A Hertofore Not Even Dreamt Of Occurance

 So, I went down to the Brown Derby to purchase my own whatever.

"What are you going to get?" asked Jr., who had shown up at my place half in the bag (three sheets to the wind, if you prefer). claiming that he would be able to meet all my needs.

"I need someone to jam with."

"I'm gonna get whatever I decide to, once I'm down there..."

"Well, yeah, that's good."

He invited me to make a detour to his place to get "loaded" before embarking upon my foray into The Brown Derby.

But, assiduous student of history that I am, I knew that this ascension to the loaded plane would entail falling in place behind him as we climbed the stairs one floor to his apartment. I would hear him say exactly whatever he said the last time I had acquiesced, and was scaling the stairs with thoughts of a few gulps of vodka and some weed on my mind.

I think it would be upon reaching a certain step in the staircase that he would wail out: "Trumpets and violins!!" -a line from a Hendrix song that holds a pretty prominent spot in his vocabulary.

"Trumpets and violins!" has become a warning to me that, unless I was so drunk that, even if a fight broke out between us, we would each swing and miss, but still both fall to the floor from the momentum of the errant swings, I shouldn't hang out with him.

Once we entered his apartment, he would proceed straight to his electric guitar and amp and, after flipping on the switch to the latter, would hand me the former: "Here you go, all ready for you...Trumpets and violins!!"

And it would proceed according to a script well known to me by now. I've tried to radically break the pattern before by going right to the guitar and grabbing it before he could, on one occasion, and this seemed to disorient him briefly, but after a couple trumpets and violins, he had regained a sense of  awareness and was thrusting a bottle of Gavno* vodka towards me, and saying: "A sip; not half the bottle!" He say's that; Every time.

And, so we were right back to where we would have been had he handed me the guitar himself and then gone to his freezer for the Gavno.

*"Gavno" is the Russian word for "shit." I'm drawing a blank on what the actual brand name is, of the cheapest vodka sold at the Brown Derby, but I think Gavno can't be far off.

I decided to go to the Brown Derby and get my own stuff. The fact that Jacob and I had busked on both Monday and Tuesday nights, drawing about $18 each with about 5 hours of effort playing, meant that I had that option. What price can one put on freedom from Jr.? 18 bucks surely seemed like a bargain.

But, as I started walking towards the store (he had been ready to walk with me, before I told him that I might jog some of the way) I started to contend with the negative emotions that were present, which manifested in the form of anger.

Stepping back from myself it seemed that I was angry because I felt that he was trying to buy my company with intoxicants; and, maybe more specifically, employ those substances to put me in the mood to jam with him, but I was most angry over the power dynamic whereby he would be in control of the intoxicants and I would have to meekly ask him for every sip I took, or if he was planning upon lighting the joint any time soon, type of thing.

So, swelled up with the pride that a man feels after he has gone out and worked and doesn't have to resort to charity, I shook off the negative feelings and started to enjoy a walk through the park towards The Brown Derby.

I thought about how The Law of Attraction has been working lately to the point where I almost feel like I'm on Spy TV (Like, the producers aim was to leave a copy of the law of attraction book somewhere and let someone find it. Then, observing that he actually sits somewhere and reads through the thing, they then they drop things in various places right ahead of where he is walking the next day -a 5 dollar bill just laying here on the side of the bar, a half smoked blunt crushed on the sidewalk another hundred yards ahead, and then...what's he always drinking, Celsius, right?...an unopened can of it, cold, and perched right atop this trash can that he's about to come upon...maybe someone bought it and then, after reading the fine print, decided to leave it for someone else who might want it, type of thing.

Those who know the secret of the Law of Attraction, know enough to totally surrender control of the details to a higher intelligence. It is perhaps beyond Man's capacity to have a pregnant and/or lactating woman show up at the Brown Derby and decide not to drink a Celsius that she just bought at that very moment; that's just beyond Man's understanding. And, she might have just driven there from Bugloosa, Louisiana. How is one supposed to envision all the details of such a circumstance and then see it manifest?

Then, after following and covertly filming me all day, they would have placed a box full of dried dog shit on the little shelf outside my apartment door and would be there to capture my eyes lighting up and my face full of gratitude and happiness over what the next blessing could possibly be, and would all bark out: "You're on Spy TV!!" just when I had peered inside the box and my nose was beginning to wrinkle at the stench..
 

That's how it has seemed.

I went to the Brown Derby and got a gallon of alkaline water, having not felt 100% after having had a large cup of coffee made with tap water earlier.

A large black man, who sells crack, was at the Brown Derby. He is someone who knows me from seeing me on Bourbon Street, and greets me as "guitar man." 

I used to run errands for people like Carlos, who got their money on a plastic card on the first of every month, but who dreaded making the trek to the store to hit up the ATM machine, because they could hardly walk, and would have to inch along, using a "walker."

Being familiar with the neighborhood that the Brown Derby is situated nearby, Carlos thought it not unreasonable, on the first of one month, a few seconds after midnight, if, after withdrawing $220 in cash from the machine, I could pick him up a 20 dollar crack rock.

I supposed, in order to help support the big guy's family, I would bring him some business. The big guy would "bless" me with 20 dollar rocks bigger than what Carlos himself might be sold. One time, one of the big guy's friends was hanging around him, and after I had gotten Carlos' rock and was walking away, the friend said something, to which the big guy replied: "That's cause I know him; he's good people," which I assume was germane to what the friend had judged as being an awfully fat 20.

Carlos had looked at the rock, and what flashed over his face, I believe was contempt for all the others whom he had sent on the same errand and how those motherf****ers must have been breaking off a piece for themselves and bringing the remainder to him; and then being treated to a hit by him. I felt a tinge of pity for whomever else he had sent before me.

So, there was the big guy in the place. He asked me if I was "alright," by which he was insinuating: "or are you alright, except for not having crack?

I had just 9 dollars on me. Even if I wanted to feel like King Kong for about 45 minutes, and then spend the next 3 hours biting my nails, feeling like nobody could ever love me, and jumping out of my skin at the slightest sound, I couldn't afford it; I was a buck short of the minimum purchase of a 10 dollar rock. Maybe in some neighborhoods you can get a 5 dollar rock, but The Brown Derby is in a little more upscale neighborhood; -more classy people, type of thing...

I was lamenting the fact that 9 dollars had me also short of being able to get an ounce of kratom. Those come to $10.98, after tax.

I was wondering if, in order to safeguard me against even considering a 10 dollar rock (and it would have been a fat one for guitar man) the higher intelligence that animates the universe, right down to the level of pregnant and/or lactating women, had arranged things so that I would have only 9 dollars. That would be depriving me of one thing to keep me safe from another...

I was pondering this as I was leaving the Brown Derby and, there in the parking lot, was laying a capsule of kratom; the extra-potent kind of extract that is sold inside. I knew it was kratom because of the logo on the capsule; I washed it down with blackberry flavored Celsius..

The Pothole

Then, I went to the India House hostel to see if there was any un-smoked weed in their ashtray. There wasn't; but I thought to check inside a certain pothole in the street right in front of the place. I had found roaches in there before. There were two sizeable roaches of a dank smelling herb at the bottom of it. The pothole is just small enough so that the tire of a vehicle riding over it wouldn't bottom out and crush any roach sitting at its bottom. I'm wondering if, since I have struck up conversations with some of the guests of India House while sniping the ash trays on the porch, and have been espied walking away, at times, by staff members, who quickly rushed outside to find that lighters, packs of cigarettes and cellphones that had been sitting on the table next to the ashtray were still there, if one of those staffers might be leaving his/her roach ends in the pothole (I love the pun) for me, like I leave chicken bones with some meat still on them for the possum that lives around our parking lot.