Unleavened Bread

Friday was another day.

I stayed in bed, watching television. I did not go out. I'm keeping to myself. I'm staying put for awhile. Charging up my energies for the SHOUT OUT on Saturday. That's what it feels like I'm doing, charging up my energies. Storing that shit, like a rechargeable battery. I'm doing good. I sleep at a decent hour, something that I haven't been doing well, and get up and take a shower. So far so good. If I take a shower, I know I'm leaving. I pack my roscoe, head to the bathroom and take a hit, then grab my gear and head out.

The Way has its usual Saturday morning problems. I'm standing on the edge of the platform and a guy comes up to me asking directions. Shit! I dunno! I'm a Fucking New Yorker! How much of this city are we supposed to know about?! Damn. I tell him to go over to the MTA platform man down the platform. I even point the fucker out. Does this guy go down there? No. You'd think that I pointed out an ass raping ex-convict. This guy blanches at the figure, and falls into my shadow. Freaks me out. I walk away from him and board the train.

I step in and imme- diately find myself in half a train full of people. Everyone is packed on my side of the car, on the other side is a smelly ragamuffin, animate homeless woman laying her shit out across the chairs in the car on one side. Duane Reade bags filled with newspapers and other shit, produced and laid about on the seats on one entire side of the car. What the fuck? The train car doors open at stops and people stream in. Those who realize that they are on her side of the car filter back over t my side. To me this shit is funny. This bitch is clearly out of her mind.

Well, that's what I get for finding the problems of others humorous. She decides to come to MY side of the car, working her way though the crowds, people moving from her path and she comes up and faces me. That's right. Out of the clear blue sky, she stops in front of my drunk and high ass and pulls out a pen and starts writing in her hand. She's standing there, staring me in my face, writing in her hand. Then she turns and accosts a couple not far from me. I'm about to say, what the fuck? Of all the people in this car, she has to come to me? Shit, she's standing right in front of me as if I want to be in her presence, I walk off as best as I can and wait until the train comes to a stop at 14th street, my stop, and I get off, shoving her the fuck out of my way as I exit the train. Damn. What the fuck?

I leave, take the long walk to the L train, find a seat and relax. Two young men walk into the train, lay down a large portable radio on the floor, and start blasting hip hop music. I'm sitting there, being slammed by the beat as these two idiots start jumping and dancing to the beat for a few coins from the passengers. Before me, there I am, watching the stereo pump away, wanting to jump up and land with both feet in the center of it, splintering plastic, rending wiring, sending sound screaming into nothingness.

I grit my teeth instead. My stop comes and I leave for the SHOUT OUT. The SHOUT OUT, which was in fact quite amazing. Our feature, literally blew the roof off the house with his poetry. Interesting. I read my poetry, my swill. It's funny, when I think no one cares to hear my shit, I read it and it goes over like a brick. But when I don't read, there are people who are irate with me for not reading. I don't know. I don't. Today, I think that everyone would rather that I had stayed home. I went through the entire SHOUT OUT high. I brought my roscoe and OBSIDIAN and I took a few tokes, and found that OTTOS has house boilermakers! Shit. Cyndi Lauper, who has taken kind of a liking to me, let me know about it, and OBSIDIAN and I did what we did best...get roaring drunk. After the show, we hung around and got drunk and high. Two fun things that go together.

While drinking, OBSIDIAN turns around and presents a guy named Sasha. He starts buying rounds, and the party gets started. A friend of his, Eric appears, and then the women appear. Their names escape me. I am royally fucked up, staring at Ottos, and amazed as to how pretty Cyndi Lauper is. All of us are as drunk as Citizen Kane when Eric wants to take the party to Brooklyn where there are even MORE nubile young women. I can't speak for OBSIDIAN, but I'm too drunk for my dick to work any longer. So what is the logic going anywhere women are the incentive. Just doesn't make any sense. Besides, we were just offered to join a group of women in the back earlier where a show was going on. I think about it. I'm tired. It's time for the hobo to go home.

OBSIDIAN is not far from the mark. He too calls it a night and we leave our young companions and stagger to the Way and I head uptown. It's time to go home. I do some food shopping, thinking about my life now. What door have I opened? Where am I? As an explorer, I'm at the threshold of a new world. A world of my mind, a world of art, a world of my life. I have to take hold of it. I have to do what I am here to do. It's not to become some stupid suicide statistic. I survived homelessness. I could have been exactly like that woman on the train today. Nuts. Living on the subway, refusing help, staying under the social radar, melting into nothingness. I want to survive. Not like that. No. I want to claw my way back into the world. Back where things made sense.

I feel more is needed. More is demanded. I need to do more. OBSIDIAN is sending out query letters to publishers for the homeless handbook. He is making a move. I need to wake up. To have a plan, and one is crystallizing in my mind. In my actions. This is my year. I'm not going to spend it waiting, waiting, and wasting away. It's time to fight. Time to win. A friend of mine said that ENERGY IS LIFE. When there is a lack of energy, there is a lack of response to the stimuli in the world around you. You dont' feel like doing anything. I was there. I was there where there was no energy to go around.

I have changed. You know something was wrong because I was not blogging. I was not doing anything. I was vegetating because there was nothing that I was capable of doing. Now things are changed. I am the man. I stayed up all night. Again. Not sleeping, just alive. Watching Hulu.com television and staring off into space. I want to do so much more. I have so much more to do with my life. I will not give up now. NO. I promise you that.

I'm going to do my thing now. In the morning, I sat up to hear the feverish pattering of rain against my air conditioner. Pounding, pounding. I wake up and get up. I was going to go to the Metropolitan hospital to reschedule another psyche appointment, but it was too late and too rainy to bother. So I made hot wings instead. I watched television shows, going back as far a McHale's Navy and I realized that I can write stories. I can write tons of stories for television and novels if given a chance. I have tons of ideas. None done before. I can do this. I want to do this. But there are hundreds of people like me who are the same, just in better circumstances. You know, they have homes, lives, loves and connections. Not someone who is prone to severe social anxiety and stays hidden in an SRO for the length of his days.

I head to the bathroom, take a piss and on coming out I run into... hmmm, what do I call her and how do I introduce her? Sherman, set the WABAC machine and let me tell a story about a particularly ugly woman, Black, mean, bat faced, slanty eyed, frowning, like a stoke victim, ugly mother fucker. This bitch floated out of nowhere, from the same bitch heaven as does all bitches, and here I am, one day, using the bathroom when she approaches me. "Are you the one leaving the seat up?" Wha? I look at this evil urchin. What are you talking about. "Are you the one leaving the toilet seat up after you use the bathroom?" I sincerely think about it because the woman is just that horrid looking. She scared the shit out of me. She made my skin crawl. I suppose so. It could be me. Why? "Because there are women here!" She scolds. "Can you leave the seat down?"

Shit, that's not an extreme request. Sure, why not? Sure I will. So I use the john and now comes the time to drop the seat, and I drop the seat and the cover. Hmmm. Did she mean the seat, or the seat and the cover? No doubt just the seat. But why should life be so good for her? I have to raise the seat to piss, so why shouldn't she have to raise the cover to do the same? So I've been lowering both seat and cover.

Well, this bitch has had it in for me since. She scowls when she sees me in the hall, and never says shit to me. I shake my head. Fuck her, right? Last night I get out of the bathroom and this scarecrow is in the hall, commenting about me and my nightshirt. "You're always wearing the same shirt, and back and forth to the bathroom." I ignore her of course, but I wonder....what the fuck is she in my business for? What the fuck is her aim for bringing out this shit to me as if I don't already know that I wear my nightshirt nightly and I'm back and forth to the bathroom because of my waterpills. So what? What the fuck does she want from me? Why can't she just leave me alone?

I'm in my room. I have to name her, but I don't know of anything good enough. I have to wait.

I'm waiting out another day, thinking. Just thinking. What can I tell you about me? I'm feeling pretty good. Very good, and I'm back. I'm back to blogging, and getting into trouble. I have more to tell. I'm just slow.

You never know.

Hobobob