A Vacancy In the Head

Well I fucked everything up.

I got up at 5:30 and jumped on the Internet. Did a whole lot of emailing and surfing and drinking coffee, and crawled back into bed and passed out. When my ass awoke it was 11:00am, too late to rush to the Doc, too late to run down to Boerum Place, too late for shit.

Damn, I'm coming apart here. I'm sleeping more and more. Fucking drugs must be putting the whammy on me after I went cold turkey for a week. It'll level off in time, I'm certain of this though. I did it before, I'll do it again. I make a sensible lunch and mope. I can still make therapy at 3:30pm, until I check the time and find that therapy is at 1:00 today. BEEAAAUUTIFUL. I email Dr.L and tell her that I overslept. She replies and says that I can show up at 3:30pm. That's good. At least I"ll make one out of four appointments today. The fourth one?? 6:30 in front of the Grace Building, where I'm to meet some very dear and old friends for dinner. Sharren, Sharrise, Rebecca, Kat, Bryan, the entire crew from my old job at Coudert Brother Library. A now defunct law firm.

I get ready, checking the weather outside. It's clear and cool. I'll need a sweater. I go to the right side of my bed drawers where I have shirts that have grown too small for me over the year and try out a few. They fit. Some better than others, but they fit. Well, I'll be damned. I may not be dropping loads of weight, but I'm certainly losing something. I decide to wear my LaBlatt's tee, something that I haven't worn in months underneath my sweater. I'm good to go.

"So, what happened. It seems like three weeks since last we spoke?" Dr. L asks. Yeah, it was about that much time. I had an excuse for each day that I missed my appointment which somehow sounded hollow. I told her about the new goings on in my life. How the System has fucked me over again. "Again? In a way that dosen't sound fair." You're telling me. I'm tired to fighting with people who seem to know or can do a little less than me while fighting against an agency whose only communication is through letters...which I haven't been getting. "Well, Mr. Hobobob, by all definitions you are viewed by the state to be a disabled person. It is critical that your health benefits be supported and not used as some bargaining chip." You're telling me. She uncrosses, crosses her legs. "I'm going to put you in touch with CID-NY (pronounced 'Sydney'), Benefits Insurance counseling for the disabled." The who...? My ears perk up. "I don't know all that they can do, but they might be able to help you." Well, no shit, I could use all he help that I can get. "Like I said, I don't know if they can do anything for you, but it might be beneficial for you to find out." Hey, when David met Goliath, all the gave him was a smooth fucking stone. I'll use it the best way that I can.

So I got the contact information and headed out. CID-NY. Ain't that some shit. Now I knew I was alone in all this, but I guess I wasn't all THAT alone. By slyly placing my termination date on the 21st these fucks in the system robbed me of FOUR days out of the week that I can act before termination. I've got this weekend, they are closed; Monday, President's day, which they are closed; and my termination falls on a Saturday, which they are closed, but not closed up to the machinery, which is still turning to terminate my benefits. Fuckahs.

I head straight to the library to look for OBSIDIAN. I find ELECTRA there, sleeping at the desk at Six O'clock in the evening, which means that she had a difficult night sleeping in the terminal the night before. I look around but no OBSIDIAN. From the library I head to Madison Avenue Starbucks, and when not finding him there, I gave up. I met up with Sharren in the front of the Grace Building and killed time there. She is looking good with her weight loss, like a completely different person. I wonder how I will look in the months to come, because I do intend on shedding these extra pounds before summer. If my body will work with me that is. I'm not as young as I used to be, and the years have not been all that good, but we'll see what the cards hold.

From there we go to Chevy's to meet up with Kat and Sharrise and chow down. Bryan soon joins us and we run off at the gibbs until a decent hour. Then Bryan and I head off to a bowling alley/night club in the New York Port authority. A sort of black tie thing, with black suited gorillas at the door, and asshole crazy pounding music inside. For some reason they let us in, with me, bearded and nappy headed and Bryan looking a little too much like a postman. Probably they feared he was one step from going postal on their asses.

We stayed until Midnight, watching the twenty-somethings run about and reminisced about the old days, before we grew so old. Bryan is only 37 and still feels that he has youth on his side, and that's such a wonderful thing. I, at 47 have waved twentysomething GIRLS goodbye. When asked the damage that I could deal out to one of them in the bedroom, I always say in what? Cards or Scrabble? I'm not even interested in talking to one any longer. I find them insipid. I know nothing about the Jonas Brothers, or Hanna Montana or any of those childish groups. Their movie stars are lost to me and they're not as old as the President of the United States. I always thought that I would have a little more time before being around the same age as the President....but no.

We split at Midnight and head off in different directions through the Way. I trudge through the biting evening cold to my room and happily lock the door behind me. Paula is is in her room across from mine with her idiot friends and I can hear her loud mouth through the door. Soon, they bring an argument out into the hallway and I wonder what makes a person so stupid that they would actually WANT their neighbors to know that they are having a difficult time in their home. This argument goes off and on until about 1:30-2:00 am when security comes up and asks if there is a problem. She must have forgotten that there is an intercom in every room directly to security. From there she fell silent until the morning.

I was too fucking tired to care. I had already began drifting in and out of sleep in front of my laptop and crashed in my bed around Two AM. Tomorrow would be the SHOUT OUT and a new fucking day.

An entirely new fucking day

Hobobob