Return to Nothing

Roundtree is over my shoulder, staring at my laptop monitor, focusing on the text about him. I put my hand over the screen and look at him. He laughs, stands up and steps away. "Heh heh, I was trying to see if that was a music video or sumpin'." Yeah, it is. In fact, I was playing the YEAH, YEAH, YEAHS, in the background. But that's no excuse to come over my shoulder.

Yeah, I was playing music videos. "'Cause I's jus wonderin'." Did I tell you that he has a branch in the corner of his mouth as he talks to you? It looks like he's chewing on a cigar. He goes over to the edge of his bed, directly across from me. Two men at a faceoff. He says more, but I don't recollect it now. I just remember that I was too tired of his parochial questions. Once again, about computers.

I wake up three times. Have you ever had that shit happen to you. You wake, look at the time, and know that you have things that you have to do, but you don't give a shit. You allow yourself another few minutes, as if your body can tell time like your brain. You drift off to a car crash. When you awake again an hour or more has past. Well at this second awakening, I gave myself another five minutes, which turned out to be another hour. It was Eight O'clock when I finally forced myself awake.

I have the interview today, and I'm pissed. As I get ready I grimace at all that I have to wear are retreads. Now, the driers are down in the Box due to a gas leak. GAS LEAK?? I didn't know that these motherfuckers ran on gas. Beats the shit out of me. I walk through the halls and corridors of the Box and it feels like a school building, as if I'm back in High School. Cinderblock walls covered with heavy oil based paint. Metal trimmed stairs shined to a shimmer. Generous doors of heavy aluminum with small windows above the knobs. Yes, it feels just like a school, and maybe at one time it was. It has the size and shape of a school. Now it's a school for the homeless. We are here to learn what it's like to get back into society.

I turn aside from a stupidly long line to get my meds and return to my bed to talk to Igor. Once again, he is leaving on the Eighth, but he gives me another kernel of information that he didn't before. It is another agency that is getting his apartment for him. And he IS getting an apartment, from FOUNTAIN HOUSE. I've heard about this shelter before. Only good things. Although the environment that you have to live in is appalling. Hence the reason why Igor lives here with us.

I shake hands to his good fortune and make my way back up for my meds. The line is shorter, but there is still a goofy line. I vote that today I think about my pressure and stand on it. As soon as I lean my back against the wall does out pop Roundtree. "Hobobob, where're you goin' now?" I look to the skies for my patron god ISIS. Please deliver me from stupidity. I'm off to the library, dear Rountree. "Which'un?" The one on 42nd street, I lied through my godforsaken teeth. If he'd ask to join me, I'd tell him to meet me there. "Oh, you like it up dere?" I wouldn't be going if I didn't. "Whadda you do dere?"Go online.

And this shit goes back and forth. One thing that it does do, and that makes the wait for my meds go faster. As I back up to enter into the office, Roundtree talks faster and faster, trying to hurry to get his sentences out before I take care of business. I know you've seen this shit happen to you time and time again. One person is speaking faster, you're giving them the opportunity to speak because you BELIEVE that they are rushing to a finish. But the truth is is that they want you to understand that they have MUCH MORE TO SAY. I have the remedy for this situation, and I suggest you do it too whenever you find yourself in it. WALK OFF. Just turn around, just shut the door, just step on the accelerator, just leave them in the dust. Simply because they need to realize that they are being selfish with your time.

Now, just guess what I did. I went right into the nurse's office, sat and took my blood pressure. The con- versation over. "Ohh, right," Roundtree suddenly realizes. "I'll talk to you later." And he goes about his business. And that's my morning folks. I stop off at Starbucks before hitting the library for breakfast, simply because I got paid yesterday for a hard days work, and I like treating myself for a few days. A Starbucks breakfast sandwich and a cup of Joe does the trick nicely. I meet Electra there.

Later I go to the bathroom in the library, because, frankly, this public lavatory is better kept than the one in the shelter, and because of the number of stalls make it much more comfortable. But today I notice something that I never noticed before. I know that this doesn't happen to women, but do you men ever find that when you flush the toilet, water splashes up onto your nuts? I mean, they are actually hanging just over the water in the bowl anyway...no don't laugh, I'm serious. When you flush, they get splashed on. But isn't that asspipe water? I stand, wondering, now how do you wash your balls in a public bathroom? Guys, I know for a fact if you haven't noticed now you will forever more. I now opt to stand before flushing the toilet. That's my new plan.

Now going on, I head to my cubicle. Electra is there already. She lets me know that she is going to Bryant Park, probably to get some fresh air, and could I watch over her bags. To Electra, I'm the personal guard for her bags, because she never wants to carry them, or look like a bag lady. Further, in Bryant Park she can sleep, and she doesn't have to worry about some skeksis walking off with her shit. I acquiesce.

I work on blogging and my mind is preoccupied with the coming interview. Down on Wall street. WHY did it have to be downtown at Wall Street, after the market closed down OVER 700 points?!!

I think about my nuts.

Hobobob