Options to Deal With Hilariousness

I woke up today with an amazingly painful ache in my back and shoulders.

Terrifically bright and searing. Fuck, what in the Hell did I do last night other than sit in my goddamn chair and type all night. And all day. And all night, and all day the next day. I had to struggle to my feet, get dressed and run errands today in enormous pain. Before going I go to my cupboards and then the cabinets under the kitchen counter searching for pain-killers. Here, there, over here, over there. None. None-ya. Shit! I check my 'Funds' can. Empty as usual. I shake my piggy bank, lint and two pennies rattling about inside. Fick Mein (translation: Fuck My Life in German)!

So I march outside, staggering like a Skek from the pain, doing my chores and taking care of business. One task was thirty blocks away. Now that was fun. While walking my shoe lace came loose. So I raise my foot on a gate to lessen the possibility of great pain, but why bother? The minute that I bent over to tie my laces the Gods of Pain drove a long, wide sword through the center of my back, just above the belt line. I staggered back from the gate, forward to wrap my arms about it's iron posts to keep from falling. Gawd-damnit! That pain changed my religion in a heartbeat.

I stood there for a few minutes, letting the pain subside and hoping that if I move it would not return. It didn't when I did. To my overwhelming relief I set of once again, back down the street. Thirty blocks should be an expedition in New York city. I'll tell you the reasons why. Like someone climbing Everest, you need equipment and shit to make it to your destination on foot. It's always hard for me to cover great distances in the cold.

Today it was cold, and I was wearing my winter coat. This Damn Coat (okay, from now on the acronym for it is TDC). I don't know who manufactured it, but I got it from a church drive. I even think it was the Bowery Mission several Thanksgivings ago. But this damn coat, it's only fucking useful for blizzard conditions. Yeah a fucking blizzard. Cold, snow, anything else, or your ass will literally overheat. It can be damn near ten degrees out, and your inside of a sauna, feeling sweat running down your torso. I have to walk with the fucking thing wide open just to feel comfortable in it, but my arms always suffer. Hot, with sweat pouring from my armpits down my arms.

Fuck this. Oh, and with the cold, comes my sinuses. Yeah, my sinuses are my own worse enemies. Once it falls below forty degrees they are on a mission to drown me with mucus. You've heard of Post Nasal Drip right? Well I suffer from Post Nasal  Drown! Or better, Post Nasal Deluge. Yeah, my lungs will quickly start  to fill up with phlegm, keeping me coughing like a smoker all day long. So what I've learned to do is hold my head up when my nose is about to run, and push pressure through my nostrils when I feel the nasal drip start behind in my skull. It's like a see-saw thing in my head.

Further, it's expanding, so in no time it feels as if I have a five pound bag of sugar across the bridge of my nose. This my friends is nothing but misery. I carry tissue, but I usually use that shit up in half an hour. My mucous production is so copious that I can fill a handful of tissues with one blow. Then it'll take another handful just to wipe my nose clean. I need to carry a fucking roll of toilet tissue if I walk for more than twenty minutes. So, I came up with an answer long ago, when I spent my first year out in the fucking cold while homeless.

Snot Rockets. Have you ever heard of em? Yeah. Snot Rockets. It's a real simple technique. You cover one nasal opening with a finger and forcibly blow the other nostril. Out comes a gout of slime like a rocket. Then repeat the process with the other nasal passage. Simple. And then sometimes you can do the 'Windmill', or as some call it, 'The Flip'. Now when you blow a snot rocket you have to lean forward and bow your head over, lest you get snot on your shirt. Sometimes your snot is so viscous that it leaves behind something akin to a snot yo-yo from your nostril.

Now you can take your single square of tissue, gather  it and wipe it away, OR you and put a finger right up to the nostril from which the snot yo-yo dangles from and flick your finger away from your nose and back towards the yo-yo itself in a real quick semi-circle. That way, the yo-yo of snot actually cartwheels, flipping end over end, away from you. It's great fun if you grow proficient with it. See how far can you throw a Windmill? Try it next time.

Well, today, my dumb ass is not thinking and I am walking down the street with my nose torturing me. So I turn to the side, stop, bow my head, and the Gods of Pain drove another sword straight through the back of my collar bone. I yelped like a little bitch and the pain was so quick, so sharp, so surprising, I swallowed the entire gout of snot. Instantly it made me sick and I rushed to a nearby garbage can to retch, but by some miracle I caught my breath and steadied my stomach as I leaned over the trash can.

But the fun of my journey was not over yet. Like I said. Like climbing Mount Everest. Now, I don't know if you are aware of it, or if I have even told you or not, but I take three water pills a day. Not one. Not two, but THREE water pills a day because my heart is not really good at eliminating fluids from it's chambers. So in time, the fluids back up and then I'll suffer from Congestive Heart Failure. Further, long before that happens, my calves turn into elephant legs and feet, swelling to two or three times their girth from Edema.

So I drink a lot of water on these pills, and eliminate a lot of water. Well, when you are walking through New York City, all you tourists, are bound to find out that there are NO public restrooms in New York City. You can't just walk into a nearby Arby's, McDonalds, Burger King or any other fast food chain and go use the fucking john. Everything, everywhere, even department stores are all locked up. Except for two places if you are a smart hobo. Barnes and Noble Bookstores and Starbucks! Thank god for them!

But on this trek there are no stores such as these to help me. I am marching through a desert. Nothing as far as the eye can see. Now I'm on my return trip back, so this shit sucks. I have another hour of walking at least, and I need to piss right now! Now c'mon gang. Do you really think I would piss on myself? I'm a hobo. I know where to go. I've only pissed myself in public once. Waiting on a Starbucks line a mile long to use the john, feeling so much pain that I could cry, and I'll tell you gang...when your body can take it no more, you will piss, whether you like it or not. You'll have no choice. It's like breathing. Hold your breath long enough and your body will force you to inhale.

Same with piss. So there is no way this hobo is going to piss on himself today. I walk, my eyes searching, and then I come up against a dumpster area, with dumpsters at least eight feet high! Wow, gathered together in a neat, orderly square. I smile. The Gods of Homelessness have smiled down on me today. I don't look about, because the knowledge of people nearby makes you not do the thing you have to do if you see them. I just head for the dumpsters, find a good enough space between two for me to move between sideways and enter into an inner sanctum. The center of the dumpsters. A wide square where no one can peer in. Great!

So I whip out my wee willie, happy for it's tiny length, because there is very little for the passerby to see. I whiz looking around and finding a gap between two dumpsters, yawning open to the side walk. As if a warning, a woman walks by but is oblivious to me and my dong hanging out of my pants. I can't be havin' this. I take a step back to hide further behind the dumpster where the gap is and the back of my heel hits something low and solid. My body totters backwards, my arms cartwheeling, my dick spraying piss in all directions like a high pressure fire hose no longer held by firemen.

Somehow I gained my balance before falling over the concrete slab. I finish taking my piss, work my way out from the dumpster bathroom and head once more home. A Helluvah way to deal with life, huh? I tell you all this because I want you to understand how far I've fallen. How un-sociable I've become, maybe even irredeemable. That's why I spoke so much about redemption the other day. My life is nothing but demeaning and debasing, but I no longer care. I am stronger than weak pride, stronger than society that looks down on me climbing out of a cluster of dumpsters, or throwing windmills of snot, or walking down the street with my coat opened ridiculously.

A friend of mine said to me that I've been a hobo for so long that I no longer know what does and does not look presentable. I don't understand or care how I look any more. But I hate to tell you gang. Now...the name of the game is survival. I'm not going to go so low that I piss myself, catch bronchitis or pneumonia, or freeze to death. No. I earn this life every day. Not much of one, but I carve it out of the air as if with a knife, and put it in my pocket, a piece at a time, each day.

And I suffer for it. I really do. But fuck suffering. If this is all there is, then I'll take it. There is another mind numbing stab of pain in the center of my back. I grimace. A walking, talking crucified man. So what? Fuck suffereing.

Fuck suffering.

Hobobob