Note to mom: I looked for the most recent mail you have sent in order to see what the address is (because I couldn't remember if you are still on AOL) but, if you are seeing this, I got the card -got it Tuesday afternoon, actually.
I sent a thank you to the .aol mailbox...
A Week In Review
Saturday, October 5th
It is about 7 PM on a Saturday night.
I went out and started playing at just a tad after 9 PM last night, instead of the almost 11 PM which I have recently backslid into as my “regular” arrival time.
In fact, after 11:30 the past couple times, I got there to find somebody sleeping right by Lilly’s stoop.
The second of these actually rolled over to face me, wearing a dopey grin on his face, excuse the pun, as if he was on some really good heroin and was genuinely enjoying the music.
After playing for a couple hours with the effect of his being there seeming to be a wash between making people not tip because it looked like all of “our” money was going towards something that makes you pass out on the sidewalk, and those who seemed to think that maybe I’m worth my salt as a musician if I have earned the seal of approval of at least one addict.
It’s like, if you want to find a good diner, look for one with a lot of trucks parked in front of it. If you want a good busker, then maybe look for one that at least one person has chosen the music of, to sleep to. This may be seen as a very high form of flattery, since the addicts are in New Orleans and have a wealth of options as to whose music to throw down their cardboard next to.
In the case of a couple weeks ago, the tourists wouldn't need to know that the guy had already been sleeping there before I even played.
But, last night, I was out there in earnest, having reached kind of a boiling point in life, after I had become irritated by a situation involving Jacob and fired off a acerbic text, that I later figured out, after some self examination, was probably myself lashing out at the universe.
Thursday, October 4th
That revolved around me taking that Thursday night (Oct 4th) off in order to visit Howard over in Gretna, whom I hadn’t seen in months, after having mentioned to him that I would probably visit to watch the NFL draft thing, back in April.
It has become probably the only tradition in my life to go to Howard’s every time the Patriots are to be featured in any TV broadcast.
Since he is hard of hearing, I don’t call ahead. That, and because I generally never call ahead about things.
Why I Never Call Ahead
This is something else that I could try to analyze, or pay a guy $120 an hour to do.
It just feels to me that, once I say I am on my way, I envision that the situation then kind of ropes me into the arrangement whereupon I feel like I have surrendered my freedom.
The people I am going to visit might tidy up the place a bit, maybe even begrudgingly, or break out some chips and salsa.
(to go with the chips- I don’t mean they would start dancing).
But, if I can be so pretentious, they might even look forward to my arrival.
And, I could ruin it all, by not showing up.
Once the commitment has been made; it opens the door for Murphy’s Law to rear its head.
As evening was falling and the game was already about to kick off, I was really torn between busking, since I had only the dollar and quarter for the bus fare, and no cat food in the house, and going to see Howard.
I had the wrong game, it was going to be the Seahawks against the Rams, no Patriots involved except about a half dozen of their ex players that would take the field.
I was really hungry.
My food card money was still a day and a half away. I didn't know it at the time, but I would choose to go on a juice/water cleansing fast, which would seem to make the food money a moot point, but a diet of spring water and apple juice for a day can almost eat up the allotted amount that the card provides.
Especially if I choose the very best apple juice, which can run about 8 bucks per gallon...
Every time I have gone over the river to watch a game, Berta, the lady of the house, has always given me food, sometimes even a steak with fries.
But, this time I would be showing up unannounced, and, because the Patriots were not playing, I wouldn't be expected.
I vacillated to the point where I even returned to the apartment to grab my busking stuff and go out. Howard would never miss me, I thought. Why would I show up to watch the Seattle vs. Los Angeles game, anyways?
What clinched the decision for me was the fact that Jacob had texted me to say that he happened to be working a Terminix security job in Gretna, not far from Howard’s house. He said that he would be getting off at 10 PM. The game would be ending some time around then.
Jacob Meets Howard
It seemed preordained that Jacob would meet Howard, about whom he has heard many stories.
And, meet him he did.
They found common ground talking about the tub full of movies that Howard had, that I had never really noticed before.
But, then, after not getting anything to eat from Berta, nor skeezing a dollar and a quarter off Howard for the bus fare back over the bridge, I got a ride back to Sacred Heart by Jacob, with my bike in his trunk.
As he was pulling out of the parking lot, when I had just one more thing I wanted to say to him, before I forgot, the chance to do so never came, because a cartwheel skeezer entered the picture.
It was a petite, blond haired, hippy looking woman. She was not unattractive and probably about 28 years old, but drunk and high enough, so she probably felt ten years younger.
I am pretty sure I have seen her in my travels, and that she has never said a word to me.
But, somehow, the sight of Jacob, in his Lexus, inspired the lady to start doing cartwheels down the sidewalk.
I hate it when people seem to expect others to be impressed by the fact that they are crazy, and so I was prepared to just let her cartwheel right by, never giving her a second look. Of course, that would have me doing exactly what I complain about New Orleans for, when I call it Ignore-leans; ignoring her totally.
I would put the damper on her skeeze with a curt: “We’re good!” as soon as she came near, which was almost a certainty.
I had the feeling she wouldn’t have been doing cartwheels if she hadn’t an audience.
I told Jacob: “Don’t act like it’s interesting that she is crazy,” but to no avail. He was gawking; which was all the encouragement that the cartwheel skeezer needed, apparently.
Seeing that she had a potential sucker on the line, she was soon upon us, emanating alcoholic breath and taking over the conversation, telling us her life story, as if we had asked for it.
All I could think of was how whatever she was high on, had to have its downside. Nobody can sustain that level of blissful abandon. Nobody loves "everyone they meet" that much, all day, every day. And if someone had attained that level of oneness with the universe, she wouldn't have to get messed up on alcohol and whatever else, in order to be herself.
Whatever the inverse emotion of the one that makes you want to do cartwheels down the street, and greet people like you both have your feet in the mud at Woodstock, was lurking in the background, waiting to rear its head, first thing the next morning, I thought.
What goes up must come down; and what a grumpy bitch she must be in the morning, especially after waking up without a cigarette or coffee, or an eye opening beer, after a night of tripping on mushrooms and doing cartwheels down the sidewalk, and it then being time to pay the piper.
Jacob wanted to interact with her so he could record her on his phone, in hopes of goofing on the recording later. That is one of his hobbies.
Almost any interaction that he has had with anybody, since he got his first phone at the age of 13 or so, he most likely has a recording of it. He just keeps the thing on “audio recorder” all day, every day. Phones nowadays have the memory to do that, and “the cloud” is big enough to hold the entire soundtrack of anyone’s life, even if they live to be 107.
Record Everything
This might be a millennial generation thing, which I might delve into in another post; I really don’t know
I know myself that I miss out on a lot of opportunities to capture funny sound and/or video, just for not being in the habit of grabbing my phone and turning the camera on instead of standing there watching, my mouth agape.
Recently, I was in a little store where the guy told me that the type of nicotine tubes he sold would fit the vaporizer that I showed him. I was down to my last ten bucks or so, and the things were 9 bucks.
He just about guaranteed that they would fit.
I bought them, went out, got into the car, where I opened the box to discover that they were entirely different from the ones that fit my vaporizer.
I went back in the store, where the guy told me that they couldn’t refund my money, and that he had never said that they would surely fit. “I don’t know about those things, I don’t use them. I told you you could try them and that they might fit,” said the 20 year old Middle Easterner.
“Augh, that’s why you should always be recording!” lamented Jacob.
Maybe he is right. In a world of 20 year old Middle Easterners, maybe one should always be recording...
Another thing that comes to mind was the fight I saw take place one night, between the guy who paints himself gold (there’s only one of him that I know of, who sits by Deanna’s Seafood being gold and somehow skeezing off of it) and one of the guys who paints himself silver (there are at least 3 of those, along with one “red” man who wears devil’s horns and one who is just entirely red).
But I had arrived at The Unique Grocery Store just as it was brewing, in the glow of the brightest neon sign in the Quarter, advertising “the lowest prices in the Quarter.”
And you couldn’t beat the bargain of seeing for free a fist fight between the gold man and the silver man.
That would have made a great video. Maybe even a “viral” one, because they were pretty well matched, both in their 30’s, and it was a pretty even exchange; seemingly over a territorial dispute. Maybe the silver guy had been trying to move in on the seafood eating crowd, which is gold man territory...
After the fight was broken up and each guy sent a separate way, the silver man walked right past me and I could see golden fist imprints, one on his cheek and another above one of his eyes...I was reminded of that old Reese’s commercial, the “Hey, you got peanut butter on my chocolate!” one, if you want to Google it...
So, Jacob wanted to amuse himself with this particular skeezer, who was not unattractive, but looked like the cartwheels were starting to take a toll on her.
I was irritated just by seeing her prosper, with her hippie-in-the-mud-at-Woodstock act; doing cartwheels up the way, while speaking in poetic riddles and happy, oh, so happy, persona.
That is my own row to hoe, my irritation at seeing skeezers whom I can see through prosper at the expense of people who can’t.
I was thinking heroin, not mushrooms, and maybe would have treated her more kindly had I known that she was on a more spiritual drug.
After she told us that she loved us for the umpteenth time, and reiterated that the police were free to “come arrest me!” for being happy and doing cartwheels up the street, I started to tell her that butting into a conversation was a strange way to show that love.
She waved me off as if I was a curmudgeonly old man, who had grown bitter and stopped doing cartwheels years ago, and doubled down on her efforts towards Jacob.
It was another example of me trying not to assume the role of guardian over a friend who is much younger, and to give him the benefit of the doubt that he could resist being taken for all he’s worth by a crafty veteran skeezer.
It didn’t help that, when she glanced over to see if her attention grabbing stunt was working, Jacob had a bemused look on his face and was practically waving her over.
I guess the ego driven satisfaction that I get from depriving such souls of my attention (there have been times when the “crazy” person, after not having seemed to get a reaction out of me with their antics, encroached further, to the point of where one of them, in a dollar store, moved closer and began to bump me slightly to punctuate whatever his crazy behavior was that I was ignoring.
That is myself being mean, and perhaps an area that I need to address in my self examinations and meditations.
You should always give everyone you meet the benefit of the doubt, even if they bend their path towards you, at the sight of you; even if you have just opened up a fresh pack of cigarettes when you detect their motion towards you.
The Golden Rule
How would I like to be treated if I had fomented a hatred for my fellow man, and drawn the conclusion that the only good all these assholes walking around possess is in regard to whatever materials they are toting around. And I had formed a view of the world as being a big planet populated by other people, all of whom were in some way standing between me and my addictions?
And then, what if I saw someone opening a pack of cigarettes outside The Unique Grocery Store?
And, I fomented a hatred for him on the spot, ready to vent it upon him should he reaffirm my view that the world is out to deny me.
And, I looked him from head to toe, deciding that the hat he is wearing is the kind that people I hate wear, and that the shirt he has on is just the kind that people sit around in, plotting against me and my ilk, and that it is all the result of dumb luck. He had had good luck, and I have gotten the short end of the stick, and his whole appearance lays this bare...
He has just had cigarettes practically given to him, as easily as money comes to some people, and now, all I am asking for is for him to take notice of my plight and do the right thing and even the score a little bit, share the wealth, spread the “love” and give me a free cigarette or dollar, at his expense....
How would I feel, if that were the case, and the person, who had had to play his ass off for a full 23 minutes before even seeing the first of 13 dollars go into his tip basket, were to become defensive and eye me with skepticism after I gave him the lie that I was hungry and begging for food, and then was to give me a smart-ass response to my begging such as: “Oh, I’m not passing out cigarettes today, that’s Thursday...when I pass out cigarettes, I buy a couple cartons, then walk around, just seeing whoever might be craving one; you’ve probably heard of me. Everyone calls me “the cigarette dude...” or something equally sarcastic.
How would I feel?
So, I was thinking that Deborah, as that turned out to be her name, knew that I could see through her skeeze, and that I had noticed the conspicuous absence of any companion in cartwheeling alongside her, and that the smell of alcohol on her breath, combined with the fact that I had seen her before and she had never shown an interest in me until faking one at that moment.
I thought about just saying all these thoughts out loud to Jacob, but decided to hold on to whatever thoughts I was about to convey to him before he drove off -something about music- and I just walked away, just as Deborah was lifting the front of her tank top and asking us each to touch her navel.
And, off I went to grab my gear and go out and busk.
I could have asked Jacob for the 75 cents for a can of food for Harold, but, doing that in front of the skeezer would open that can of worms, and make it easy for her to put in her own request for some of his money, behind the skeezing mind-set that demands to be an equal recipient of any generosity that they, the skeezers, see flowing towards any other person.
For all Deborah knew, I had been just walking down the street and had somehow gotten Jacob to stop his car, maybe by standing on my head right by the exit of the parking lot, where he would have to briefly pause before going out into traffic. And that I was skeezing him. Why not turn it into a skeezing party?
It would have been a knee-jerk reaction in a skeezer to approach, like a dog in a pen with other dogs, and try to dislodge a piece of the meat that has been thrown to another dog, and tear it away for itself.
So, I didn’t even ask him for cat food money.
It crossed my mind that he might be upset because, since I had gone over to Gretna, where he was stuck working, I could have left much earlier in the day, so I could have kept him company for some of his boring shift, and then just left for Howard’s house around game time.
That would have been a righteous thing to do, in exchange for getting a ride (and saving me from having to ask Howard for the bus fare, after I hadn’t seen him in almost a half a year) but, I had woken up at 4:30 PM, and still wasn’t on my bike and heading in the right direction until 3 hours later.
A lot of this time was spent hemming and hawing over whether or not to busk in order to have any money at all, or to put my faith in any karmic flow that might proceed from choosing instead to cheer up my old buddy with a visit, and then introduce him to the fascinating Jacob, and vice-versa.
Some of Howard’s stories, which Jacob hasn’t heard as many times as me, might have been fascinating to him, I thought.
The Road To Hell
But, there is always a danger in planning things.
Having things go as planned is like flipping a coin and hoping to flip it to a half dozen tails in a row.
It’s like the guy who invites a young lady who is a love interest over to his house.
He figures that she will show up around 7 PM, when the sun is just setting, and so it would be nice and romantic if they were to sit on the porch swing together watching it, and sipping rosѐ wine.
Before going out onto the porch, he would strike a match and light the newspapers that he had wadded up under the kindling as part of his plannings, so that, after they had watched the sun set and finished the wine, and just as the outside air was cooling (he would have somehow finagled it so she left her sweater inside) they would re-enter the cottage (he lives in a cottage in this fantasy) which would be at the perfect temperature, especially by the fire ...”I thought we could sit in front of the fire and warm up...” where they would cuddle.
He would have loaded a playlist into his music system, which would have been carefully planned ...”I figure I’ll take her hand and start dancing with her during the Hootie and the Blowfish song; then we can sit back down on the couch, and I’ll kiss her during the Johnny Mathis one, and then...”
Then, as life would have it, she would be allergic to rosѐ wine and so the sunset, that you thought you could count on, if nothing else, wouldn’t go as planned.
And then some other distraction might come up, like a deer appearing in the back yard, one that she wants to see how close she can get to, by slowly creeping up to, and then she might spot the wishing well and want to make a wish at, and so over an hour is spent outside, allowing the fire, because of the flue being more stopped up than you had thought, to fill the cottage with acrid smoke, which would burn her eyes and make her not feel like dancing to Hootie and the Blowfish...
And a dozen carefully planned events would never come to fruition, having been sidetracked early on.
The two cigarettes placed on the bed stand next to the antique lighter (which you thought might spark a conversation during which you could tell her about your family’s antique store in New Hampshire) forget about those cigarettes; you never made it past the sunset...
So, I know enough not to think and hope that things and events will unfold in a certain way.
Football, You Bet!
To Jacob’s credit, he was able to keep under wraps, for the most part, what I detected to be a certain disdain for the sport of football, where men go out and try to knock each other down, and it being all about physical prowess.
It’s not just that Jake looks like “the effeminate looking guy who abhors violence; and you can’t help but think that it is just because he is softly muscled and has the delicate fingers of a pianist and doesn’t like pain at all" (according to him).
Myself, I never liked pain. In fact I can recall hating it, on several occasions.
I’m not being facetious, because there was the one pain, which was kind of invigorating, of having had my face cut open by the fist of a young black guy in Baton Rouge who had tried to rip me off by swindling me on a 5 dollar sack of weed.
He had then resorted to violence, after I reneged on the deal, having initially picked up a beer bottle off the nearby ground and then shattering it to particles, while trying just to break it into a jagged knife; a knife with such an irregular edge that it will get you in more than one place at a time, but, to be fair to the young man I don’t think you can make a lethal knife that way, absent a really lucky swing to the juggler vein using one that broke in just the right way on the curb...
Have I digressed enough... Oh, yeah. It was by the grace of God as I understand Him that the kid didn’t know how to break a beer bottle into a knife, maybe the next time he was a lot more careful with his break and was able to cut up a white boy really good to get his five dollars; which he probably felt was rightfully his, because he had played his part correctly; lured the guy with the money to a place just a tad removed from where anybody might notice, etc. and he didn’t want to be denied, in this world that is out to deny him...
By the way, the next part of this particular skeeze, as I have come to know it is that, after you give the guy your 5 dollars, he then walks in the direction of the cluster of houses, disappearing among them.
He will indeed come back.
You would have been standing there feeling like a sucker the whole time. You would have been thinking: what the hell is going to make him come back, he’s already got the money?!?
But, then, you would see him and be like: “Oh my God, you mean there’s actually a trustworthy weed guy hanging around the hood store?
And, you would be in the process of feeling ashamed of yourself for having judged him, and would be in the middle of thinking that you had been all wrong about the guy, when he would crystallize the sentiment by saying: “I told you I wasn’t gonna take your money; told you I’d come back!” (aren’t you ashamed of yourself...?) as kind of an approbation.
Then, though, the skeeze would continue with him saying:
“Listen, the guy only has quarter ounces, but they’re fat like this (fingers apart impressively) I can get one for twenty, you got another fifteen?”
This part of the skeeze is a trap for anyone who might be under the illusion that the guy had just proven himself to be trustworthy by coming back the first time, and not just taking off with the 5 dollars.
In fact he even brought the bucks to his guy (so the house must be a real thing, right? And he had already done some legwork on your behalf, so you are indebted to him, right?) who told him that he wasn’t dealing in small amounts, only magnificent, gloriously copious bags worth every bit of 40 dollars, but available to this special man whom you just met in front of the store, at half that price. You were in the right place at the right time.
In truth the guy didn’t really come back, he never really left.
It doesn’t end there. If the sucker has to think about that, then the skeezer knows that the sucker has more money; at least another 15 bucks, on him. If his instantanous response is not “That was all the money I had,”then the skeeze goes to the next level, approaching the stabbing with a bottle phase.
And, then, even if you balk at giving him another 15 bucks, you are now out there, out of view, with him, next to a cluster of houses that you are starting to think are vacant, and out comes the beer bottle knife.
If you have even more than the fifteen dollars, then it will be virtually impossible for you to separate out one of the combinations that add up to that amount without revealing just how much more money is in your possession. You might have to rifle through the whole stack in order to find a ten and a five, type of thing...
And then, out comes the beer bottle knife.
The most viable solution, if you find yourself in a similar situation is to give the guy the 5 bucks, say something like: “I’ll trust you this time...” and then bolt out of their, entering the 5 dollars under “educational costs” in your ledger, and then moving on.
He might have felt rightfully entitled to the money because, well, he did everything by the book; he led me to the spot just out of sight of the main road, or rather, I allowed myself to be led there.
He was definitely playing me for however big a sucker I might have been.
If he had to take my 5 dollars to this place out of sight and get my weed and then come back to me, then why couldn’t he have proffered that same business offer while we stood under the bright light of the hood store sign?
Then I could, and would, have told him that, no, "I never hand my money to someone I don’t know and then watch him walk away with it."
This is because the one time I did do that, the clock began to slow down.
I became subjected to a psychological torment, as I imagined his steps with my money, and where he might be going, then could imagine him coming back; he should be coming around the corner any second now...
Then, I had to face the truth that, waiting longer because I was really looking forward to the weed and want to give him a little more time, turns into a fool's game, and more mental anguish.
Until I finally settled upon something like a half hour as being, if he hadn't come back by then, something to be chalked up as a lesson learned.
A lesson in letting go...
So, his whole hustle was just glorified mugging. If you don’t hand him the 5 dollars (it bears repeating the amount of money to point out the ridiculousness of it) then he will demand it at knife point or try to beat it out of you.
I think I was supposed to freak out at the sight of him preparing the beer bottle knife and just toss the money towards him before making a hasty escape. That was probably his plan.
We should just legalize everything, just put warnings on it all...It’s a crazy game.
Another thing is that, in many cases, the guy wants to go off-camera so he can dig the weed, that you are going to consume, out of his underwear, where it resides alongside his scrotum because, well, if there is one thing that the very manly cops who are going to be the biggest dicks if they find weed on you, are is, they are the biggest homophobics.
Your underwear is like a safe deposit box.
These cops are "NOT no faggots," in fact a lot of them have wives (whom a lot of them beat) and yeah, they’ve had all the typical jokes hurled at them; “What, did you become a cop because you like grabbing guy’s balls?” and other such insults aimed at diminishing their masculinity, and I have, myself, going back to the late 80’s and Bush’s “War on Drugs,” hidden quantities of up to a quarter ounce of weed right within the confines of my BVD medium size (fits sizes 32 to 34) tighty whity’s and been searched by law enforcement agents nationwide. I found it to be totally safe, cops just won’t check your balls. There are too many gossipy officers on the force to discourage that.
But, this guy didn’t have the weed secured in his underwear, nor hidden under a rock, he wanted me to follow him further, which I did do until such a point that the above logic dawned upon me:
So, anyways, his busted beer bottle knife plans dashed, he instead made a dash at me with his fists.
And he was able to hit me above one eye hard enough to blacken it a bit but mostly bloody it, as it landed more towards the eyebrow. That and another blow that I wasn’t aware of were enough to knock me to the ground, where I lay on my back and he stood over me at my feet.
He was about 19 and I was 48 or so. But I was drinking back then, and it was probably with the appearance of a slobbering drunk, that I sallied forth from the hood store with what was probably tank of cheap malt liquor #4...
But, in Baton Rough, I would have been busking on 3rd Street (see photo).
I would have left my guitar and my backpack with a couple that ran a hot dog cart, complete with a canopy that you could sit under.
They were always right across the street from the glass case that I used to love to play in front of. So, I eventually befriended them and they watched my stuff while I ran for malt liquor tank no. 4, it might have been.
I wouldn’t want to make that trek down Florida Ave with my guitar, never mind follow a nigga’ into the netherworld with it.
So, back to the fight, and the point of the story...
I would never drink to the point where I couldn’t busk for being too drunk to hit the right chords, stay on the beat, hold on to the pick; whatever.
I found that to be an easy enough point to gauge. Seeing as though my weight was not fluctuating from day to day, and I was drinking the very same brews day in and day out, there was a place somewhere around 2 and 2 and 2 3rds of those 25 ounce Tecate jobs, where the can may as well have had a line drawn with the universal symbol of a guitar pick falling from fingers.
I guess playing music involves a slightly higher logic than, say, walking; just putting one foot in front of another. I found that it was possible to be kind of staggering a bit on foot, but still be able to sit down and render passable music, for the occasion.
So, realizing that I was in a fight with a guy who was trying to, I suppose, knock me out and take at least the 5 dollars, and thankful that, for busking purposes I always maintained a firm grip on a blade of grass, I drew my feet towards me, almost in a fetal position, but I did it in a cowering way, as if I was going to ball myself up and try to protect myself from him that way.
He stood over me, still on the attack, as if my legs being drawn up was going to allow him in close enough to punch my face some more.
And I envisioned when I used to do the standing broad jump in high school track, and the mechanics of it -which muscles did what, and in what proportions, and I remembered that to get a really good jump, you would swing your arms to establish a rhythm...
Then, in the next few milliseconds, as he was cocking his fist (better than fisting his cock, eh?) I remembered that the long jump had been more my thing in track. I had been better at it.
That exercise takes the guesswork out of any rhythm because that is already set by the pitter-patter of your running feet; you just have to coordinate it so you are running at top speed, yet be ready to explode upward when you get to the white bar and...
With that as my visual and his solar plexus kind of being the white bar at the end of the runway; my foot exploded like I was trying to jump and fly as far as possible.
It knocked him back enough so I had enough time to get back on my feet, then, with an indignant look on my face, I made a fake charge towards him, which froze him long enough so I could run the half block to safety.
Maybe his solar plexus hurt a bit, too...
I yelled: “Five dollars; really?!?” as I ran away; as loudly as possible, so it would serve also as a distress call, or at least draw eyeballs to the area, which might have made him abandon his quest for the 5 bucks, should he have chased me.
So, to the point; the pain that I felt seemed in a bizarre way to be processed as; he tried to kill me, and this is all I got, and it felt more soothing than anything.
I went back into the hood store, where the guy greeted me with: “Oh, Jesus. They got you too?”
And this was said in a tone that would indicate that since, in his view, I minded my own business and wasn’t in there giving myself away as a crackhead by buying brillo, and purchasing a product which I have never heard referred to by any other name than “those flowers in a tube” which is a ready made crack pipe in the form of the glass tube, and came with a little artificial flower inside.
But, his tone also alarmed me enough so I found my reflection in something and saw that the blood from the cut over my eye had washed down over a lot of my face and that surprised me because it only felt like a scratch at the time.
Adrenaline, I guess.
I went back to busking that night.
I figured that I would give busking with a busted open bloody face a shot.
I didn’t make anything, I recall. Not even after starting to say: “Boy, they really let you know when they don’t like a song, around here!” to passersby.
Not a good idea. I think that was tank of malt liquor number four’s idea.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have made them think that, among their fellow LSU students, there are those vicious enough to attack a busker over a song. Or they might have thought it was fake blood and that I had a weird, kind of disturbing shtick...
I’m really off on a tangent here. This is where I normally delete the preceding dozen or so paragraphs, paring it back to the last one that was on point, but I’m going to leave the story about the fight in Baton Rouge. I think an anniversary of it is coming soon...
Back To Thursday Night...
So, I didn't ask Jacob if he had 75 cents for cat food, because it would be in his nature to say something out loud in front of the skeezer like; “Yeah, my boss paid me for both nights, so I’ve actually got 240 dollars on me,” innocently.
Maybe to vocalize his gratitude for the good fortune that had befallen him, but in the presence of someone who had gotten her fix, and so the universe was a magnificent and fascinating place, but who was also on a collision course with "the coming down," which would manifest itself as backwards cartwheels, figuratively speaking.
It was kind of conspicuous that she was alone. But that wouldn’t be for long, as soon, some dude had caught up with her. By then I was in my apartment bagging up my busking stuff, to eventually show up at the Lilly Pad at 12:30 AM on a Friday morning.
I looked out the window just in time to see that the above mentioned dude had joined them. I couldn’t help thinking that she had given him some very subtle communication with her eyes perhaps, to say, "This one is pretty gullible, play it cool..."
Then, I saw the lady getting into Jacob’s car.
“Whatever,” I thought. He’s 21 years old. He should be able to discern whether or not someone is skeezing him. Maybe being skeezed is the only way to learn certain things.
So, I went out to busk and I was actually pretty happy to have been able to squeeze in the trip to Gretna, watch a whole football game with Howard and still make it out there to busk.
The lateness of the hour on a Thursday night translated into a pretty light crowd, and I only made the cat food, Bang energy drink and a pack of cigars that I did, but it gave me a sense of security.
But, when I got a text the next morning from Jacob saying that the lady turned out to be "cool" (she was on mushrooms which is a whole different plane of existence than being on heroin) I thought I might have been wrong about her.
My main issue was with the extreme high she was on. What goes up, must come down, and there has to be an anti world, where the anti Deborah would wake up in, with puffy eyes and immediately start yelling and cussing” most likely with a Jones for nicotine, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, or cocaine. She might say: “I can’t believe I was cartwheeling down the sidewalk last night." She would be back to feeling 10 years older.
After discovering her lighter is out or something, her biggest dilemma would be how to make it seem like asking whomever she took home for the night for whatever she was craving without having it seem like it is being bartered for whatever sex she might have "provided."
All this from a lady whom I am pretty sure I have seen around the neighborhood, and who probably saw me, sitting on my bike, and maybe even picking tobacco out of the ashtray out front, and ignored.
She had never performed cartwheels at the sight of me, and so, by deduction, it was Jacob, who is half my age and was sitting in a Lexus, who was her mark, and the target audience for her conversation crashing antics.
But, all I could manage to say to him as she approached was: “Don’t act like you think it’s interesting that she’s crazy,” which, admittedly came from a prejudice that I have against anyone walking in our neighborhood.
So, when I got a text from Jacob then next day, saying that the lady had turned out to be cool and, not only that, sold mushrooms, I kind of felt like I had to swallow crow, somewhat, as I think the expression is, and admit that I had read her wrong, and that, clouded by my negative judgment of her, I missed out on an opportunity to make the acquaintance of a lovely person.
But, then, I also took his assessment with a grain of salt.
The proof is in the pudding, and it turns out that she had indeed gotten something out of him; sold him mushrooms at a profit...
But, the text that I sent him stated that I didn’t want to do mushrooms and busk with someone who had been so callous, as to have had the knowledge that I didn’t have any money at all (otherwise I could have thrown my bike on a bus) and had also asked him to pick me up after he got off his job, which coincided almost exactly with the ending times of most “Thursday Night Football” broadcasts.
I know that Jacob enjoys company at his job sites. I will admit that 12 hours is a long time to sit idle.
Something For Nothing Not For Me
When I worked in a little glassed in booth in Charlottesville, Virginia, back in 2002, we had the remnants of a hurricane come through -one that hadn’t made landfall until hitting Charleston, or something, and it knocked the power out.
I was still asked to go in and sit overnight in the blacked out booth and do nothing.
I didn’t have a cellphone; and, even if I did, this was 2002 and there just wasn’t 8 hours of entertainment in those things.
My manager wanted me to just be on the premises.
As protection against looting. The place was open 24 hours a day, normally, and so they never had to secure anything before vacating it.
But the upshot is that I sat there.
I watched the trees swaying in the heavy winds and heard rain pelting the glass booth on its side.
And I noticed which lights had not gone out. All around me the landscape was eerily darker than I had ever seen it. But there were the lights that ran off generators that were still on, and I looked at those. That got pretty boring after about 44 seconds..
Then, I had the impulse to turn on the radio. Oh, yeah, the power's out...
Then I wished I had brought my electronic chess game.
And, before three out of the 8 hours had elapsed, I had determined that I wouldn’t, not in a boat in a moat, not for up to three times the money I was making there, take the job of just sitting there and watching water on glass, against the backdrop of the lights still on.
You really would have to pay me, I think I figured, a pretty astronomical figure to feel as useless as I did; no pickup truck driven by rednecks with sledgehammers coming after the soda, just total indifference.
Of course the rules for that job would be the same -I wouldn’t be allowed to bring anything that I neglected to bring on that night.
For this astronomical wage, I would have to sit there feeling utterly useless. The solution would be to practice some sort of meditation; show up with some incense and dry matches and make a holiday of it, I suppose.
But, I can almost see where today, people are doing the same thing in different places, ie. staring at the screens of their phones, and to sit there on Youtube all day while getting paid, seems night and day and light years ahead of watching water on glass.
But, I have since apologized for the hostile tweet to Jacob, and turned the experience into a positive, by using it as the impetus that I needed to embark upon (another) cleanse and fast.
I have, as I sit here, reached 48 hours without having consumed anything other than apple juice.
I finished busking last Sunday (Oct 6th) having made up my mind that I was going to do the juice fast, which would turn into a water fast, up until the 12th of the month, which is my birthday.
What better way to celebrate one’s birthday than by biting into a watermelon, as the first food in a week?
As I rode home this (early Thursday) morning, after having made a decent 15 bucks or so, for someone showing up at 10:45 PM on a Thursday and playing for an hour and twenty minutes, I thought to myself, as I noticed a physical weakness in the legs pedaling my bike, how I had at least reached that stage, at about 40 hours, where I was fantasizing about eating the can of pumpkin that I have in the house, and how I wouldn’t complain that it wasn’t sweetened at all, I would just devour it. These are Auschwitz level thoughts.
This is the devil appearing before me and telling me to turn stone into bread.
But, the point is that, I don’t even care, right now about heavenly delicious things like a whole bag of those little round white powder covered doughnuts, or a pizza that you throw in the oven for 15 minutes.
No, give me the can of pumpkin an a spoon, or a can of green beans and a fork, and I would be more than grateful.
So, I recommend intermittent fasting if for no other reason than to wean oneself off of foods that might become unhealthy addictions.
I noticed a big difference between eating off the “maggot wagon” at construction sites, where I was doing heavy physical labor, back in 2000, like cutting through asphalt with a special saw, then using long pry bars to separate the cut out sections, hoisting them into a wheelbarrow and then hauling them off to a dumpster etc., all done with the Florida sun high in the sky and the mercury reading right around human body temperature.
I would show up with a bottle of this stuff called “XXL” which had 1,100 calories, something like 49 grams of protein. And it was the kind of protein that had already had the first process of digestion in the stomach done in a laboratory, it was "ionized" nitrogen, or something.
I would bust out the work as if I was in the gym, and I slept like a baby, 4 miles out into the white upper middle class suburbs, on a spot designated as “protected wetlands” and labeled a wildlife sanctuary on at least the map of Jacksonville that I saw.
But, there were times that I ate off the roach coach.
Perhaps I had woken up with no money one day, and had had no breakfast.
And then, maybe the boss, being a kind man, and maybe considerate to the point of having noticed that, though I salivated at the sound of the lunch whistle, I had produced no food from anywhere. And maybe he handed me a five dollar bill riht in front of the cart, saying:
“Here, go get you something off the cart...” He wouldn’t call it The Greasemobile or anything; not in that context, at least.
And, so, I have eaten from it, just like everyone else. No Nitro Fuel today...
I have gotten the big meat and cheese thing.
And, on those late afternoons, I remember moaning right along with my coworkers, for once, about the heat and about wanting to just lay down under that tree, type of stuff.
My sweat was greasier and didn’t seem to evaporate (hence cool) as well, either.
The funny thing is that, for about the first hour and a half after eating the big meat and cheese thing, I felt a wellspring of strength, but also a shortness of breath and that sensation that a lot of blood was going to the stomach; like the reason it is advised not to swim for 20 minutes after eating a “big” meal.
I guess this kind of catches the blog up. It is way late now; Friday night is gone forever.
But I just got going writing about fighting a black kid as skinny as myself; and before I knew it, the clock on the wall said "3 of the clock" or 3 "o'" clock, as is the conventional abbreviation.
I'm going to continue this into a post that will appear as tomorrow's.
The sun will be up in 3 hours.
I want to put on some of the recordings from Jacob and I busking that I have fancied up some, but I have to sift through them; I will type my post and sift at the same time...
on a Saturday morning -the sun will be up in 4 hours. But, I might grab my gear and at least ride by the Lilly Pad.
Someone might see the guitar and ask me to play, then tip me 20 buck; making it worthwhile to ride a total of about 4 miles; along with whatever I might find laying around on the sidewalks...
I sent a thank you to the .aol mailbox...
 |
| The scene on Bourbon, as I sit here at home... |
Saturday, October 5th
It is about 7 PM on a Saturday night.
I went out and started playing at just a tad after 9 PM last night, instead of the almost 11 PM which I have recently backslid into as my “regular” arrival time.
In fact, after 11:30 the past couple times, I got there to find somebody sleeping right by Lilly’s stoop.
The second of these actually rolled over to face me, wearing a dopey grin on his face, excuse the pun, as if he was on some really good heroin and was genuinely enjoying the music.
After playing for a couple hours with the effect of his being there seeming to be a wash between making people not tip because it looked like all of “our” money was going towards something that makes you pass out on the sidewalk, and those who seemed to think that maybe I’m worth my salt as a musician if I have earned the seal of approval of at least one addict.
It’s like, if you want to find a good diner, look for one with a lot of trucks parked in front of it. If you want a good busker, then maybe look for one that at least one person has chosen the music of, to sleep to. This may be seen as a very high form of flattery, since the addicts are in New Orleans and have a wealth of options as to whose music to throw down their cardboard next to.
In the case of a couple weeks ago, the tourists wouldn't need to know that the guy had already been sleeping there before I even played.
But, last night, I was out there in earnest, having reached kind of a boiling point in life, after I had become irritated by a situation involving Jacob and fired off a acerbic text, that I later figured out, after some self examination, was probably myself lashing out at the universe.
Thursday, October 4th
That revolved around me taking that Thursday night (Oct 4th) off in order to visit Howard over in Gretna, whom I hadn’t seen in months, after having mentioned to him that I would probably visit to watch the NFL draft thing, back in April.
It has become probably the only tradition in my life to go to Howard’s every time the Patriots are to be featured in any TV broadcast.
Since he is hard of hearing, I don’t call ahead. That, and because I generally never call ahead about things.
Why I Never Call Ahead
This is something else that I could try to analyze, or pay a guy $120 an hour to do.
It just feels to me that, once I say I am on my way, I envision that the situation then kind of ropes me into the arrangement whereupon I feel like I have surrendered my freedom.
The people I am going to visit might tidy up the place a bit, maybe even begrudgingly, or break out some chips and salsa.
(to go with the chips- I don’t mean they would start dancing).
But, if I can be so pretentious, they might even look forward to my arrival.
And, I could ruin it all, by not showing up.
Once the commitment has been made; it opens the door for Murphy’s Law to rear its head.
As evening was falling and the game was already about to kick off, I was really torn between busking, since I had only the dollar and quarter for the bus fare, and no cat food in the house, and going to see Howard.
I had the wrong game, it was going to be the Seahawks against the Rams, no Patriots involved except about a half dozen of their ex players that would take the field.
I was really hungry.
My food card money was still a day and a half away. I didn't know it at the time, but I would choose to go on a juice/water cleansing fast, which would seem to make the food money a moot point, but a diet of spring water and apple juice for a day can almost eat up the allotted amount that the card provides.
Especially if I choose the very best apple juice, which can run about 8 bucks per gallon...
Every time I have gone over the river to watch a game, Berta, the lady of the house, has always given me food, sometimes even a steak with fries.
But, this time I would be showing up unannounced, and, because the Patriots were not playing, I wouldn't be expected.
I vacillated to the point where I even returned to the apartment to grab my busking stuff and go out. Howard would never miss me, I thought. Why would I show up to watch the Seattle vs. Los Angeles game, anyways?
What clinched the decision for me was the fact that Jacob had texted me to say that he happened to be working a Terminix security job in Gretna, not far from Howard’s house. He said that he would be getting off at 10 PM. The game would be ending some time around then.
It seemed preordained that Jacob would meet Howard, about whom he has heard many stories.
And, meet him he did.
They found common ground talking about the tub full of movies that Howard had, that I had never really noticed before.
But, then, after not getting anything to eat from Berta, nor skeezing a dollar and a quarter off Howard for the bus fare back over the bridge, I got a ride back to Sacred Heart by Jacob, with my bike in his trunk.
As he was pulling out of the parking lot, when I had just one more thing I wanted to say to him, before I forgot, the chance to do so never came, because a cartwheel skeezer entered the picture.
It was a petite, blond haired, hippy looking woman. She was not unattractive and probably about 28 years old, but drunk and high enough, so she probably felt ten years younger.
I am pretty sure I have seen her in my travels, and that she has never said a word to me.
But, somehow, the sight of Jacob, in his Lexus, inspired the lady to start doing cartwheels down the sidewalk.
I hate it when people seem to expect others to be impressed by the fact that they are crazy, and so I was prepared to just let her cartwheel right by, never giving her a second look. Of course, that would have me doing exactly what I complain about New Orleans for, when I call it Ignore-leans; ignoring her totally.
I would put the damper on her skeeze with a curt: “We’re good!” as soon as she came near, which was almost a certainty.
I had the feeling she wouldn’t have been doing cartwheels if she hadn’t an audience.
I told Jacob: “Don’t act like it’s interesting that she is crazy,” but to no avail. He was gawking; which was all the encouragement that the cartwheel skeezer needed, apparently.
Seeing that she had a potential sucker on the line, she was soon upon us, emanating alcoholic breath and taking over the conversation, telling us her life story, as if we had asked for it.
All I could think of was how whatever she was high on, had to have its downside. Nobody can sustain that level of blissful abandon. Nobody loves "everyone they meet" that much, all day, every day. And if someone had attained that level of oneness with the universe, she wouldn't have to get messed up on alcohol and whatever else, in order to be herself.
Whatever the inverse emotion of the one that makes you want to do cartwheels down the street, and greet people like you both have your feet in the mud at Woodstock, was lurking in the background, waiting to rear its head, first thing the next morning, I thought.
What goes up must come down; and what a grumpy bitch she must be in the morning, especially after waking up without a cigarette or coffee, or an eye opening beer, after a night of tripping on mushrooms and doing cartwheels down the sidewalk, and it then being time to pay the piper.
Jacob wanted to interact with her so he could record her on his phone, in hopes of goofing on the recording later. That is one of his hobbies.
Almost any interaction that he has had with anybody, since he got his first phone at the age of 13 or so, he most likely has a recording of it. He just keeps the thing on “audio recorder” all day, every day. Phones nowadays have the memory to do that, and “the cloud” is big enough to hold the entire soundtrack of anyone’s life, even if they live to be 107.
Record Everything
This might be a millennial generation thing, which I might delve into in another post; I really don’t know
I know myself that I miss out on a lot of opportunities to capture funny sound and/or video, just for not being in the habit of grabbing my phone and turning the camera on instead of standing there watching, my mouth agape.
Recently, I was in a little store where the guy told me that the type of nicotine tubes he sold would fit the vaporizer that I showed him. I was down to my last ten bucks or so, and the things were 9 bucks.
He just about guaranteed that they would fit.
I bought them, went out, got into the car, where I opened the box to discover that they were entirely different from the ones that fit my vaporizer.
I went back in the store, where the guy told me that they couldn’t refund my money, and that he had never said that they would surely fit. “I don’t know about those things, I don’t use them. I told you you could try them and that they might fit,” said the 20 year old Middle Easterner.
“Augh, that’s why you should always be recording!” lamented Jacob.
Maybe he is right. In a world of 20 year old Middle Easterners, maybe one should always be recording...
Another thing that comes to mind was the fight I saw take place one night, between the guy who paints himself gold (there’s only one of him that I know of, who sits by Deanna’s Seafood being gold and somehow skeezing off of it) and one of the guys who paints himself silver (there are at least 3 of those, along with one “red” man who wears devil’s horns and one who is just entirely red).
But I had arrived at The Unique Grocery Store just as it was brewing, in the glow of the brightest neon sign in the Quarter, advertising “the lowest prices in the Quarter.”
And you couldn’t beat the bargain of seeing for free a fist fight between the gold man and the silver man.
That would have made a great video. Maybe even a “viral” one, because they were pretty well matched, both in their 30’s, and it was a pretty even exchange; seemingly over a territorial dispute. Maybe the silver guy had been trying to move in on the seafood eating crowd, which is gold man territory...
After the fight was broken up and each guy sent a separate way, the silver man walked right past me and I could see golden fist imprints, one on his cheek and another above one of his eyes...I was reminded of that old Reese’s commercial, the “Hey, you got peanut butter on my chocolate!” one, if you want to Google it...
So, Jacob wanted to amuse himself with this particular skeezer, who was not unattractive, but looked like the cartwheels were starting to take a toll on her.
I was irritated just by seeing her prosper, with her hippie-in-the-mud-at-Woodstock act; doing cartwheels up the way, while speaking in poetic riddles and happy, oh, so happy, persona.
That is my own row to hoe, my irritation at seeing skeezers whom I can see through prosper at the expense of people who can’t.
I was thinking heroin, not mushrooms, and maybe would have treated her more kindly had I known that she was on a more spiritual drug.
After she told us that she loved us for the umpteenth time, and reiterated that the police were free to “come arrest me!” for being happy and doing cartwheels up the street, I started to tell her that butting into a conversation was a strange way to show that love.
She waved me off as if I was a curmudgeonly old man, who had grown bitter and stopped doing cartwheels years ago, and doubled down on her efforts towards Jacob.
It was another example of me trying not to assume the role of guardian over a friend who is much younger, and to give him the benefit of the doubt that he could resist being taken for all he’s worth by a crafty veteran skeezer.
It didn’t help that, when she glanced over to see if her attention grabbing stunt was working, Jacob had a bemused look on his face and was practically waving her over.
I guess the ego driven satisfaction that I get from depriving such souls of my attention (there have been times when the “crazy” person, after not having seemed to get a reaction out of me with their antics, encroached further, to the point of where one of them, in a dollar store, moved closer and began to bump me slightly to punctuate whatever his crazy behavior was that I was ignoring.
That is myself being mean, and perhaps an area that I need to address in my self examinations and meditations.
You should always give everyone you meet the benefit of the doubt, even if they bend their path towards you, at the sight of you; even if you have just opened up a fresh pack of cigarettes when you detect their motion towards you.
The Golden Rule
How would I like to be treated if I had fomented a hatred for my fellow man, and drawn the conclusion that the only good all these assholes walking around possess is in regard to whatever materials they are toting around. And I had formed a view of the world as being a big planet populated by other people, all of whom were in some way standing between me and my addictions?
And then, what if I saw someone opening a pack of cigarettes outside The Unique Grocery Store?
And, I fomented a hatred for him on the spot, ready to vent it upon him should he reaffirm my view that the world is out to deny me.
And, I looked him from head to toe, deciding that the hat he is wearing is the kind that people I hate wear, and that the shirt he has on is just the kind that people sit around in, plotting against me and my ilk, and that it is all the result of dumb luck. He had had good luck, and I have gotten the short end of the stick, and his whole appearance lays this bare...
He has just had cigarettes practically given to him, as easily as money comes to some people, and now, all I am asking for is for him to take notice of my plight and do the right thing and even the score a little bit, share the wealth, spread the “love” and give me a free cigarette or dollar, at his expense....
How would I feel, if that were the case, and the person, who had had to play his ass off for a full 23 minutes before even seeing the first of 13 dollars go into his tip basket, were to become defensive and eye me with skepticism after I gave him the lie that I was hungry and begging for food, and then was to give me a smart-ass response to my begging such as: “Oh, I’m not passing out cigarettes today, that’s Thursday...when I pass out cigarettes, I buy a couple cartons, then walk around, just seeing whoever might be craving one; you’ve probably heard of me. Everyone calls me “the cigarette dude...” or something equally sarcastic.
How would I feel?
So, I was thinking that Deborah, as that turned out to be her name, knew that I could see through her skeeze, and that I had noticed the conspicuous absence of any companion in cartwheeling alongside her, and that the smell of alcohol on her breath, combined with the fact that I had seen her before and she had never shown an interest in me until faking one at that moment.
I thought about just saying all these thoughts out loud to Jacob, but decided to hold on to whatever thoughts I was about to convey to him before he drove off -something about music- and I just walked away, just as Deborah was lifting the front of her tank top and asking us each to touch her navel.
And, off I went to grab my gear and go out and busk.
I could have asked Jacob for the 75 cents for a can of food for Harold, but, doing that in front of the skeezer would open that can of worms, and make it easy for her to put in her own request for some of his money, behind the skeezing mind-set that demands to be an equal recipient of any generosity that they, the skeezers, see flowing towards any other person.
For all Deborah knew, I had been just walking down the street and had somehow gotten Jacob to stop his car, maybe by standing on my head right by the exit of the parking lot, where he would have to briefly pause before going out into traffic. And that I was skeezing him. Why not turn it into a skeezing party?
It would have been a knee-jerk reaction in a skeezer to approach, like a dog in a pen with other dogs, and try to dislodge a piece of the meat that has been thrown to another dog, and tear it away for itself.
So, I didn’t even ask him for cat food money.
It crossed my mind that he might be upset because, since I had gone over to Gretna, where he was stuck working, I could have left much earlier in the day, so I could have kept him company for some of his boring shift, and then just left for Howard’s house around game time.
That would have been a righteous thing to do, in exchange for getting a ride (and saving me from having to ask Howard for the bus fare, after I hadn’t seen him in almost a half a year) but, I had woken up at 4:30 PM, and still wasn’t on my bike and heading in the right direction until 3 hours later.
A lot of this time was spent hemming and hawing over whether or not to busk in order to have any money at all, or to put my faith in any karmic flow that might proceed from choosing instead to cheer up my old buddy with a visit, and then introduce him to the fascinating Jacob, and vice-versa.
Some of Howard’s stories, which Jacob hasn’t heard as many times as me, might have been fascinating to him, I thought.
The Road To Hell
But, there is always a danger in planning things.
Having things go as planned is like flipping a coin and hoping to flip it to a half dozen tails in a row.
It’s like the guy who invites a young lady who is a love interest over to his house.
He figures that she will show up around 7 PM, when the sun is just setting, and so it would be nice and romantic if they were to sit on the porch swing together watching it, and sipping rosѐ wine.
Before going out onto the porch, he would strike a match and light the newspapers that he had wadded up under the kindling as part of his plannings, so that, after they had watched the sun set and finished the wine, and just as the outside air was cooling (he would have somehow finagled it so she left her sweater inside) they would re-enter the cottage (he lives in a cottage in this fantasy) which would be at the perfect temperature, especially by the fire ...”I thought we could sit in front of the fire and warm up...” where they would cuddle.
He would have loaded a playlist into his music system, which would have been carefully planned ...”I figure I’ll take her hand and start dancing with her during the Hootie and the Blowfish song; then we can sit back down on the couch, and I’ll kiss her during the Johnny Mathis one, and then...”
Then, as life would have it, she would be allergic to rosѐ wine and so the sunset, that you thought you could count on, if nothing else, wouldn’t go as planned.
And then some other distraction might come up, like a deer appearing in the back yard, one that she wants to see how close she can get to, by slowly creeping up to, and then she might spot the wishing well and want to make a wish at, and so over an hour is spent outside, allowing the fire, because of the flue being more stopped up than you had thought, to fill the cottage with acrid smoke, which would burn her eyes and make her not feel like dancing to Hootie and the Blowfish...
And a dozen carefully planned events would never come to fruition, having been sidetracked early on.
The two cigarettes placed on the bed stand next to the antique lighter (which you thought might spark a conversation during which you could tell her about your family’s antique store in New Hampshire) forget about those cigarettes; you never made it past the sunset...
So, I know enough not to think and hope that things and events will unfold in a certain way.
Football, You Bet!
To Jacob’s credit, he was able to keep under wraps, for the most part, what I detected to be a certain disdain for the sport of football, where men go out and try to knock each other down, and it being all about physical prowess.
It’s not just that Jake looks like “the effeminate looking guy who abhors violence; and you can’t help but think that it is just because he is softly muscled and has the delicate fingers of a pianist and doesn’t like pain at all" (according to him).
Myself, I never liked pain. In fact I can recall hating it, on several occasions.
I’m not being facetious, because there was the one pain, which was kind of invigorating, of having had my face cut open by the fist of a young black guy in Baton Rouge who had tried to rip me off by swindling me on a 5 dollar sack of weed.
He had then resorted to violence, after I reneged on the deal, having initially picked up a beer bottle off the nearby ground and then shattering it to particles, while trying just to break it into a jagged knife; a knife with such an irregular edge that it will get you in more than one place at a time, but, to be fair to the young man I don’t think you can make a lethal knife that way, absent a really lucky swing to the juggler vein using one that broke in just the right way on the curb...
Have I digressed enough... Oh, yeah. It was by the grace of God as I understand Him that the kid didn’t know how to break a beer bottle into a knife, maybe the next time he was a lot more careful with his break and was able to cut up a white boy really good to get his five dollars; which he probably felt was rightfully his, because he had played his part correctly; lured the guy with the money to a place just a tad removed from where anybody might notice, etc. and he didn’t want to be denied, in this world that is out to deny him...
By the way, the next part of this particular skeeze, as I have come to know it is that, after you give the guy your 5 dollars, he then walks in the direction of the cluster of houses, disappearing among them.
He will indeed come back.
You would have been standing there feeling like a sucker the whole time. You would have been thinking: what the hell is going to make him come back, he’s already got the money?!?
But, then, you would see him and be like: “Oh my God, you mean there’s actually a trustworthy weed guy hanging around the hood store?
And, you would be in the process of feeling ashamed of yourself for having judged him, and would be in the middle of thinking that you had been all wrong about the guy, when he would crystallize the sentiment by saying: “I told you I wasn’t gonna take your money; told you I’d come back!” (aren’t you ashamed of yourself...?) as kind of an approbation.
Then, though, the skeeze would continue with him saying:
“Listen, the guy only has quarter ounces, but they’re fat like this (fingers apart impressively) I can get one for twenty, you got another fifteen?”
This part of the skeeze is a trap for anyone who might be under the illusion that the guy had just proven himself to be trustworthy by coming back the first time, and not just taking off with the 5 dollars.
In fact he even brought the bucks to his guy (so the house must be a real thing, right? And he had already done some legwork on your behalf, so you are indebted to him, right?) who told him that he wasn’t dealing in small amounts, only magnificent, gloriously copious bags worth every bit of 40 dollars, but available to this special man whom you just met in front of the store, at half that price. You were in the right place at the right time.
In truth the guy didn’t really come back, he never really left.
It doesn’t end there. If the sucker has to think about that, then the skeezer knows that the sucker has more money; at least another 15 bucks, on him. If his instantanous response is not “That was all the money I had,”then the skeeze goes to the next level, approaching the stabbing with a bottle phase.
And, then, even if you balk at giving him another 15 bucks, you are now out there, out of view, with him, next to a cluster of houses that you are starting to think are vacant, and out comes the beer bottle knife.
If you have even more than the fifteen dollars, then it will be virtually impossible for you to separate out one of the combinations that add up to that amount without revealing just how much more money is in your possession. You might have to rifle through the whole stack in order to find a ten and a five, type of thing...
And then, out comes the beer bottle knife.
The most viable solution, if you find yourself in a similar situation is to give the guy the 5 bucks, say something like: “I’ll trust you this time...” and then bolt out of their, entering the 5 dollars under “educational costs” in your ledger, and then moving on.
He might have felt rightfully entitled to the money because, well, he did everything by the book; he led me to the spot just out of sight of the main road, or rather, I allowed myself to be led there.
He was definitely playing me for however big a sucker I might have been.
If he had to take my 5 dollars to this place out of sight and get my weed and then come back to me, then why couldn’t he have proffered that same business offer while we stood under the bright light of the hood store sign?
Then I could, and would, have told him that, no, "I never hand my money to someone I don’t know and then watch him walk away with it."
This is because the one time I did do that, the clock began to slow down.
I became subjected to a psychological torment, as I imagined his steps with my money, and where he might be going, then could imagine him coming back; he should be coming around the corner any second now...
Then, I had to face the truth that, waiting longer because I was really looking forward to the weed and want to give him a little more time, turns into a fool's game, and more mental anguish.
Until I finally settled upon something like a half hour as being, if he hadn't come back by then, something to be chalked up as a lesson learned.
A lesson in letting go...
So, his whole hustle was just glorified mugging. If you don’t hand him the 5 dollars (it bears repeating the amount of money to point out the ridiculousness of it) then he will demand it at knife point or try to beat it out of you.
I think I was supposed to freak out at the sight of him preparing the beer bottle knife and just toss the money towards him before making a hasty escape. That was probably his plan.
We should just legalize everything, just put warnings on it all...It’s a crazy game.
Another thing is that, in many cases, the guy wants to go off-camera so he can dig the weed, that you are going to consume, out of his underwear, where it resides alongside his scrotum because, well, if there is one thing that the very manly cops who are going to be the biggest dicks if they find weed on you, are is, they are the biggest homophobics.
Your underwear is like a safe deposit box.
These cops are "NOT no faggots," in fact a lot of them have wives (whom a lot of them beat) and yeah, they’ve had all the typical jokes hurled at them; “What, did you become a cop because you like grabbing guy’s balls?” and other such insults aimed at diminishing their masculinity, and I have, myself, going back to the late 80’s and Bush’s “War on Drugs,” hidden quantities of up to a quarter ounce of weed right within the confines of my BVD medium size (fits sizes 32 to 34) tighty whity’s and been searched by law enforcement agents nationwide. I found it to be totally safe, cops just won’t check your balls. There are too many gossipy officers on the force to discourage that.
But, this guy didn’t have the weed secured in his underwear, nor hidden under a rock, he wanted me to follow him further, which I did do until such a point that the above logic dawned upon me:
So, anyways, his busted beer bottle knife plans dashed, he instead made a dash at me with his fists.
And he was able to hit me above one eye hard enough to blacken it a bit but mostly bloody it, as it landed more towards the eyebrow. That and another blow that I wasn’t aware of were enough to knock me to the ground, where I lay on my back and he stood over me at my feet.
He was about 19 and I was 48 or so. But I was drinking back then, and it was probably with the appearance of a slobbering drunk, that I sallied forth from the hood store with what was probably tank of cheap malt liquor #4...
But, in Baton Rough, I would have been busking on 3rd Street (see photo).
I would have left my guitar and my backpack with a couple that ran a hot dog cart, complete with a canopy that you could sit under.
They were always right across the street from the glass case that I used to love to play in front of. So, I eventually befriended them and they watched my stuff while I ran for malt liquor tank no. 4, it might have been.
I wouldn’t want to make that trek down Florida Ave with my guitar, never mind follow a nigga’ into the netherworld with it.
So, back to the fight, and the point of the story...
I would never drink to the point where I couldn’t busk for being too drunk to hit the right chords, stay on the beat, hold on to the pick; whatever.
I found that to be an easy enough point to gauge. Seeing as though my weight was not fluctuating from day to day, and I was drinking the very same brews day in and day out, there was a place somewhere around 2 and 2 and 2 3rds of those 25 ounce Tecate jobs, where the can may as well have had a line drawn with the universal symbol of a guitar pick falling from fingers.
I guess playing music involves a slightly higher logic than, say, walking; just putting one foot in front of another. I found that it was possible to be kind of staggering a bit on foot, but still be able to sit down and render passable music, for the occasion.
So, realizing that I was in a fight with a guy who was trying to, I suppose, knock me out and take at least the 5 dollars, and thankful that, for busking purposes I always maintained a firm grip on a blade of grass, I drew my feet towards me, almost in a fetal position, but I did it in a cowering way, as if I was going to ball myself up and try to protect myself from him that way.
He stood over me, still on the attack, as if my legs being drawn up was going to allow him in close enough to punch my face some more.
And I envisioned when I used to do the standing broad jump in high school track, and the mechanics of it -which muscles did what, and in what proportions, and I remembered that to get a really good jump, you would swing your arms to establish a rhythm...
Then, in the next few milliseconds, as he was cocking his fist (better than fisting his cock, eh?) I remembered that the long jump had been more my thing in track. I had been better at it.
That exercise takes the guesswork out of any rhythm because that is already set by the pitter-patter of your running feet; you just have to coordinate it so you are running at top speed, yet be ready to explode upward when you get to the white bar and...
With that as my visual and his solar plexus kind of being the white bar at the end of the runway; my foot exploded like I was trying to jump and fly as far as possible.
It knocked him back enough so I had enough time to get back on my feet, then, with an indignant look on my face, I made a fake charge towards him, which froze him long enough so I could run the half block to safety.
Maybe his solar plexus hurt a bit, too...
I yelled: “Five dollars; really?!?” as I ran away; as loudly as possible, so it would serve also as a distress call, or at least draw eyeballs to the area, which might have made him abandon his quest for the 5 bucks, should he have chased me.
So, to the point; the pain that I felt seemed in a bizarre way to be processed as; he tried to kill me, and this is all I got, and it felt more soothing than anything.
I went back into the hood store, where the guy greeted me with: “Oh, Jesus. They got you too?”
And this was said in a tone that would indicate that since, in his view, I minded my own business and wasn’t in there giving myself away as a crackhead by buying brillo, and purchasing a product which I have never heard referred to by any other name than “those flowers in a tube” which is a ready made crack pipe in the form of the glass tube, and came with a little artificial flower inside.
But, his tone also alarmed me enough so I found my reflection in something and saw that the blood from the cut over my eye had washed down over a lot of my face and that surprised me because it only felt like a scratch at the time.
Adrenaline, I guess.
I went back to busking that night.
I figured that I would give busking with a busted open bloody face a shot.
I didn’t make anything, I recall. Not even after starting to say: “Boy, they really let you know when they don’t like a song, around here!” to passersby.
Not a good idea. I think that was tank of malt liquor number four’s idea.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have made them think that, among their fellow LSU students, there are those vicious enough to attack a busker over a song. Or they might have thought it was fake blood and that I had a weird, kind of disturbing shtick...
I’m really off on a tangent here. This is where I normally delete the preceding dozen or so paragraphs, paring it back to the last one that was on point, but I’m going to leave the story about the fight in Baton Rouge. I think an anniversary of it is coming soon...
Back To Thursday Night...
So, I didn't ask Jacob if he had 75 cents for cat food, because it would be in his nature to say something out loud in front of the skeezer like; “Yeah, my boss paid me for both nights, so I’ve actually got 240 dollars on me,” innocently.
Maybe to vocalize his gratitude for the good fortune that had befallen him, but in the presence of someone who had gotten her fix, and so the universe was a magnificent and fascinating place, but who was also on a collision course with "the coming down," which would manifest itself as backwards cartwheels, figuratively speaking.
It was kind of conspicuous that she was alone. But that wouldn’t be for long, as soon, some dude had caught up with her. By then I was in my apartment bagging up my busking stuff, to eventually show up at the Lilly Pad at 12:30 AM on a Friday morning.
I looked out the window just in time to see that the above mentioned dude had joined them. I couldn’t help thinking that she had given him some very subtle communication with her eyes perhaps, to say, "This one is pretty gullible, play it cool..."
Then, I saw the lady getting into Jacob’s car.
“Whatever,” I thought. He’s 21 years old. He should be able to discern whether or not someone is skeezing him. Maybe being skeezed is the only way to learn certain things.
So, I went out to busk and I was actually pretty happy to have been able to squeeze in the trip to Gretna, watch a whole football game with Howard and still make it out there to busk.
The lateness of the hour on a Thursday night translated into a pretty light crowd, and I only made the cat food, Bang energy drink and a pack of cigars that I did, but it gave me a sense of security.
But, when I got a text the next morning from Jacob saying that the lady turned out to be "cool" (she was on mushrooms which is a whole different plane of existence than being on heroin) I thought I might have been wrong about her.
My main issue was with the extreme high she was on. What goes up, must come down, and there has to be an anti world, where the anti Deborah would wake up in, with puffy eyes and immediately start yelling and cussing” most likely with a Jones for nicotine, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, or cocaine. She might say: “I can’t believe I was cartwheeling down the sidewalk last night." She would be back to feeling 10 years older.
After discovering her lighter is out or something, her biggest dilemma would be how to make it seem like asking whomever she took home for the night for whatever she was craving without having it seem like it is being bartered for whatever sex she might have "provided."
All this from a lady whom I am pretty sure I have seen around the neighborhood, and who probably saw me, sitting on my bike, and maybe even picking tobacco out of the ashtray out front, and ignored.
She had never performed cartwheels at the sight of me, and so, by deduction, it was Jacob, who is half my age and was sitting in a Lexus, who was her mark, and the target audience for her conversation crashing antics.
But, all I could manage to say to him as she approached was: “Don’t act like you think it’s interesting that she’s crazy,” which, admittedly came from a prejudice that I have against anyone walking in our neighborhood.
So, when I got a text from Jacob then next day, saying that the lady had turned out to be cool and, not only that, sold mushrooms, I kind of felt like I had to swallow crow, somewhat, as I think the expression is, and admit that I had read her wrong, and that, clouded by my negative judgment of her, I missed out on an opportunity to make the acquaintance of a lovely person.
But, then, I also took his assessment with a grain of salt.
The proof is in the pudding, and it turns out that she had indeed gotten something out of him; sold him mushrooms at a profit...
But, the text that I sent him stated that I didn’t want to do mushrooms and busk with someone who had been so callous, as to have had the knowledge that I didn’t have any money at all (otherwise I could have thrown my bike on a bus) and had also asked him to pick me up after he got off his job, which coincided almost exactly with the ending times of most “Thursday Night Football” broadcasts.
I know that Jacob enjoys company at his job sites. I will admit that 12 hours is a long time to sit idle.
Something For Nothing Not For Me
When I worked in a little glassed in booth in Charlottesville, Virginia, back in 2002, we had the remnants of a hurricane come through -one that hadn’t made landfall until hitting Charleston, or something, and it knocked the power out.
I was still asked to go in and sit overnight in the blacked out booth and do nothing.
I didn’t have a cellphone; and, even if I did, this was 2002 and there just wasn’t 8 hours of entertainment in those things.
My manager wanted me to just be on the premises.
As protection against looting. The place was open 24 hours a day, normally, and so they never had to secure anything before vacating it.
But the upshot is that I sat there.
I watched the trees swaying in the heavy winds and heard rain pelting the glass booth on its side.
And I noticed which lights had not gone out. All around me the landscape was eerily darker than I had ever seen it. But there were the lights that ran off generators that were still on, and I looked at those. That got pretty boring after about 44 seconds..
Then, I had the impulse to turn on the radio. Oh, yeah, the power's out...
Then I wished I had brought my electronic chess game.
And, before three out of the 8 hours had elapsed, I had determined that I wouldn’t, not in a boat in a moat, not for up to three times the money I was making there, take the job of just sitting there and watching water on glass, against the backdrop of the lights still on.
You really would have to pay me, I think I figured, a pretty astronomical figure to feel as useless as I did; no pickup truck driven by rednecks with sledgehammers coming after the soda, just total indifference.
Of course the rules for that job would be the same -I wouldn’t be allowed to bring anything that I neglected to bring on that night.
For this astronomical wage, I would have to sit there feeling utterly useless. The solution would be to practice some sort of meditation; show up with some incense and dry matches and make a holiday of it, I suppose.
But, I can almost see where today, people are doing the same thing in different places, ie. staring at the screens of their phones, and to sit there on Youtube all day while getting paid, seems night and day and light years ahead of watching water on glass.
But, I have since apologized for the hostile tweet to Jacob, and turned the experience into a positive, by using it as the impetus that I needed to embark upon (another) cleanse and fast.
I have, as I sit here, reached 48 hours without having consumed anything other than apple juice.
I finished busking last Sunday (Oct 6th) having made up my mind that I was going to do the juice fast, which would turn into a water fast, up until the 12th of the month, which is my birthday.
What better way to celebrate one’s birthday than by biting into a watermelon, as the first food in a week?
As I rode home this (early Thursday) morning, after having made a decent 15 bucks or so, for someone showing up at 10:45 PM on a Thursday and playing for an hour and twenty minutes, I thought to myself, as I noticed a physical weakness in the legs pedaling my bike, how I had at least reached that stage, at about 40 hours, where I was fantasizing about eating the can of pumpkin that I have in the house, and how I wouldn’t complain that it wasn’t sweetened at all, I would just devour it. These are Auschwitz level thoughts.
This is the devil appearing before me and telling me to turn stone into bread.
But, the point is that, I don’t even care, right now about heavenly delicious things like a whole bag of those little round white powder covered doughnuts, or a pizza that you throw in the oven for 15 minutes.
No, give me the can of pumpkin an a spoon, or a can of green beans and a fork, and I would be more than grateful.
So, I recommend intermittent fasting if for no other reason than to wean oneself off of foods that might become unhealthy addictions.
I noticed a big difference between eating off the “maggot wagon” at construction sites, where I was doing heavy physical labor, back in 2000, like cutting through asphalt with a special saw, then using long pry bars to separate the cut out sections, hoisting them into a wheelbarrow and then hauling them off to a dumpster etc., all done with the Florida sun high in the sky and the mercury reading right around human body temperature.
I would show up with a bottle of this stuff called “XXL” which had 1,100 calories, something like 49 grams of protein. And it was the kind of protein that had already had the first process of digestion in the stomach done in a laboratory, it was "ionized" nitrogen, or something.
I would bust out the work as if I was in the gym, and I slept like a baby, 4 miles out into the white upper middle class suburbs, on a spot designated as “protected wetlands” and labeled a wildlife sanctuary on at least the map of Jacksonville that I saw.
But, there were times that I ate off the roach coach.
Perhaps I had woken up with no money one day, and had had no breakfast.
And then, maybe the boss, being a kind man, and maybe considerate to the point of having noticed that, though I salivated at the sound of the lunch whistle, I had produced no food from anywhere. And maybe he handed me a five dollar bill riht in front of the cart, saying:
“Here, go get you something off the cart...” He wouldn’t call it The Greasemobile or anything; not in that context, at least.
And, so, I have eaten from it, just like everyone else. No Nitro Fuel today...
I have gotten the big meat and cheese thing.
And, on those late afternoons, I remember moaning right along with my coworkers, for once, about the heat and about wanting to just lay down under that tree, type of stuff.
My sweat was greasier and didn’t seem to evaporate (hence cool) as well, either.
The funny thing is that, for about the first hour and a half after eating the big meat and cheese thing, I felt a wellspring of strength, but also a shortness of breath and that sensation that a lot of blood was going to the stomach; like the reason it is advised not to swim for 20 minutes after eating a “big” meal.
I guess this kind of catches the blog up. It is way late now; Friday night is gone forever.
But I just got going writing about fighting a black kid as skinny as myself; and before I knew it, the clock on the wall said "3 of the clock" or 3 "o'" clock, as is the conventional abbreviation.
I'm going to continue this into a post that will appear as tomorrow's.
The sun will be up in 3 hours.
I want to put on some of the recordings from Jacob and I busking that I have fancied up some, but I have to sift through them; I will type my post and sift at the same time...
on a Saturday morning -the sun will be up in 4 hours. But, I might grab my gear and at least ride by the Lilly Pad.
Someone might see the guitar and ask me to play, then tip me 20 buck; making it worthwhile to ride a total of about 4 miles; along with whatever I might find laying around on the sidewalks...
