Some letters to Pathetic Life:

As I started to write this letter to you, I thought of telling you how sad my life is and how pathetic I am. And what kind of fucked-up competition is that?
I am sick and tired of being sad, depressed, and miserable, but when someone is talking about how miserable they are, I chime in, "Oh, you think your life is shit? I so don't like myself I've removed all the mirrors in my apartment and keep cutting myself shaving," or something like that.
I'm depressed because I'm a loser and can't do shit but still, if I'm going to be pathetic I want to be the most pathetic, at least more than you. Irony? If there is anything I don't want to be it's the best at being sad. I just think I've got nothing else. Is depression all I have? God, that sucks.
Anyway, please send another copy of your zine…

—Greg M, Tallahassee

♦ ♦ ♦

Let me offer a little unsolicited (and probably unwelcome) advice: I'd caution you against moving suddenly to New York City unless you're sure that YOU WANT TO GO. Please don't go just because Sarah-Katherine wants some company.
If you do decide to move to New York with her, I think you deserve a little more of a commitment than she seems to be giving you. Moving three thousand miles is a big jump, especially if the person you're going with isn't giving you any assurances of sticking together once you arrive at the destination.
I know you like Sarah-Katherine a lot, and I don't mean to be a killjoy, but I do think you need to look out for yourself a little bit. Don't just move to New York because she wants some company — move because YOU WANT TO GO and would be willing to go on your own.
So much for my lecture.

—Karl Myers, Permafrost

♦ ♦ ♦

Dear Pathetic — and you are that! I wrote a response to your sleazy letter, but CF thought better than to print, showing a kinder being than you were to that young woman.
You are most correct, you are a butthole. Most men are. However, as you angered me greatly, CF said I should have mercy on your worthless being so I forgive you, but will not forget!

—Pat, Harrisburg PA

Of course, I have no idea who you are, who CF is, why you let CF do your thinking for you, or what young woman you think I was unkind to. —DH

♦ ♦ ♦

I find New York City a hideous, unlivable place, and stay away from it. It is totally alien to human life.
The poet William Everson said there are only two cities in the US where man lives in harmony (I'd add the qualifier 'relative' here) with nature, instead of at war with it: San Francisco and New Orleans.

—David AM, Warren OH

♦ ♦ ♦

My bowel movements have been pretty good lately. I try to eat fibers. Carrots are good. Rice and beans, too. Yum.
Dang, man. Yesterday I found out that ████, a woman I've been nuts about for years (she's a big reason I moved down here) is getting married in May. Tonight I found out that ██████, my buddy in Portland, has fallen in love with a woman on Vashon Island, and he's moving there in a few weeks. Go figgur. Why don't people do what I want them to? But they never do.

—Corby, Salem OR

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Enjoyed #13-15. I used to live in Berkeley, and frankly, all those hippie-dippie street vendors drove me nuts. And so you say they're still selling the same old shit — tie-dye, bad jewelry, "US out of North America" stickers.
I realize it screws up your job, but in an evil way I loved hearing what a bureaucratic mess it is. Berkeley is a big phony place and I knew one day I'd be proved right about that.

—Al Hoff, Thrift Score

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I'm doing this article for this magazine (Peerpee) that I edit here in the UK. It concerns the authenticity lent to fiction and non-fiction by presenting it in diary form. I was given your address by a colleague and was wondering if you could send me a copy of Pathetic Life? We will also review it and perhaps we could do an interview?

—D G Owen, Peerpee

Sure, that's what I need to do — waste $2.51 I don't have on overseas postage to a magazine that may or may not exist, where the editor begs for a freebie so he or she can write what sounds like a hopelessly boring article about diaries. Absolutely no. Try sending money, ya fuckin' cheap bloke. —DH

♦ ♦ ♦

When you mentioned your need/desire for a substantial sum of money in order to move to New York, I thought for a moment of withdrawing such a considerable sum of my life's savings and sending it to you, if only to imagine your expression and reaction. The moment must have lasted for all of two seconds before I decided that (a) I'm much too selfish to do such a thing, (b) anyone who'd even think of relocating from the bay area (or Seattle) to NYC has more problems than can be helped with any amount of money less than a million or so dollars, and (c) it doesn't sound like your proposed relationship would work out well for long.

—Don F, Covina CA

♦ ♦ ♦

I work the night shift as a security guard at the hospital, I guess in case someone sneaks in to try stealing a CAT scanner, but really nothing ever happens. Sometimes a patient's relatives try to sneak in after visiting hours, and once I found a couple of naked interns — both men — in a meeting room that was supposed to be locked. I think they thought I'd fill out a report and their careers would be ruined or something, but fuck it, why should I care? I asked them not to leave a mess, and to lock the door behind them on the way out.
That was a crazy night, but usually nothing happens at all. I just sit here reading zines, making the rounds every once in a while, and I just read yours and liked it, wanted to say thanks.

—Michael G, Los Angeles

♦ ♦ ♦

I wonder what you expect from New York City? It's not exactly a hospitable environment, especially for people without much money. New York is violent, cold, and expensive.
I've been there, Doug, and it's a great place to be from. When my employer offered me the opportunity to transfer to San Francisco, I jumped. I lived in Brooklyn for three years and it seemed like twenty. I've been here for six years, and I've never felt so at home.
Take it from someone who's been both places. If you move to New York you'll regret it for as long as it takes you to find your way back.

—Bruce W, San Francisco

It's not enough to make me reconsider, but it does make me wonder why so many people are warning me away from moving to New York City.

This zine has almost two dozen readers in the rotten apple. Would one of you please say something nice about the place? —DH

Addendum, 2022: Years later, what smacks me in the face is that I was always more likely to reply, or at least reply in the zine, if you were an ass, than if you said something kind or thoughtful. What an ass *I* was, and still am.
I should've said something kind to Grieg, the first letter. I wonder how much he was kidding around, and how much he meant it. Have a hug in 2022, Grieg.
And to Michael G, can't believe I didn't retort, "Thanks, and don't leave a mess."

For the past two Wednesdays, I've been working for an old lady named Gertrude, doing housework and such. I mildly disliked her from the first day we met, as she talks too much and has a sarcastic comment always at the ready, and she never fails to find fault with my work, and she smells funky, too. That 'old person' smell, plus lavender parfum.

She pours a bottomless glass of lemonade for me every week, so what the hell, right? Work is work, and I need the money. Still need the money, but after today I'm done working for Gertrude.

I got there right on time, said hello, and she almost hugged me, I swear. Her arms went up, but I stepped to the side.

Then I scrubbed her toilet bowl, washed her dishes, swept her steps, and defrosted her refrigerator, while my brainwaves went flat listening to her recite another week of her life. She told me about her arthritis, about a church charity function she'd gone to, about a neighbor's dog, and when I tried to say anything, tried to make her monologue into a conversation, she interrupted to correct my grammar, to scold me for saying "God," or she simply babbled on top of my words.

She reminds me of my mother, but with Mom I put up with it because I love her. I don't love Gertrude.

At the end of today's sentence at hard labor, she paid me and tipped me $10. I said thanks, and meant it. That's a nice tip. As I gathered my pack and jacket she said, "I need you back again next Wednesday."

I'd been hoping she wouldn't say that, but "OK," I said. "What time?"

"I think we should clean the drapes," she answered.

"What time?" I asked again.

"It's just so nice having a man around the house again," she chirped, with a goofy, giddy look on her face, and I was pissed off.

Her line about a man around the house seemed creepy, and I'd asked twice what time, and she was still talking.

"You're such a hard worker," she said, "and I'm starting to think of you as not just the handyman, but a friend," which is exactly the opposite of how I'd been thinking of her. She'd never be a friend to me, and I didn't even want her as a boss one day a week.

"Yo, Gertrude," I said, in a tone that made her smile disappear, which I enjoyed. "I listen to your stories and do the work for five bucks an hour, that's the deal. I don't yell back when you snap at me, and I haven't cussed you out, but none of that means we're friends."

"Well!" she half-sighed, half-screamed, "If that's not the rudest thing I've ever heard—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," quoting the Beetles, as I squeezed past her out the door and down the stairs, thirty bucks richer, immeasurably happier, and never to return.

A few words of meanness from me probably ruined her day. Maybe she cried. And I do feel bad about it, but that's not the same as regretting it.

I think she either had a crush on me or wanted to adopt me as her son, but I was there to clean the toilet and vacuum the hall. If she wants me to pretend to be a friend, that costs way more than $5 an hour plus tips.

It's been better than a year since I've had a TV, and it's approaching six months since I've had any contact with my family.

And you know, I never give my family much thought at all, but this morning I woke up wondering how things are going between Becky and her low-life husband on Roseanne.

♦ ♦ ♦

Whenever my hair gets too long, needs too much combing and shampooing, it's time to plug in the clippers and re-do my crew-cut. As of this morning, hair and beard are a flat quarter of an inch all over my face. Looks ugly. Drug dealers think I'm a cop. Marines salute me. Girls shun me, but that's probably not about the hair.

I don't care what I look like. I am fat and funny-looking, and that's not something that can be fixed with mousse and a blow-drier.

♦ ♦ ♦

My evening was pleasantly wasted with Josh, for a meal and a movie. In an unexpected moment of schmaltz or sentiment, I confessed that I'm starting to think of him as a friend, and he didn't respond the way I did when Gertrude said essentially the same thing.

He said thanks, shook my hand, and bought our tickets to the show, but I'd like him even if we went someplace that didn't cost money. He's a good egg, soft-boiled.

The movie was Devil in a Blue Dress, at the UA multiplex in Emeryville. I usually avoid the plexes, so I hadn't been there before, and it's a strange place, a recent vintage megaplex built to look like an old-style movie pace from the outside. Inside, of course, it's soulless, identical to multiplexes everywhere.

The movie? It's very noir, complete with voiceovers and a plot that twists more than Lombard Street. It has a big edge over the original noirs of the 1940s and '50s, in that the racial realities of that very black and white era are bluntly acknowledged, folded into the story, not ignored like in most movies. Can't sidestep it when the movie is set in the '40s and the star is Denzel Washington.

Afterwards, Josh bought us a Vietnamese dinner at the Emeryville Public Market. Loved my veggies in rice. Didn't love the condom-wrapped shrimp rolls.

♦ ♦ ♦

I'm extremely tired of fish drama, but there were developments today and I'm a reporter, sort of, so here's the news:

Two months ago, Jay filed the required forms and began waiting for the pinheads at City Hall to decide whether we can sell funny anti-religious fish under the Constitutional protections of free speech. Seems to me that having to wait months for the government's permission to say or do something is not free speech.

Jay's patience is running low, so she called the city today to inquire whether they've lost our application a second time. They told her that because there's a 'history' behind the application — meaning, she'd previously bought a business license and a seller's permit, and she didn't complain about being regulated until the city told us to stop selling Darwin fish — our paperwork is no longer being considered by the Department of Traffic and Engineering. Instead it's been shunted over to "Legal," where lawyers, not bureaucrats, will decide what's allowed and what isn't.

I'm not up on my Kafka enough to know whether this is good news or bad news. All I know is that it remains illegal to put a plastic fish with 'Darwin' engraved on its belly on my fish stand. Someone from 'Legal' promised Jay that, pro or con, "a decision on this matter is forthcoming, possibly within just a few weeks."

Ptth.

I'll say only this, then drop it: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Today was a boring day on Telegraph. I worked five hours, sold only three fish. It was too cold and overcast; business on the Ave was bad for everyone.

I did better than the tarot card reader next to me, though. She sat at her table, hands folded, waiting all day for a customer or even an inquiry, and had no takers.

Nobody spoke to her, except me. I said "Good morning," and "Good night," and in between I tried to make conversation, once, and somewhat.

"So," I said after lunch, "is it a scam, or what? Do you really believe you tarot cards are for real, or are they 'really' for real?" I did quote marks with my fingers for "really."

"Peddle your fish," was her response. Gosh, and I'd tried so hard to be sociable.

Later, some old codger stopped at my stand, barely glanced at the fish, and started yakking about what he did in the '60s, and working for the Governor's office, and all about a prehistoric era he twice referred to as "the good old days."

I sat still for a few days, hoping he'd wander away when his story ended, but one story melted into the next, and just listening I felt myself getting older. After waiting a week for a breaking point, I didn't want to wait months so eventually I interrupted.

"I don't care," I said, and he frowned but walked away.

♦ ♦ ♦

There are a few people I like, but most of them — 99.99% — are only annoying. The claim is that God created man, and that's proof that the almighty is anything but infallible.

Most people are completely content to think only what they've been told to think, do whatever they're told to do, and pretend to be nice to each other while sharpening their blades behind their backs.

They're ordinary, and that's all they aspire to. They might mutter a complaint under their breath, but you can count on people to follow the herd, root for the home team, praise the Lord, fill out every form, sign on the dotted line, obey the most ridiculous rules to the letter, and dial 9-1-1 if anyone else doesn't.

As for that old man yabbering about"the good old days," you know his days weren't as good as he misremembers. When he was young, doing what he told, he was part of the process. Now he's old, still doing what he's told, but nobody listens any more. That's the only difference between now and his good old days.

Nobody listens to him any more, so he makes me listen to his stories from a time when people listened.

And these are my good old days, like the song says, but on days like this I find that hard to believe.

In this ugly, uninteresting life, there is one oasis of beauty, and that's my dear Sarah-Katherine. She'll be back in San Francisco next month, but until then she only visits in my dreams, and here's last night's dream. You don't need a degree or a deck of tarot cards to interpret it:

We were crawling across am old, rickety wooden footbridge, as a windstorm blew it apart. Everyone else had fled, leaving Sarah-Katherine and I the only two people on the bridge as it rocked and swayed, very Tacoma Narrows. The wind gusted so strong that our shoes were ripped off and blown to infinity above the clouds.

Barely hanging on, we inched our way across the bridge, and as the storm came closer it felt more and more perilous. She was crawling ahead of me, slowly, and I remember admiring her fine butt as we tried to make our way toward land.

Finally, she was safely off the bridge, clinging to the first streetlamp on solid ground. I was right behind her, but still on the last section of the wobbling wooden span, and I could hear lumber bending, creaking, snapping, as the bridge finally collapsed. My body began to tumble down, and about to die, I said what I knew would be my last words before death, ''Sarah-Katherine, I like you a lot," as the bridge disintegrated under me.

Like in a movie, though, she reached out, grabbed my hand, pulled me up, saved my life. And then I woke up, before the kissing, maybe the boinking that might've followed.

Me and Sarah-Katherine, in New York City? Sure, soon as we have the money. But romance? Nah, she's made it clear that's not allowed, but — not even in a dream? Sheesh.

♦ ♦ ♦

Mid-day on the Avenue, I walked up the street to use the john in a café, and the caffeine addicts were all atwitter that Yitzhak Rabin had been shot. Condition: critical, said the radio, and by the time I'd put away my merchandise, locked up the fish cart, and walked home, the news said he's dead.

I've never met a Yitzhak that I didn't like, but Rabin was a politician, and that's strike one. His background was military, and then commanding the military, in two bloody wars, and that's strike two and then strike three. Peacemaker, the newspaper says, but I have doubts that a two-war military commander was much interested in peace.

The news tells me his death is a heartbreaking tragedy. Any man's death is, I'd say. Is Rabin's death a bigger tragedy than a bum beaten to death in the Tenderloin, news allotted a single paragraph deep in the Chronicle a few weeks ago?

There's oil in the Middle East, so it's safe to assume that everything we're told about that part of the world is slanted toward whatever country America can get oil from. Maybe Rabin was a better politician than most, but if so, that's like saying Jeff Dahmer had good table manners.

I'm not much of a music man. Grew up listening to the top 40 on an endless cycle, and I liked it but not enough to buy a lot of albums or even know which bands did which songs. In the 1980s when Air Supply hit it big I figured I'd heard enough and clicked it off.

Movie musicals are a habit, though, along with the oldies from my era and earlier. If you're dumb enough to loiter within earshot, you'll often hear me whistling a few of the standards — "Blowing in the Wind," "Some Enchanted Evening," "Theme from Super-Chicken" — whenever I'm not cussin' people out for whistling too much.

Sometimes I sing, too, and maybe improve the lyrics. I've written words for the Siskel & Ebert theme, but it's just "Why don't you both just kiss my butt" over and over again.

Lately I've been singing "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound of Music, with motherfucking added. Pick up the tempo to fit in the extra syllables, and it can brighten your spirits.

Climb every motherfucking mountain
Ford every motherfucking stream
Follow every motherfucking rainbow
Til you find your motherfucking dream!

That's the song I was singing, sitting at the fish stand, when two young men in suits approached. They were both carrying Bibles and wearing too-narrow ties. Jehovah's Witnesses, obviously. Witness this.

Maybe they were going to complain about the fish, or more likely just try to save my soul, but I wasn't in a mood for either so I sang the song a little louder, and opened the Bible I now arm myself with on Telegraph. It was Jay's idea, and it was brilliant. On the fish stand, it diffuses the idiots, and today it had its desired effect.

They looked at the fish, looked at the Bible, the fish again. One of them said, "Where's the Jesus fish?" and the other said, "You're a Christian?"

Given my choice of those two lines, I took the one less traveled. "Yes I am," I lied, "and you're two Christians?"

"Yes," said one of them, and the other echoed. "We are Christians, and we are proud of it."

"Pride is a sin," I said, and felt like I'd taken an early lead in this game. Proverbs 8:13.

To that there was silence for a few seconds, and then the dumber one of them said, "I don't understand the fish and the Bible. What do you believe?"

"I believe your God made some people especially stupid, lacking any sense of humor, and lacking any sense at all. And behold, He called them Christians." Then I was feeling lucky, punk, so I lifted Jay's Bible and gently, slowly tossed it into the trash can on the sidewalk. If I'd missed I would've lost the whole contest, but today my aim was true for two points. It must've been God's will.

One of them said something more, but I drowned him out with the raspberries. I dunno why it's called the raspberries, the fart sound you make with your lips. Spit comes out when you do it, and I saw a blop land on one of their hands, but the conversation had gone off-script, and I don't think Jehovah's Witlesses are programmed to improvise much.

After they'd walked away, I picked Jay's Bible out of the trash and wiped it off, for next time.

Today's entry is not a rerun, but it feels like it because this is the fourth time I've seen it in not much more than a month. There must be a 'crackdown' going on. It's part of the normal cycle of homelessness and street life.

First, do nothing and offer no help to prevent people from slipping into desperate situations.

Second, ignore the people living on the street, all of whom got there because of step one.

Third, start arresting the homeless under whatever pretext can be invented, making their already miserable lives even more miserable, in hopes they'll relocate outside city limits.

When the crackdown reduces visible homelessness, or if more people complain about the crackdown than about the homeless, then return to step one for a while.

In today's episode, I was walking 16th Street toward the Mission BART station in San Francisco, when two strangely polite cops started questioning a couple of bums who'd been bothering nobody, simply sitting on the big concrete planters in front of Bank of America branch #4,289,910.

As in all the hasslings I've seen, the street people were just talking to each other, which used to be legal. "May we see some ID, please?" came the inquiry from these stalwart officers of the law. Very polite, 'please' and all.

Again as always, I stopped and watched, in case there was something to be seen. Which means, to take notes and write about it, sure, but also it means being a witness if the cops pull out their billy-clubs for batting practice.

There were no arrests this time, and no violence, because both bums had passable ID, and neither had any outstanding warrants when the cops read their license numbers over the radio.

For ten minutes, those two harmless and impoverished old men were not free to go. They were interrogated, until the cops couldn't find even a phony pretext to arrest them, and told the bums to "Move along." The two bums said OK and started walking down the sidewalk, until one of the cops shouted, "No, no!" and told them to walk off separately.

One bum said something quietly to the other, probably, "Meet me behind Walgreens" or some such, and then they walked away, and away from each other, one to the east, one to the west. Good work, officers. Homeless isn't enough, so let's try making the homeless friendless, too.

When I've seen cops picking on other homeless people recently, I could at least rationalize that I didn't know the down-and-outers involved, so, hell, maybe they were troublemakers. This time the cops' records check proved that they weren't troublemakers, so the entire intent of this hassling was plain meanness.

It would be a stretch to say that I knew either of those bums, but one of them was a familiar face. I used to live in a rez hotel around the corner, and he's lived on that street for years. He's panhandled me and I've given him a few bucks, and he's no danger to anyone.

This is America in the here and now, and it's ugly, on the way to getting uglier. By what authority can the police approach anyone anywhere doing absolutely nothing and demand identification?

"Are your papers in order?" Mine aren't, and even if they were, being forced to show ID to every bluesuit with a badge who demands it is not what I'd call freedom. It's only America, which isn't at all the same thing.

A black man in a wheelchair came rolling down the sidewalk toward me. In his lap, a boombox was blasting an old Rolling Stones tape, but the man had no legs, so he couldn't tap his toes to the beat.

"Hey, dude," I shouted over the music as he approached, "you're rockin' and you're rollin'!" He didn't smile. He must've heard that joke before.

♦ ♦ ♦

I was on my way to a store for a loaf of bread and two tins of tuna, but it wasn't the store I wanted to go to. Usually I'd walk five blocks to Walgreens or ride a bus to Safeway, but today I was low-energy, so instead I went to the kinda shady, half-stocked, overpriced, surly-staffed mom & pop store down the street. I rarely shop there, and soon remembered why.

Some of the merchandise has price tags, but some doesn't. The noodle soup doesn't. At some stores it's as cheap as four for a dollar, at other stores it's as high as 89¢ each, and I wanted to stock up but only had ten bucks. Already I was holding four cans of tuna priced astronomically.

Damn, I hate having to ask how much something costs. Prices should be marked, required by law. When they're not marked, I always think they'll make up a price based on how well you're dressed. I was dressed shitty, of course, and feeling rude and rowdy, so I walked to the register, gently slammed the noodles on the counter, and said, "There's no price. How much?"

"$1.09," said the guy behind the counter.

"What a fuckin' rip," I said, and put the noodles back on the shelf. Noodles made of gold, I guess. No impulse shopping at that store.

Back to the original plan — I'd buy the bread and tuna and that's all. Only the fancy bread had prices, though, and I am not paying $2.29 for a damned loaf of bread. Grabbed an un-priced generic loaf that would cost 69¢ at Walgreens, took it to the front and slammed it against the counter hard enough to blow over a stack of Twinkies. "How much?" I asked, almost shouted.

"A hundred and twenty dollars," the clerk shouted back at me.

It melted my anger and made me laugh. I almost apologized to the guy, but he decided I was crazy when I laughed, and ordered me out of the store.

Ah, well. I'm still out of bread and tuna, but I made a new enemy and that's priceless. Chuckled all the way home, and I'll go to Walgreens tomorrow.

How pathetic is this pathetic life? That's what I'm wondering as I lie in bed, looking at nothing, thinking nothing, just liquifarting and waiting for enough energy to get up and pee.

Answer: It's pretty pathetic, so today I'm gonna rip myself apart.

I've had perhaps five real friends in my life. One of them I doublecrossed twice, ending the friendship. It was nothing noir or anything, I'd promised I'd help with a major project, then wimped out and didn't. Another friend, I abandoned by leaving Seattle, and haven't kept in touch. So I have three friends left, and wonder how I'll lose them.

My net worth is about $150, not counting the cash value, if any, that my flabby body parts might have on the black market.

I am not particularly bright. When I'm with my friends, they're kind enough not to say it, but I am gently aware I'm the dummy in the room. What's amazing, though, and terrifying when I think about it, is that compared to the average boob on the street, I'm Einstein.

And same as being not-so-smart but smarter than most, there's my writing. It's the only thing I love to do, and I don't do it very well (see: this article), but do you ever browse through a bookstore or magazine rack full of People magazine and Harlequin Romances? I know I'm no Hemingway, but people make a living writing far worse shit than the shit I write.

Music is nice but not a passion, and I rarely go to clubs unless invited. By habit, though, all invitations to go anywhere or do anything are declined, so 'rarely' means 'never'. I am socially awkward, and feel out of place in almost any situation involving other humans. My idea of an exciting evening is to curl up in bed alone, reading a good zine.

Mom and Dad loved me, and did a fine job beating their goody-two-shoes philosophy into me. Not a lot of beatings, mind you, only the ones I deserved.

And their morals seeped in under the bruises. When a grocery clerk gives me too much change, I'll probably point it out, unless the clerk has been really rude. In four years living in and around Frisco, I've only snuck through the automated BART gates twice, and those weren't even attempts to cheat; the gates were malfunctioning and I wanted to ride a train, not chase down a station agent.

So I'm an honest enough man, and a decent citizen, and a very boring man. I yawn at myself in the mirror.

My penis works, and it's my favorite thing in the world, but I can count my sexual partners on the fingers of… hey! Thanks to Sarah-Katherine, I now need a second hand to count the women in my life. Females almost never notice me, and if they do it's only to walk around me on their way to someone else, so I am not the swinging bachelor I imagined I'd be when I first moved into my own apartment.

Once, I very briefly fooled around with another man's wife, and it still bothers my conscience, even though we didn't do much, and the guy was a schmuck, and his wife deserved better than him, better than me.

I've smoked marijuana (coughing a lot) and dropped acid, but I'm very cautious along those lines, and generally avoid drugs. When I once found myself accidentally high from cough syrup, I didn't enjoy it — it scared me.

I've been known to drink a beer when I'm thirsty and you're buying, but I'd prefer a soda. It tastes better. So I've never been drunk. Two beers give me a tiny buzz, and that's enough. Saw plenty of drunks in high school, the kids whose idea of a great weekend was breaking last weekend's puke record.

In the city, drunks and derelicts are everywhere, living for their next can or bottle. I certainly see the attraction of turning everything in the world to an out-of-focus fuzz, but I do that by retreating into my bedroom, alone with a ham sandwich, or four.

Call me a boring man — you're on page 15 of a zine called Pathetic Life, so 'boring' should be obvious — but I would rather sit here, staring at my typewriter, alone with only my unclouded thoughts, than go to a concert or a bar with a bunch of so-called friends.

I would rather be alone, so alone is where I am and where I'll be, tonight, and tomorrow, and forever.

Thursday —

Had a stupid dream last night, but enjoyed it so here it is: I was guest-hosting Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, and walked onto the set, took off my sweater and kicked off my shoes like I was supposed to, but I didn't slip into loafers and a more casual sweater. Instead I just went barefoot and shirtless, my nipples and boobies bouncing on national TV.

As the show went on, I was smoking a Dave Letterman cigar, though I don't smoke, and eating Twinkies, which I definitely do. Also farted a lot, belched, picked my nose, drank whiskey from a bottle, and offered some kid a swig. And everything I said to the kids or camera, I shouted, but it was always happy shouting, never mean. "Would you like a Diet Coke, kid?" and "Is it a beautiful day, really?"

Then that goofy train came around the corner with King Friday the 13th riding on it, ding ding, and I love that little train, so I climbed onto the table, looked inside the train, and then I sat in the train. Or tried to, but the train is tiny and I'm big and I ended up sitting on it, not in it, leaving nothing but sticks.

Nope, I don't know why I'm telling you this, except that nothing interesting happened in my life today so that's the best I got. And I love Mr Rogers, so my apologies for ruining the train set.

♦ ♦ ♦

If I put my lips together tight and suck between tongue and tooth, I can make my half-hollow left eye-tooth hurt like hell, so of course I've been doing that over and over again tonight. The hurting is a bad sign. Probably means another toothache is about to erupt.

♦ ♦ ♦

Friday —

At 10:30 this morning, just as I was crawling out of bed to start getting ready to go sell fish on Telegraph, my boss Jay called and invited me to breakfast instead. I warned her that is we went out to eat, there's no way I'd have the stand ready by noon, but breakfast with the boss is the perfect excuse for being late to work, so we met at the Brick Hut.

Jay had french toast with fruits and nuts on top, and flirted with the all-lesbian staff. I had wheat hotcakes, and they were dang fine indeed. Jay and I chatted about which waitress she'd like to screw, and she asked my opinion, which was awkward. It's a lesbian place, and as a rule I don't screw lesbians, or even daydream about it.

We had some laughs, never once talked about fish, and then after breakfast when I should've been rushing to get the fish stand open late, instead we browsed at the pet supply shop down the street. I'm trying to stretch my budget, so I seriously studied their gourmet vegetarian dog food, 99¢ for a big can, and wondered if it would taste OK spread on toast, or over rice…

Didn't buy it, though. Cat food can be good when money's short, too, but I'm not yet looking for alternatives to people food.

Then Jay wanted to run an errand, and pretty soon it was 2:00, and she gave me her blessing to say fuck it and take the day off. Can't really afford that, but I couldn't bring myself to argue either. Offer me a day off, even without pay, and I'll take it, every day.

Came back to this house and room full and happy, fat and lazy. Thanks for breakfast, Jay, and now there's the whole afternoon to write, but I have nothing else to write about so I'll take a nap instead.

Addendum, 2022: Ah, serious bummer. The fabulous Brick Hut Cafe is no more.

Stepping out of the shower, I accidentally knocked a spray bottle off the shelf. It was somebody else's bottle, so I got nosy and looked at it, picking it up. It said, "For the temporary relief of itching and pain associated with minor skin irritations," an invitation I couldn't decline.

I've had a recurring rash around my groin for a while now, probably from not changing undies often enough, so why not lightly dust the bottom of my balls with this stuff? Just two or three squirts, I thought, but I only pressed the button for a fraction of a second before screaming and almost falling to the floor.

It felt like I'd nestled my testicles in hot charcoal, a pain infinitely greater than the jock itch has ever been or could ever be. The label said, "Thrifty Drugs Anti-Itch Spray," but it might as well be Agent Orange. I tried stifling my screams of agony, unsuccessfully.

"You OK in there?" asked the voice of one of my male flatmates, and I don't know and don't care which.

"Yeah, yeah," I sniffled through the door, and through tears.

After my long and slow recovery, the bottle's small print told me that the medication "expires 3/89," but it's still plenty potent. For a few minutes of excruciating pain, the itch was gone, but as the drug-induced agony faded the itch under by nuts came back, and I have never been happier to scratch my balls.

♦ ♦ ♦

Walked to Telegraph with Danny again, the homeless economist I met a few weeks ago. "Hi, Danny," I said, and we talked for a few blocks.

Again he made me laugh, and he seems to be mostly there, but when I said goodbye I had to introduce myself. "Have we met before?" he asked.

♦ ♦ ♦

Three middle-aged women walked by the fish stand, and eyed the display. They slowed, paused, and one of them pointed at the condom-fish, and giggled, but religion quickly overruled her sense of humor. One of her friends sorta scoldingly said to her, "Do you know what all this fish imagery means?"

At that, the giggler stopped giggling, became very serious, and said, "Yes," in a pre-programmed tone straight from The Stepford Wives. Then the three of them stepped away, one of them literally shaking her head no, and I thought I heard "tsk tsk" as they faded down the street.

I don't want to sound too haughty myself, but Jesus H Christ — it's batty, of course, to believe in something you can't see and there's no evidence for. That's God. But then you let this imaginary entity overrule your own sense of humor? Something you know is funny can't be funny because 'God' wouldn't like it?

♦ ♦ ♦

Spotted Andrea on the sidewalk, and said hello. Hadn't seen her in a month or so, and we're not friends or anything, but we know each other's names and I'm lonely enough it's a genuine pleasure when a pretty woman seems happy to see me and says, "Hi, Doug!"

She's read my zine and I wanted to give her a copy of the new issue, but I'd forgotten to bring any in my backpack. Instead I handed her one of my "I'll do anything" flyers. Maybe she needs a man about the house, hubba hubba?

She was in a hurry, though, and just stuffed it into her purse. Which means, wow, a pretty woman has my phone number in her purse…

♦ ♦ ♦

Speaking of pretty women, where I work on Telegraph Ave, there are always lots of them. The university is just a few blocks away.

One of today's pretty women was very memorable. She was maybe 20, and wearing a transparent dress. Not translucent, something you could see through when the sun hits it just right — no, this was simply see-through, almost as plain as you see through air.

She stopped and looked at my fish, wearing a low-cut high-hem barely baby blue and barely-there dress, and my attention naturally went to her pink lacy brassiere and white panty triangle. One moment I was reading a zine on the Ave, the next moment it was Cinemax unscrambled.

I don't think I glanced at that woman's eyes for even a moment. She could've been someone I knew, and I'd never have known it. And that's sad, isn't it? Thinking about it afterward, I'm at odds with myself. Confused.

It is none of my damned business what someone else wears, but also it's none of my business to be seeing what color her underwear is. Thanks to my dumbass Christian upbringing, it felt uncomfortable looking, but of course I looked, and couldn't stop looking. As she walked off, and all the way up the Avenue until she disappeared around a corner, I was still looking, and I wasn't the only one.

Much as I appreciated it, which is much, it made me sad, and made me wonder, what's going on in her life, to be walking through the biggest crowds in Berkeley wearing basically a bikini?

Maybe she was making a well thought out statement: I will wear whatever the hell I want, and if so, that's a good thing. If it happens again, I promise to force myself to look at at a woman's eyes no matter what she's showing me.

And maybe I'm getting old. I am of her parents' generation. Maybe I'm ready to start saying, "Kids today...", but it feels… wrong (is that the word?) or at least strange to show that much of yourself.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Psychoanalyze me, please.

An obvious mother and daughter came by the stand today, looking at the fish, chatting and smiling. You might've thought they were one of those hypothetically happy families.

The daughter, about 10 or 12, noticed and picked up the booklet we sell, titled What Lesbians Do. Before she could even open it, her mother gently took it from her hands and put it back on the display rack. "That's not for you," she said, smiling, and they went back to looking at the fish.

The girl remained curious, though, or perhaps became more so. When her mom took a step toward the other end of my table, the girl picked up the book again, and again her mom snatched it away and put it back, but this time she briefly scolded the girl. Then Mom took the kid by the hand, and they walked off.

What I'm guessing Mom's guessing she saw, and I'm guessing she's right, is a girl who's kinda curious about what lesbians do. The booklet is only poetry, so it wouldn't answer that question, but Mom's like, "No daughter of mine will learn about that by looking at a book."

♦ ♦ ♦

High above the sidewalk, in the branches of a tree, was a lost cockatiel. I'm not a birdwatcher, and wouldn't have noticed. There are lots of birds in lots of trees on the Ave.

But a frantic man was pacing the sidewalk, looking up, and just worried thick. When he noticed me looking at him, he said, "It ithn't my bird, but I uthed to have a cockatiel, and I dethperately want to thee thith one thafely returned to it'th owner."

Yeah, the gentleman had a lisp so heavy it was difficult to figure out what he was saying, and he could not have been any further out. He wore rouge around his eyes, a pink shirt, and he slowly snapped his wrists to accentuate particular words as he spoke. It was like an offensive comedy skit playing up every gay stereotype, but once in a while stereotypes are real, or they wouldn't be stereotypes.

I write about my life, and it happened so I wrote it, but as the story continues I'm not going to type any more of the man's lisp.

Some onlookers collected under the tree, wondering what to do about the escaped bird, and the man loudly and dramatically asked, "What can we do?"

"I can get the bird down," I volunteered.

"Really?" he asked. "How?"

"Just let me get my shotgun."

"That's not funny!" he shrieked.

I was only being a wise-ass, but then things got ugly.

A heroic college boy climbed the tree, which was barely strong enough to hold him. As the small crowd cheered him on, he inched out on a branch, reaching his hand closer and closer to the bird. It must've been completely domesticated, because the bird didn't seem afraid of him at all.

He reached his hand further, tried to grab the bird, but when he lightly touched it, it fell of its perch, sorta flying but also sorta dropping down.

And another good guy on the sidewalk tried to catch the bird in midair, but he missed, slipped, and accidentally slapped the bird in flight as he fell. It fluttered to the ground, and the second good guy landed right on top of it.

This was a terrible sight, and a sickening sound. The second guy stood up, and the bird was making a very pained gurgling noise, and you could see that its head was about half collapsed.

The bird was as good as dead, and seriously suffering. After a few seconds of swearing and everyone screaming oh my god, one of the college kids shook his head yes, and the other one stomped on the bird's head, finishing it off.

All this was simply and absolutely horrible to see, a moment I hope to forget. Everyone involved and watching was choked up. My eyes watered. You couldn't not be saddened, sickened.

After several seconds of silence, a delayed reaction, the gay guy broke into absolute hysterics. He wailed, he screamed at the two kids who'd tried to help, and then he bawled, and picked up the dead bird's carcass and held it to his chest.

And remember, this wasn't his bird. He's just the guy who spotted a cockatiel in the tree.

Almost immediately he apologized to the college boys for yelling at them. "I'm sorry, I know it was an accident," he said, "but I'm so, so—" and after that I couldn't understand what he was saying, because he was crying so much.

I didn't want to be an asshole, and also don't want to be an asshole writing about it, so my apologies, sincerely. But like I said, I write about my life, and this happened.

As awful as the whole scene had been, when the man was still bawling a few minutes after the bird's stomping, crying louder even than when it first happened, it started to become inappropriately funny.

No, I didn't laugh, but I wanted to. When my torso silently shook with ripples of suppressed and embarrassed giggles, I asked my neighbor-vendor to watch the fish-stand, and hurried across the street and around a corner. And then, yeah, I laughed.

When I returned to Telegraph a few minutes later, the crowd was gone, the man was gone, and the dead bird was gone. My neighbor-vendor told me that the distressed man had carried the bird with him as he ran weeping down Telegraph Ave, and he'd said something about giving it a decent burial. I respect that, appreciate that.

He's a man who's in touch with his feelings, and there's no shame in it. Also, I hope, there's no shame in finding the whole situation, while ghastly, also funny.

♦ ♦ ♦

Let's end today's entry on a brighter moment, later in the afternoon. Here's a snippet of conversation overheard, as two middle-aged women walked past my table:

"I meditate for world peace, and I know it's working, but it's a really slow process."

On my way to a day's work in San Francisco, an unaccompanied little kid sat in the seat next to me. Maybe 7 or 8 years old, he was all chirpy and chatty and started boring me with talk of the 49ers.

"Why aren't you in school bothering a teacher instead of on BART bothering me?" I almost said, but I always hated school, skipped constantly, so I took mercy on the boy and only said, "I don't like football.

That shut him up, so I turned to look out the window at the plain gray of the tunnel whizzing under the bay.

A minute later, though, the kid started babbling again, this time about a policeman who'd visited his school and made a big impression on him. I mostly ignored him, but then he tapped my shoulder and wanted to show me a DARE pamphlet he'd pulled from his backpack.

Ah, jeez. DARE is "Drug Abuse Resistance Education," a many-million-dollar boondoggle that sends cops into schools to teach little kids to say no to drugs. Little kids probably should say no to drugs, but I hate cops and propaganda and DARE is both.

The boy was too darn happy, and I don't know what he expected me to do with his DARE brochure. I didn't even glance at it. He said what you'd expect a DARE-brainwashed kid to say, something about the dangers of marijuana, and all I said was, "Don't believe every lie everyone tells you."

Then I looked out the window again, but like I'm a Corleone, every time I wanted out of this conversation, he kept pulling me back in.

"What do you mean?" he asked, all wide-eyed and dopey-looking.

"What I mean is, everything that cop told your class is a lie, and everything in that pamphlet is moose-poopoo." I was proud of myself for coming up with moose-poopoo, because you shouldn't say bullshit to a little kid.

"The policeman was nice!" he said.

"I'm sure he was, but he was paid to be there and he was lying to you. Nobody's paying me, so I'll tell you the truth. Pot can be fun. Most people can handle it, like punk rock or math. Or football — say no to football."

By about halfway through my stupid spiel, though, I was talking to an empty seat, after the kid grabbed his backpack and scurried to the other end of the car. Good riddance, brat. Did I ask you to bother me?

That's public education — they tell kids lies about marijuana, lies about liberty and justice for all and all that, but they never mention "Don't talk to strangers" any more?

Going through this week's mail, I'm the recipient of two checks for sample issues of the zine, so I'm going to rant about it.

Like it says in Factsheet 5, like it says in every issue of Pathetic Life, I don't take checks. It's not because your check will bounce. It probably would bounce, but that's irrelevant.

The price for the zine is three dollars. My price for carrying an out-of-town check from a stranger into some bank where I don't have an account, waiting in line for half an hour to show ID I don't have to a bewildered teller, and explaining to her who I am and what zines are and hoping she'll turn your check into three bucks, which she won't, would be substantially higher.

One of today's checks is "pay to the order of Pathetic Life," as if I'm a business. The other is payable to cash, which is slightly smarter, but still a nearly impossible challenge. Most checks come payable to Doug Holland, which, of course, is a pen name.

I've been quite nice about it, though, usually returning checks with a handwritten note explaining that I don't take checks. I've considered having a rubber stamp made. Out of dozens of such notes I've written, maybe five check-writers have subsequently sent stamps or cash. Sometimes I've stupidly enclosed the zine with the note, but the response rates seem no different.

The latest issue of PL still hasn't been mailed to everyone who prepaid for it, because I don't have enough stamps. I've stretched the mailing schedule out because I'm broke, and checking the maildrop is supposed to leave me less broke, and it does — there's always cash, it's always appreciated, and a few more past-due copies of the zine are going into the mail.

But there are also checks, every time, and it's starting to seriously piss me off.

Other people's ignorance shouldn't obligate me to spend 32¢ and waste an envelope, returning a check I can't cash. From now on, anyone who sends a check will receive no reply, and all incoming checks will be playfully ripped into 32 pieces and confettied into the trash.

♦ ♦ ♦

While filling orders and typing, I've been listening to Free Radio Berkeley, and for more than an hour now a man has been reading a rant against ending Affirmative Action.

I agree with him. Affirmative Action is a fitting apology for generations of discrimination, shouldn't be ended, and there ought to be more action and it ought to be more affirmative.

The guy talking on the radio, though, is awful at it. He's reading it and it sounds like he's reading, and even stumbling over his own words. Too many words, too. What he's said fifty times already is, basically, that America is a racist society and always has been. A ballsy thing to say at the Republican National Convention, but people listening to a pirate radio station probably already know that racism exists and is bad.

That's really all this guy's been saying, for a frickin' hour. It's an impressively ass-backward accomplishment that he can make such ugly and outrageous facts sound so boring.

No, I'm not going to call the station and say this, but I'll say it here:

Some people have a gift for public speaking. Some people don't. The people who don't should not be speaking publicly.

In today's headlines, the government has been shut down, which is simply untrue. It's not shut down, merely slimmed down.

Says here in the Chronicle that almost two-thirds of federal workers are still working. The people shit outta luck are anyone applying for government aid, tourists at national parks, etc, and any government employees deemed non-essential.

I'm not even sure what "non-essential" means. In my world, if your job is deemed non-essential, your employer lays you off.

To too briefly recap: President Clinton vetoed the Republicans' spending bill from Congress, because Republicans wanted to cut spending, because they're Republicans and Republicans always want to cut spending. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his cohorts aren't about to reconsider, so now there's no budget authorization, so there's no money to unlock the doors of the District of Columbia and a thousand other places Republicans hate.

My simplistic and under-informed knee-jerk response is that shutting down the government, especially its "non-essential" functions, is what Republicans want anyway. The "non-essential" functions are mostly things Republicans would love to axe permanently.

From what I've read, at least 60% of which I understand, it's all a ginormous clusterfuck. If you need to get something done and it involves dealing with the federal government, you're shit outta luck, and I'm against anyone getting shit-outta-lucked by Republicans, but a tiny blurb deep in the Chronicle shows how the "government shutdown" has affected a few people:

A group of 39 illegal immigrants detained by police in Colorado were sent on their way when the local Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) office furloughed much of its staff.

So these people, who'd otherwise have been penalized for a crime that harms no-one — being on a piece of dirt where they weren't born — are instead free to go.

Hey, that's good news! Right up there with laws illegalizing certain herbs and laws banning the best sex acts between consenting adults, laws against crossing an imaginary line are evil and ought to be ignored.

If such laws weren't so cruelly written and enforced, untold thousands of "furloughed" INS workers could be laid off forever, the people they'd arrest and deport could get jobs instead, the economy would improve, and America could have an occasional taste of the freedom we the people are so often promised but denied. And also, the quality of burritos would improve across the country.

If that's the worst example of the horrors of this government shutdown, please keep it shut down as long as possible. Buy a few hundred thousand more locks, send home the rest of the government staff, and please, President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich, don't forget to padlock your own offices on the way out the door.

Addendum, 2022: "Simplistic and under-informed," indeed. Back then I was an anarchist, or close to it, and shutting down the government didn't bother me much. On the big map of my political progress, I still had a long ways to go.
Republicans were already bugging me more than Democrats, though, and I like that about this snapshot from way back when. Even wet behind the ears in my late 30s, the difference was obvious to me: Republicans are cruel bastards who want the worst for everyone who isn't them. Democrats don't really want to hurt anyone, they just don't give a damn.

Today I did yard work for an old man in Oakland, but it was boring and there's no story to tell. The fun happened after work, when I was done with the old guy's azaleas, and went to the movies. And after.

Often in critics' lists of the greatest films ever made, The Bicycle Thief and The Third Man are near the top. I'd never seen either, and they played as a double feature at the Castro tonight, so I BARTed under the water to see what all the fuss was about.

The fuss is about two terrific movies.

The Bicycle Thief (1948) is about a poor out-of-work working stiff who finally lands a job to support his wife and kid, but the job requires a bike, and his is promptly stolen. No bike means no job, and with no job is a man a man? As a philosophical parable, as a father-and-son buddy flick, and as a study of morality and consequences, the film is excellent. It's also pretty dang good as entertainment, and it made me laugh, cry, and think. There's not much more you can ask a movie to do.

Between shows, as always at the Castro, the organ rose out of the pit and the crowd was serenaded with oldies. The organist is David Hegarty, unless he's at one of his side gigs — I've also heard him play at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto, so he gets around. If he's away, though, someone else plays the organ, and it's always grand.

Tonight it was genuine Hegarty, and after a 20-minute medley including the themes from both of the evening's movies, he finished with the flourish that always waters my eyes, a rousing rendition of "San Francisco." Maybe you don't know the title, you know the song — San Francisco, open your golden gate….

As always, everyone in the theater clapped hands and stomped feet to the beat, then applauded, and tonight it was a standing ovation — deserved, because that dude can play.

And as much as the Castro's cool architecture and soaring balcony and curtains to the sky, that organ shaking the walls is something no modern multi-screen cinema can match.

The Third Man (1949) is noir set in Vienna, a mystery of friendship, betrayal, and love lost, told with biting humor, and featuring Orson Welles as a deliciously evil villain. It's filmed from astonishing angles, throwing all expectations askew, brilliantly scripted and performed, and there's a zither score that's exactly wacky enough to fit. The movie is clever, dark, tense, and ends with one of the most gloriously scripted and photographed scenes ever put to film. As great as The Third Man had already been, I hadn't guessed the finale would be quite so perfect and poignant.

♦ ♦ ♦

I walked out of the theater in a daze, and was approached by a cute boy who wanted to flirt with me under the marquee. Kissed him on the cheek and said, "Thanks, but no."

Shaken and stirred by the movies, too restless to bus back to the BART station, I walked Market Street alone in the fog, to Civic Center, stumbling over memories all the way.

Here's the piece of sidewalk where I stood so many times, handing out flyers for a second hand shop and wearing a green glittery cape. The weirdest thing about that job is that I started to like some of the people passing by. Imagine me, liking people.

The shop is still there, but was closed for the night or I would've said hello to Stevi and LeeAnn... and they would've had me wear the cape one more time.

At the next intersection, Kevin was waiting for me. He's a homeless gent who lives on these streets, and when I wore the cape and stood outside all day, we used to talk. He has a few faulty chips on his circuit board — he's about 40% with it, and I'm about 60%, so we had some great conversations.

The game starts by saying a sentence, any sentence about anything in the entire universe. I said, "Millard Fillmore is dead," and immediately Kevin was talking about the mayoral election. I said I'd voted for Humphrey Bogart, and he segued to the old hippie anthem, "Don't Bogart that Joint," so I reminded him that pot can lead to harsher drugs like beer and tobacco, and he told me tobacco is a leading crop in several Southern states. I replied that Hawaii is much further south than Florida, and the mention of Florida took him on a tangent about the dangers of the Bermuda Triangle.

Talking with Kevin is like the word-association game in a shrink's office, only it's all improvised and never ends. It's one of the top ten-thousand things I miss about living in Berkeley instead of San Francisco.

Kevin has nowhere else to be, but I do, so I said adios and kept walking, and most of the way, nobody disturbed me. A hobo here, a hooker there, but mostly it was silence where thoughts fell free and unfettered out of my head and between my footsteps. The fog, the chill, the streetcars…

Here's the restaurant where an almost-friend bought be a beer.

Here's the corner where the police chief suspended civil rights and arrested peaceful protesters after the Rodney King injustice was announced.

Here's a pile of people poop, because there are only about seven public restrooms in the entire city.

Midway at the next block, a middle-aged scum couple were engaged in — what, an argument? The prelude to a rape? He had his arms around her, he was trying to kiss her, but she kept turning her head away and saying, "No, no, stop it!"

Walking toward them and toward downtown, I looked for some sign that they were kidding around, but she wasn't giggling, and after hearing her say "No" a dozen times something had to be done.

Of course, I couldn't win a fair fight against Captain Kangaroo, so instead I stopped twenty footsteps away, quietly unzipped my backpack, and pulled out the hardcover novel I'm reading. The guy had his hands all over her but his back was to me, so I snuck up from behind and whomped him full-force with the book on the back of his head.

He staggered off of her, looked around, dazed — too dazed to fight, I hoped — but just in case I dropped the book and flipped the safety latch on the mace from my pocket. He didn't approach, didn't do or say anything, and the dazed look on his face never changed, but he did let go of the woman.

And the instant he did, she started screaming at me, "He was just having fun, you stupid shit!" So I walked away, looking over my shoulder to be sure they weren't coming up from behind. That would be a cowardly thing to do, like I'd done.

They were both drunk, and both assholes, and such a couple deserve each other, but Christ, if "No! No! No!" is her idea of having fun, they ought to do it indoors. Else the next dummy like me might intervene with a gun instead of Time and Again by Jack Finney.

Walking on, it took a few blocks for my heartbeat to return to normal. My diary doesn't often have action scenes like that.

I said good evening to some people living under the 13th Street overpass, flipped off a honking car at Larkin, turned down a half-price special from a half-attractive hooker, and gave nothing to the night-shift panhandlers all along the way.

At U.N. Plaza, the wind blew a mist off the fountain into my face, pleasantly. Lost souls were selling pot, hash, acid, and stolen goods at reasonable prices, but I smiled and walked on by, then descended the stairs and found a seat on the next train out of town.

And as the train rolled away, the Castro's organ played again in my mind...

San Francisco, open your golden gate
You'll let nobody wait
outside your door
San Francisco, here is your wanderin' one
Saying I'll wander no more...

What a great city, San Francisco. Take a walk anywhere here, and you'll see something crazy. Take a long walk, you'll see too much, maybe get crazy yourself.

I miss living there, but it's still only a quick train ride away.

Sarah-Katherine wants us to move to New York, 3,000 miles from this crazy place. And I like her and all, but that's a long ways from home, and tonight I'm not so sure about it as when she first asked.

Walking to work, pushing my cart full of fish and fish supplies, a police cruiser pulled up beside me at the light.

Maybe I haven't mentioned it for the past few pages, but I don't like cops. Everything you've seen on Dragnet to the contrary, having a police officer around usually means trouble, and often the cops don't ease the trouble, they create it, exacerbate it. If that's not their job, a lot of cops think it's their job.

A squad car idling beside me wasn't the best possible start to my day, but my worries were only psychosomatic, so far.

When the light changed, I pushed the cart onward, being careful to roll between the crosswalk's white lines... and the cop car kept pace with my walking. And that was more than psychosomatically weird. There was next-to-no traffic, and cars generally move faster than I walk.

Sweating, I glanced over and saw only one cop, the driver. Usually they travel in pairs. We made eye contact, because he was watching me more than the road.

Past the bus stop, past the book store, with every step the police car was beside me, driving 5 mph in a 25 zone, eyeballing me.

Generally, I'm an innocent man, and yet all my petty crimes flashed before me. A month or so ago, I hopped a BART gate. When I moved to Cali from Seattle, an unpaid citation was left behind. I do puff pot, but rarely, and today there was not only none on me, there was an extra stash of none at home.

But this cop in a car was studying me like I was Al Capone, or a pretty woman, and it was making me nervous. I would've bolted across someone's lawn if I hadn't had the fish cart with me. And if it wasn't a cop harassing me, I would've picked up a thick stick that was lying on the sidewalk, for defense.

But you don't do anything like that while the long arm is staring you down. Instead I stopped, stepped in front of the fish-cart, leaned on a wall as peaceable as possible, and smiled at the officer.

He stopped the squad car, leaned across the seat, and rolled down his shotgun window. "Hello," he said, toothy grin and all friendly like.

"What do you want?" I hollered, which in retrospect was stupid. Anything I said should've been said softly.

I did have the presence of mind to stay perfectly still, though. Too many news accounts say that the dead guy made a 'threatening' move, so I was a damned statue. Birds could've crapped on my shoulder.

"Relax," the policeman said, but his smile was gone. It sounded like he was going to say more so I waited, but that's the only word he said to me.

Maybe this would end more quickly, I thought, if I answered all the questions he hadn't asked, so I said, "I'm a street vendor," and very, very slowly pointed at the fish-cart. "Licensed and everything. I am pushing the cart to Telegraph Ave to set up shop, and I don't need a police escort." This, I said at a more reasonable tone.

At that he smiled again, sat up straight and drove away, 25 mph. No nod, no wave, no explanation, no apology. No doubt he was in a hurry to frighten someone else.

Inwardly I was shaking, wondering what that had been about. And would he be back to bug me later on the Avenue, where I'd dumbly told him I'd be? And would he be watching me again tomorrow morning?

Onward I rolled the cart, replaying the scene in my head, keeping my eyes open for more possible trouble, and thanking Jesus himself that I'm not black, so it's not ordinary to have lawmen watching my every move.

♦ ♦ ♦

And what was waiting for me when I reached Telegraph Ave? Not cops. Seven god damned Christians, armed with amplifiers, preaching and singing hymns at the corner.

When preachers set up on the sidewalk they're there for the whole damned day, so just hearing them annoyed the bejeebers out of me. Then I listened to Jesus talk, amplified, all day. I wanted to send them to their heavenly reward a few years early.

Freedom of speech is something I believe in, almost without limits, but I do not believe in freedom of electrically amplified speech in a crowded public space where nobody wants to hear what you're saying.

♦ ♦ ♦

The cart's fish equipment always includes a few folders filled fat with sushi. That's whet I call our raw fish stickers, before they're scissored. They're flat sheets of mylar crowded with fish designs, and between customers I sit at the table and snip snip snip fish stickers out of those shiny silver and gold sheets of mylar.

This produces mylar leftovers, and these scraps are sticky-backed like the fish, so to vent my anger at the Jesus freaks, I used a permanent marker to make lots of mini-stickers. Each of them said things like, "Jesus is dead, and so's his old man," "To hell with God," "Jesus farts," "Christ stinks," "Jesus fucked my chihuahua," and whatever other childish slogans would fit onto the scraps.

I offered my dumb anti-Christ stickers as a free bonus to people who bought fish, but there are a dozen mini-stickers and two mini-magnets left over. They're too radical to display on the fish-stand (like I need more angry Christians in my world?), so if you'd like one, say so next time you send $3 for an issue, and I'll slip one into the envelope.

♦ ♦ ♦

And behold, the Christians kept preaching, switching to a new preacher every fifteen minutes or so for the entire day. Great frustration was begatted.

Two of the seven preachers preached in Spanish, and that's preferable, because I don't speak the language so it's just noise, and my brain doesn't try to make it make sense.

Morning, midday, and afternoon, only four people stopped to talk with the preachers. Nobody got on their knees or anything. Dozens of people yelled at them, shook their heads 'no', and a few flipped them off, but not enough.

♦ ♦ ♦

The preachers at least took my mind off the cop who'd shadowed me this morning. Thinking it over tonight, my logical mind says I must've looked like someone they wanted, and when I stopped and gave the cop a good look at my face, he knew I wasn't Baby Face Nelson or whoever.

If I let myself get paranoid, though, worse things are possible. Cops are notoriously right-wing, reactionary, conservative, and Christian in the worst sense of that word. Maybe me or my fish offended the wrong Christian, and that wrong Christian mentioned it to his buddy the cop, and there'll be more cops in my future.

With that worry, I did what I do with any big things that are out of my control… I nudged it into a back corner in my mind, locked it inside a box, and forgot what's in the box. Or tried to.

Today was a boring day. I walked to work, and then sold fish. It's a job.

Yesterday's worrisome cop wasn't back, and that's good.

After work, I walked home, ate four peanut butter sandwiches, stared at this typewriter, and wondered what to write.

What can I tell you about my day and life that I haven't already told you?

My life is: I'm alone. That never changes. There are a few faint acquaintances, but they don't really know me and they're a long ways away, either in miles or in mindset.

Alone is the baseline. It's who I am, wasting my few years on Earth as pleasantly as possible. I write, and sell fish, and read zines, and eat, and beat off, and sleep.

Writing is the part I like best. If ten minutes of my day are interesting, that's a terrific day, and I'll spend an hour writing it, trying to keep it honest but also interesting, usually failing but what the hell.

Days like today, though, when there aren't even ten minutes of anything interesting, are too damned dull to describe. Shall I tell you that I've switched from Woolworth to Walgreens branded suppositories, and explain at length why? That is the only story to tell for today, and I don't want to tell it, and you don't want to read it.

So instead I'm just popping in to say that not every hangnail can be Hamlet. Having said it, I'll say adios.

I'm taking a week or so off from the diary, recharging my muse and typing fingers, until next Saturday.

I took a few days off from the zine, and now I'm back. Did ya miss me?

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I'm thankful I didn't force myself to write about it. It's a bullshit holiday, like most holidays, only with better food.

♦ ♦ ♦

Because his ears poke up like a bat's, because he's cloaked in black fur and can appear frightening, his name is Bela Lugosi. He's Jake and Judith's dog, a huge hairy hyperactive hound.

Judith says Lugosi is as smart as two sharks and a rock, but I'd give him more credit than that. Maybe three sharks, two rocks. He's kind of a dumb dog. He's housebroken, and knows and might obey a few commands — say 'sit' and he'll sit, say 'lay down' and if you say it twice he might. He knows 'stay', but it only applies while you're looking at him; walk away and he'll follow.

He's a slobbering furball of love once he knows you, but if anyone walks in front of the house, Lugosi will drop whatever he's chewing and bark ferociously as he charges, salivating, throwing his 166-pound body against the door for dramatic effect. We live at a busy intersection, so there's often something that needs to be barked at, especially when I'm trying to write or sleep. It's gotta be unnerving for the neighbors, and for anyone else within a block.

When the mail comes each day, it is announced by thunderous roars from the dog, and he runs down the stairs to attack the mail slot, where letters drop through the door to the floor.

To keep the dog from devouring the mailman's fingers, there had been a metal box over the inside side of the mail slot, but pouncing and chewing at it, Lugosi killed that cage a month or so ago.

Now there's a plexiglass basket that's supposed to protect the mail and the mailman's fingers, but Lugosi can and sometimes does knock the basket over sometimes. When that shield is gone the dog attacks the mail as it drops through. Magazines, bills, letters, small packages, whatever, all mail will be punctured, or shredded if nobody stops Lugosi. He'd maul the mailman, probably to death, if the door wasn't securely latched.

The dog has bitten strangers twice, and there's a death sentence if Lugosi bites someone a third time, so he is not allowed outside except on a short leash (maximum length, two feet) and muzzled. That's by order of some city agency, and Judith keeps the letter posted on the fridge, so nobody forgets.

There's also a warning posted on the wall, soon as you step into the house: "For your own safety, all visitors must play ball." When guests enter, they're handed a tennis ball, and instructed to play fetch with Lugosi for as long as it takes the dog to decide that they're OK.

The first time I visited, long before moving in, Lugosi and I played ball, and we've been playing ball ever since. I like the dog. He's never bitten me. He's not my dog, not my problem, but he is a problem — he's dangerous. He's too big and full of energy to be pent up indoors all day, but by law he can't be outside unless someone's holding his very short leash.

In the house, then, Lugosi paces the floor a lot, and comes running, slobbery ball in his mouth, hoping to play, whenever any of the flatmates emerge from our rooms. On your way to the john, the dog will meet you in the hallway, and for as long as you're seated on the porcelain you'll hear him dropping the ball outside the bathroom door, then picking it up, pawing at the door, dropping it again. And again and again and again. Playing ball is all he wants to do, ever and always. That and eat the mailman.

The guy from the gas company comes by once a month to read the meter, and the dog goes crazy. The meter is on the back porch, reachable only by walking through the house, through the kitchen. The dog cannot be held back, so he has to be locked in a bedroom until the gas guy is gone.

In other words, Lugosi is a scary dog. Judith got him at the dog pound, and she thinks he must've been abused as a puppy, or trained as an attack dog, since he's so vicious with people he doesn't know.

Well, last night Jake's sister and niece arrived for a few days' visit. Can you see where this is leading?

His sister is 40 or so, and I met her in the afternoon, while her daughter stayed with Jake at his work. The sister played fetch with the dog, and Lugosi decided she's OK.

When Jake came home with his 8-year-old niece a few hours later, though, he didn't know that the little girl hadn't played ball with the dog.

She didn't need stitches, just bandages and antibiotics, but her hand is still wrapped. When the kid came back from the emergency room it was late, but she adamantly refused to sleep here. Smart kid. She's asleep in the living room now, though, because at her Aunt Judith's insistence, the bandaged girl and the dog played fetch and became friends.

Their bounce and bring the ball games woke me up, and I was moderately pissed off, until Judith explained that Lugosi had bitten the girl, necessitating this late-night bonding time.

Guess I'd heard the biting too, a few hours earlier, but I'd slept through the dog barking, because the dog always barks, and I knew a kid was coming to visit, so I'd just assumed she was screaming and bawling like kids do. When I heard it, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

(Have I mentioned that you can hire me as a babysitter, for just $5 an hour?)

The lady and her daughter are Jake's family, so nobody's going to complain to Animal Control, and Lugosi will live to bite another day.

That dog and this household, though, are not a good fit.

♦ ♦ ♦

Here's the latest on Jay's endless bureaucratic battles with Berkeley over "free speech."

On Monday the 20th, Jay was supposed to talk to someone from the city attorney's office about whether Darwin fish could legally be sold from our stand on Telegraph Ave. An hour before she was due at City Hall, though, some secretary called and cancelled the appointment. "Something came up," she said. Are there regulatory emergencies? They've been ignoring Jay's paperwork for so long, I'm surprised the call didn't come from the coroner's office.

On Wednesday, Jay called the city again, to make another appointment, and they told her to call again in a few more days. She told them she was tired of the runaround, and insisted on making an appointment, and they relented, told her to be in the city attorney's office at such-and-such a time, day after tomorrow — Friday the 24th, which is now yesterday. I offered a bet with Jay, $10, two hours wages, that there'd be no meeting that day, but she wouldn't gamble on it.

So yesterday Jay went to her re-scheduled meeting at City Hall, and the guy she was supposed to talk with wasn't back from lunch yet. She says she waited 45 minutes before giving up and leaving.

Meanwhile, I'm still selling fish on Telegraph Ave, but of course not the controversial and contraband Darwin fish that's been banned in Berkeley.

Again I said to Jay, and again I'll say to you, all this is stupid, wrong, and oxymoronic. If you have to ask the city for permission, it's already *not* free speech.

We're not allowed to sell the Darwin fish because it's manufactured elsewhere, and the street vendor's license allows only the sale of arts and crafts and clothes and candles and whatever else if it's all made here in Berkeley.

To sell the Darwin fish, we'd have to discard the license, and run what's called a "free speech" table, offering merchandise that makes a political statement. Half a dozen unlicensed vendors are already doing that, selling subversive bumper stickers and t-shirts, so if we did it, it wouldn't even be risky or daring.

But Jay doesn't wants to do that. She wants us to be a licensed vendor. I don't understand why. She wants to argue with the city, instead of selling Darwin fish.

In 18 issues of this zine, how many words have I written about the stupidity of others? Lotsa thousands, that's how many, but now it's time to write about the dumbness of Doug.

♦ ♦ ♦

When I'm done selling fish on Telegraph Ave every day, I disassemble the cart, which involves putting my light equipment into a pack, folding the big metal display (a fireplace stand, actually) and putting it into its box, collapsing the table and chair, and lashing everything to the handtruck.

Last thing before rolling away, I look at the spot where I've worked all day, to make sure I haven't left any litter, dropped any merchandise on the sidewalk, or forgotten anything valuable.

Yesterday, with Xmas approaching and all, the street was extra crowded with both customers and vendors, and there wasn't any ground space available on the vendors' side of the sidewalk, so I put the box a few steps away, leaning on a storefront, while I bungeed everything to the cart. And then —

I forgot about the box, with the display inside. When I did my last double-check it looked like nothing was left behind, because I didn't think to look at the building.

Ah, shit. The fireplace stand is only worth twenty bucks or so, but to save time I never take the magnets off the display, which means 50-60 fish magnets — $4.50 each — were in that box I abandoned. I left about $225 worth of stuff in a cardboard box on the Ave.

It wasn't until this morning that I noticed what was missing. Pretty stupid, Doug. When I hurried to the Ave, I stupidly hoped to see fish magnets strewn across Telegraph. I could wipe them off and sell them, but no.

In the store where I'd left the box out front, and in the store next door, and the store around the corner, I asked if anybody'd seen a bunch of fish on a fireplace stand. One wiseass told me to ask the fat, ugly street vendor who sells fish.

I asked the vendors I'd worked near yesterday, but nobody remembered anything. Do they hate me enough to lie, I wonder?

Asked the street sweepers, the guys who come by with broom and basket every couple of hours.

Asked a few homeless men I'm fairly friendly with, and asked them to spread the word that I'll pay fifty bucks, no questions asked, for the return of the fish.

Seems highly unlikely, though. Some lucky bastard found a whole lot of nifty stocking-stuffers, and finders keepers.

Losers weepers. $225 obliterates every penny I've saved to move to New York with my fuck-buddy. Jay doesn't owe me money for selling fish; I owe her money for all the merchandise lost.

Add to that, or subtract, that almost nobody bought any fish today, and I was in a pretty shitty headspace. At one point I stood up and shouted at some people walking by, "Hey, it's Christmas, ya bastards — buy my god damned fish!" Surprisingly, this didn't result in increased sales.

Most jobs, you'd be fired for an outburst like that, but I work alone. Umberto was nearby, and he baby-talked me until I'd regained my composure, but I lost it again a little later, at lunch.

♦ ♦ ♦

In my panic this morning, packing sandwiches seemed like the least of all possible worries, so I'd come lunchless. By mid-afternoon, I'd developed a fierce hunger headache, so I left my stand in Umberto's hands, and walked to the dollar-an-item Chinese fast-food place, a block off Telegraph.

There was no line. The lunch rush was over. I knew what I wanted, and the food had been sitting under heat lamps since 10:00 this morning, so it should've been "fast-food" like the sign promises, right? Not today.

The only worker up front was talking in Chinese on the phone, so I waited, pretending to be patient, until he put the phone on his shoulder and said, "Yeah?"

"Rice, steamed vegetables—"

"Here or to go?" he interrupted.

What I'd wanted for lunch, what I'd intended to say, was "Rice, steamed vegetables, and more rice, to go, please." Two orders of rice. I say it that way because sometimes at the counter at that place, English is the workers' second language. When I've started with the word 'two', they've tried to give me two of everything.

"To go," I said, and my next words would've been, "Rice, steamed vegetables, and more rice," but he wouldn't hear it. The phone was again at his ear, and he was mumbling Chinese to the mouthpiece while scooping food into the box, but he hadn't let me finish ordering. He'd interrupted, and while I watched, while he talked on the phone, he boxed up some rice and steamed vegetables, but not my second order of rice, because he hadn't even let me say it.

I was grumpy, but if he'd even said, "Anything else?" before bagging and ringing up what he thought was my order, I would've politely asked for a second order of rice, and maybe what happened next wouldn't have happened.

It did happen, though. He said, "Just a minute" in English to whoever was on the phone, put the receiver back on his shoulder, bagged the rice and vegetables and banged a few buttons on the cash register, and to me he said, "$2.17". When I didn't immediately pay or respond, he said "$2.17" again, and looked at me like I was the idiot.

I shook my head no, and said too loudly, "When you get off the phone, I'm ready to place an order, but please, don't let me interrupt your conversation," and as I spoke, his expression changed from simple disinterest to point blank anger. Maybe he was having a bad day, too, but I didn't care.

We stared at each other in silence, so — third try — I told him what I wanted, and this time he didn't interrupt: "Rice, steamed vegetables, and more rice, to go, please."

He didn't answer, didn't move, just stared at me. Maybe I should mention that there was no language barrier today. His English and bad manners were as well-practiced as mine.

He was still staring at me, so, "More rice," I helpfully explained. "Two. Fucking. Orders of rice."

He took the phone off his shoulder, and put it on the counter, the better to Jackie Chan me, perhaps. He scooped up another cardboard box of rice, added it to the bag, and at last rang up the lunch I'd come in to buy. Now it was $3.27, and I paid and turned and walked away.

Was it over, though? No, it was not. "Thank you," he said loudly and sarcastically to my ass, and I hesitated, unsure what to do. An adult would've kept walking and and let the situation diffuse. I am not that adult.

To the left of the cash register, behind a wide opening in the wall, two middle-aged Chinese women were watching from the kitchen, so to them I said, "Rudest service I've had anywhere," and then added truthfully, "this week."

"They can't understand you," said the voice of the young man at the register. "They only speak Chinese."

Ain't it crazy how the craziest little things can make you crazy? Or me, anyway — I stopped, whirled around, looked him in his eyeballs and screamed, "I can make them understand me, you smartass shithead." In analyzing this moment hours later, I have no real idea what that meant, or how I could make anything understood to people who don't speak my language.

"Get out!" he yelled back at me, pointing at the door, but as he pointed his whole hand was quivering with nervousness. I walked toward him, and both old ladies came out of the pass-through, cluck-clucking in Chinese for me to go away. And I should've. Damn it.

The guy who'd "helped" me was Asian, so maybe he knows chop socky. I've seen enough martial arts flicks to know not to get too close. He was still behind the counter, ten feet from me, still pointing, and it was comical seeing his hand, his whole arm shaking. Later, thinking more clearly, I decided his shakes meant he was as angry at me as I was at him. Maybe he was even scared. I was too stupid to be scared, but I should've been. I'm a wimp. Your grandma could probably kick my ass.

"I'm just an angry customer," I said to him, very softly but with a smile intended to be Satanic. "If you keep trying, though, you could make me (long pause) very angry, and you wouldn't want that." Not sure if I made that up, or if it's a line from the early poetry of Clint Eastwood, but I wanted it to sound mean.

He said, "Fuck off, get out, and don't come back," and I left without another word. The "don't come back" part hurt worst, because their food isn't all that good, but it's cheap. When I buy lunch on the Ave, that's usually where I go, and now I probably can't go there any more.

And I know, everything I did was idiotic. For a minute, I was angry enough to forget that I'm a wimp, which is dumb and dangerous. One of these days forgetting I'm a wimp will lead to me getting the shit kicked out of me.

♦ ♦ ♦

The rice was lousy, crispy from being under heat lamps for so long, but I deserved shitty rice. And when I folded up the table and packed the cart at 5:00, you'd better believe I made triple-sure nothing was left behind.

The moment I'd been dreading all day was next. Jay's house is between Telegraph and my place, and that's where I park the cart overnight, so I knocked.

When she opened the door, I told her about losing the display and hundreds of dollars worth of fish. I was hoping she'd only make me pay the wholesale price for all that lost merchandise, which I'd estimated was about $150, but she only told me to forget about it, and be more careful in the future.

A happy ending to a shitty day. Glad I work for a friend, instead of just a boss.

When I came up from the BART station at 16th @ Mission, soon as I stepped off the escalator (today only, it worked) four men in suits were coming at me, walking side-by-side by-side by-side, leaving no room for anyone else.

I'm disappointed in myself for this, but when I saw them coming, I meekly stepped off the curb into the street to let them pass. Mom taught me good manners, so I'm kind of a pussy sometimes.

It's nuts to be nice to nimrods, though, and four people walking abreast on the sidewalk deserve no courtesy, so I stepped up to the sidewalk again. Walking on the right side as walkers should walk, and braced for impact before slamming into one of the men's shoulder.

It was a good crunch, too, and his briefcase hit my kneecap, which hurt. His damages were worse, though — he dropped his Starbucks, lost his footing a little, and came close to stumbling.

I continued walking, until I heard him yell at my backside, all righteous indignation, "I beg your pardon!"

Stopping and turning to face my accuser, I said, "You dang well better beg my pardon."

One of his brain-dead banker buddies said, "What an asshole," so I'd call the encounter a success.

This phenomenon happened often, when I lived in a touristy neighborhood in downtown San Francisco. Some people insist on walking side-by-side on crowded sidewalks, which means people going the other way need to turn sideways to squeeze past.

Homey don't play that, not any more. Share the sidewalk and we can co-exist in peace. Don't share the sidewalk and I will walk right into you.

♦ ♦ ♦

During my weekly shift at Black Sheets, my boss Bill played a CD of Prince's greatest hits. I've heard of Prince, but I don't like royalty, and hadn't heard much of his music until today. He's pop plus electric, and his old-fashioned romantic ballad, "You Sexy Motherfucker," made me dance a little as I mopped the floor in the basement. They have orgies there, so it needs frequent mopping.

Also did some filing and phone-answering and joking around with Bill and Steve, so I was feeling chipper by the time I left, and half-hoping for another lesson in good manners on my way home. And sure enough…

♦ ♦ ♦

In a mostly-empty BART car, a young black man got on at West Oakland, and as soon as the train left the station the scent of his cologne choked me like asthma. "Fuck!" I said out loud, and he turned to look at me, so I expounded, "Fuck and double fuck!"

Then came thirty seconds of silence, but I couldn’t stand the stink, and got up to walk to a different train-car. "Do you fuckin' bathe in perfume, and wash your clothes in it?" I asked, as I walked to the door. He never said a word, and then I was in the next car.

For the past few days my fuse has felt like it's pre-lit, and I don't know why. Maybe I'm getting cranky in my middle age, but I don't want to take anybody's crap. It'll probably pass, and I'll go back to being a walking outhouse anyone can poop on.

♦ ♦ ♦

Took a seat behind a woman whose purple artificial nails were longer than her fingers, and I could not look away. Her nails were like giant cosmetic claws, and I was fascinated with wondering why — why would a person want such garish accessories?

And also how. Perhaps she could pick up a pen by pinching it, but how could she sign her name? How could she press the buttons on a calculator? How could she put a key into a lock? How could she put change into a Coke machine?

She and I got off at the same station, so I slipped behind her in line at the exit gate, to see how or whether she could process her ticket through the machinery.

As I craned my neck to peer over her shoulder, she delicately unsnapped her purse, pinched out her ticket, held it like one of those mechanical claw amusements an at arcade, and with two tries inserted in into the gate. Like a sci-fi creature she took the ticket back with her pincers, put it into her purse, and walked away, probably to meet with others of her alien species.

♦ ♦ ♦

Coming up from the BART station near home, I was spare-changed by the usual gauntlet of homeless people, and I would've ignored them or smartassed them, but Danny was one of them. "Here ya go, Danny," I said, handing him 50¢.

He was flustered, and asked "Have we met?"

"We've talked a few times," I said, and we have, but he never remembers me, so I introduced myself again. We talked for ten minutes, about Bosnia, the A's, his Danny dollars, and the high price of marijuana these days. It took another 50¢ to shake him off, but I wasn't pissed about it. He's easier to talk to, makes more sense, and listens better than most people who pass for normal.

"Thanks for treating me like a human," he said as our conversation came to a natural, comfortable end. "Most people act like I'm not playing with a full deck."

Shook Danny's hand and walked the last few blocks homeward, thinking, Hell, who isn't at least a few cards short of 52? I know I am.

I check the maildrop only once weekly, on Mondays when I'm in the city. That makes Tuesdays my usual day for taking care of the mail, and here we go…

Paul Weinman is a poet, and I don't know if he's any good — I suppose, if I read his poems aloud and seriously, there might be something there, but he sends his "White Boy" mini-micro-chapbooks everywhere — to every address listed in Factsheet Five, I suspect — and they're re-circulated ceaselessly, and I am so tired of his "White Boy" poetry. Every week, there's more "White Boy" stuff in my mailbag.

This week sets a new record — three people enclosed Weinman's "White Boy" zines in their correspondence, plus here's a "special issue" of Taggerzine devoted entirely to Weinman, and here's a one-shot poetry zine by Daily Cow's David Wyder and 'Paula Weinman', so I guess he's a white girl now. I can't find a large enough container to hold my lack of excitement.

Also in the mail came a bit of unsolicited porn, but I'd never complain about that. But I'm about to. Hey, if you want to send naked snapshots of your penis, your snatch, whatever you've got, send it. Two of my readers routinely wrap their three dollars in homemade porn, and those are always among the first envelopes I open.

The glossy porn received today, though, is not for me. It's The Mammoth Mammories Catalog, page after page of naked women with breasts so large I kinda feel sorry for them (the ladies, not the breasts). These are skinny women with boobies three times the size of their heads, and I don't mean both boobies, I mean each booby.

Whether nature's to blame or a surgeon, it's almost a disability, I think. The back pain must be endless. It's too much tits to be titillating, so please, send no more of this. Send it to Paul Weinman.

♦ ♦ ♦

Also received: $3 for the next issue of Pathetic Life, from Diane & Jeffrey. I'll leave out their last name.

Every month they send three bucks for the next issue, and even though their address is only a mile and a half from mine, they haven't even hinted at inviting me to dinner or anything. Thank you, Diane & Jeffrey.

With big exceptions, I have generally enjoyed meeting the readers who've wanted to meet me, but it's always an obligation, and I dread it at least until the handshake hello, and sometimes after.

It makes no sense that anyone would read these rantings from a guy who's obviously an introvert and a misanthrope, and then invite me to a movie or a cup of coffee. Like you're the human I'll be glad to have met?

Of course, that is how I met Jay, who I work for. And Judith, who I live with. And Sarah-Katherine, who might be moving to New York with me. As a rule, though, this hermit likes being a hermit, so thank you again, Diane & Jeffrey, for respecting that_._ Let's not get together some time!

♦ ♦ ♦

Yowza! Guess who called my I'll do anything voice mail? Andrea, a woman I sorta know and have a crush on. Her regular babysitter is out of town, and she needs someone to tend her brat next Monday night, so I called her back and said sure, for five bucks an hour I'll do anything.

She had only one question: "I'm sorry to be blunt here, but I don't know you very well. Are you a pervert?"

It's an obvious question, if you're hiring a 37-year-old fat bearded bachelor to be a babysitter. Hearing the question point blank, though, I was taken aback.

I thought about answering with the complicated truth, that of course I'm a pervert — most people probably are, and I've done things with sauerkraut you'd never imagine. But a philosophical discussion of kinks isn't what Andrea wanted, and it wouldn't have landed me the gig, so instead I gave a simple, honest answer: "Little kids don't turn me on, Andrea."

Then it was her turn to be silent for a moment, and I think she thought she'd offended me, so I added, "I am, however, attracted to your daughter's mother."

She relaxed and laughed, and next Monday night I'll be impersonating a responsible adult, looking after a little kid.

— — —

Addendum, 2022: Google tells me that the poetry of "White Boy" Paul Weinman ended in 2015.

The obituary in his local paper is worth clicking and reading. He seems to have been a man I might've liked, but as usual for me, I never made the effort.

Maybe it was a mistake to give up, after reading two or three of the (seriously) hundreds of his mini-micro-chapbooks that landed in my mailbox. It really was a blizzard of "White Boy" poems back then, and always I wondered why he mailed them over and over to people who'd never asked for them.

Probably it was for the same reason I write this blog for a tiny audience — hoping for a connection.

"Hope you make a million bucks today," a bum said as I pushed my pushcart past his shopping cart, on the sidewalk's fast lane. Like we're old buddies, both of us in good spirits.

We weren't and I wasn't, but I can fake it, so I said, "When I make a million bucks on Telegraph, I'll give you ten percent." A lie, but a nice enough reply, yes?

"Hey, you don't have to say that," he said. "I wasn't begging." He was annoyed, so I slowed my cart, and stopped to consider.

He wasn't a bum I know by name, but I've seen him around Berkeley since before I moved here, when I used to come for movies at the UC or PFA. We've talked a few times, and I gave him 50¢ once. Decent guy, for a bum. I wouldn't have thought he was any more nuts than anyone else on the street.

"I was just making conversation," I said, keeping my voice low and casual. "No insult was intended, sir." I thought 'sir' was a nice touch.

"Ah, kiss my ass," was his retort.

Mine was, "Blow me, ya lazy crackhead."

He started yelling profanities, and I stood and glared at him for long enough to prove that I, too, have testosterone. I didn't yell at him, though. I don't have that much testosterone, or stupidity. When I'd heard enough, I resumed rolling my cart down the sidewalk. We'd been headed the same direction, but he didn't follow right away, and his hollering faded into the distance behind me.

I try to be kind to down-and-outers, to anyone actually, but I don't try too hard.

♦ ♦ ♦

Worked on Telegraph, cutting out fish, talking to the street crazies, and singing along when the Hare Krishnas made their daily trek up the Avenue. I like the part where they chant about hairy ramen. Lugosi sheds, so I can relate.

Toward the end of the day, a vendor I semi-know and occasionally chat with pushed his cart by, and said hi. I asked how's biz?, he said OK, and I should've left it at that, but instead I said, "And how's life?"

"Not so good," he said, suddenly glum, and proceeded to tell me the details of his mother's death in a natural gas explosion in New Jersey, that ended her life and ruined the turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

"Sorry," I said, after listening too it all, and what the hell else could I say? Why are you telling me this? I wanted to ask, but I guess I'd literally asked for it.

My mom makes me nuts, but if she's dead before I am I'll be saddened, too. I'll spend a long time missing her and kicking myself for every time we argued.

What I won't do is bother anyone with the news of her death, except close friends and the unfortunate readers of my diary. I won't be dropping my grief on casual acquaintances and co-workers who say hello.

♦ ♦ ♦

Me and people are never a good mix. Dogs neither, I guess.

When I got home, Lugosi bit me. He jumped at me like he always does, playful not mean, wanting to play fetch or lick my face, but he nipped my nose instead.

There was more than a nose worth's of blood, but it's nothing serious, and my face won't be any uglier than it already was. Probably stained my shirt, but with the mustard and ketchup blops the blood won't be noticeable.

Eating baked beans for breakfast, two gnats descended into the bowl. I delicately rescued them, scooping 'em out with my finger before squishing them on the blankets here in bed.

Now I'm noticing that the room is swarming with gnats. It's nature's reminder that I need to take out the trash, so I'll empty the bucket tonight, or maybe tomorrow.

Jeez — roaches, crickets, fleas, and no gnats. What's next, locusts? Lions and tigers and bears?

♦ ♦ ♦

My teeth haven't been bothering me lately, and I think I know why, so I 'll share this easy home remedy for recurring toothaches:

Brushing seemed to make pain throb even worse, so I've cut way down. Now I brush my teeth maybe once every other week, and the teeth are lovin' it, and I'd like to thank my few friends for not complaining.

♦ ♦ ♦

When Sarah-Katherine visited in July, I spent the last few days before she arrived whackin' off a lot, just imagining all the things we'd do. Perhaps as a result, even though she was willing, I was unable to do nearly as much as I would've liked.

So this time, nobody's touching me, including me, until she gets here, which will be December 9th. I enjoyed one last slow-stroking masturbation just before midnight, then wiped my fingers to type this announcement that there'll be no more masturbation until she's come and gone. Like a pro athlete before the big game, I'm saving all my energy, and when Sarah-Katherine steps off the plane it's my intent to be bursting, bursting with excitement.

♦ ♦ ♦

And that's a wrap, the end of November. See you in the next issue, next month.