A Slipping Downlife

My slipping downlife.

It was a good movie. About a chick that falls in love with a musician so she carves his name into her forehead with a broken piece of glass. Unfortunately for her stupid ass, she carved his name while looking in a mirror so it came out reversed when people looked at it normally. Now THAT sounds like something that would happen to me. Fucked up by my own stupidity. Hence, my slipping downlife.

Hell. That's just the way the world is. Dig it? I'll give you a real life example of my slipping downlife. I seem to always... always get into the line that moves the slowest and whoever the teller/cashier/ticket counter/pharmacist/prostitute or whomever is busy taking care of a line of patrons, my line moves the slowest. And when I get to the very head of the line, the penultimate position, I see the problem. The teller/cashier/ticket counter/pharmacist/prostitute is busy with the patron ahead of me. I look at the non-existent watch on my wrist and it's a quarter past my mole and she is still taking care of this person.

Then, miraculously this person moves on, and I'm allowed my turn. Suddenly, BIP, BAM, BOOM! Like a slap on the back of the head, I'm done. I don't even remember going for the cash in my pocket to pay the son-of-a-bitch. I'm just standing there, looking stupid because I'm done so fast. So fast that the next motherfucker reaches over my shoulder to lay down their purchase just to let me know that I'm moving too slow. What's up with that shit?

Now here's the math, which isn't all that simple. Lets just say that there is a line of ten people, and it takes me ten minutes to get to the cashier, that means that the average speed of processing a patron is about a minute, right? So then, why is it when I get to her, it takes five seconds? It would stand  to reason that if this was a constant fact then it would take less than a minute to get to the head of a line filled with ten people, right? Or am I doing the math wrong, because I suffer from Alcaculia (Acalculia Type of aphasia characterized by inability to perform arithmetic operations, seen most commonly with parietal lobe (retrolandic) lesions), so I was terrible at math in school then and in life now. So, if I'm getting the math all fucked up, forget it.

I think you can figure out what it is that I am trying to say to you. I can't understand why I'm shot through the cannon, while everyone else gets the silver spoon treatment. I'm beginning to believe that I give off that aura. That wonderful glow that you get after you've been homeless for more than a year. It's a look, a feeling, a sensation, maybe even a fucking smell that you get whenever a homeless person strolls past you. They don't have to look altogether homeless, like me, but you can feel that something is wrong.

So, you behave accord- ingly. You treat me in a certain way. And I'm not saying that it's altogether intentional, or if you are even aware of it. I am saying that it marks my position on the social strata and snap judgments are made about me daily without my even opening my mouth. Maybe it's in my stature, the way that I hold myself, stand, dress. Maybe my clothing? Not pressed and cared for enough. My body, my physical frame distorted and bent over by the passing of the years and the drugs in my system. What is it?

I don't know, but I feel it too at times, and I'm in a better position to identify it than you are. How? Because I know the homeless in New York. We are a very closed community. If you are in 'The Scene' for more than a year, you can recognize 90% of the homeless people in the city from eating in soup kitchens and being on line at missions and churches for clothes alone. The flipside? 90% of homeless people can recognize you too.

But with this being the case, sometimes when I'm not even looking mind you, a homeless person will pass behind me and I'll know it. I feel some of my life force sucked right out of my body in their passing. I stand up, turn around, and unlike you, I can see if I know the person or not. Many times I know the person. So, we must give off some kind of aura, or drain people of theirs when we come near.

It is a force that also repels women. I mean, sends them bitches to the hills screaming. I used to think that I was a pretty decent looking guy, but just the other day I took a shower and came out of the water and stood in front of a mirror, naked, and the fucking mirror shattered. What the fuck is THAT about? Not that I wasn't disheartened, I no longer care. What is the reason for caring for something that my social status denies any fucking way? Shit, even prostitutes don't sleep with the homeless.

Am I crying over this fact ? Shit, and what will that do? Will a com- passionate god hear my pain and answer prayers that I no longer offer? I don't think so. It's just a useless gesture. Something that's supposed to make me feel good, which doesn't. It makes me dwell on feeling bad, and I've promised myself a long time ago, when I was sleeping in a leaf bed in Bryant Park, that I was through with feeling bad. I had climbed into a leaf bed to avoid the security guards on patrol and fell asleep, thanking god because I was JUST THAT BONE TIRED AND WEARY and an hour later sprinklers came on, both waking and drenching me. Yeah I felt bad. I was tired, wet, cold and hungry. I was exasperated and in pain and most of all, without a bottle of hooch to drown my suffering. I should have felt bad then, but I didn't. I just staggered off, half asleep, and found a spot between a flower pot and an office building to rest my head.

Maybe being in 'The Scene' marks us, brands us, makes us into something sub-human and loathed that unlike the dirt under our nails and on portions of our skin, which does not wash off in the shower. I realize that some problems in my life now are homeless based and I have no real history with them. I have no one to explain to me these things before or even during their arrival. I have to both identify and solve things that I have no experience with and quickly to reach a solution within my lifetime.

Case in point. the ring around my toilet seat. When I was homeless I recognized it when I stood up from the toilet seat after taking a shit. I would leave a dark ring of grime around the toilet seat, or where my upper thighs rested on the seat alone. I looked at it quizzically and searched for it every time I used the bathroom after that. And it was there. So I chalked it up to showering once a week.

Later, I was sent to the Box of Nuts, the homeless shelter for unstable people, and I could take showers a little more often when I spent my year there. Not that I did, mind you. Even though it was available daily, I might have taken them less frequently than when I was on the streets, largely because I could not take my laptop into the shower with me and I wasn't about to leave it out, and unprotected, while I did. So I showered even more infrequently. Did the ring around the seat follow me? Yes it did.

Then I moved into my SRO, and could take a shower every single day. Very good. I felt better and smelled better than I had in a long, long time. Did the ring still follow me around? Yes it did. What the fuck? WTF! How in the Hell? I searched about. What was fucking me up like this?

The only thing that I could think of was my fucking underwear after a lengthy process of trial and error. When you are homeless, every shelter or soup kitchen that you go to hands out cotton jockeys. I have pounds of cotton jockey underwear. Underwear that I had never worn before, I mean, before I was homeless. I was a Speedo kind of underwear guy, made of some kind of synthetic fabric, polyester or something. I hated boxers because they let my dick lie sideways, so whenever I got an erection, it would snake down my leg and become practically visible through my slacks.

Fuck that. Briefs did a better job, tucking my tool underneath my balls... but that's another story. What I'm trying to say is that I used to avoid all cotton jockeys because they made my entire ass sweat no matter the temperature outside. Sweat can gather and hold dirt better than rolling around in the mud any day. So I stopped wearing the offending underwear and the ring vanished forever. But my point here is that I didn't have anyone to tell me, "Hey Hobobob, don't sweat the ring. Well, actually, that's the problem. It's your ass sweating which leaves a ring around the toilet seat. Throw away those fucking jockeys." Nice.

Nope. Not only did I have to identify a problem that I had never encountered before in my life, I had to solve it through missing the culprit time and again. What's my point here? That maybe this life has marked me in some way or manner. Maybe there are things about me that I have not, as of yet, identified and solved that are clear indicators that I don't belong in or to society as a whole. Now my question to you is: Should I feel bad about this? Should I feel bad that I'll probably never again get laid in my entire life? Should I feel bad because I'll never escape being identified by Skeks as a Skek? Should I feel bad about waiting almost forever on lines that somehow boot me away faster than if I suffered from leprosy?


Should I feel absolute pain for this slipping downlife?

My answer to you is that that's just the rub. It's MY FUCKING slipping downlife. This is my life! I feel like ending it sometimes because it does make me feel bad, but it's either this downlife or death. And I'm trying not to think about ending this right here and now. I'd rather think about the one or two reasons that I have left to keep going, and let me tell you, it takes all the strength that I have to hold onto those.

I have a million things and counting to feel bad about so it's useless to even count them on my fingers and toes. I just refuse to. I just will continue to keep on going...the raggedy man that I am. This is MY slipping downlife, and I claim it for myself and myself alone. Do you know what that means? It means I wear it like a big, bloody albatross roped around my neck every fucking day for the rest of my fucking life. Like I've always told you. I don't care for anyone's sympathy, just for them to give me as wide a room that they can afford to give me. Just step back a little and let me breathe.

Maybe that's what these tellers/cashiers/ticket counter/pharmacists/prostitutes are doing? Stepping back and giving me room. Maybe I shouldn't complain.

Maybe I should be grateful.


Hobobob