What a Fool Believes To Be True

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I have an appoint- ment today.

At 1030 hours I have to be in midtown Manhattan to see the dentist because my tooth is off the hook. The bitch has been killing me non-stop, but I've been taking Tylenol the same, so the pain has been endurable. I don't sleep much and spend too many hours on IM with OBSIDIAN, just bullshitting. He has a knack of making me laugh my ass off at times. Even when he's nothing but letters on my computer screen he has me cracking up.

We've decided to go to D2theL's reading on March 7th at some swanky club. D2theL and T-Fuk are doing damn well in the circuit. They are busy with their venues, their books and their readings. They took a page from our playbook and ran with it. Much success. I don't know if I can keep up with the pressure of jumping in again. I did it with the SHOUT OUT, and I'm not inclined to do it again unless OBSIDIAN and I can get some help with it, something we never really tried to relieve the stress.

We just went with the flow and took our beatings and slowly gave up. The SHOUT OUT was a weekly trial that neither of us, I do believe, want to repeat. So I go to sleep late and get up early, tired in fact, but I can function. I hop out of bed and head into the shower and on coming out it feels like a million fire ants are crawling up and down my skin, eating the shit out of me! What the fuck? I've had this reaction before to water. It comes from LAMICTAL. When I was on a lower dose, I didn't feel a thing, but on this much higher dose I get a phantom rash that drives me batshit.

I have an anti- histamine spray for the skin which quiets it down, and then pain killers to make it go away for good. As C3PO in Star Wars said, "We're made to suffer. It's our lot in life." But since suffering is part of my daily repertoire, I take all this shit on the chin. I'm tired of feeling broken. I'm tired of pain. I haven't got time for the pain and suffering in my life. All I have time for is to write and work hard at getting published. There is no other commitment that I can make that will have any real meaning.

I am tired of the pain. I will fight it all. I've decided to keep swinging blows until my arms get so tired that I can no longer lift them. Oh, you're just being melodramatic Hobobob. Your life is not all that shitty. All you do is crank and complain that it's hard to read you anymore. You don't talk about skeks and trying to eat and all the funny shit that you did on your radio show. What do you want from us? To pity you?

No. I don't want pity. I want to crank and complain, because it beats whining and crying. I want to vent my hatred and anger over the electronic page because I'm good like that. That's what I do. So, my melodramatic ass gets dressed after the itching stops and I head to the subway, using my last ten dollars on my Metrocard and snag the bus cross town to the subway heading downtown. I print out the location of 901 Avenue of the Americas and I walk around looking for the numbers in the rain.

I walk uptown, then downtown, then uptown, then downtown in the pouring rain, and it's apparent to me that the number 901 does not exist. The only thing that is there is a huge shopping mall, called the Manhattan Mall. I remember it like yesterday. When I was homeless, me and OBSIDIAN would go to the food court there and eat our soup kitchen breakfast, then get cleaned up the minute they opened the public restroom. We called it the 'Tighten Up". Then we were clean enough to face our day. Well I finally give up and walk into the mall today and look at the directory and I don't see any dentist office anywhere. They're all stores.

So now, I go back out into the rain and two women stop me and ask me which way to Macy's. I tell them, and then the idea hits me. GO ASK SOMEONE WHERE 901 IS! I start hitting office buildings and stores but there was no one who could tell me. They had never seen the number. Then a man stops me, asking which way to the Path train. I give HIM directions. He can't help me though. I stop two police officers, they hunch their shoulders.

Finally I give up. I don't have any money, so I can't call the doctor's office from a pay phone. When I get home I call and ask where the Hell are they. "We are conveniently located INSIDE of the Manhattan Mall on the second floor." YOU'RE WHAT?! You have to be shitting me! There is nothing that says you're in that building and you're not so fucking convenient! I had to reschedule until next week if that isn't a kick in the ass.

I sit down and rest. I didn't want to have to cancel that appoint- ment but what could I do? It wasn't my fault. It was the fault of this insane life I lead, where there is no comfort. Where there is no solace. Where there is no succor. Just one trial compounded by the next. No I don't want to joke about skeks, no I don't want to find humor in everything that happens to me. No I don't want to be dark all of the time.

Sometimes, I just want to bitch and moan.

Hobobob