Blood like oil

I said I was going to do it.

I pull the ends of my jacket around me, pull down the duckbill of my cap and walk forward from the mantrap in The Spot into the falling drizzle. It was cold and rainy and wet and windy and all those things that you hate in a day, but I had promised myself that I was going to walk down to 72nd street today to build on the exercises that I'm doing. This made day number two of walking through the rain and not letting it deter me.

The walk was long and windy, as I fight against the rain at times struggling on. 72nd street came sooner than it did yesterday. I hit the Way there and rode the 1 downtown to 42nd, transferred to the ever crowded Shuttle to Grand Central, and then the 6 train from there to 23rd street. Still, I'm not at my therapist. I have to get out and walk from 22nd and Park Avenue to 24th and 1st. In the drizzle. I decided not to put on my poncho again because that motherfucker can get hot as Hell under there in semi-cold weather. The best time to put that on is if it is snowing. Or a really cold, rainy day. Any other day, it's best to keep it in the backpack.

I made it to the office and went through my therapy session with Nurse G. I'm seriously getting used to her. She doesn't bother me as much as she used to and I find myself talking to her more. Still she wants me to keep up the anxiety sessions, telling me that that's good for me. I know it is, but lets just explain that to me when my nerves are jumping and I'm biting my nails and pissing my pants at the sheer thought of going.

Well, I'm satisfied with myself. I've made all three appointments, and if I make Dr. A's tomorrow that would be perfect attendance for the week. Yippee!!

From my psychotherapy session I head to Quest Diagnostics. If you don't know what Quest is, I'll tell you. A COVEN OF VAMPIRES!!

That's right, its time for my bloodtest. I don't know what's up with Dr. A. but he certainly likes to send me off for blood tests pretty often. So often that I am growing used to being stuck with a needle and watching as my life essence pours forth into a test tube. I'm not impressed any longer. Even when one of the vampires sticks me and draws blood out like a fucking pro, I am bored. Today, that's what I get, but first they have to play with my name. Dr. A. must like fucking with their minds because on some blood test forms he uses my first name, and on others, well, he uses my middle name. The name that I most often go by. Well, they now have two Hobobob's in their computers. It takes them some time to figure this out, but when they do and they finally put my new test information on my test tube, and then here comes a big assed needle. I always have to watch it as it goes right under my skin. Like they hit red oil, the blood comes rushing out and into the test tube.

It is over in a few seconds and the nurse is pressing a cotton ball on the spot on my arm where she draws the needle from. I get up, say my goodbyes and head to the library where I find Electra gone and people sitting in our chairs. I am cast off to wander around the library to find a seat somewhere. I do, in the middle of the massive library, in plain sight. This I don't like quite well because poets come in and have to disturb you to say hello. It's not that I don't want to say hello, I just don't like being disturbed from a good flow. And yes, this does happen.

Finally I closed up shop and headed upstairs to exit the library, and upon stepping outside I become witness to my fine drizzle turning into a heavy rain. I still refused to put on the poncho as I jetted over to the Madison Avenue Starbucks and dried out there for much of the evening with my brother.

I realize something now, while sitting around in Starbucks. I have insulated myself from current events. That's right. I know very little of what's going on around me. I don't mean immediately around me, like to my brother, or in the poetry circuit, but rather, on the news. I don't watch television, at all. I don't even watch it on the Internet. I was once told by some hillbilly in the stix that he never had a TV and never misses it. I thought that he was an idiot. Dumb fuck is such a throwback he thinks he's current. But now, I'm the fucking throwback. I don't want or need television. The boobs on it are just people more successful than I. Why do I care how they live their over bloated lives? Or read lines from a script. I have my own life to live to its fullest to waste valuable time living life vicariously.

Getting back to the point of my story: Because I'm cut off from a ready source of news, like the television, newspapers and even news on the Internet, I've become dumber to the aspects of what's going on around me. I'm a walking wood knot, serving no purpose at all. My brother quotes things in the paper that he's read and I have no clue what's going on. He tells me that a man lost his entire family when a Marine fighter craft smashed into his home, killing his wife and children. What the Fuck? When in the fuck did this happen?

Oh, and what about this, and what about that, he would ask, and I wouldn't have a clue. Am I losing it? Am I letting go of my feeble hold on reality, preferring to leave the world and it's myriad problems than to join it? Have being a lone Hobo made me a solitary figure? A stone statue in an abandoned museum?

Fucked up shit, right?

I think I'm going to start putting the Hobobob news team back together. I've got to stay current, or else.

Did you hear about the fucking fighter jet???

Hobobob