Losing My Grip on Sandwiches

I don't really get much sleep now.

It's a crap shoot. I get what I can get when I can get it. Kinda like sex. That's what I should call sleep from now on, 'Motionless Sex'. Ha! Yeah, I get Motionless Sex very little now, and it's affecting my eating habits already. I only get hungry immediately after I awake in the morning. But when I start eating, I only can eat a few mouthfuls. Meaning I eat three mouthfuls of food, seven times a day. And I nap approximately the same, give or take three. Nice right? And in between, amazing levels of energy and creativity. All of my cylinders are firing. I am in 'Full Effect'.

So it kinda pisses me off to hear Paula's drunk voice in front of my door, banging on her door at two in the morning. Somehow the drunk guy she met at the bar that she was blowing in the back of the warehouse alleyway tonight locked her out of her own apartment. So she is outside, half dressed, banging away. Inside, he has her stereo blasting so loud that I can hear it through MY door. I roll over, close my eyes and strangely slip back off into sleep. This time I walk right into another lucid dream. I have her to thank for that. A very real place in my head where I was trying to communicate to other people but I had no voice.

But Paula does. The people talking in my dream were actually Paula, two guys and another hooker, bombed out of their skulls discussing where they were going to go this morning. Probably deciding what open lot that they were going to have sex in the Bronx. Speaking as if they were inconsiderate asses on cellphones that you meet every day on the street. Shouting as if they are at least fifteen paces apart from each other. I get up and go to my refrigerator. I have meals already pre-packed and pre-made already in my microwave. I call them my own little MRE's. You do know what MRE's are right? You see? Hyper-activity has it's upsides too.

So I take my....Personal Meals Ready to Eat (PMRE) snack and put on my headsets to drown out the shrew across the hall. I knew it was going to be a bad idea to accept this apartment as soon as she got the one across from me, but I did it anyway because I fell in love with it the second that I saw it, and I suppose that I am still in love with my little room. My own tiny slice of heaven. Live in the streets for two years and you'll catch my drift. But whatever. Sin in haste, repent at leisure.

Oh, I know some of you guys out there are worried or even confused about my post yesterday. I thought you hated Skeksies, some of you might be thinking.Yeah, yeah and all that, but sometimes my better Alter Personality peeks though and types something he feels, and then I stomp him out again because this blog is MY blog and not his. I am Hobobob! He is...well whatever you want to call him. That's who he is. This blog isn't about him and his mealy whining, and it's not about talking serious shit all the time, although I find Paula serious shit.

But consider this everyone, I do get serious from time to time, I do talk about sex from time to time, I do bitch about Skeks from time to time, I crank about my country, and my old job, and I absolutely RAIL about 911, from time to time. I think this blog would be boring if it was based on a premise or had an asshole theme. At the bottom line, this blog is NOT about being homeless, but instead it's ABOUT a homeless man. That's why I took homeless off the subtitle on top of the blog. Now if you want to split cunt hairs you're correct if you still call me homeless, because this is only transitional housing, but I'm not a Streeter any longer. I'm a Shelt. By definition, I am living in a place that has four walls, a roof and a door. I have Shelter (not homeless shelter though).

So yeah, there was a moment of clarity yesterday, and I have to admit, I did cry tears while I wrote it. Yeah, decisions were made ever since 9/11 and some of them were not smart, or wise. And maybe many of my friends feel that I'm an asshole that got exactly what I deserve. Maybe I'm a cautionary tale, or a big, fat disappointment, but whatever the case, I'm who I am. Human, fucked up, and full of twisted emotions that I cannot comprehend or control at times. Does that make me evil or disturbed? Maybe both, maybe neither, maybe one or the other, but I have to say...I'm something. I may not know what, but I'm something.

I remember one time getting out of a limousine in front of Carmine's, a swanky restaurant on the West Side when they had a big time private party. You know, velvet rope, people in line, and bouncer at the door. This stretch limo pulls up, because we had no clue, another couple and my ex-wife, that they had a fucking function that night. The limo just pulled up in front the door and the driver steps out and opens the door, and my ex emerges in a brand new gown that I bought her, me in a brand new suit, and the other couple the same (we had these jaunts once a month called 'Steppin' out'). My ex looked back at me, her face reading: Oh oh, they've got a private function tonight. I walked past her to address the bouncer and ask him how much would I have to tip him to let us slip in and out.

On my approach, the bouncer simply reached over and took the velvet rope from in front of me. I took my ex by the hand and led her into the restaurant and we had a great time. Yes there was a private function, but Carmine's is way too big to buy out entirely, and they WILL let certain people in, especially if they are willing to spend money. But the moral of this story. I went to the bar to pick up our drinks before the waitress arrived and a woman watched me as I sided up to the bar. As I waited for the bartender to fulfill my order, the woman leaned over to me and asked flatly in my ear, "Are you rich?" in a voice like warm satin. I turned to her, then turned to my wife, lost and obscured in the distance by the reveling crowd, and then back to the woman. "Only in character, Ma'am, only in character."

I have never been all that pretentious, but I liked the good things in life every once in awhile. I was a hard worker. I felt that I deserved those things every blue moon. That's why I feel so bad for so many of you, like my grrrl, MARYDREAMS on IRC who has to work two jobs just to keep her head above water. There are so many hard workers out there now in the middle class, busting their asses, and they can't even afford to go out on a night on the town. Or a decent vacation to a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. Nothing, but barely keep food on their table. That's sad.

I hope that you out there Never end up like me. Fallen from a great height. At one time breathing the rarefied air only to be sent down lower than necessary, as if you were hated by your own life. As if you were despised by the very forces that caused the magic of your mother, meeting your father on a fateful night, of you actually racing with a million of your other brothers and sisters, swimming to a distant circle of pink, soft in a pale light. And then being conceived, and develop with all of your fingers and toes to emerge crying into the world.

I rebuke this though. Fuck this.

I hope you never end up like me.

Hobobob