"Hobobob, when are you going back to the stories of being homeless in New York, and your incredible and humorous stories about Skeksies and soup kitchens? Instead of post after post of your 'world view', men, women and their sexual organs? I liked your social commentaries of New York better," someone wrote.
Two things, buddy. Look at the subtitle to my blog above. Does it read 'Homeless' any longer? Were you here when it did? I'm not a Streeter any more, but instead a Shelt. I live indoors and have a door with a lock and a key, so I can literally lock out the Skeks for days at a time. I can close out the entire world! Ha ha ha ha! The world of social commentary, like I am doing now. Rarely emerging from my room except on very special occasions, such as needing to take a shit. Fuck outside, fuck the world, fuck social commentary. I'd rather watch the passage of time as shadows moving along the walls in my room, and the stubble on my chin grow into a beard. I'd rather wait until some new inspiration arrives and write my fingers off than to claim to hold onto this mean, barren, loveless rock we call Earth.
The second thing. A recent comment ended as saying: "signed, one of YOUR bitches. yes, you know who..." So take this as a warning people...Hobobob HAS BITCHES. Although I was not aware of this, I am pleased to have it pointed out to me. Which means for the rest of the world...BACK THE FUCK OFF! I am divinely protected by forces that you cannot either understand or contend with! It fills me with a pleasant hopefulness that I will NOT be wiped off the Earth easily because I have Death, Hades, Creation and Destruction riding the four horses of the Apocalypse right behind me. You have been warned!
Ahh, so many of you want me to go back to ruminating over the miserable world of being homeless. You want more yuks for your bucks? Well, I'm somewhat back in the world now. Somewhat. I'm still dealing with THE SYSTEM, and they are the new shit-heads. I have to think of a name for these people, who have no other use but to screw with the lives of others. I wonder just how do they get up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror? Still, I know how their minds think. They have to feed their children and spouses. Take care of their own, even if it means destroying yours. Sad right? That's why I say that things in this country are going to get much, much worse, because we are still only thinking about ourselves. And honestly, when it comes down to white hot survival....the majority of us do NOT have what it takes. We have NEVER earned the right to live. This will be tested of us all...trust me.
Why am I bitching about THE SYSTEM? Why am I bitching? Because I have a lot to bitch about. I'm not sitting in my nice comfortable home, with my loving wife beside me in my bed, my children asleep comfortably in the room next to ours. I don't have a full cupboard and refrigerator, or even a bathroom to take a comfortable shit in. I'm surviving. Fighting day to day. I can't even eat food anymore without covering it with hot sauce because my food has to HURT for me to appreciate eating it! I'm surviving, and I have to say, I have earned the right to live every day, because I seize the day. There is passion in my life. Force and downright ugliness that only survivors understand. We strip away civility and pride daily, feel pain and agony regularly, and because of such, we are hardened. When I was working, I was like balsa wood...now I'm lead.
"Oh Hobobob, you are being so homelessly dramatic. Qwit yer bitchin'." Why? Why should I when I get this letter in the mail just the other day, which read in part: "Since 2008, the City of New York, through the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's 9/11 Benefit Program for Mental Health and Substance Use Services have helped those with mental health or substance use issues related to the World Trade Center attacks. We are proud to have helped New Yorkers in their recovery.
"This is a reminder that the program will end on January 7, 2011 and the last date to submit claims is March 31, 2011." Ha ha ha ha!! It took nearly an entire year of research, paperwork, letters, mailings, postage, notary public services, photocopies, emails, blah, blah, blah, and constant wrangling with this Commission to prove to them that I was working down in the Wall Street area during 9/11...only to have them recently approve my coverage which will only last about FOUR months. Why did they work so hard to keep me from services that had less life in it than it did to prove to them that I was eligible? Why so much work for so little? Why? I can answer that for you....it's THE SYSTEM. They have no intention of GIVING you shit, no matter how much they justify it to the American Taxpayer that they are actually doing something, they are not, as usual. Grandiose claims of how good and beneficial their programs are, but behind the curtains, they have their faceless minions doing nothing but denying them to those that need them.
Sad right? Why am I bitching? Because of shit like this. It seems that no matter what bureaucrat that I deal with, I get the sleight of hand. All motion but no movement. All bullshit. So, okay, I have been very depressed for personal reasons that I do not wish to share with anyone right the fuck now. I feel bad...a lot. A WHOLE LOTTA BAD. I will feel better, I know...but you know that old saying: "When is it the BEST time to kick a man? When he's already down!" So, guess what? I get an email from some of my friends in New Jersey that still talk to me to tell me that a very, very close friend of mine has died. Perished from off this mortal coil. I read the email several times, somehow thinking that it would say something different the next time. My head would not wrap around the fact that I would never see this person again on this side of the veil of tears.
Close friends asked if I would like for them to drive down and pick me up for the service. I didn't respond. I closed my eyes to the world recently, the pain in my heart too great to deal with the mass of mankind. Now this? Right. That's the way things go. But like I said, some of us will survive, not because we have been overlooked when it comes to pain and despair, but because we live on these things. If not, we would have perished long ago. Besides, I feel sorry for people who need to go to a grave to pay their 'last respects'. I don't believe in graveside redemption. People crying to a coffin about how much they loved the person within, when they didn't do it when they were alive. In my book, it's too late. This person no longer hears you. You've missed your chance, and your weak attempt for absolution is falling on deaf ears. This is self-serving interests at its best.
The good thing about me is that I don't fuck around. If I love you...I'll tell you to your face. If I hate you, I'll stay away. If I want you dead, I'll stay far away. If I have something to say to you that is of benefit, I'll say it. I'll not wait until you have your hands crossed over your chest in your final rest. My friend that I am speaking of here...I told her how many times I loved her until she was blue in the face. I even went out of my way to do things for her, move furniture, help her with her groceries or anything that she needed. Yeah, she was an older woman, but I loved her like my own mother. I lost touch with her, as I did everyone else in New Jersey once I was banished from the state and became homeless. But she always knew, even if I wasn't around to say it any longer, that I loved her. There would be no need to make some sort of dramatic entrance before people that knew her and myself. The only two people important in this interchange is me and her. We know how we felt about each other. No one else needs a sorry assed show to.
But now I hurt even more. Yesterday was Halloween. Paula, Bat-Faced- Bitch and the coven of witches on my floor squawked like cackling crows all day long in the hallway. Their voices booming as they shouted up and down the echoing corridor, mainly standing in a huddle before my door, still shouting to one another as if deaf. They were so loud that I could not even hear my computer television for the majority of the day. I wasn't aware that it was Halloween at the time, but I heard them talking about 'costumes' and 'party', and I was certain that their noise pollution would end sooner or later. Still, I had to do a little food shopping so I walked outside to go to the store. It was then that I realized that it was Halloween!
Shit! The sidewalks at night were literally packed with costumed clowns. Whores, Nurses, cops, Hulks, Witches, this, that and the other thing! Hundreds and hundreds of people in costumes marching up and down the streets. I rushed to Gristedes and purchased some food and then hurried back. Upon riding upstairs in the elevator my heart was pounding in my ears so loudly that I could barely think. I sprinted to my door, and fumbled with my key in the lock. The door behind me opened and I looked over my shoulder, expecting Paula, but instead, it was my cheery assed neighbor Richie. He emerges from his room with a grin like a dried out corpse, the edges of his mouth curled up to his ears, revealing a frighteningly toothy smile.
His eyes are wide and glassy and he comes lumbering out of his room directly for me. "Hey, Hobnob!" Hobobob, I mutter back to him, the key finding the lock and turning the cylinder. I could feel his hand reaching out for my shoulder, my heart skipped a beat, my face flushed with a surly heat. "Oh! Hobobob! I don't know why I keep callin' you Hobnob!" My door opens. His hand is just a hair's breadth from my skin, which pops and peels upon its approach as if his fingers were hot irons. I slip from under his grasp, slide into my door, and close it shut behind me. Goodnight, Richie.
I close the door and lock it in one move, then I fall back against it, panting for air, my eyes rolling in my head. Outside I can hear Richie whining: "You aren't shutting the door in my face are you, Hobnob?" I smile, then frown. "You're going to treat me like that are you, Hobnob?" He continues to cry, standing right in front of my door. I wait a minute until I hear him withdraw, turn and open the door a crack to peek out at him. I'm in for the night, Richie. Good night.
I close the door. I am feeling ill. Over the last two weeks I have been assaulted by someone every night. Before, once or twice a week someone would knock on my door, or ring the bell, or both. Over the past two weeks it has been almost every night. Around two in the morning I can hear soft knuckles rapping on my door. Insistent but cautious. Rap, rap, rap. Then a long pause. Longer than it should have been. Something like five minutes, then, tap, tap, tap. Some nights, around one in the morning the doorbell will chime. Once.
Now when this happens my skin crawls and my heart jumps into my mouth. I'm always awake for these events. They are driving me crazy. I make certain that I am taking my head meds. I watch movies until the morning. The sunlight crawling up against my window. I keep the shade down. I live in the dark all day long. The lights are NEVER ON. I watched several movies during the day...and I have to say, they continue my world view. In three movies, the superhero of the story...well the average joe that does some completely unbelievable things, reaches the climax of the movie and the villain has him defeated and at his feet, and from nowhere, his BITCH comes in and fucks up the enemy in the last second. This happened THREE times. In the fourth movie, the BITCH kills the motherfucking hero. Has my world-view changed about bitches? Of course it has. I told you that.
Then, for some reason I watched SAW VI. The last part of the series, or so I thought. I vaguely remember SAW I and II, but I forgot the premise of the series, which was that we do NOT have the right to life. Only those who have faced death or are facing death, and survive actually deserve to live. All others are living on borrowed time. Interesting concept. In the movie the JIGSAW killer makes these very sick traps, called 'Games', wherein he places ordinary people and gives to them an unreasonably inconceivable situation that they have to make a very unsavory decision to survive. The death is unimaginably horrible. The price for life...equally so.
In the first ten minutes of the movie, the first 'game' is so abundantly sickening that you wonder if you can make it through the rest of the movie. I have to say though, since I like the sick and twisted I found it to be very entertaining because The Game, was on a much larger scale than I first realized. When all was said and done, the unraveling of the story had a truly satisfying 'jigsaw effect' that made it wonderful to watch.
But the ending was what caught my attention the best. Consider this shit. Everyone in the movie who was forced to play a game had the CHANCE of survival, they only had to make a uniquely unsavory decision to do so. Some made it, the majority did not. The final character at the end though, was not given a Game, but instead placed in a horrific trap only to die. He was bound, bolted and placed into a trap that I remembered from SAW II as needing a single key to get out of. In SAW II the key was obtainable only through some heinous act that was disturbing to say the least. In this character's case, he was not given a key, and still placed on a minute timer to count down his death. This was simply a mean-hearted revenge killing. This was no game, and there would be no out.
I felt sorry for the character, because in SAW II, the woman who was in the trap barely made it out with her life. She got to the key. The eyes of this character searched about, his mouth bound. Panic registered on his face. He was going to die...and then the impossible. Like some wild animal, he came alive, his mind firing long dormant neurons, and from nowhere, he made impossible choices where none existed before, rested upon his body demands that only the insane would have come up with, much less do. He found devices in the most simple things, tools where none were before, and when his minute was up, he had survived. Not survive in the sense of survival that we normally equate with as survival in movies and on television. Those sorry images of the hero walking away unharmed. HIS survival was more a trade off. He simply traded death for Quality of Life.
Horrific choices were made where none were given him at all. But then I remem- bered the premise of the film. None have the RIGHT to life. Only those that EARN it deserve it. Undoubtedly, this man EARNED the right to live. I'm certain that there will be a SAW VII. I hope so. I was so amazed by his...well I don't want to call it escape, because that would mean that he left unscathed, and in fact he was very scathed. His ingenuity was as creative as a Bitch fighting for her life. Absolutely remarkable.
And then it hit me. A screenplay. A one hour movie for a ShowTime series called MASTERS OF HORROR. I want to write my first horror story. I'm certain that I can't hold a candle to Stephen King, but I can come up with something unusual. My mind was searching for this path for quite some time, and now I have stumbled upon it. I started writing it and have been moving so swiftly, I know that I will finish it soon. I stop for just an hour or two, and then begin anew, all night, all day long. It feels good. I feel creative. My pain melts away.
Horror. Who would have guessed. Maybe my next genre will be horror and not science fiction. Maybe I'll write about homelessness. That's horrible enough.Hobobob
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