New Orleans On 3 Dollars A Day

Thursday afternoon, the 14th of September.

"Snap the picture real quick, and then let me get back to what I was saying..."
I didn't busk last night, as I was at the Uxi Duxi until almost 11 PM. I had moved outside to one of their tables after they closed at 8 PM, and wrote for just shy of 3 hours.

Travis asked me where I had been when I returned, in a manner not inconsistent with a nagging wife.
New Orleans On 500 Dollars A Month

He met with Dorise yesterday (Wednesday) and he is set up to move in to one of her places, maybe as soon as the 28th. He had arrived like 10 minutes early for their meeting, and had phoned her at that time to notify her that he was there, so she could be impressed by his early arrival.

He is going to have a room in a house which will have its own electronic keypad lock on its door, and there will be two bathrooms, one male and one female, and a cleaning lady will come once a week. I think he said it would be 500 bucks a month.

I don't know what he plans to do in the interim. I am pretty sure that the security people here haven't been counting the number of days that he has stayed with me.

And last night, Bobby, who used to be my weed connection, signed him in the building, while I was still en route from the plasma place. This meant that he was officially using one of Bobby's "10 days per month" that he is allowed any single guest, and it wouldn't accrue against the ten days that he is allowed at my place.

This is certainly a usable loophole, and Travis was just about getting to the end of his 10 days at my place, but it was the manner that he came back and informed me, full of joy and excitement, that "the people up front don't really know what they're doing," and had even forgotten to sign him in or out on a few occasions."
I'm sure Bobby filled his head with information about how easy it would be to skirt the rules.

Travis stopped short of saying: "I can stay at your place as long as I want, and they'll be none the wiser," but he almost implied it.

I am non committal, as far as him staying or leaving, at this point. But...
More Compensation Sought

I suppose that the 75 dollars worth of food that he bought me almost 10 days ago, now, has been divided down to a "rent" of around 8 bucks per day, and, if he manages to stay at my place until he's ready to move into Dorise's on the 28th, that amount would be 3 dollars a day.

He is a cheap person. In exchange for me keeping a bunch of his stuff at my place, for which he initially offered me 100 dollars, which I couldn't, in good conscious, accept, and which I kind of amended to 20 bucks, he has given me all of the cleaning supplies that he isn't going to need when he gets to his place, because there will be a cleaning lady.

But, I'm alright with the deal, because it is stuff that I would have spent probably around 20 bucks on; and it doesn't diminish the value of it, knowing that it is stuff that suddenly became surplus to him.

Neither did it matter that the 75 bucks worth of food that he bought me came off his food stamp card.

I just don't want him to catch frugal fever, and try to shoot the moon by staying as long as he can at my place without giving me any more, to compensate for the inconvenience.

The inconvenience manifested itself this (Friday, the 15th) morning in full force.

He came out of the shower and heard that I was listening to David Bowie's "Hunky Dory" album. It was on the 3rd or 4th song.

"Oh, David Bowie, cool, I love David Bowie," he started.

And he basically stood there saying "This is great music right here, great music...I really love this music that's playing right now."

And proceeded to talk over the entire length of the album, never once apparently thinking about stopping his banter so I could actually listen to the album that I was listening to.

"I would say; if I had to make a list of my top 20 artists of all time, David Bowie would definitely be on the list; and that's saying something, because when I lived in New York, I got to hear a lot of music, definitely a lot of late 70's stuff because I was living with my aunt for a while and she dated this guy, let me tell you about this guy, you gotta hear this; then I'll tie it in to David Bowie in a minute...."

[10 minutes later]

"And this album is definitely one of his classics, and one that would be better known to hardcore Bowie fans...another album is "Low," that one came out before he really became big, but the arrangements on that album and the people he had in the studio with him, it all came together...Do you know who the guitarist is on this song?"

"Yeah, it's Adrian Belew..."

"Yeah, (holding up a hand to stop me from going further) and I've got an Adrian Belew story that will blow your mind..."

He talked about how he had first heard David Bowie, and the people who were in his life at that time, who introduced him to Bowie's music and what significance that had in forming him into the musician he is (who has picked up my guitar a couple times and played recognizable chord changes from songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit," by Nirvana, but not much more) and how he almost saw David Bowie live once, but didn't because of things detailed in the ensuing 20 minute story about the time he almost saw David Bowie, etc. etc.
He punctuates each sentence with some kind of conjunction, where he raises his voice with: "AND NOT ONLY THAT..."  or something, as kind of a preemptive strike against me interjecting anything; a way of saying: "I'm not finished yet."

I decided to just sit there and see if he would indeed talk over the whole album, out of morbid curiosity and due to the fact that this was still only around 10:30 in the morning. I really wanted to see if he would notice that he was doing it at some point and say: "I'll let you get back to listening; but that's a great album." I only managed to make it to somewhere in the middle of the second side of the thing before the temptation to say something became too much.

"Dude, I can't listen to you talk about David Bowie and listen to David Bowie at the same time;" I considered saying, but it would have been hard to keep the irritation out of my voice. I'm making every attempt to get along with the guy.

I finally just said: "Oh, I need to listen to the lyrics of this song, I'm trying to learn them," once another song started.
"I Don't Know..."

He then went instantly into the other room as if he had been slapped in the face and sat on the couch, in a silence so pronounced that it sucked the ambiance out of the room, with an "excuse me for breathing" look on his face. He even overtly walked on tip toe into the kitchen for something. I think that is the definition of  "passive aggressive" behavior.
And, I don't believe I ever have to worry about him reading this; as he seems to have no interest in anything I have to say, when in "conversation" with him, and that probably extends to the written word. I typically begin a sentence, and when I get to the first noun which isn't "I", such as in: "I just ate an apple," He will interject "Yeah," to cut me off and then as in this example will continue with something like: "I used to eat a lot of apples, of course when I lived at such and such, there was a fruit stand like right on the corner, and...."
And, so, I actually left my Snowball microphone on and recording as he began to speak the other night, and I captured 2 hours of audio, with him speaking 99% of the time. This was covert, and I felt bad later, because he had actually been talking about some things of more substance than he usually talks about.
But, last night I let the thing record again and he went for over an hour without stopping. If I interjected anything, he seemed to not be listening, but rather trying to retain his train of thought so he could continue as soon as I was done speaking.
Enough Piling On Travis. Except...
If I grab my guitar and start to play, he evinces a lot of distress, as if I am giving him something that he isn't an expert on, has no control over, and he generally will frantically ask me what the music is that I'm playing, like he needs to know before I go on any further. If it is an artist he knows, he will lecture about that artist, and if I tell him it is one of my own songs, he will squirm as if in great discomfort and will act as if he is torturing himself trying to relate my original song to something that he knows and can monopolize a conversation about, like he feels he needs to defend himself against whatever music I might produce.
I definitely can't see him reading this blog. Unless he knew that he was the subject of a post, then he might. So that he can give a rebuttal. A long rebuttal which would keep returning to the theme of "I don't know..."
"Is Your Water Running; Is The Electricity On?"

His cat, which he never lets outside, has just about destroyed all of my house plants, but that is kind of a blessing in disguise as we are having an inspection from the Louisiana Housing Commission, or something, on the 25th. They are the ones who are basically paying my rent (and I have Michelle Obama, who came and spoke to us "homeless veterans" in 2013 and shook all of our hands, to thank, along with the mayor of New Orleans).

But, I need to get rid of the scraggy pot plants that I have been keeping, amidst a few of other varieties, just to be on the safe side.

They are pretty weak as far as THC content, and when they were healthy, and I was smoking weed about every day, I could clip about a joint a week off of them, on those rare occasions when I didn't come across any anywhere else.

I haven't had any reason to do much to them besides watering them and keeping them back a bit from the windows, so that none of the contractors who come here to, say, work on the roof in the hot sun, might vent their jealousy towards a veteran who gets free rent, by trying to turn me in to the authorities and get me kicked out of the place.

Who knows what goes through the mind of a guy who is lugging a 40 pound load of shingles up a ladder and looks through a window to see a guy dancing to Grateful Dead music in an air conditioned place. With his pot plants right in the window?

If he's an undocumented worker, then I guess it'll be a mute point after the "Great Cleansing of 2019."

Berta (one of Howard Westra's housemates) is going to give me an avocado tree out of the ones that she has succeeded in getting to grow.

[Howard is on the cruise that he's been dreaming about going on for at least the past 5 years. He was going to take a Greyhound to Chicago, and then a train to British Columbia, and then a cruise boat to wherever the whales are in Alaska. He is going to see Mount McKinley. I told him that, 3 hours into his bus ride, when he is only in Chattanooga, Tennessee and already his butt cheeks are falling asleep, he would regret having chosen that particular mode of traveling.] 

I have tried to grow avocados before, with no luck. Berta said that she started 6 of them and only 2 of them grew, so now I understand how my measly 2 attempts might have failed to produce a tree.

It never crossed my mind to start a half dozen of them. Maybe that's why Berta is a "green thumb," and I'm a green thumb with white spots on it and some dry brown, crinkly areas around its edges.

She also had started something like a dozen mango seeds to produce one tree ("It was one that we just shoved in the ground," she said.

This gives me hope of having a mango tree under grow lights in my place some day, side by side with kratom plants.

Further away from home...

I'm thinking that President Donald is going to have his buddy, Putin, amass a huge military presence in Belarus, under the guise of "military games," and that those troops are going to remain there, posing a "threat" to U.N. Nations (in the Baltic?) and that threat will be the catalyst for an accelerated building up of the military.

"I help you with Operation Windy!"

Then, the guy in North Korea, pursuant to another "behind closed doors" arrangement will provide some excuse for the U.S. to use South Korea as a staging area, where 3,5 million or more troops will be assembled and then trained to return to invade their own country; rounding up illegal aliens, loading up the aircraft-carrier-turned-deportation-vessels, and seizing weapons from those who shouldn't have them. They might start with a "blitzkrieg" of Chicago, perhaps after fixing the NBA finals to allow the Chicago Bulls to win the championship, and then basically just picking them off left and right, during the ensuing rioting and looting spree.

The U.S. troops won't have to use care to not damage inner city property, as it needs to be torn down and rebuilt, anyways.

It will be a glorious time and will cement a second term for the political genius in the White House.

The Rectory Studio

One thing that Travis has suggested to me is that I try to find some person, perhaps an Arch Bishop, to ask if I can use the abandoned rectory as a music recording studio.
He said that the church may even have other properties that they would allow me to use for the purpose. "That way you don't have to worry about the police showing up," he said.
But, if they tell me that they couldn't allow me to use any such place, and then the police do show up, it will be twice as bad for me, as I would have been told explicitly that I couldn't go inside the place.
I am about to drill 4 holes in a rectangle big enough for me to squeeze through in one of the wooden doors, then I will cut from hole to hole with a hacksaw, removing the rectangle of wood. This, I can later duct tape back in place and spray paint over in the color of the door, after having found some other way in and out, perhaps through the crawl space, if I can free a trap door open from the inside.
Vocals are the major concern, as I get closer to recording a CD.
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Full Circle

• Up 8 Pounds
  

• I Find Travis A Place
  

One of the challenges of having Travis as a roommate (and, by the way, I would include a photo of him  to go along with any stories about him, but, he is extremely camera shy, doesn't have a Facebook or a Linkedin, has no photos of himself on his phone, and there are none that he knows about [that he hasn't deleted] in existence -he wears shades when he goes out in public, too, by the way) is that he has a habit of thinking out loud; laying out his options for the next day, as if seeking encouragement from me "Yeah, I think you should do that," or, more cynically, trying to enlist my help in managing his life.

Yesterday (Tuesday, the 12th) Travis was up and out of the apartment early in the morning, on his way to the plasma place to donate and get 50 bucks.

This left me to my own devices.

The afternoon before, as I was on my way to get a creatine drink and then walk up to the Uxi Duxi for a shot of kratom and to blog, and then to the pet store to get Harold food, and then back to the apartment, where I would have a half hour to pack up my stuff, making sure I had my tuner, harmonica, guitar pick, new-ish strings, tip bucket, tiposaurus, sharks, sign, extra strings, spotlight, good batteries for the spotlight, and that I was in a positive frame of mind, before getting on the 9:12 PM. trolley to go out and busk for about 2-3 hours, in order to keep things flowing, especially some money; I ran into Travis on the trolley.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Is there a place around here where we can get some water?" he asked.

I take care of my water needs and always have some on my refrigerator, but Travis, as my guest doesn't want to use any of it.
This is fair enough, but it is the "we" part of the equation that is indicative of the major problem with having him as a roommate, whereby it seems that he is looking for a companion as much as a room to stay in.

"There's a Winn Dixie and a Rouses right across the street right up there," I said, pointing to a couple stops ahead.

"A what?," he asked.

I suspected that this was him feigning helplessness. He has lived in New Orleans long enough to have noticed the two major supermarket chains; where does he get his groceries from if not at one of them; does he go to Wal-Mart for everything? Maybe he does.

"Winn Dixie, and Rouses; the two major food stores in the city?"

"Oh," he said, and then suggested that "we" could get off the trolley and then go and get water for "us" and then I could go with him to his next stop, the library, where I could make the copy of my food stamp card that I need to send off for a free smartphone with, something that he has been encouraging me to do, since he loves his.

This might have been his attempt to keep me, and the key to the apartment, in his sight, so that when he was done at the library and ready to go back to the apartment, we could walk back there together. This would give him a chance to talk my ears off about his possible plans (for us) the next day.
I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, as I told him that I was in the middle of taking care of my business, and that I still had a half gallon of water on the fridge and that I didn't deem the situation to be too critical.

He has some grounds for being concerned about my whereabouts because the turmoil that he throws me into by focusing upon himself has had me running around unnecessarily in the past.

Sunday night, I had only noticed that I had forgotten my harmonica because I took my guitar out to play at the trolley stop, because the trolley was nowhere in sight, and would be a while.

I had time, actually, to go back in the apartment and grab it and return in time for the next trolley.
This was because, even though, at about 9 PM, I had told him that I had 12 minutes to catch the next trolley, and had asked him if I could get a hit of weed off his pipe before embarking, he had slowly and casually taken out his pipe, while talking non stop about something, and then had packed the thing and then just held it in front of him with his lighter in the other hand, as if he wanted to finish up whatever he was saying before lighting the thing.

Sure enough, by the time we had smoked off the pipe, and I was on my way out the door, I had missed the 9:12 PM trolley, and had a whole half hour to kill before the next one.

It was as if my telling him that the trolley came in another 12 minutes presented him with the challenge of trying to make whatever he was talking about more interesting to me than catching the trolley.

Then, when I got out there and realized I had no harmonica, I had to just shake my head.
The whole time I had been packing up, I had been listening to him and interjecting a "yeah," or a "no doubt," or a "I can imagine," or something in between his points, and sure enough I forgot to pack my harmonica.

Wednesday was on myself.

I left for the Uxi Duxi to get a shot of kratom, telling them that I needed to "gulp and run," as I had time to make it to the plasma place, but would have to take an alternate bus and walk an extra mile or so after I got off it. I had checked the map and knew that I had plenty of time if I walked at least 3 miles per hour, to get there.

This, I did.

I had a bus pass that expired at 8:45 PM.

Along the way, I spent the last of my cash on a pack of American Spirits, knowing that I would be at the plasma place and would leave there with 25 dollars in less than an hour.

I left the plasma place at about 7:45 and walked to the Wal-Mart.

Travis was texting me often. He was leaving the library at 8 PM, and would be waiting for me to return and let him in the apartment. His donation had gone well and he had gotten 50 bucks.

I got to the Wal-Mart and checked the balance on my plasma card, before going in to spend money off of it. The balance was $14.08.

They had given me 15 dollars, instead of the 25 that I'd been expecting. Then, had charged me a dollar for the "balance inquiry," that gave me the bad news.

The sand was sifting through the hourglass of my all day bus pass.

By the time I had called and found out that I had only gotten paid 15 dollars, due to the technicality that I hadn't donated twice within seven days (or that they had counted the day that I donated last week as the first day) it was already 8:10 PM.

It took me longer to shop in Wal-Mart than I had planned, of course, so many flavors of Fancy Feast; so little time.

I wasn't worried though, because I would just get another all day bus pass for 3 bucks- the later the better, so I could use it to go out busking the next night; except...

After I took $2.87 off of the plasma card, reducing the balance to $11.21, I learned that Wal-Mart only gives cash back in the amount of 20 dollars or higher. There was no button to hit to get 10 dollars back. This meant that I had to go out to the bus stop and hope the thing came within the next 12 minutes. It didn't.

Family Dollar, the only other nearby hope of getting cash back, closed in another 15 minutes. By the time I walked there, I would arrive less than 10 minutes before their scheduled closing, and I could already hear the lazy employees telling me that they had already shut down the register or see them closing 10 minutes early, like the one on Broad Avenue is infamous for doing.

And, I could imagine the bus going by as I stood there, still without cash.

It was hard not to get angry at Travis, who was incessantly texting me "Let me know when you're on the bus...let me know when you're on the trolley..." etc.

It was the confusion of having him at my place, talking non-stop that factored in to my having not read the fine print on the Octaplasma agreement and having waited one day too many to get the 25 dollars. It would almost serve him right if I wound up stranded in Gretna and had to walk to Howard's place to get bus fare, leaving him stranded outdoors, I thought.

But, I ultimately took responsibility for my plight. I hadn't read the fine print, and I had spent just about my last dime on a pack of cigarettes, and I could have hurried enough to have caught the 8:20 PM bus back to the Quarter, had I wanted to be on "the safe side." It was on me.

The #114 bus arrived at about 8:55 PM.

It was being driven by the same driver who had taken off on me a couple weeks prior. He had let two black people board, who had been waiting there with me, but then slammed the door in my face and drove off after I showed up, maybe 5 seconds later. Read The Bus Driver Story Here
I had thought about raising hell, e-mailing the RTA people, writing a letter to the editor of the local paper, giving it the racial slant that would surely get it printed here in NOLA (perhaps on the front page; nothing is a hotter issue here than racism). I had even thought of concocting some story about my "8 year old daughter" having gotten home from her after-school activities and waited for me to arrive on the bus to let her into the house, and her having been abducted after night had fallen and she was still sitting there on the front steps...crying...

But, even though I had told some of the other drivers the whole story and had even been encouraged by some of them to pursue the matter "You're not the first one he's done that to, he's gotten a lot of complaints," I just let it go.

He let me on with a 10 minutes expired pass; coming around full circle from his previous slight of me.

Travis could breath easier. He was waiting outside Sacred Heart Apartments.

All I had to do was get off on Canal Street and then get 10 dollars cash at CVS off the plasma card, while buying something inexpensive, and then I could get a 3 dollar pass and be back at the apartment within a half hour. Easy as pie, right?

With a balance of $11.21 on the thing, I grabbed a newspaper for one dollar. I wanted to read the write-ups about the weekend's football games.

I scanned the paper and slid my card. It spat out the receipt for the paper, but never offered me an option to get cash back.

"It didn't give me a chance to get cash back," I said to one of the cashiers.

"Those two don't do cash back," she said, pointing to those two machine, one of which I had used.

"Well, I was trying to get 10 bucks cash back; that's one of the reasons I'm buying the paper..Can you refund the dollar and let me ring it up again on one of the machines that gives cash back?" I asked.

"We can't refund papers, because they come through a vendor," said the cashier.

I had 10 dollars and 21 cents on the card. The cheapest thing in CVS was a 19 cent postcard.

After having been disappointed at the plasma place and then having been rescued by a bus driver who might have felt that he owed me, I was prepared to just walk for a half hour, back to the apartment, while Travis stewed on the stoop in front of the place, warding off skeezers every time he lit a cigarette.

But, since most of the cashiers in CVS have seen me several times before over the past 6 years, and I had never been a problem, they decided to refund the dollar for the newspaper to me in cash. I had told them about the plasma and the Wal-Mart cash back and the bus driver and..."OK, OK, here's your dollar!"

I looked at the postcard that I had chosen, in order to get 10 bucks. It was a picture of the park around Jackson Square, depicting a spot where I had slept at times, when I was homeless a few years ago.
"I used to sleep here sometimes, when I was homeless," I said to the cashier who had been nice enough to refund me the dollar. "I guess I should count my blessings and stop bitching about not getting the whole 25 bucks for my plasma," I added.

"Yup," she said with a smile.

"How soon we forget..."

I arrived at about 10 PM at the apartment. Travis had been waiting a whole 2 hours in front of the building. He was too tired to even talk incessantly, it seemed. He had given 900 milliliters of his blood plasma earlier in the day and felt "drained."

At the back door, I stopped to ring my keys to alert Harold the cat that I was home, and had Fancy Feast fresh from the Gretna Wal-Mart.

"Can you just let me in, and then come back out and get him, I mean, I'm really beat, I'm falling asleep standing here," said Travis, irritably; adding: "I mean, I'm not trying to be a dick," something he usually says when he's being a dick; completing a full circle from his "Dude, if you can help me out, you'll be saving my life...I'll hook you up big time!" of a week earlier.

So, there we were, inside the apartment. I had 10 dollars and a postcard to show for the day. I had used the paper refund money to ride the trolley back. I couldn't make Travis wait yet another half hour, that would be cruel.

I decided to pull myself up by the bootstraps, pack my stuff up and go out and busk; even though it was a Tuesday night, and it was approaching 11 PM.
"Are you going out to play?" Travis asked, seeing me zip up my guitar; as if he had hoped that I might sit there and listen to him talk instead.

"Well...yeah...He who doesn't work doesn't eat..." I said, in my best "I'd love to run totally out of money and then be at your beck and call for even a cigarette tomorrow," tone of voice.

I went out and played well and made 23 dollars in an hour and a quarter.

It was very satisfying. Lynda Depanais and her husband, Brian, stopped by at one point, with Lynda sitting on the stoop to my immediate right and listening for a minute before I looked up and recognized her.

She tipped me 10 bucks and said that she wanted me to play in front of her house. "I'm serious; I would like it if you would play in front of my house," she said.

I didn't know if she meant for me to go over there and do a few songs, or is she wanted me to remove myself from the Lilly Pad and migrate almost directly across the street from it, permanently.

I don't know how Lilly would take that.

While we were there, one of the waitresses from Lafitt's, named Kelly stopped by to talk to Lynda, who is her landlord.

Another waitress, Amy is in the habit of standing next to me when she takes her cigarette break. The first time she ever did that, she had sat on the stoop and listened for a while and then said. "Dude, you just totally relaxed me. I was so stressed out from the bar that I had to get out of there, and now I'm calm and ready to go back to work."

Amy is one of the reasons that I'm pushing myself to learn new material, since she hears me about every night. It's embarrassing to be playing one of the same dozen songs every time she shows up. She'll get sick of them soon if I don't expand my repertoire.

Kelly, I met the night that a couple from British Colombia were hanging out and listening to me for most of a night.

Kelly had invited them, along with me, to join her on her patio, which used to be Barnaby Chancellor's patio, before he moved out, to smoke weed and hang out.
There had been a skeezer there then, who was skeezing, and the couple were so friendly and not skeezer-wary enough that they had responded to his "I guess that means me, too" with "Sure, come along," after Kelly had asked: "Do you guy's want to come back to my patio and party a bit?"
There evolved a situation then, after the skeezer had become annoying, when it was like: "I thought you knew him..."

"No, I thought you knew him..."

"No, we know Daniel, we were listening to him play," to which Amy and Kelly had said, "Yeah, we know Daniel, but we thought he knew him..."
"No, he's the guy that grabbed my guitar and tried to smash it a few weeks ago; and I wound up fighting him. He's just pretending to not remember that," I had said, in disgust.
There was a moment when the guy from British Colombia and I looked at each other, both of us assessing our combined physical strength against that of the overweight, incredibly drunk, barefooted, tie dyed shirt wearing skeezer, were we to ask him to leave and he refuse.
We wound up with a drunken skeezer making comments about dogs farting, in between our discussion about how the molecules in the human body could have originated from stardust.

I had seen Kelly a couple times after that night. She seemed undecided in how to treat me. She had been with people whom she had met at the bar, whom she had decided to hang out with after work, and had always returned my "hey" in a friendly, yet reserved way.

But, when she had walked up last night and was speaking to Lynda in a landlord to tenant kind of way (Lynda dresses in high fashion and looks like a million bucks) Lynda then "introduced me to" Kelly: "This is our good friend, Daniel" to which Kelly gushed: "Oh, I know Daniel, I hang around with him all the time out here!" and shot me a look that said "Please don't deny it."

That was the most satisfying part of the evening. Now Kelly might be a little less reserved in greeting me at the Quartermaster when I run into her and whomever she is with.

It's just a fact of life that, even the skeezers on the block, seeing Lynda with all of her diamonds and pearls, stopping to give me a hug, are going to see me in a new light and respect me. If a skeezer is trying to grab my guitar, they might even come to my defense, thinking that they are helping a rich lady's friend, and that that is going to bode well for them, in general.

Lilly has the same effect on people. I think that these ladies enjoy exercising their power that way.
I played a few songs in front of Lynda and Brian's house, while they stayed over at the Lilly Pad, still talking to Kelly, until they went inside, and I called it a 23 dollar night.

I don't want to become a pawn in a chess match between Lilly and Lynda, and I'm hoping I can tell Lynda that the spot in front of her house just isn't good for me because of the cars that are always there blocking the sight of me from most angles, and that most tourists walk on the other side of the street.

When I got home at 1 AM, Travis was too zonked out on the couch to be stirred by the sounds of me making two humongous pancakes, using rice flour, whole wheat flour, ground flax, eggs, coconut oil and then topping them with real butter and blackberry preserves.

I weighed in at 138 pounds at the plasma place. This is up 8 pounds from 2 weeks prior.

The creatine and the little bit of working out and the pancakes with real butter and preserves seem to be working. If I gain 12 more pounds, I can become a 50 dollar donor, like Travis; but; by then I hope to be doing well enough as a busker to make that a mute point.

A Home For Travis

I thought about the time when I was new in town and had stopped where Tanya and Dorise were playing. It was a Sunday night; the night that they typically had an extra microphone plugged in and allowed people to sing karayoke style along with them.

I had sang a couple songs. They were Mariah Carey songs, of all things. It was then that I learned that Tanya was a huge Mariah Carey fan. Dorise had been very complimentary, saying that she could hear some "Prince" in my voice.

Later that night, I was walking by the casino, looking for a dry piece of cardboard. Howard was reclined on such a piece by the ferry terminal, under a little overhang, as it had begun to rain lightly.

"Daniel!" came the voice of Dorise from behind the wheel of a white SUV.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"I'm looking for a dry piece of cardboard," I said.

"Come on, hop in!" I felt like I was being adopted into the fraternity of New Orleans street musicians at that point, and that she had ridden around looking for me, to see if I needed a place to sleep on that rainy night.

Travis' new landlady (right)

I told her that my friend Howard was kind of expecting me over by the terminal and I didn't want to just disappear on him.

But, I remembered that, and the fact that Dorise is in the real estate business and buys and restores houses and rents them out, giving preferential treatment (i.e. lower rents) to musicians such as I was at the time.

In the following months, I demonstrated myself to be too much of an alcoholic street musician to be considered a reliable tenant and she never repeated any offers, outside of asking me once: "Can you come up with 350 a month?" to which I honestly told her that I couldn't do that reliably.

But, I told Travis about this friend that I had.

"Could you call her?" he asked.

I called Dorise the next day and then gave her number to Travis, who called her and is now set to move in to a place that he described as "really nice," at the end of the month.
"Thank you so much for hooking me up with Dorise," Travis said this afternoon after he had seen the place. Her offer of a place to rent had come full circle, in a sense.

The Pinkberry Spot

A Quick 8 Bucks

Last night, it was, once again almost 11 PM, before I went out to busk.

I had been at the Uxi Duxi until they closed at 8 PM, then found the Petco closed, 'cause it was Sunday, so went into Rouses Market next door to it and got Harold some food, and myself a dozen brown eggs, a gallon of water, and a pound of butter. I'm taking this weight gaining thing seriously.
I've been getting a creatine monohydrate drink from the GNC daily, to mix with my kratom shots. And, I've been working out with the chunk of concrete with a fence pole through it that I had found nearby the apartment and lugged inside, which probably weighs 58 pounds; if I had to guess...

I almost bought a pound of ground buffalo, but it was 11 bucks; and I remember thinking that it tasted "gamey," the last time I tried it.
I got back to the apartment and smoked a bowl with Travis, and then set up my microphone to capture myself just sitting on the couch and playing "informally." I was hoping to capture Travis talking over myself so that I could turn it into some kind of mix song later. He didn't disappoint.
He has the habit of talking about and artist all through the performance by that artist, whether it is on the radio or played live.
While I played a George Harrison song, he gave a talk about the Beatles post-Beatles stuff, stopping only when I was singing.
I decided, once on the trolley, to stay on until it got all the way to the casino and then set up in front of the Pinkberry place.

It is a louder spot, and one that I have played at before, usually when I was busking after 3 in the morning, since the casino never sleeps.
The harmonica was able to compete with the traffic noises and a good number of the people passing by threw me a buck, or some change.
One guy showed up; a "cheerleader," for lack of a better sniglett to describe his type, and profusely complemented my playing, stood nearby and applauded between songs; encouraged other tourists to tip; told me that he was going to check me out "every time I come here", and that he would tip me, but he was broke...
And, ultimately when seeing me packing up, produced a clock from somewhere, which he tried to sell me for a dollar. "This is worth 8 bucks, but I'm only trying to get a dollar for the bus," he said.
I probably should have bought the thing, which was about the size of an ashtray and had a black face with white hands. I had about 50 bucks, including the 8 dollars that I had made in about an hour. The clock would have made a good conversation piece, especially if the subject of guys that hang around and listen and wind up asking for money rather than tipping, came up.
It was probably worth 8 dollars.
"No, sorry, I didn't even make enough to get cigarettes," I told him. I had left only 3 dollars in my basket, putting the rest in my pocket, mostly so it wouldn't blow away on such a windy night as it was; so this was plausible. After I left, he sat down in the same spot to skeeze, I assume.

A Soul Skeezer

$18 Saturday Night

I supposed that I was "supposed" to be dejected and miserable for the rest of the night after I found out that I hadn't been hired by the Uxi Duxi.
I left, and Nathaniel, who was outside wiping the windows, said "Goodbye, Daniel," and it seemed that he was making a point of saying it, so that I would glean that we were all still friends, even though I hadn't been hired.
They probably hired their friends that they've been friends with longer than I, I thought.
I tried to decide if I should not even say anything, or if I should even stop going to the Uxi Duxi (and just buy ounces of kratom at the Herb Shop one block up the street and sit elsewhere to blog about it) as a form of protest, or if I should say "Goodnight, Nathaniel" in a tone of voice dripping with disappointment.
I said "Goodnight Nathaniel" in a voice with just a tinge of disappointment in it.
It is hard to separate business from friendship, and he certainly might have felt a bit sorry for me.
I was thinking that they didn't hire me because I'm 54 years old, and/or because my teeth are kind of messed up, with me holding on to my natural ones instead of getting a set of dentures that would be obvious because of the fact that they would be too perfect...
Then, I was immediately approached by a young black kid, who had come around the corner opposite the Uxi Duxi, as I was lighting up a cigarette.
I was ready to tell him: "I don't give away cigarettes."
But, he asked me if he could talk to me, by talking to me.
It was a variation of "Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"
I tried to tell him that, yes I did, and I was surrendering my will to the guidance of the Holy Spirit; I was fine and happy and wished him a good evening.
But, that wasn't good enough for him, he wanted me to start attending religious services at whatever church he was a member of.
I said "I know the bible say's 'Do not forsake the gathering' with fellow Christians, but..."
He said that it was good that I knew (at least that much, I guess of) the bible, and then cited the verse about steel sharpening steel, as he walked step for step with me.
This was a test of something for me, I thought.
He had probably targeted me because I had just stepped out of the satanic looking, perhaps, Uxi Duxi, and had further cried out to him by lighting up a cigarette.
I told him that I believed that God found people wherever they were and that people don't need to go to some building; and that I didn't want to have my ego become entangled with his in a relationship where he would have been responsible for me coming into the fold and he would get credit for it, and that I feared that if I didn't show up one Sunday, the rest of the flock might call me to see if everything is OK and I hadn't fallen out of grace, etc.
And I told him that, the last time I went to a church (2009, Saint Augustine, FL) a guy sitting at the entrance told me to take off my hat.
And, I just didn't want to argue with the kid.
He asked me if he could pray for me. I said he could.
He then grabbed my hand and began to pray. After about a minute, during which he asked God to "purify" me with a quick glance to the cigarette in my hand, and to keep me from certain evils, with a glance towards the kratom bar, and then wrapped his prayer up after I had tried to get my hand back from him the third time.
The whole encounter had me feeling the same way I do when skeezers try to skeeze me.
And, I guess he was a soul skeezer, basically.
I went away mumbling, and wishing that I had been extremely kind to him, rather than on the verge of chewing him out: "Look, you're harassing me, just like a bum wanting a dollar or a cigarette!" and trying not to think too hard about whether or not I was wrong in not gathering with a group of Christians every Sunday at some church that the young guy would get credit for having brought me to, and I wound up praying for him, in the privacy of my head and without holding his hand.
A minute later, I found a ten dollar bill laying on the sidewalk. There was a bit of a breeze blowing from the direction of the bank, which I noted with mild amusement.
Then, when I got back to the apartment, Travis offered me 100 dollars if I would allow his pile of stuff to remain in my place for a couple weeks after he moved out.
I thought about the issue of the day, namely, that Nathaniel had been trying to separate business from friendship and seemed to hope that I didn't feel bad for not being hired.
I had a similar conundrum. If I accepted the hundred dollars, it would kind of imply that I didn't see him as the kind of "buddy" to whom I would say: "I'm not going to charge you to keep your stuff here, buddy."
I ultimately told him that I couldn't accept that much money from him. I knew him well enough to know how much he makes working for Amazon, and how taxing it would be to him to have to cough up that amount.
I told him that I would keep his stuff for free, but that he could tip me, if he liked my performance in doing so...

Less than a quarter mile away...the Chickie Wah Wah club

Then, I went out and busked, after smoking a bowl of weed with Travis.
I made 18 bucks in a little over an hour. Then, as the weed was wearing off, so was my enthusiasm, which had always been my major complaint about marijuana as it relates to busking.

Now, I am off to download music by the artists who are scheduled to appear at the Chickie Wah Wah club, right down the street from my apartment.
The place is known for its excellent sound system and everyone who plays there is well known in one circle or another.
The guy who played guitar for Jackson Browne is a good example.
But, still, it would be cool if I could play there on a Monday or Tuesday, or something, and if they liked me and began to call me on nights when Jackson Browne's guitarist's gets a flat tire on the way there and is running a couple hours late, type of thing...

Travis, Day Whichever

• $22/Hr. Friday Night
• They Didn't Hire Me, Feeling (see below)

Travis has been staying with me for maybe a week now; things are going much more smoothly this time, due to a combination of myself being conscious of, and accepting his shortcomings, while at the same time admitting my own.

He came in with a blaze of promises "Dude, if you can help me out, I'll be so grateful and I'll SO hook you up!" which is what he had said the first and second times that I have had encounters with him as a roommate.

What had happened the other times was that his inherently frugal inclinations pecked away at his good intentions like crows to a loaf of bread, making him become more chintzy as time rolled along, until, towards the end he, for example, wanted to subtract the hamburger that he had bought me for lunch at Burger King from the 20 bucks that he had promised me for letting him store his stuff at my place until he had relocated.

So, rather than hold that against him and refuse to help him this time, I made sure that I cashed in on his initial grandiose offering of "Dude, I'll give you 80 bucks!" by responding with: "How about you give me 20 in cash and then buy me 50 bucks worth of food off your food stamp card?" and then following through on it by using some of the issues that I know he has, to my advantage.

I feigned to be totally broke the afternoon that he moved in, so that he handed me the 20 dollars right away (really not until we had walked halfway to the Family Dollar where I was going to spend some of it, as if he wanted to hold it just a few minutes longer before parting with it).

I was pretty sure that he was being kicked out of the place where he was living because of the way that he can become annoying to someone who hasn't figured out a way to make these annoyances work in their favor.

There are a lot of good things about Travis, but they were throwing the baby out with the bath water. They are young and the kicked him out behind the excuse that, at 35, he is "old."

He will talk non-stop for up to 3 hours, presenting his talk as kind of a lecture, even interjecting things like: "I'm going to touch on that subject in a moment, but first, it's important to lay the groundwork for that discussion by...." etc.

But one must avoid pulling the triggers to these discussions by voicing certain keywords. If you were to mention Kurt Vonnegut, the writer, for example, then you could sit back and enjoy the hour long story about the time that Travis met the guy, even if you have already spent one or two hours hearing it once of twice, already. He might even preface something with: "I think I may have already told you this, but..." before telling you it.

The first day that he moved in, I had stuck a piece of paper to the refrigerator upon which was written:

Rules
#1. Don't hijack my life
#2. Don't make everything all about your self
#3. Don't use the same knife for the peanut butter that you used for the jelly

This was intended to be humorous, in general, but, after I had gone out to throw a bag of trash in the dumpster, I returned to find him pacing back and forth by the kitchen, as if he had read it and was chewing upon it.

I realized that it was almost an accusation of him having done these things in the past, and felt bad about it.

With him being in a situation where he had a choice between sleeping outdoors or my apartment (on such short notice; since they had summarily kicked him out "out of the blue") I kind of had him over a barrel and immediately felt bad about using this to gain leverage over him. But, I remembered having probably written something like: "Never again," would I take him in, after the past experiences.

He gives the impression that he wants a companion, just as much as a room to rent. This drove me crazy the first time he stayed with me. When I left to go to the dollar store, for example, he said: "Wait, let me throw my sneakers on and come with you, because I want to get a few things..." This had the immediate effect of slowing me down. I was going to hop on my bike and make the whole trip in about a half hour. He was on foot, so I wound up riding along next to him at walking speed. Along the way, he did all the talking about what he was thinking about buying and why. "I'll probably get the 20-pack of batteries because it's only a few bucks more, and I'm going to eventually need them....The only thing is, that would make my backpack heavier, and plus I want to get a gallon of water, 'cause why get the one liter bottle when for like 30 cents more I can get a gallon...plus, shit, that's right, I need cat litter, which will add like another 5 pounds...I'll definitely need to get a bus pass because I'm not going to carry all that all the way to the library and back....unless...I could hold off on the kitty litter and just bring Beast outside so she can do her business, but I also don't want her to run off, I don't know how she might react to a different environment....Or, ...we could walk back to the apartment and I could drop off the heavy stuff, and, by then my money will in, so we could hit the ATM and I'll be able to give you the 20 bucks, and get a bus pass and then we could take the trolley up to the Rouses to get groceries; but, wait...what time does Rouses close?"

"Travis, all I wanted to do was hop on my bike and run to the store for an energy drink and some cat food; I didn't think it was that complicated...just figure out what you need to do and then handle your business!"

"No, I wasn't asking you to solve my problems, I just thought that we...I guess I'm just thinking out loud..."

#1. Don't hijack my life

He defaults to the word "we" as a natural progression.

I can understand now, that he is just more comfortable working as a team with someone else; but it sometimes feels like he wants someone to hold his hand and walk him across the street, type of thing.
And I can understand how hard it must be for him to find someone that will be that other person, without being repelled by his incessant thinking out loud.

So, I really do feel like I have a certain responsibility, as someone who is conscientious enough to have figured out a way to not be driven crazy by him. I'm one of his only hopes of having someone to hang out with, I believe.

I also feel a kind of responsibility to be a guardian of his innocence (naivety, if you will) because I realize that he is going to have a rough go of it, and be misunderstood by 99% of the world.

So, we had a talk that night, when I admitted to him that I had a tendency to fall into thinking out loud myself. In my case it's the reason that I tend to be a loner, because other people wind up saying: "I don't know; you'll have to figure it out yourself and do what's best for yourself."

We both agreed to try to be more vigilant of this and to cut way down upon it.

I changed the sheet of paper on the refrigerator to one that read:

Rules:
#1. Realize that "I" am not talking to "you;" It's all Him.
#2. No shaming or judgemental language
#3. Don't drink out of the orange bucket by the refrigerator

It can be a good idea to think out loud because the other person might be able to help you out, like: "The library closes early tomorrow, so you might want to go there first."

"Oh, I'm glad you told me that; I would have been screwed if I didn't get those copies made!" type of thing.

But, if you're thinking about Kurt Vonnegut, stay mum around Travis.
So, I grabbed the 20 dollars and we were soon on our way to the Wal-Mart on Broad Avenue where Travis bought me the "50 dollars worth of food."

It actually amounted to $75.03. I had been just grabbing stuff and throwing it into the cart*, thinking that, at the register, I would monitor the subtotal while re-arranging things so that the least necessary items would be towards the rear. I had expected to throw some stuff back when the total hit 50 bucks (the chicken livers? the box of Raisin Bran?) but Travis said: "Dude, you're saving my life by letting me stay at your place, I want to hook you up, don't worry about it..."

"Wow, thanks, man. You can always eat some of my food too, like if I make a huge stack of pancakes you're welcome to some; type of thing..."

"No worries..."

*That he didn't grab his own separate cart is a good example "we" thing that he defaults to.

So, there we were, waiting for the #94 Broad Ave bus, with my backpack stuffed and our hands full of as many bags of food as we could carry. There was a black man standing nearby, who kept shooting us glances with a most hateful look on his face. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other and I thought for sure that he was thinking about trying to snatch the backpack and run off with it; probably lamenting the fact that one of us could remain there to watch the remaining food while the other, unburdened by a 40 pound pack full of food would easily be able to catch him.
He most certainly got food stamps himself and had probably sold his $194 worth of food for a hundred dollars in cash which was now just crack smoke in the atmosphere.

It was kind of a Norman Rockwell slice of Americana; the black man leering at the white guys with their huge load of food, his heart blackened with hatred; feeling that it just wasn't right, wasn't fair -that he sold his food stamps for crack money because this world which was created by whites, for whites, had beaten him down to the point where the only solace he could see was in the crack pipe; and here they were, gloating and taunting him; just daring him to grab a package of ground beef or something; with all that food they had; ain't no way they can eat all that, anyways..shit!

Having my cabinets stuffed with food for the first time in the 2 and a half years that I've been living there was actually amazing. I had to take a few deep breaths and calm down before trying to come up with an idea for what I might have for dinner that night. The Raisin Bran would be the quickest, but, if I was patient, I could have whole wheat and rice and flax flour pancakes, fried in coconut oil, with maple syrup poured over them, and a cup of coffee.

"I'm learning to think about food differently, now that I'm not buying it one meal at a time," I said to Travis.

"Yeah, when I lived in New York, there was this little market near my apartment and..."

[15 minutes later]
"Yeah, you've already told me that story..."

Friday night, I went out to busk, being down to about 2 dollars in cash, but having cabinets full of food.

It had been a great day.

I did a double shot of kratom, then hit the Petco pet store, where I splurged on Harold with some gourmet cat food.

Then, feeling that I had a 50% chance of getting a job at the Uxi Duxi, joined Travis in smoking a bowl of weed (no drug test for the kava kava bar job) and then went out an played the hell out of a few songs and made around the 20 bucks per hour that I had become accustomed to.
This just in:
The Uxi Duxi has hired 2 people, none of which were myself, and now I'm feeling like the black guy that was staring at Travis and I and our bags of food probably was.
I guess I'm glad that I wrote most of this post while I was still feeling upbeat and optimistic...
I don't know how I'm going to handle this news. I don't think I'll ever apply for another job as long as I live...
I'm going to smoke weed and go out and busk on this (Saturday) night.

I Apply For A Job

It's something I haven't done since 2008.
In 2008, I had put in 11 applications around the Mandarin section of Jacksonville, Fl.
2 of the called me, and I interviewed with one guy who told me at the end of it: "Well, the guy who does the hiring won't be here 'til Friday..."
And that was the end of my search for a real job, my hopes of ever getting a paycheck having been snuffed out like a candle.
I had ridden up on a bicycle with a backpack on; and the business operators had probably seen me around Mandarin; even seen me busking...
One smart ass Indian store owner asked me; "Why don't you get a job?"
To which I told him that I could work there.
"No, we know you as a homeless guy; we couldn't hire you," he said.
His reasoning was that, if money came up missing, there would be no home to send the police to, or something....
I have applied to work at the Uxi Duxi kratom bar and only time will tell now....

Hatred

Hateful Comment Retracted

My Charlottesville Home

I have gone back to yesterday's post and edited out the comment that I made about running down the queers on Bourbon Street with a vehicle. In this day and age, that is not something that should be "joked" about.

The comment provoked a comment from Alex of California, who has probably, at last, stopped reading this blog.
The gist of his comment was, ironically: Daniel is full of hatred, so fuck him, I'm full of hatred for him."

Well, here it is:

He has also expressed how delightful it would be to take a car and plow though the crowd of gay people who are in New Orleans right now. I keep forgetting how hate-filled he is underneath, and I'm sure if he voted, he'd have voted for Trump, and probably thinks the Charlottesville murder was hilarious.
Seriously, fuck that skeezer.-Alex In California

I can only take the high road in saying that, anyone (sight unseen) being murdered is a tragedy, but...

I lived in Charlottesville for a couple of years. I blogged about the dwelling that I constructed on what I believed at the time was city property.
It was on a hill overlooking the reservoir, and I assumed that the land would never be developed and I would have a covert (and free) home for years to come.
The blog post, I placed in its proper chronology of 2001, where more details are.
One of the most noticeable things about Charlottesville in 2001 was the fact that a huge proportion of young white girls had black boyfriends.
I worked in a gas station overnight, and when the clubs let out at about 1 AM, I would see car after car pulling into the station for gas and whatever, with the majority of them being driven by white girls (who owned the cars and had licenses) with the stereo pumping out rap music and a young black guy in the passenger seat; bobbing his head to the music and telling her not to forget the Philly Blunt or whatever, as she stepped out to pump the gas, pay for it; and grab a pack of Newports and a Philly Blunt, very often.
The girls were not all of the typical "heavyset and homely" variety commonly seen to migrate away from their own race, who disparage them as being unattractive, and go to the blacks, who apparently just want white girls for the "optics" of it, and aren't very critical of their looks

A self-described "good looking heavyset woman."

But, it seemed to be a fad in Charlottesville, Virginia (like the hula hoop, the yo-yo or a certain kind of hairstyle) for a high proportion of the young white girls to find a black boyfriend, any black boy, like most of their friends had.
Selective Breeding
Some of these white girls were stunningly beautiful. I suspect that the same kind of selective breeding that the Virginians used to produce the biggest and strongest slaves (by forcing the strongest men to mate with the strongest women) was also practiced upon white women in some capacity; because nowhere else I've ever lived have I seen such pretty faces attached to such perfectly shaped bodies, as in Charlottesville, Va.
And, some such specimens would show up at my gas station booth window requesting a pack of Newport cigarettes and a Philly blunt cigar and maybe the rest of a 20 dollar bill on pump number 6, and I would therefore already know what I would see if I looked to the passenger seat of the car that the young beauty was driving. And it would often be a pretty expensive car.
I evolved a theory that the white men there, in that sequestered neck of the Virginia woods treated their women pretty poorly.
When I worked at the Wendy's right next door to the gas station that hired me after Wendy's fired me; my manager was a woman named Dixie, who was right around my age of 35.
Dixie had the lowest self esteem of any woman that I had ever met to that point in my life.

A Salad And A Job
I met her the same night that I arrived in Charlottesville. 

I had stopped for a salad and had mentioned out loud that the store was "just like the one that I worked at in Jacksonville."
"Really, what can you do?" asked Dixie.
"I can run the grill, I can make fries, I know how to close..."
"I have an extra uniform, do you want to clock in? We can do all the paperwork later," Dixie had said.
So, I finished my salad and began working at the Wendy's, 10 minutes after arriving in Charlottesville. It's really surreal being in a brand new city. Every time the person on the radio which was playing near the sink where I was washing dishes, whose voice was unfamiliar to me, would say something like: "Charlottesville weather, mild tonight with light breezes" It would be like: How did I get here?
In the course of covering all of my training, Dixie kept harping upon how inept she was; at everything. "You can probably do this a lot better than me; I'm terrible," she had said about the tomato slicing machine. She was terrible with math, couldn't do a very good job of, say, tearing open a bag of french fries and loading them into a fry basket, nor much of anything else..

In her own esteem, that was.

I came to the conclusion that Dixie had somehow had the belief instilled in her that men could do everything better than women.
I should have asked her out on a date, in retrospect, because that is a very attractive trait to me to go with her Shirley (of "Laverne and Shirley" fame) looks; but that is water under the bridge.
Dixie and I were the only white people on a typical crew of about 12 people.
I witnessed the young black workers doing things like the young men coming up behind the females and humping upon them in plain view of any other crew members; being lazy, as in, if a bus full of people pulled into the parking lot and they ordered say, 32 hamburgers, 32 fries and 32 cokes, but no frosties, the guy who had been assigned to the frosty machine would lean there against it, lending no help to the others, as they scrambled to complete the order; and stuffing 10 pound boxes of frozen ground beef along with bags of frozen fries into their duffel bags (that they probably brought to work for that purpose) at the end of a given shift.

3 or 4 of them were receiving rides to work from another manager, a white guy named George, who lived in the same town of Waynesboro, about 40 miles to the west of Charlottesville as they did, and was nice enough to have been giving them an opportunity to work by providing them with transportation.
George probably lost some sleep wondering why his inventory kept coming up short; putting his job in jeopardy, while never knowing that he was transporting about 50 dollars worth of stolen food right along with his lazy workers on his trip home every night.
The young black workers would say things like: "White boys can't smoke Newports; their lungs aren't strong enough," while we sat in the break room. And, when I had gotten some poison ivy on my arms while clearing the spot where I was to build my covert dwelling by the reservoir; some of them voiced concerns about catching the "poison ivory" from me.
I was fired by one of the black managers over something trivial; but it was probably because of the poison ivory scare that I had thrown into the black crew.
The gas station right next door to the Wendy's, where I often went after work hired me right away after I had told them what had happened at Wendy's
Ironically, it was managed by a black guy.
But it was a black guy who had come directly from The Ghana (formerly the "Ivory" Coast).
His name was Modou, and he hated "niggers."
"These niggers here in this country; they are all teeves (thieves) every one of them. I tried to hire some of them and all they did was steal. They think that everything is owned by the white man and it's OK to steal; and that's not right!" said Modou.
So, once again, in life, the color of my skin helped get me a job -go figure...
Modou and I got along just fine; he spoke impeccable English, learned in school from a young age from British (I assume) instructors.
This is where I met a woman whom I did date.
She was of similar mind to Dixie.
Her name was Xanna and she had been abused and belittled by her father since she was born as the less preferable, to him, of the sexes.
"He kept calling me the runt of the litter, and he would beat me and throw me down the stairs." Xanna had lost the vision in one of her eyes as a result of one of those beatings early in her life.
But, Xanna was about my age also, and dated only white men; and only ones who wound up beating her. I guess she wanted to marry a man like mother did...
And so, before I fall too far off the chase...

There was another whole set of people in Charlottesville.
They were the mustache wearing men who were huge NASCAR fans. One of them owned a bar called The Winner's Circle.
You would never see a black man at that bar; just white men; every one of them sporting a mustache, just like Dale Earnhart and Rusty Wallace and Richard Petty. All lined up at the bar.
Their offspring would gather in the parking lot almost nightly. Every one of them driving a Ford Mustang.
They had their own corner of the parking lot, from where they kept a leery eye on the spectacle of white girls pulling in to gas up with black men in their passenger seats.
They would each come to the window and each buy a variation on a pack of Marlboro's and a Coke-a-Cola. They would hang out and enjoy their Mustangs, and their perfectly beautiful girlfriends. I think the most beautiful girl I've ever seen was with a rather ordinary looking guy with a mustache, who, after a while wouldn't even have to say "and a pack of Marlboro's," as he placed his bottle of Coke (and a diet one for the lady) on the little shelf; I would have had them ready upon seeing his Mustang pull in.
"You don't mind us hanging out in the parking lot, do you?" he asked one night.
"Oh, hell no. I actually feel safer with you guys there," I had said, giving a quick nod of my head in the direction of the nearest car with a white girl behind the wheel and a black kid in the passenger seat, rolling a blunt.
We became kindred spirits then.
How low must be the self esteem of that beautiful girl, to have considered a Mustang and a mustache as being enough for her, I couldn't help thinking. He was just a regular looking guy.
So, fast forward to 2017, and some guy plows into a crowd of "black lives matter" protesters, killing a white girl who is among them.

Isn't it ironic that the first president that America has ever had who was not a politician, turns out to be the best politician of them all?

"You want to fuck niggers, well, this is what you get!" was all I could imagine the guy yelling from behind the wheel as he punched the gas. (I can't Google right now, but I'll bet he was driving a Ford, like Greg Biffle).
And, no. I don't think it hilarious, just sad.
The whole thing, that is, dating back to the 1800's. Sad.
And, yes, I would have voted for Trump.
That's just the flavor of Kool Aid I chose, but it's all Kool Aid, being ladled out by someone or other...
I am starting to think that the election really was rigged, because only Jay the loud singer and I would have, it seems, voted for the guy.
I wish people would look at results. The stock market hitting record highs, the fact that he was here, pronto, promising the 108 billion dollars to rebuild flood ravaged areas, while it took president Bush 17 days to come here after Katrina, and when he did, his speech from Jackson Square had to be broadcast using generators because the power was still out, almost 3 weeks later; and would dismiss his tweets.
Isn't it ironic that the first president that America has ever had who was not a politician, turns out to be the best politician of them all?
And, to be honest, I look at life kind of like a movie. If you bought a ticket to see a movie and nothing had really happened a half hour into it, you would either fall asleep or go to get a refund.
This (presidency) is very entertaining, in that regard, at least.
I have no trouble with the "us" vs. "them" thing, because I'm one of "us," I believe.
I do fear that Trump might rally the army overseas somewhere and convince them that they need to come over here and put things to right (beginning with seizing all the guns and knives) but that is my imagination running wild again...

But, back to the post...
One of the drawbacks of kratom that I noticed shortly after having started taking it, was a certain feeling of "alienation" from my fellow man, that crept into my psyche.
One of the fruits of my victory over alcoholism (which I didn't realize until about the 9th month "dry", when I had become convinced that sobriety had reached a plateau and had no room for improving my life further) was when I began to let go of the fear of not having the means to feed my addiction and its companion stress, when busking and not making a dime.
I reached the point where I sat down to play and became immersed in it, and truly, didn't pay attention to the tip jar.
I played for reasons such as: "This person walking past might not have any money, but maybe could use some uplifting by hearing a joyful song, sung by someone who was genuinely feeling it."
And, lo and behold, tips were finding their way into my jar.
After a week or so using kratom, I discovered that it focused me in, the way I assumed ritalin was intended to do for kids with "attention deficit disorder," and that I was able to play more precisely and overcome technical obstacles by doing things such as envisioning the bones in my fingers and wrist and arms as being the levers of a machine, and then being able to figure out a way to better employ them in cranking out fast and accurate music.

It reminded me of the way Tanya Huang, the violinist plays, and made me even wonder if it is something in the soil of Taiwan, where kratom comes from, that gives Asians that proclivity for working hard for long hours, like robots (a stereo-type, I know).
But, along with that, I had experiences such as one night, when I was playing a song and hitting every note, and a couple of ladies came by, with one of them commenting in a pleasant nature about my "tiposaurus."
"The tiposaurs rarely bites," reads the sign next to the tip jar which is "guarded" by a little plastic replica of a dinosaur.
In the past, I had always maintained a sense of humor and would have said something like "It hasn't bitten since December 9th, 2009," or something, which might have gotten them to smile or a laugh, and that might have broken the ice; they might have sat down on the stoop to converse further with me; and that was where the $175 tips have stemmed from.

I remember looking at the lady kind of coldly and only mumbling something, while thinking: "It's obviously just a plastic replica, and can't bite you..." I couldn't think of anything humorous.
This was so out of character for me that I decided that that might indeed be the downside of the kratom. I had no warm and fuzzy feelings for people; but I could think and react more quickly.
Kratom's main "use" is to help people kick opioid addiction.
Since I had no such addiction, I became, I suppose, like people who take pain pills, but aren't in pain. It gives them a high which feels like it isn't going to go away any time soon.
And, yeah, feelings of not being connected "cosmically" to mankind, nor being able to imagine what it might be like to see the world through someone else's eyes intensified into anger and/or hatred at times; when coming down off the stuff, I guess.

I stopped to talk to Jay the really loud singer (who makes no secret of the fact that he uses crystal meth to boost him, so he can play for long stretches of time; to make enough to pay for the crystal meth, so that he can play for long hours, to make enough to pay for more meth...etc.).
Jay has often suggested that I try the stuff too, telling me that it would definitely make me play for a lot longer than the 2 and a half hours that I average. Like all night until the sun comes up and and maybe all day the next day, and then why not all the next night, since it would be dark again and tourists would be out again....
Jay usually breaks 100 dollars each night, and is the type who will whip out a wad of 3 or 4 hundred bucks in order to brag about it, on occasion.
Johnny B., who was on methodone, and professed a hatred of everyone whom he saw in his daily walk, would also pull out his money and count it in front of everyone on the trolley for example. And then get off the thing and walk through the dark, pulling his expensive equipment behind him in a little cart to his apartment, which he hated the location of because it was in a heroin neighborhood, and that put temptation in his way. I don't think he owned a gun, because he would have shown it off
at every opportunity if he did.
So far, all of the meth heads or methadone addicts that I have met liked to show off thier money; but I digress.
I always basically saw Jay as being a very cranky and angry musician who played in a very utilitarian way, without much "feeling." He just put in the hours, playing the same six (and now nine) songs repetitively.

I always assumed that he and Johnny B. were pissed off at some level because of the monkeys on thier backs, even though they would seem happy as larks and in the mood to play all night a lot of times when I saw them.
Jay is the textbook redneck. He openly hates "these foreigners," and "these niggers," and, more recently "these faggots," who don't tip. He will often use his microphone to insult people, when he's not getting tipped.
Jay is a pretty large and imposing guy, and so he can get away with that, sending things echoing down Royal Street like: "My wife is so fat she can hardly get in the Mazda," if a guy happens to be assisting his wife in doing just that nearby, or maybe adding: "We're gonna go home and eat some refried beans and rice and then some ice cream..." if they happen to be Latino and overweight.
He was very excited about the prospect of a Trump presidency, in the months leading up to the election, asserting that "things are gonna get a whole lot better once he gets in.."
So, I found a sympathetic ear when I arrived and complained that the Southern Decadence people just didn't tip, period.
He smiled when I mentioned running them all over.
I was kind of surprised, though, by the reaction of Tim, my caseworker (whose job it is to see that I am happy and well adjusted and that the "permanent assisted housing" program that I am a beneficiary of, is working) when I told him about the same thoughts.
"Oh, I'm not into that at all," he said dismissively.
I felt kind of ashamed upon waking up the next day.
There is enough of that kind of talk uttered at Sacred Heart apartments, usually by drunken and, presumably mentally ill residents, when they are pissed off at the world.
Part of Tim's job is to assess the "risk" of me just up and leaving my place to become homeless by choice, again.

I do worry that kratom is making me more cranky and hateful; I'll have to monitor that, and maybe alternate between it, and kava or CBD dabs, which are more mellowing.
Sunday, September 3rd, 2017
It is Sunday night, and I have, for the first time, taken a whole weekend off from busking. It was just too trying of my soul, and I kind of lost my cool and became angry and bitter.
Who knows what goes through the mind of a tourist who walks the length of Royal Street during the day and then Bourbon Street at night and never throws a dollar to any of "the jugglers and the clowns" who all do tricks for them.
But there is a definite mob mentality at work. When the tips rain, they pour and when they don't, they don't.
I might be wrongly assuming that every tourist knows darned well that I have to live off whatever tips I make; and that they are, knowingly starving me to death.
It calls to mind the infamous New Yorkers who would walk past a guy who is bleeding to death on the sidewalk, never stopping to help, or even bothering to phone 911?
That is the deep, underlying and unsettling crux of the matter.
Even when the occasional one says something like: "I wish I had some money, I would throw you a couple bucks," that goes a long way and is so much better than the "total ignoring" thing.

It is now Monday night; less than 3 hours before my food card will be charged with 137 bucks.
Lilly called me as I was walking back from the plasma donation place this afternoon. Walking because I had miscalculated the number of donations that I have made in the past 7 days, having been befuddled by the changing of the month and having flipped the leaf of my calendar over.
I was headed towards Howard's residence to borrow the 80 cents that I was short on a bus fare. A 5 mile walk through the heat, rather than ask any stranger for money. If Howard wasn't home or something, I was prepared to walk another 3 miles, over the bridge and up Canal Street to my apartment, where I would check the couch cushions for change and then try to get back the next day to sell plasma. With the food card having money put on it at midnight, I also considered offering to buy someone a 2 dollar item in exchange for the buck I would need to ride the bus.

Lilly asked me where I was. After I explained that I was in the middle of a 5 mile walk through Gretna, I could hear a concern in her voice and thought that she was about to offer to come pick me up in her Navigator, but I quelled this by telling her that I was almost to Howard's house.
She told me that most of the gay guys at the Southern Decadence festival were in town trying to make money "not to tip anybody else." I had thought about that, but Lilly articulated it very well. There were the 1% of millionaire gay guys, whose old, fat, flatulant bodies wouldn't attract a young gay stud, but their millions do. And there are the 99% who are there to dance and entertain and do whatever else. It's almost like a big convention of young gay prostitutes in a sense, the way Lilly explained it, and she would know, because she has lived in New Orleans since she was 6 years old, and is in the know, just in general. As Bruce Springsteen sings: "We take care of our own."
So, that explained being overlooked by 99% of the crowd at the festival. I feel better now. But, as Mae West said: "It's better to be looked over than overlooked."
I told Lilly that I had thought about busking in a thong with my body painted pink.
"No, don't do that," she said firmly. Not after all the nice things that she had to say about me to get the committe to approve me as the official neighborhood busker.
I bought an ounce of kratom to get me through the 2 days that they are closing the Uxi Duxi for renovations.
I'm sitting outside Harrah's Casino, using their wi-fi with a tight grip on this laptop, because of the high concentration of "casino skeezers" around.
More Job Talk From Me
The manager of the Uxi Duxi, Nathaniel, is openly gay, and I have gotten to like him very much for the intelligent conversation that he is capable of holding, and his sense of humor. And, he treats me very well.
I am usually twice as old as everyone else in the bar.
This is actually the first time that I have been in the society of people half my age since I was in Saint Augustine, Florida in 2009, at the age of 47, and 19 year old Brittany was my girlfriend. Until she found out that I was 47, that is...
But, in the meantime, I was hanging out and partying, surrounded by teenagers, with the fact that I was a musician being the common denominator.
Then Karrie came along, 10 years my junior, and from yet another totally different culture.
But, having ingratiated myself with the millenials, who frequent the kratom bar has been rejuvenating.
More Job Talk
I am about to ask Nathaniel about the possibilty of my getting a job there.
If it would require getting a haircut and some nicer clothes, and boning up upon kratom and kava and coca leaf and CBD dabs and herbs and mushrooms and divination and Kabalah and witchcraft and insence and sitar music; then I would be willing to go that extra mile.
Whatever they pay is supplemented by a big fish bowl of a tip jar which, I have noticed, can fetch what looks like 35 to 40 bucks by the end of a shift.
Nathaniel would be brutally honest with me, I have little doubt, in pointing out whatever might have kept him from offering me a job already. (maybe he reads this blog -d'oh!)
They are open 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, and that many hours must be hard to fill.
One of them seems to always be taking time off to travel the world. Michelle recently returned from a trip to northern Italy and southern Switzerland, where she met some of her relatives, whom I guess she found using the Internet; Satori has just left for a vacation in California, and that seems to leave only Kia, Michelle and Nathaniel himself to run the place.
It is a good sign of the lucrativeness of the place that the employees can afford to take off for weeks at a time to travel the world.

Satori was a busker and a living statue in the French Quarter before, I guess, becoming frustrated with the diminishing wages "I used to be able to count on at least a hundred bucks a day, but then there just started to be too much bullshit involved..." he said.
"I can imagine," I rejoined.

To say that it would be a dream job for me would be pretty accurate. It would be magical on the order of how I discovered kratom in the first place.

Danny Kratom Seed?

Kratom plants; $50 a pop on E-Bay

I am thinking about changing the theme of this blog...
Virtual Cobwebs
Street Musician Daniel has garnered me just about 40 readers* who, ostensibly, check in at least once per month. After 11 years of running the thing.
Or, more likely, this blog was added to "reading lists" of some sort that are culled from the Web, by robot-like aggregators; and may, or may not, be actually read by the 40 people who show up in my statistics.
My 15 "followers," too, are people who, at one point decided to follow this thing.
They may have lost interest (long ago?) but never bothered to "un" follow it (or thought that it might hurt my feelings and leave me feeling cyber-jilted). There could be e-mail notifications piling up in inboxes with virtual cobwebs all over them.
Like Father McKenzie (writing the words of a sermon that nobody hears; no one comes near) I may be.
Because if people read this and actually value it, it would be easy for them to leave a comment once in a while, or "share" a post, or something.
The last time someone sent me a nice comment saying "I always love reading your stories," it was after I had written something as a homeless person, who lived under a wharf, probably about 5 years ago. (It was the story about when a skeezer was sleeping near "my" spot and I balled up pieces of bread and threw them all about his body and my little rat friends then scared him off by surrounding him....yeah, that story).
I can understand how a person who lives in a house might enjoy seeing life from the perspective of a (somewhat articulate) homeless guy; and was not too surprised that that story had amused that particular person enough that she had sent me that comment.
I can't explain my apparent popularity in France, though...

But, I am thinking of changing the theme of the blog to be about kratom.
It seems to be a niche with a lot more potential upside than a blog about a street musician, who is not busking for his survival...anymore.

The Uxi Duxi "kava kava bar" that I discovered about 2 months ago, shortly after having discovered the mitragyna specioso leaf which is kratom (pronounced to rhyme with atom, or ate 'em, interchangeably, it seems) has gone from a place where the guy working behind the bar was shaking his head one day, lamenting that he hadn't done enough business "to even pay me" to, well, let me see if I can get a photo of the place without enraging anybody who might feel that their privacy is being violated by having their photo taken by the weird guy in the corner with his laptop...
Open To Suggestions
OK, I didn't want to point my camera right at anyone because that would be rude, but, take my word for it that the Uxi Duxi is doing a bustling business now, enough to pay the girl behind the bar...
So, I might make this blog all about kratom.
That is a much more specialized area than busking, which almost everyone is aware goes on.
I might even be able to get in on the ground floor and become THE website for all things kratom related...if I treat the blog like a full time job.
That is one of the problems that plagues this Street Musician Daniel blog -the fact that I busk about 8% of the time and so the blog becomes about the other 92% of my life.
It is just a thought...
Maybe if anyone out there truly enjoys reading this blog the way it has been for the past 11 years they could drop me a comment, so that I can hack their e-mail passwords, I mean, because I'm open to suggestions....
Kratomheads Unite
I think about the things that interest me, or don't, in other people's blogs and, unless someone has a personal relationship with me, ala my mom, I don't see my purchase of a dozen eggs at Rouses Market, for example, as being particularly news-worthy, for example.
I don't know...It's time for me to do some soul-searching, perhaps.
It's funny how my having quit smoking pot (2 weeks now and counting) and the substitution of a shot of kratom a day for it, has seemed to have repelled some friends in my life and attracted others; ditto for this blog.
Of course, if I ever decide to go "all in" as a busker (i.e. get an amplifier and microphone and try to partner with Tanya Huang in the role formerly played by Dorise Blackmon i.e. do things "the right way") then I might witness a resurgence in the popularity of Street Musician Daniel. Then, I would be making a lot more money, and we all know how that phenomenon peaks the interest of the common man -just ask the president of the United States of America...
Maybe someone, somewhere on the planet who has begun to dabble in dabs of CBD oil and/or kratom would be interested in reading a blog written by a fellow kratomhead.
Southern Decadence A Busking Bust
I had marked my calendar "leave town" over the 5 days of the Southern Decadence festival.
I just hadn't provided for Harold the cat, nor saved enough money for a Megabus trip, nor gathered up the courage to hop a freight train with a guitar and a backpack, come what may. That would have given this blog a shot in the arm...maybe next year...
Once again, I busked last night and was just about totally ignored by the 10,000 gay men who walked by holding hands in their thongs and didn't tip.

Not one dollar.
I quit after about 45 minutes, rather than "try harder," or try to unravel the mystery of them, and when I began to harbor a paranoia that the gays, for one thing, all think the same; and were of one mind in deriving some perverse pleasure out of not tipping the straight busker guy.
Better to go home and eat eggs with oatmeal and wait for midnight to roll around when Rose and Ed would give me 40 dollars.