, so he have an excuse for ignoring anyone who might try to make eye contact with him; and earbuds, so he could ignore anyone trying to get his attention verbally. He was fine with interacting with people on the screen of his phone, but that "real life" stuff seemed to make him feel awkward and so he would try to insulate himself from it as much as possible. He even worked doing micro-tasking on his laptop for some company of people whom he would never have to meet face to face. At least this Travis look-alike had removed his earbuds instead of feigning not having heard me. 

The first guy I had asked was a tall skinny guy wearing an unusual hat, who had recommended that I ask someone who lives in the city because he was a new arrival himself and, who knows, the hospital might be right around the corner but he hadn't discovered it yet, type of thing.. 

If the second guy were the real Travis Blaine, he would have turned the experience, like every other experience, into an opportunity to flaunt his technical acuity by performing a few vigorous swipes on his phone screen and then announced to me, in what he hoped I would realize was in record time: "Touro Hospital, 2.2 miles, then turn left onto Jackson Street and go 3 blocks...do you have the name of a doctor? I can see if he or she is in.." type of thing. 

The millennial that I had gotten did indeed know where the hospital was and began to evince some signs of struggling with how to convey the directions; there was the shortest route, but that involved cutting across a few streets, making it more complicated. despite being but shorter -the amount of pedaling I would save perhaps not being worth the effort of having to retain a few extra turns in my memory. Then, he seemed to have a Eureka! moment; he became visibly more relaxed and said: "Here's the way I would go..." That's more like it, I thought. Travis, too, would have his own special way of getting from one place to another; and it would be a very clever route that most people wouldn't have devised for themselves. Maybe you would be mostly in the shade along the way, given the positioning of tall buildings; maybe you would avoid being splashed by cars running through a puddle that is always in a certain place due to a leaking underground pipe; perhaps there is a vicious dog on some street that sometimes gets out of the fenced in enclosure and harasses people -a dog that can be easily avoided if you have the specialized knowledge that the average person wouldn't have. There could be any number of good reasons for going the way the millennial would go, but the ease and enthusiasm with which he gave me the directions, and the pride he seemed to exude over the way he would go made me think that he was picturing me arriving at the hospital and thinking: "Wow, that was easy, just take Louisiana Street all the down a little bit past the hospital, but then you can cut back along this street and you're right there, without having had to cut through a bunch of side streets or get chased by any dogs; I'm sure glad I asked that guy for directions, what a clever young man, and what a clever way to go!" 

I suppose the moral of that story is, when dealing with millennial's, try to find a way to make it all about them. Don't just ask: "Do you know the way to Touro Hospital," ask: "Pardon me, but which way would you go to get to Touro Hospital?" 

I rode most of the "3 miles down St. Charles Street" as directed by the millennial and, since I was already going to be 15 minutes late, 20 minutes late wouldn't be much worse, I thought, and so I stopped at the Brother's Market on St. Charles to get a Monster Zero drink, so as to keep me alert throughout the interview with the shingles vaccine research team. 

I had no sooner locked up my bike when out of the store sauntered the first guy I had asked directions from -the tall skinny guy; still wearing the unusual hat. He had been on foot, how did he beat me to this store almost 3 miles down the road?  Was I still in the dream where Touro was just a few blocks off Canal, or was this an alternate universe? Had the millennial been so delighted to reveal the way he would go because that was going to take me, to his amusement, through a realm where wizards and sorcerers and entities that can defy the laws of time and space roam? 

Or had someone driven up upon the guy with the unusual hat on foot and offered him a ride to Brother's Market? it seems like there would have been stores a lot closer than 3 miles from where I first saw the guy walking, if that was indeed his intended destination... 

I got to Suite 412 in one of the buildings at Touro. I was handed a clipboard and told to fill out as much as I could on it. I handed it back less than 5 minutes later. 

I had no doctor, was on no medications, hadn't been vaccinated since 1981, hadn't been diagnosed with any conditions in all my adult life, and my only "hospitalization" had been in 2014 at the very same hospital, where I was misdiagnosed as having C.O.P.D. and started on a life-long regimen of inhalers and regular doctor visits during which I would probably be prescribed every new C.O.P.D. drug to hit the market, billed to my Medicaid account, payable to Touro Hospital.. "They did all kinds of tests on me. They took at least 5 vials of my blood and ran them through different labs." 

I think they had been adamantly trying not to admit me, even overnight, since I was a homeless guy who had flagged down an ambulance, which probably meant they were required by law to treat me, but sure as hell didn't want to give me any more treatment than necessary; who knows how the ambulance ride was paid for, if it even was. 

I know that, when I was in a motorcycle accident in 1986, and happened to have some pretty good insurance at the time, to go with an iron clad, slam-dunk claim against the insurance company of the wealthy guy who was having trouble staying in his lane that particular afternoon, with all the skid marks in the lane that I was in ready to paint quite a convincing picture for any potential jury; I that 5 mile ambulance ride was billed at around $3,500. Sure beats driving an Uber for a living. 

Back to the clinical study: I was shown to a small examining room to wait for what turned out to be at least a half hour. The one overbearing piece of artwork hung on the wall in that room looked like it had been drawn by an architect. It may have been some specific "style" of art which tries to support the eye of the beholder the way that certain architectural structures can bear enormous amounts of weight, such as arches and types of things you see holding bridges up. But, to me, the "work of art" resembled a maze. 

No Phone; Go Home

Having finished my Monster Zero drink  about 20 minutes in, Iwas seriously considering just leaving. 

I started to wonder if perhaps they had some other drug that they were testing which was intended to treat impatience, and if maybe by coming out of that room after less than 15 minutes had elapsed and saying: "I'm sorry, maybe I can come back another day; I'm really going crazy waiting in there" I might have qualified myself to participate in that other study. ...We're looking for the people who come out of that room in less than 15 minutes to ask: "Did you forget about me?" or something to that effect. 

The nurse/registrar for the study did come in the room, just before I was about to pose such a question. She told me that I would be there for "around 3 hours" going through a batter of medical questions and with a good deal of time spent familiarizing me with the app that I would be required to download and install on my phone. I did have my phone with me, right? 

No, my phone has a battery in it that only lasts about 45 seconds after being unplugged, so I just usually leave it at home. 

She was sorry to inform me that without me having a smartphone with me upon which could be downloaded the "diary" app we would have to reschedule. We agreed that I could bring my phone there for the next visit and just keep it plugged in while the app downloads; then we could proceed from there. 

They had been planning upon giving me the vaccine that day; as soon as I had downloaded the app and was ready to use it to check in with them daily. That made me wonder if this vaccine is so unpredictable that they need to monitor their guinea pigs very closely, so as to detect life threatening side effects at their onset. 

They rescheduled me for tomorrow (Monday) but now that I found out that my data connection won't be restored until the 14th of the month, perhaps I have been the beneficiary of a blessing in disguise, as this will give me another 8 days at least to Google "Has anyone been injured by the shingles vaccine that is currently in its clinical trial stage?"