Overestimating Understanding

Saturday.

What can I say? It's my least favorite day. I get up and I have to go somewhere...that's the first least favorite thing. I would like to spend a lazy Saturday at home. No matter how nice the weather. I would like to do nothing. Probably just spend the entire day on IRC. I can do that. It's far too simple.

But that's besides the point. My point is is that I could stay home and watch the paint peel. But no...I have to start packing up two bags of gear. And not just leave them behind, but to muscle these fuckers through the Metropolitan Transportation System. Now that sucks. It's as if people who see you with two large backpacks have to come over and fuck with you. Either they have to bump into you or step over them. Whatever. No matter where you are, they have to come clear from the other side of where ever the fuck that they are, and fuck with you. Son's a bitches.

I have to fight with the contentious trains, who run on whatever it is that you want to call a schedule. I call it their contrary whims. You're going to wait, and they're going to move slowly, going local instead of express, as if people do not want to get from point A to point B fast on Saturdays. People go shopping on Saturday. Do they understand that they are holding up commerce?

Then I've got to get to the SHOUT OUT. Probably slowly becoming one of the high points of my day. The stage isn't scaring me as much as it used to. I'm becoming more relaxed on it, and by becoming more relaxed I have less of a fear of the day. In time, I hope to master it. When I had arrived, about fifteen minutes early, I find the door open. Inside is Cyndi Lauper and the boss behind the bar working hard. I greet the boss, Nell, with a hello and head straight for the back. Once there, I find Franky Wood standing at the mouth of the entrance to the stage area, his back to me. Ohhh, great. The warm weather has gotten the blowhard up out of bed. I walk around him without saying a word, wondering who he is jabbering with, only to find my brother and another poet standing inside.

I am shocked and relieved to see my brother this early in the morning. We set up the stage and make ready for the start of the show. I don't start at precisely at 4:00 this day, there just aren't enough poets for it. There is a big jazz/poetry show happening at some club, whose name escapes me, which is drawing all of the poets this Saturday. A new, hot venue that's getting some attention. The numbers at our reading are down. Especially this morning.

But in time, after my first beer, we get started. Boom, brrrupt, like a truck coming from a ditch, I get the beast started and barreling down the road. More poets appear, the house starts to fill. Near the end, Franky Wood appears to make an ass out of himself. Such a wretched asshole. I wonder what this man would be doing without people to harass. Sitting on a park bench, reading the paper and feeding pigeons. Otherwise known as dying slowly.

We end on time, which is perfect, and I close down the stage area. We file out by degrees to the front of the building. There are no toke circles today. In fact, I ran into one this afternoon, during the intermission...that and another beer and I was good. The world floated on an invisible palette, lagging natural movement by several seconds. We left with DJ Bensonhurst to get a pizza and stood on the sidewalk eating it. I burned the shit out of the roof of my mouth. Then we strolled up to a Starbucks on Twenty Third. We said so long to DJ on the way there, and took our time. Not that I was all that tired and achy, because I was all of those things. It was just that the babes were out, showing off their summer bodies. Well, Spring Bodies, but it lasts all summer long. In the beginning, they are like fireworks. Everything is fresh and new and not boring.

An old friend and I would ride the bus from New Jersey, and in the spring, we could always tell it was the change of the season when you saw your first belly button. Once you've seen one of those...spring has sprung. And there was a lot of feminine pulchritude marching around the city this evening. The night wasn't even cool, but instead mild, and if these young ladies didn't want to get undressed in the streets then I didn't know what the fuck I was looking at. Legs and mid drifts and bare back, plunging necklines, tight pants...it just went on and on. It wouldn't stop.

It was maddness. Now I know what it means to be called a dirty old man. Shit, I'm not even old, and yet looking at these women filled my thoughts with...well...simply fucking the shit out of them I guess. I wanted to reach out and connect with a piece of ass like it was fruit from the vine. Now I know how Vikings felt. Fight, Eat, Fuck, Sleep.

My brother and I sat in the Starbucks ...my eyes drooping, my head bobbing. I was hit pretty hard with two beers and a joint. It was smashing into my sensibilities so that I could do nothing on IRC but watch text scroll. That's how fucked up I was. I don't know how long it was, with me nodding like a dope fiend, only raising my head up to watch the pretty pert asses head into the bathroom, but soon it was time to go. I hopped the number one at twenty third street and took it straight home.

I stopped off at a deli for a Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red and ran into a one eyed, crippled hooker dressed in tight fitting pants on her deformed hips and a blouse thin enough to show off her well formed tits. She stopped in front of me and stared into my face as I struggled past her in the narrow store. She reeked of cigarettes. I ignored her and paid for my shit and left for my room. Upon getting into the lobby, I find on the door of the elevator a sign that read: Out of Order. Oh great. I press the button for the jalopy elevator, right across from the new one, and wait. While waiting, a man comes down the stairs and walks past me: "That one ain't working either."

What the fuck??!! Do you know... sixteen flights up??? I'm carrying three heavy bags and I've spent the afternoon walking around all over the place with, and now I have to play Johnny Stair-master? FUCK!! I start off, one flight of stairs at a time, taking it easy. It's a slow grind. I march until my legs feel like lead and I'm panting like an old steam engine. I lean against the walls of the stairwell for support, and on the sixth floor I had to take a break. After a spell I strike against the stair anew, and this time prevail. I bust into my room like gangbusters and settle down, settle in and get online. I slip into the IRC channel and find it empty. I slip back out and crawl into bed. The day is over. I'm out in seconds.

Hobobob