Regurgitation to greet the new day — I don't think I'm sick, but yesterday's bedtime snack of six sandwiches and two bowls of ramen emerged as a bitter lump in my mouth this morning. Seems a fitting summation of my life so far.

♦ ♦ ♦

Washed away the residue with a glass of water, then put on my pants and walked to Walgreens (no apostrophe) to replenish my supply of unhealthy eats. Filled a basket with several loaves of bread and tins of sardines, and stepped to the end of the long, long line to pay.

Soon enough, a woman joined the line behind me, and started grousing about the wait. "What is the problem?" she asked nobody in particular. "What's taking so damned long?"

Since I'm nobody in particular, I answered: "You must be new in the neighborhood. This is typical here," and it is.

It's a mostly-black part of town, where Walgreens is our closest approximation of a grocery store, and because of the color or income of the customer base, the chain understaffs the store and overprices the merchandise. Usually there are a dozen people waiting in line at one open register, and two security guards watching everyone like prison guards. Ten minutes in line is ordinary, but if you're grumpy about it it'll seem twice as long, so it's better to laugh.

Today they had speedy service — I only waited seven minutes for my turn at the register, but then the scanner wouldn't scan my loaves of generic wheat bread. The cashier ran every loaf left to right, right to left, front to back, back to front, but the device wouldn't beep it up. She had to type the UPC, ten digits, hunt and peck, and here's where it got stupid.

Indicative of the store's top-notch hiring and training, she didn't input the UPC once and then punch the number 4 for my four loaves of bread. Nope, she input the UPC four times, stroke by slow stroke, button, pause, button, pause. The woman behind me sighed and fumed, and I memorized the bread's UPC.

♦ ♦ ♦

When I came out of the store, two scruffy-looking teenager boys approached me, and I thought I was about to get panhandled or maybe mugged. The scruffiest one asked, "Do you know where we can get some LSD?"

"Berkeley," I suggested.

"Isn't this Berkeley?" asked the other one.

"This is the place," I answered, walking on.

They're either from the far-away suburbs, or more likely they're police plants. Anyone who needs help finding acid in Berkeley just isn't looking very hard, but random middle-age white guys at Walgreens aren't going to be much help.

♦ ♦ ♦

Too many times I've seen the Berkeley Police Department hassle the homeless, for "loitering" or "blocking the sidewalk" or whatever BS cops make up. So tonight, I attended an orientation session for CopWatch, the Berkeley good guys that are trying to bring rogue cops under control.

A nice lady named Alice ran the meeting, and kept the lecture lively and interesting. There were only four of us rookies in the room, though, and one was a gorgeous college girl in a tight sleeveless sweater, so I might have missed some of what Alice was saying. Still, I learned a few things about my rights.

I was pleasantly surprised when she said that mace is now legal in California without the ridiculous training classes that used to be required. Nobody needs "training" to know how to point and push a button. The law was changed effective January 1, Alice said, so the canister cops confiscated from me a couple of years ago, they couldn't confiscate today.

Of course, there's been mace in my pocket every day, either way, because I'll defend myself whether or not it's legal to do so.

There's a law against sitting on the sidewalk, which I've seen cops enforce dozens of times against the homeless, but never even once against college kids or yuppies eating a bag lunch. Tonight I learned that there's been a court injunction against enforcing that law, for months. I saw cops use that law against homeless people last weekend — breaking the law themselves, when they did.

I also learned, contrary to everything I've seen on the streets of Berkeley and San Francisco, that we the people are not required to carry identification. However (there's always a 'however' when talking about civil rights) if you're suspected of any crime, even jaywalking, and you can't present a valid and current state-issued identification card, police are fully authorized to handcuff you, take you to the station for fingerprinting, and jail you over a long weekend until your identity can be verified.

As I raised my hand and said at the meeting, this makes the concept of not being required to carry ID a de facto canard.

The main thing CopWatch does is watching cops. They go on two-person patrols around town, one person with a video camera, and the other with a radio monitoring police broadcasts. When cops are called to such-and-such an address, the CopWatch duet hurries to that address, to film everything. If police billyclub someone's head without cause, or shoot pepper-spray indiscriminately into a crowd (there's a great photo of this in the current CopWatch newsletter), they have the evidence on film.

Things get murkier after that, though. Any evidence of police misconduct is turned over to something called the Berkeley Police Review Commission, a bunch of hacks appointed by the mostly-Republican City Council, so usually nothing much happens. When I asked Alice if any local cops had ever been fired or prosecuted as a result of CopWatch's filmed evidence, she said she wasn't sure, but that she knew a few cops had been disciplined.

So, 'disciplined' but never fired, never prosecuted. This was my first moment of skepticism.

Alice then handed out some literature, information on what cops can and can't do (by law, anyway, for whatever that's worth) before, during, and after arresting someone.

We watched a training video, showing cops being cops, routinely treating humans like they're not humans — the Berkeley PD's greatest hits, so to speak.

In the video, though, the police officers — perhaps because they saw the CopWatch camera — were never particularly brutal or physical, just rude and vulgar. The only violence in the video was when a peace officer, infuriated because Food Not Bombs volunteers were feeding people in People's Park, smashed his club into an innocent paper plate of food on an empty table.

"That spaghetti is under arrest," Alice explained, and we all laughed.

We weren't allowed to keep it and I wouldn't want to, but she also passed around a book titled California Penal Code (abridged). It was the size of War and Peace. The _un_abridged laws of the State of California would no doubt fill the building. As an anarchist or near-anarchist (depends on my mood), this reinforces my belief that America has too damned many laws.

Often, Alice said, CopWatch responds to a police call before the police arrive. She recounted several times when this has happened to her, when she and her CopWatch comrade got to an address several minutes before the police.

"How many of you are against drug laws?" she asked, and everyone in the room put a hand into the air. Which makes sense — the world's worst people are right-wingers, people who hate freedom, and none of them would volunteer for CopWatch because they love police brutality. Everyone in the room was a lefty.

Alice continued, "You have to disregard your personal beliefs when you're on CopWatch patrol. Our mission is to observe the police and act as witnesses, but we can't interfere. So," she explained, "if you arrive at the scene of a drug bust, and the police aren't there yet, you only stand and wait. We never warn people to get away, and we never tip anyone off that cops are coming."

So, if cops are on their way to raid a blind guy's house because he smokes pot for his glaucoma, and CopWatch gets there before the police, they say nothing? I have a problem with that, is what I was thinking.

As if she'd heard my thoughts, Alice said, "That's not what we do, and in fact, if you do anything like that, you're breaking the law yourself. You're subject to arrest for interfering with a police officer, and you're damaging the reputation of CopWatch. We're only there to observe and report police who themselves break the law. We need the support of the people of Berkeley, and to get and keep that support, everyone needs to know that we're not against cops on principle, and we're not against cops doing their jobs properly."

I raised my hand, and said, "I am against cops on principle."

"Well," she said, "you'll need to get over that," and she continued talking and I continued listening.

I could see her point. Guess I understand what CopWatch is and isn't, and that if CopWatch volunteers gave a heads up to a pot smoker, a prostitute, or the perpetrator of any other crime that shouldn't be a crime, there could be legal and public-relations repercussions for CopWatch.

Letting people know the cops are on their way is something CopWatch can't do, but it's something I can't not do.

There's simply no frickin' way that I could stand in front of someone's house, knowing the cops were coming to arrest someone for possession of peyote, and not knock on the door to let 'em know.

I've made a billion compromises with evil already in my life, but there are some compromises I can't make, certain things I can't and won't do, so I'm not volunteering with CopWatch.

They're a good group doing important work, and I gave 'em a few bucks when they passed the hat, and I learned a lot at tonight's meeting, and I'll keep reading their newsletters, and I respect and appreciate what they're doing, but I can't be part of it.

♦ ♦ ♦

Back home, I've finally written that letter to Sarah-Katherine, and it wasn't easy.

Way back last July, she invited me to move to New York with her, and I said I'd do it as soon as I could afford it. It was a pragmatic invitation, not a romantic one. She said she'd be seeing other men, maybe other women while we'd be living together in Brooklyn, and I said that wouldn't be a problem.

And like I said yesterday (in last month's issue), after giving it some long overdue thought, I'm not wild about moving to New York, nor about working my ass off to get the money, and I'm also not wild about a wide-open arrangement.

If I had a fat bank account and money was not at issue, I'd be in Brooklyn already. But I don't have the money and never will, so all other considerations are moot. I'd have to work double shifts at some shitty job six days a week for six months to scrape up the money for bus fare, shipping what little I own, and New York rents.

I'm not willing to work that hard to leave San Francisco, the only city I've ever loved, for a city I've never seen, where I'd probably have to keep working some shitty job six days a week, all for a woman who'll never be my girl.

I should've said no from the first time she brought it up, but I was enamored and stupid and I wanted to be wherever Sarah-Katherine was. Saying yes was a big mistake, which I've now belatedly corrected, in a letter that tells her the answer is no.

It's written, sealed, stamped, and I've taken it to the postbox, and it's on its way. And I am sorry, not that I'm not going, but for six months of making believe that I was.

It was overcast in downtown Berkeley, and no vendors were set up on the side of the street where I'm supposed to sell.

Being a loner and introvert, I'd probably prefer to have no vendors near me, but it's a practical mater — if no other vendors are within shoulder-tapping distance, you can't ask someone to watch your table while you slip away and pee. Peeing is a necessity now and again, so I set up my fish stand across the street from my assigned spot, where a few other vendors were already doing business.

This, however, was a violation of the law.

The clouds threatened rain, so the other vendors had wisely perched their tables under the awning in front of a series of shop windows.

Of course, we're supposed to sell from the street side of the sidewalk, not the shop side, so this was another violation of the law.

The inspector isn't often seen, but of course this afternoon he came by, of course. He didn't threaten us with tickets, though, and didn't order us to shut down. He merely recited the rules, in the nauseating voice of a grade-school teacher who's caught a kid chewing gum, and warned us to never do it again.

The inspector's job is to make sure I can't go to the bathroom all day, and to see to it that we're drenched if it rains. His demeanor implied that we should've been grateful for his magnanimity, and the other vendors were full of "Sorry" and "Thanks," but I didn't say anything.

Since switching two months ago from licensed status to a "free-speech table," today was only the second time the inspector has spoken to me, but it pissed me off.

I hate that fucker — hate his attitude, hate his face, and especially I hate his job, because I hate being inspected. Tell me, what does it matter, which side of the street and which side of the sidewalk my table is on?

♦ ♦ ♦

Umberto and Bo and a few of the other vendors went to visit Gerry this afternoon. He's another vendor, spending a month in jail because he'd received too many tickets for vending without a vendor's license. Umberto invited me along, and walking through the jail's metal detector, being frisked and then watched by guards, is something I might do for a friend.

Gerry ain't quite a friend, though. He's just another vendor I sorta know, so I didn't go. Besides, Jasper went with the visiting bunch, and he's a jerk.

At home, Judith asked me to go to Matilda's burial at Mountain View Cemetery. It would be, she said, a clandestine affair sometime after sunset, digging a hole for the rat and covering it up without being caught. Joe and Jack and Cy were going, she said, so if I came everyone from the house would be present for a rat's last rites, showing our support for Joe.

I considered it. I don't hate Joe, and if nothing else, the burial might make an funny story to tell. But, nah.

All day I'd been around people, and I'd been looking forward to closing my bedroom door. No intrusions on my solitude, please. I'm alone in life, by choice, so I closed the door, wrote about my day, and went to sleep.

In my dream, I was hanging on to a window sill very near the top of the TransAmerica Pyramid, not quite ready to let go and get cheese-gratered all the way down, but considering it.

Awake again, whoa! I don't like suicide dreaming, and have no idea where that nightmare came from.

Sure, there are days when I reflect on what absolute shit my life is — doesn't everyone? — but I've never pondered suicide while I was awake. Doubt I ever will, and I don't appreciate doing so in dreams.

And what a yucky and painful way to go. Climbing out on a ledge and then letting gravity have its way with you, bashing and bruising and bleeding into the windows for 48 floors to the sidewalk? Not today, thanks.

If ever I did have suicidal intent, there are easier, less painful ways to shuffle off. I'd buy and eat a hundred jelly donuts, and lace the last few with sleeping pills.

That would give me plenty of time to reconsider, and if I went through with it, at least I'd leave with a smile on my face.

♦ ♦ ♦

It rained again today, and it's miserable trying to sell fish in the rain, but I gotta make a living so I swam to the Ave, and set up my fish stand. There were only three vendors on the block, all of us under a store's awning, illegally dry.

♦ ♦ ♦

Selling sacrilegious fish on the street, Christians often stop to annoy me with warnings of God's wrath. Not quite daily, and not as often as they used to, but at least several times weekly some sanctimonious believer tells me that God holds a grudge forever so I'm toying with eternal damnation, etc.

Always I argue back — tell 'em I hate Jesus, or fold my hands in mock-prayer and sarcastically ask God's forgiveness, or simply show them my middle fingers. Anything to anger God's foolish followers. Anything to anger God.

Today was different, though. Some white-haired old lady started in with the ordinary stupidity of her religion, but I was wet and tired and grumpy, and didn't have any fight in me. Not today, thanks.

As she prattled on, I simply sat in my chair and watched her lips move. It wouldn't be accurate to say that I listened, but I never interrupted, never said anything, and made no faces or gestures.

When she'd finally finished blessing me with the Lord's hatred, she waited for a response but I had none. She gave one last harrumph and walked away.

It seemed too silly to argue about, and pondering it afterwards, I like the way that encounter went. She got to speak her mind, and seemed to enjoy it. I enjoyed it, too, but didn't participate.

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned, if I'm bright enough to learn it. A lot of life's drama, and arguments, violence, maybe even wars, could be avoided by not arguing about things that are too silly to argue about.

Telegraph Avenue was rained out today, so I stayed home and started editing the next issue of the zine — something I can't possibly wring an interesting story out of.

♦ ♦ ♦

The radio was on in the background, and the only station that's not a 24/7 insult to anyone's intelligence is Free Radio Berkeley, the local pirate station. Every other station is commercial crap or public piffle, but FRB plays what they want to play, with no concern for ratings, advertisers, or underwriters.

Imagine it — they broadcast what they believe in, and even when I disagree with what they air and sometimes I do, you can't dispute the passion. All art should be driven by passion and nothing else, and FRB is art.

Last night, for example, they played a fascinating, crystal-clear, uninterrupted tape of the last speech given by Malcolm X before his life was snapped short. Life snapped short is what always happens when anyone starts making too much sense.

This morning, Free Radio Berkeley played two hours of punk rock that sounded like music. To my ear, a lot of it doesn't, but FRB played some really good stuff by bands I'd never heard of, Kaspir and Sublime.

♦ ♦ ♦

I can't listen to FRB non-stop, though, because there's a downside to a station run by passion. Not caring whether the audience likes it or hates it means that sometimes I can't be in the audience.

Yesterday, one DJ did her entire tire tire show show show with ith ith echo cho cho effects fects fects switched on, and I'm sure she thought it was very entertaining ning ning but no, it was just frustrating ting ting, and unlistenable bull bull, so I turned it off.

When I turned the radio on again an hour later, they were playing genuine rock'n'roll and I was pumped to hear more, but between songs they played two minutes and 45 seconds (I timed it) of an automobile idling. Does anyone like listening to that sound?

If you're a complete idiot with a radio show and no idea what to do with it, maybe that qualifies as a bright idea or an artistic statement. But why would anyone choose to listen?

When I turned it on again half an hour later, they played a fine piece of fresh, local music, and then where you'd expect the announcer to tell you what you'd just heard, instead we got six minutes of two people coughing. It might've been more than six minutes, but I couldn't stand it and clicked it off again. And what's really frustrating is that I might've wanted to buy the rock song that came before the coughing, if they'd ever told me what it was.

Allowing long enough for the next host to get seated and comfortable, I turned the radio on again, and found a DJ promising some music I'd really like to listen to — a jazz trumpet solo, a campy vaudeville number, and a symphonic "Blue Danube." As I got my hopes up, though, the DJ explained that he'd be playing all three pieces at the same time, and the cacophony began. Three works of musical art became one audio wall of rubbish.

After that came a fundraising appeal for a new pirate station coming on the air in El Salvador, but the announcement was read with the echo device switched on again. It must be FRB's new electronic toy:

"So so so please ease ease if if if you you you can can can help elp elp call call call six six six six six six five five five seven ven ven one one one five five five six six six. It's zits zits important ortant ortant. That number again…

Clicked it off, and put Pink Floyd on my record player instead.

♦ ♦ ♦

Give some people a microphone, and they'll promptly prove they have nothing to say, is what I wrote to end my rant for today.

On re-reading it, though, much the same criticism could be made of me and my zine. What is Pathetic Life, really, but a fat guy with an audience, entertaining only himself, but on most days having nothing to say? othing to say. othing to say.

My teeth are not great. Not quite often enough to be often but also not rarely enough to be rarely, a chunk of yellowed white or an old filling chips off when I'm chewing something chewy — popcorn, licorice, a peanut butter sandwich, etc. This morning, though, a filling came out intact in my sleep. I awoke choking on something tiny, hard, and metallic.

But, what's a poor schmo gonna do? No insurance. Can't afford a dentist. Sure as hell can't afford dentures.

Well, I can't think about that today, like Scarlett O'Hara said. Maybe I'll think about it some other day.

For now, I still have enough teeth left to chew.

♦ ♦ ♦

BARTing in to the city with a sack lunch and this morning's Tribune, a woman sat in a seat not far from me, with two children, and a stroller.

The girl, about 4, screamed over and over, at exactly the frequency that shatters glass and nerves. The boy, 2 or maybe 3, had free reign of the train, and toddled and crawled and bumped into everyone.

As the train made a slight turn, a toy he'd dropped rolled away, and he started bawling like his sister. Meanwhile, their mother said "Shhh," but only twice, and softly.

While his mom watched, the boy chased after his toy, and stepped on an old lady's foot. She screamed, he screamed, and then he fell over and started bawling again. All this while his mother wore a resigned expression that said, "Kids can be exasperating, can't they?"

Kids can be exasperating, lady. That's why I don't have any. You have two, and maybe a third one in the stroller, so why are you manufacturing 'em if you're not going to even try keeping them under control when they're out in public? No, I didn't say it, only thought it.

At West Oakland Station, as people got on and off, a yuppie almost toppled over the boy. "Steven," his mother said like she was talking to a two-year-old, "you have to get out of people's way." She made no attempt, though, to get the boy out of everyone's way, or to make him sit down. Eventually she said "Shhh" a third time, though.

As the train began moving again, then dipped under the bay, the boy's toy rolled around on the floor, bumped against my shoe, and disappeared under my seat. The boy was stumble-walking toward me, arms and dribble everywhere, and I didn't want him crawling under my ass, so I bent over, picked up the toy — a spittle-soaked plastic ball with a noisemaker inside — and tossed it underhand gently up the aisle.

Well, you'd think I'd kicked the kid or something. His mother started yelling at me in Mandarin, and two other women (guess they'd been watching) hollered at me, too. The boy ran after his toy and started bawling again, and his sister of course had never stopped.

A big man in a suit brought the kid's toy back, handed it to him, and pointed at me and said, "You make me sick."

Hell, I'd only been playing fetch with the kid, like playing with the dog at home. Of course, I knew better than to actually say that, or say anything. I didn't even shrug. Mom and the kids were still screaming, and it felt like everyone on the train was glaring at me, so I stood up to get off at Embarcadero Station, though that's not my normal stop.

As I walked out the door I'm pretty sure I heard someone mutter, "Asshole," which was doubtless meant for me.

On the platform, I turned left and walked to the next car of the same train, where it was quieter, with no screaming kids. Took a seat and resumed reading the paper.

♦ ♦ ♦

I seriously don't hate kids, you know. I only hate uncaring idiot parents.

♦ ♦ ♦

At the magazine, I worked for six hours, and Bill paid me $150 for hours worked since late December, so I'm momentarily rich.

A week ago I might have put that money aside for the move to New York, but that's not happening and I'm not a responsible adult, so I splurged on a rare treat — a Number 1 for one at the Sincere Cafe.

Won ton soup, pork fried rice, egg foo young, prawns, and pork chow mein, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert. Six bucks plus tip.

♦ ♦ ♦

In the same way that a meaningless pop song can be fun if it has a good beat and a catchy tune, I have always enjoyed a good Steven Spielberg film. Tonight at the Red Vic, *free* because a reader had mailed me a pass, it was Jaws (1975), and man, what a ride!

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." There's no meaning to the movie, no message, nothing to ponder on the subway ride home, but it's loaded with laughs, scares, blood and guts. Shark eats people. Shark bad. Movie good.

♦ ♦ ♦

Inside each BART station, there's a men's room and a ladies' room. I don't know what's in the ladies' room, but in the gents' there's one toilet and one urinal.

However, due to muggings and such, there's a sign asking that only one man be allowed in at a time. You're supposed to lock the entrance as you walk in, and everyone does, but it means a restroom built for two can only be used by one.

And you know, a single BART train can carry up to 2,000 passengers. They might ride for as long as an hour from one end of the line to the other, so one restroom per gender per station seems less than what's needed. And now that they're limiting each restroom to one person at a time, that doubles the wait when there's a line.

Tonight, there was a line, and I was 7th in it. With a large movie Coke inside me, I was desperate to pee, balancing first on one foot and then the other. Usually I don't speak to strangers about pooping and peeing, but I asked the men in front of me, and three of them said they were waiting to poop. One of them even volunteered to let me go ahead of him.

Still, at a couple of minutes per poop in front of me, I was maybe 10 minutes from my turn to urinate, as I heard the train tooting its approach to the station. Trains only run every twenty minutes at night, so I needed to make a quick decision.

And the decision was, to hell with it. I abandoned the line and jogged down the escalator, unavoidably squirting some pee into my pants as I hurried to catch the train.

I took a seat at the very end of the last car, and then, with the nearest passenger fifteen feet away, I discreetly unzipped and pissed on the back of the seat in front of me. Relieved at last, I moved to a different seat.

♦ ♦ ♦

So when you're complaining that the BART train smells like urine, blame me, but before you get all sanctimonious and Republican, tell me what you would've done.

Well, now I've done it — spent every penny of the money Bill paid me yesterday, and more, on printing, postage, and envelopes, getting the January issue of the zine into the mail. It ain't great, but at least it's out.

And now my grand total net worth is $21.71.

Long ago, there was an emergency fund — several hundred dollars stashed in a sock and a jock, in case I broke an arm or needed a tooth pulled or something. Haven't broken any arms lately, but bit by bit that money's been spent on luxuries like licorice and bus fare and typewriter ribbons.

There was also an earthquake kit, once upon a time, with dozens of cans of cheap beans and water to last a week, and flashlights, batteries, band-aids, whatever'd come in handy after The Big One hits. There's still water, but as the money's been tight, I've eaten the beans, used the batteries, worn the band-aids.

And none of this would be a problem, if only some wealthy reader would be kind enough to name me beneficiary, then die.

Until that happy occasion, I'll muddle along by posting more of my flyers, which I did today. It's been a while since I've shared the flyer in the zine, so consider yourself nudged, especially if you live in the bay area and need your goldfish sung to or floorboards re-hammered:

I ' L L D O A N Y T H I N G L E G A L
F O R $ 5 A N HOUR
FULL-TIME, PART-TIME, or ONE TIME ONLY
* bodyguard * data entry * dog walking * errands * heavy lifting * housework * kid sitting * moving * office work * tour guide * typing * yucky stuff * or almost anything else *
I've been an office flunky for years, so no work is "beneath me." I'm 37 years old, and I've never been arrested, or addicted to anything but television (I've recovered). If you need dependable, hard-working help, why be shy? Please call Doug, at (415) ███-████. We'll both be glad you did.
( 4 1 5 ) ███ - ████

"Can you drive?" was the first question the man asked, when I returned his call from my voice mail.

"Sure, I can drive," I said, "but not legally."

To that, a long silence. "Your license is suspended?" the voice finally asked.

"No, it doesn't exist. I moved to California several years ago, but never got a Cali license, and my Washington license expired in '93." Another long silence, so this time I interrupted: "I take the bus or BART." More silence, like what I'd said was incomprehensible, so I added, "Prefer it, actually."

Came the silence again. For so few words, ours was a rather long conversation. Finally he asked, "Do you have a car?"

"If I had a car, mister, I'd mention it in my flyers."

Click. He hung up, but that was an enjoyable couple of minutes of my life. His last silence suggests that he might've been willing to hire me to drive without a license — a getaway car after a bank heist, perhaps — but not without a car of my own.

♦ ♦ ♦

I have no car, don't want one, and don't miss driving. You ever stop to think what driving entails? Paperwork, for a driver's license and vehicle plates, and insurance, and gas and oil and trips to the garage. And traffic. And parking. And cops eager to pull you over. And always the risk of hitting something, or being hit.

Screw all of that. In San Francisco and the bay area, there's noplace you can't get to on the bus or the BART, the trolley, the subway, or CalTrain.

I came to California for new surroundings, fewer obligations, broader horizons, some distance from my family, and maybe better weather. Not needing a car wasn't among my expectations, but it's become one of the best and most liberating things about living here.

♦ ♦ ♦

By now, Sarah-Katherine has received my letter saying 'no' to New York. She probably crumpled it and cursed me almost as much as I deserve.

I feel shitty about what I've done — she wanted someone with her, so she wouldn't be jumping to NYC alone. I said I'd be that someone, so she made her plans. And then I backed out. I've stood her up, on a transcontinental date.

If she writes back "Go to hell," or if she never writes back, I'll understand.

And it's not the first time I've been a weasel in life. Probably it's not the last. My intentions are usually good, but my follow-through sorta sucks.

♦ ♦ ♦

When money's tight, canned cat food instead of tuna is not a joke. You might make a few mistakes along the way, though. My advice is to buy several different brands, until you find one to your liking. Some of them smell too ghastly to eat, and I've given a few to the cats in this house.

It's curious that the list of ingredients on a fancy "tuna" cat food begins with poultry by-products, water, and meat by-products, before there's any mention of fish. But the "chopped mackerel" reads better. Most tempting is Nine Lives "tuna in sauce," which promises tuna, water, soy grits, calcium carbonate, choline chloride, vitamins, zinc, thiamine, niacin," before getting to the preservatives and emulsifiers, all of which sounds as healthy as a bowl of granola.

Perhaps surprisingly, Safeway's generic 'fish' flavor cat food is my favorite, and it's only 29¢. Not that you won't know it's not tuna, but it has the right texture, and the taste is... a fair approximation, when mixed with mayo and mustard and spread on cheap bread.

A reader of the zine called and wanted to meet me, not to freak me out by being sociable but to hire me, which is awesome. Said his name is Saul, he's in a wheelchair, and he needs me to drag his furniture down a flight of stairs, into a truck, and over to the new place he's moving into. Not today, but by the end of the month.

Today, though, he wanted to meet me and buy me a burrito, and I don't generally argue with food when someone's buying. We met at Kim's Super Burrito, a Mexican place off Telegraph, owned and operated by a Korean couple (I love the bay area).

He was easy to find, what with the wheelchair and everything, so we shook hands and ordered and took a table. They specialize in Mexican food, so of course I had a Denver omelet with wheat toast and hash browns.

Kim's has very slow service, pretty good food, and excellent hash browns. It was less than four bucks, and Saul paid. He called it a business-related expense, and saved the receipt to show Uncle Sam. I didn't ask what the business was, but I suppose Uncle Sam will.

Guess it was a working lunch, since we agreed that I'll help him move in a few weeks, but we'd pretty much agreed to that already, on the phone. We also talked about zines and movies and love gone wrong and politics gone wronger, but he's a Republican so everything political he said made my head hurt.

"The Republicans would love to deny you any kind of medical coverage, wheelchair repairs, prescriptions you need," I said. He said maybe we shouldn't discuss politics, so I changed the subject to religion, and on that we seemed generally agreed.

He's not monstrous for a right-winger, had more sense of humor than most, but I don't understand the politics, and wouldn't have guessed anyone of his persuasion was reading my zine.

"Polio," he explained after breakfast, as the hydraulic machinery whooshed him into his van. I hadn't asked, or even wondered, really. None of my business. "I was one of the last kids to get it before they developed the vaccine," he said. "I've always had bad timing."

"Rotten luck," I said. "My sister was one of polio's last victims, too, but all she got was a few corrective surgeries and a slight limp."

Saul offered me a ride home, but I declined. I'd rather walk than ride in a van festooned with Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan stickers.

♦ ♦ ♦

Besides, I wasn't going home. Josh and I were meeting on Shattuck, and planning to see Dead Man Walking at the ghastly U/A complex, because I had a pass for two someone had sent for a copy of the zine.

Things did not go well, though. The girl at the ticket window, and then her boss, said the pass was no good. It hadn't expired but its size and shape and color weren't in their big catalog of possible passes.

Which is bullshit. The format and phrasing was exactly the same as the examples in the book, and I seriously doubt anyone's counterfeiting U/A passes to buy zines. The manager (just a kid, actually, a corporate lackey in training) was perfectly polite telling us no, so I got hot and cussed him out.

Josh didn't say much as I made a fool of myself fuming and raging, but after we'd walked away he asked to see the pass, and noticed that it said, "Courtesy of United Artists and KPFA Radio."

So he slipped some coins into a phone booth and called KPFA, explained the situation to whoever answered the phone, and with no runaround at all, they told us to stop by the station any time, and they'd trade the U/A pass for a Landmark pass.

We went right away and made the switch. Landmark is a better chain anyway, and shows better movies, so other than not seeing the movie we'd intended, we came out ahead on the deal.

It's also an object lesson in getting things done. My method was to scream at some 20-year-old so-called manager, and when that didn't work my back-up plan would've been to sulk all afternoon and eventually write a seething letter to U/A's Department of Don't Give A Damn, or maybe throw a rock through the theater's window.

Josh's method was a polite two-minute phone call, and a four-minute drive to the station. His way worked way better than mine.

♦ ♦ ♦

Then we scanned the paper to see what was playing at the various Landmark cinemas, and traded our new and improved pass for two tickets to Heat at the California Theater, a block from the dratted U/A that hadn't let us in half an hour earlier.

Heat is a new cops-and-robbers thriller, three hours long, by Michael Mann. Al Pacino is the cop, Robert De Niro is the robber, and it's a complicated competition between good guy and bad, reminiscent of The Spider and the Fly, which we'd seen and loved a month or so ago. There's a large supporting cast of lesser thieves and cops, and wives and girlfriends, and everyone's allowed the chance to seem human and real and they do. There's tension and genuine emotion, and jeez, talk about realism — I saw pimples on one of the women, something you never see in a movie.

Heat simmers, would be my headline. It's never dull, often fascinating, starts off pretty good and gets better as it goes, and it's a complete kick by the end. I'll want to see it again, when it's eventually double-billed with Mann's other great cops-and-killers flick, Manhunter.

♦ ♦ ♦

Afterwards, Josh bought us burritos at Taqueria de Berkeley, next door to the theater, and we we listened to each others' complaints about our respective pathetic lives. When I mentioned my utter ongoing bankruptcy, he said, "Oh, that reminds me," and tried to give me twenty bucks to renew his subscription, but that's nuts. I don't take money from friends.

Turned down a bonus from Jay around Xmas time, too — she'd wanted to give me an extra $50 on top of my wages, but it felt strange. If you, dear reader, want to give me money for nothing go right ahead, but it's weird when a friend makes that offer, so I told Josh I was chewing on his renewal — he'd just bought me dinner. And he scored the Landmark pass. And he's bought me enough movies and burritos his subscription is pre-paid through the end of the century.

Probably it's a stupid stand to take when my wallet's empty, but stupid is as stupid does and that's me.

♦ ♦ ♦

And a word about Taqueria de Berkeley. The chow was cheap, and almost as good as the movie. Delicious burrito, sure, but this is California — land of 10,000 taquerias with great burritos.

It's the chips that I want to rave about. A shitty taqueria charges extra for tortilla chips on the side, and when that happens I never come back. A so-so taqueria gives you a handful of chips. This place, though, gave each of us a big bowl of tortilla chips, with a 12-ounce bowl of guacamole and three other dips on the table, all at no extra charge. Then, when the burritos came, they came with a big bag of more tortilla chips to take with us.

I am munching on chips now, as I type this the next morning, and I gotta say: El Castillito is still my favorite taqueria in San Francisco, but my favorite in Berkeley is Taqueria de Berkeley.

♦ ♦ ♦

Two people bought me meals today, keeping me fat with no money spent. My goal in life would be three free meals in one day... every day.

I'm the fattest of the five people living in my flat, and undoubtedly eat more than any of them. With three big meals daily and plenty of snacks between, when I gotta go it's never one plop or two, it's a lot of plops, often more than the toilet can take. Gotta remember to flush halfway through, or I'll have to plunger the plumbing afterward.

This morning I forgot to flush halfway through. When the waters began to rise I plungered as fast as plungering is possible, but it spilled over and got the floor and the mat wet. After the plunger came the mop, and then I rinsed the floor mat, and now it's hanging on the shower rod.

All this has happened before and nobody's asked about it, but still — damn it, Doug, gotta remember to flush halfway through.

♦ ♦ ♦

Sold fish on Telegraph Ave today, and watched from across the street as cops frisked a young black man.

They must've thought he was a drug runner, literally, because they made him take his shoes off. While the man stood in his socks on the sidewalk, one of the cops scrutinized the shoes one-at-a-time — loosened the laces, looked under the tongue, pulled at the soles, as if the man's footwear might be hiding something illegal. Both shoes got a very thorough investigation, but nothing incriminating was found or planted, and after five minutes the cops left.

He'd never complained, at least not loud enough for me to hear, and he didn't even shake his head as he reshod himself and walked away. That man's been through this before.

If it wasn't so wrong and offensive it would be downright silly. It's a free country, so they say, where armed agents of the government are well-paid to examine a man's tennis shoes.

♦ ♦ ♦

The table next to mine was one of the Avenue's marijuana booths, with pamphlets about legalizing it, and pot-centric stickers and buttons and stuff. Buzz is the man who runs that table, and he's a little paranoid (stereotype alert) but he's friendly, and sometimes funny. He once told me several minutes of offensive but funny Helen Keller jokes, so I kinda like the guy.

Well, I was sitting in my chair scissoring fish from the mylar, and glanced up as a cop rode past on a 10-speed bike. He and I made brief eye contact, and the cop nodded at me as he wheeled past. I nodded back at him, just barely. It's instinct, one of the slight social niceties.

But suddenly Buzz was at my shoulder, and he asked, "Do you know that cop?"

"No," I said. "Why would I know a cop?"

"Well, you nodded at him."

"I nodded, Buzz, same as I'd say 'nice doggie' to a Rottweiler off its leash."

He looked cross. "I don't like cops, man."

"Hey, I hate cops, OK?"

"OK, OK," he said, wandering back toward his table.

See, in addition to telling people the health benefits of the demon weed, and collecting signatures for an initiative to put pot by prescription on the ballot, Buzz also sells delicious marijuana brownies on the Avenue. He's sold me a few, but not today cuz I didn't have two dollars.

So some wariness is to be expected, but it struck me as amusing, so I jotted a few words in my notebook, to remind me to write about it later.

Suddenly Buzzard was back. "What are you writing, man?" He sounded seriously concerned, semi-panicked.

"I keep a diary, Buzz, so I take notes all the time." He still looked distressed, so I handed him my notebook, open to the page I'd been scribbling on.

"'Nice doggie, Rottweiler'," it said, and he said, but he still looked skeptical.

"Turn the pages," I suggested, and he spent a minute flipping through some of my pathetic pangs for Sarah-Katherine, the ingredients in various brands of cat food, a shopping list for tomorrow's grocery run, and other stuff so boring that a lot of it won't make it into the zine you're reading.

When he looked up at me I said, "You want to check my shoes, too?" We'd talked about the morning's tennis-shoe inspection after it happened.

"No, I ain't doing that," he said, and looked at my notebook for another moment. "You take notes about everything, huh?"

"Yup," I said, "but my diary is nothing to worry about, Buzz." He didn't seem quite convinced, but there's only so much I can offer in the way of counseling services.

♦ ♦ ♦

Couple of hours later, as I was packing my stuff to leave, Buzz came back to my table and said, "Sorry, Doug, about giving you the third degree," and he handed me a brownie, free of charge.

"Oh, man — thank you! All is forgiven for a brownie."

I was almost out the door, on my way to another day selling fish on the Avenue, when Jay stopped by and invited me to breakfast.

She's the boss and a friend and I could eat three breakfasts every day, but she's also a talker, and she's one of those people who dart around toward whatever intrigues them in the instant. The last time she took me to breakfast on a work day, I never got to work at all — we ate breakfast and talked and dawdled and ran a few Jay errands, and then the day was done.

Even if she buys the breakfast, I'm too broke for a breakfast like that. Can't afford a day that doesn't pay, so I said no thanks, and pushed the cart to Telegraph.

♦ ♦ ♦

Being a reasonably nice guy, I'll usually wait at an intersection until traffic on my side of the street has passed. On a busy street without lights to stop the traffic, though, I'm not gonna stand there waiting until there's no traffic coming from either direction. I'd be standing there all day.

So I looked left before stepping off the curb onto Shattuck Street, and then halfway across with my pushcart, I looked right before crossing the yellow line. I saw the pickup truck coming, but I'm not gonna stand and stop in the middle of the road, so onward I walked.

He was supposed to stop, or at least slow, but instead of yielding the driver of the pickup truck wailed on his horn and drove straight ahead at 30 mph, missing my cart by inches.

Just another arrogant prick behind the wheel — there are millions of them, and when I had a car sometimes one of them was me. I was too blue about missing a free breakfast, and too caffeine-deprived to be furious at the guy, so I simply looked him in the eye as he drove by gloating, and I smiled and waved at him.

I waved, damn it. Waved.

The pickup pulled a u-turn and screeched to a halt in the gravel in front of me, the driver climbed out, and he came almost-running at me and my cart.

I could've rammed the cart into his ankles and done him some serious damage, and the thought did occur to me, but Stallone in First Blood flashed across my mind — not the part where he's blowing stuff up, but the line where he said Brian Dennehy had drawn first blood. My hand was on the mace in my pocket, but I didn't want to draw first blood.

He wasn't much more than a kid, maybe twenty, white, blond, and scrawny, and he screamed, "You flipped me off!" His voice was hoarse and flushed with fury. "You fucker, you fuckin' flipped me off."

Well, shitfuck. I hadn't flipped him off, but even if I had, what loon would get so worked up over a finger? His hands were balled into mean little fists, and I was terrified. Oddly calm, but terrified. Seemed like a delicate situation, so I said nothing.

"You fuckin' flipped me off!" he shouted again, and came closer. Then he grabbed my shirt — the nice new flannel shirt Cy & Peter gave me for Christmas. A few buttons popped as he twisted the fabric, and to me, that was "first blood."

What I did in response was stupid. I should've simply maced him, but instead I put both my hands on his shoulders and pushed, hard. I'm a wimp, but he was skinny and there's almost 300 pounds of me, so I pushed him backwards ten steps until he banged into the front fender of his beater truck.

And then I wanted to punch him, but I don't even know how to throw a punch without probably breaking my knuckles, so instead I gave him one last, hard shove, and he slipped off the side of the truck and onto the gravel.

Jeez, it was crazy there for a moment. Living in the city, people yell and pose tough, and you hear about violence, people getting mugged or beaten up or shot, but the violence doesn't often involve me.

But there we were, him on his back in the gravel, me standing over him, and once the violence was underway I wanted more of it.

I wanted to kick him, pound him, bludgeon him with a lifetime's accumulated rage.

I wanted to stomp his head, kick at his groin, jump on his legs and hear them crack under my weight and enthusiasm.

I wanted to beat him with a baseball bat, and keep swinging it until my arms were too tired to hit another home run through his skull, and then after that I wanted to bend over and put my ear close enough to hear his last breath as he choked on his own blood and vomit.

Adrenaline is a scary monster, and I could've done all the above, and wanted to...

But instead I only yelled. "I didn't flip you off, asshole! I waved," and I waved at him again, down there on the ground. "If I'd flipped you off, it would've looked like this:"

He scampered to his feet and around the hood of his truck, opened the door and stood leaning on it, catching his breath. "You're a dead man," he said, and then he got inside the truck, slammed the door, started the engine, flipped me off, and roared away, spinning gravel behind him.

Ooh, I'm so afraid.

I'm so afraid that I wrote his license plate number on several pages of my little notebook, and handed them to a few people who'd been watching, asking them to call the cops if they heard about a murdered street vendor.

And same to you: If he's right and I'm a dead man, if I suddenly stop answering the mail, tell 'em it's a yellow Ford pickup, circa 1970 with California plates 418 VIJ.

♦ ♦ ♦

And then, well, there's still rent to pay and movies to see, so I walked the rest of the way to Telegraph Ave, and sold fish all day in a shirt missing three buttons.

I was exhausted when I got home yesterday, with a few aches from the almost-fight. Why I should ache I dunno; my would-be killer never even hit me, and all I did was push him to the ground, but I guess it used muscles I don't usually use, which is most of them.

Anyway, soon as I walked into my room I stripped, crawled under the binkies, and fell asleep by 9:00.

And at two minutes past midnight, the dog started barking at shadows, and I was very awake. An hour later I was still very awake, and despite counting thousands of sheep and trying to hyperventilate, I am wide awake at 1:30 in the morning, full of thoughts about Sarah-Katherine and long-lost family, money and violence, and the whole sorry mess that is my life.

♦ ♦ ♦

After a lousy day selling fish on too little sleep and a belly full of coffee, I met my pal Josh on the Ave, and we drove into San Francisco for a triple feature at the Roxie. One of the movies was good but sad, one was not so good and kinda frustrating, and the third was an astoundingly pretentious ode to astounding pretentiousness.

Who Killed Pasolini? ruminates on the death of filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, a murder that was covered up, perhaps even plotted by his country's right-wing monsters. He was bludgeoned to death, and the police didn't even investigate. All the obvious evidence of a conspiracy or hit was ignored.

Why? Because Pasolini was gay, a pinko and a poet. "Just another dead faggot," says the cop in charge. The few police who cared about the case were quickly transferred to other assignments, and the killers were never apprehended.

The film shows the authorities' open and obvious disdain for justice, and I hope it'll pressure someone into giving a damn, but it seems unlikely. The people who'd have to give a damn are, probably, the people who killed him.

Minor complaint: Who Killed Pasolini? includes a violin score designed to tweak tears, but it's maudlin, irritating, manipulative, and unnecessary. The facts of a murder plus getting away with murder are sad enough. Lose the frickin' fiddles.

And then the second feature...

Orson Welles: The One-Man Band is a study of the famous filmmaker's grand dreams and failures, made up mostly of clips from several Welles projects that were never finished, due to lack of funding, tax troubles, studio interference, and his own touch-and-go enthusiasm.

The film shows Welles in costume as Captain Ahab in his version of Moby Dick, another of his many movies that never were. The film's symbolism, then, is that Welles was Ahab, and all his unfinished projects were the whale, or maybe that he was a whale of a talent, but adrift for years and then lost forever. Something like that.

Mid-size complaint: In a documentary fueled by film clips, not a single moment from Citizen Kane or The Magnificent Ambersons? Mr Welles was forced to kowtow to lessors all his life, and toward the end he was reduced to making basically home movies and commercials for wine and whiskey, but he did complete a film once in a while, and they're among the best movies ever made. A biography so preoccupied with his failures seems like a cheap shot.

And then the third feature. Oh. My. Golly.

As soon as the lights dimmed for Nico Icon, I began to frown. I had never heard of Nico until this documentary about her, and if you're as happily ignorant of her as I was, I'll tip you off: She was a model in the 1950s, then a singer with the Velvet Underground, and later a solo singer on the nightclub circuit.

What caused my frown is that she was a singer who couldn't carry a tune! Her studio recordings may have been tinkered with until they were almost listenable, but the footage of Nico in concert sounds like an orchestra of dentists' drills, industrial accidents, and Yoko Ono, with a jackhammer keeping time.

My major complaint about the movie is that I saw it. The filmmakers are Nico's artistic equals.

We're constantly shown close-ups so up close that it's only someone's eyes and nose, or someone else's nose and mouth.

The film frequently slows to half-speed for no reason, with lots of stop-action freeze frames.

The camera is hand-held by a drunkard while everyone explains Nico's greatness.

Most annoying among many annoyances are the slow-fading intertitles — when someone's saying how simply mahvallous Nico was, a word or phrase from what they're saying is written on the screen, often before it's spoken. "She was like a goddess from Walhalla," someone says, while the word "Walhalla" fades in, blocks out everything else, then leisurely fades away.

Also, I think it's Valhalla, not Walhalla.

♦ ♦ ♦

Nico Icon gave me a throbbing headache, which only got worse as we left and Josh said he thought it was great. "I've always been a fan of Nico," he said. "I've got several of her albums, and her version of Jim Morrison's 'This Is the End' amazes me."

I must've stared at Josh for ten seconds before I could think of a reply. "Uh, I hated it," is all I came up with. We talked about Nico and Nico's movie on the way home, or rather, Josh talked. I was shell-shocked.

Everything 'amazing' or 'goddesslike' about Nico eludes me, and the movie sucked gas from a tank and swallowed.

People shouldn't stink. That's my theory of hygiene.

Not stinking does not require a daily shower, however, or a weekly load of clothes in the washing machine.

Showering: My last shower was five days ago, and I'm just starting to stink in the pits. Usually my scalp starts itching at around Day Three or Day Four, so that's when I shower.

I've been ignoring the itch for a few days, but I just shampooed with a bar of soap, and lathered all of me while the water was running. All clean now, clean enough to last until Thursday or Friday.

Clothes: Since I don't work in pig shit or come home covered in grime and sweat, it takes a long time before my shirts and pants get stinky or stiff.

At the end of every day, unless I've fallen in mud or had a mustard disaster, whatever I've worn goes back on the peg or shelf, to be worn another day. This continues until the clothes gain a funky odor, at which time they go into the washing machine.

(July, I think, was the last time I did laundry, and only because Sarah-Katherine was coming to visit. Which she never will again.)

And sorting between light colors, dark colors, and colorful colors is another canard. Segregation is over. All clothes go into the washer together.

T-shirts, underwear, and socks: Ah, now these all come in contact with the sources of human stink, so they need more frequent cleaning, but usually not in the washing machine. Instead I simply toss the smelly undergarments into the shower, and walk on them while I'm lathering my head and arms, legs, and genitals.

The t-shirts, underpants, and socks get sorta washed by all the soapy water, and then sorta rinsed by me standing on them as I rinse myself, so by my standards they're sorta clean. Then I wring 'em all out and leave 'em on my windowsill to dry.

We could end the California droughts if more people lowered their standards to match mine. And don't even get me started on the laughable ludicrously of folding clothes, or putting them on hangers.

Sarah-Katherine sent a valentine's card, signed, with X's and O's, and nothing else. A card with no words.

It's the emptiest anything she's ever sent me, and I hope it doesn't mean she's hurting too much for words.

The card I sent to her a few days ago was mushier and crushier. I like her no less than a month ago, and I'm still being faithful — she's the only woman I masturbate about.

The valentine is the first thing she's sent in the mail since my letter almost two weeks ago, when I said I wasn't moving to New York with her.

I'm still sorry about it, but I just couldn't do it, couldn't look for a straight job or give up my zine or do whatever else it might take to get the funds to get out of California. Couldn't do it, because I'm happy here and don't want to leave.

Well, 'happy' might be an exaggeration, but I'm comfortable in California. In New York I'd be nothing but _un_comfortable, with the city, and with being her buddy with benefits.

I'm still sorry about telling Sarah-Katherine for months that I'd go with her to New York, before realizing that I wouldn't. I'll be sorry about that for a long time, with no plans to forgive myself, and I don't expect she'll forgive it either. But I'll never be sorry for not moving to New York.

Since Christmas, I've been selling fish only part-time, generally on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, weather permitting. But Jay asked me to take the cart out today, because she thought there might be some Valentine's business for our Fuck fish, or the Condom fish, or the Venus fish. Or maybe she knows I'm bankrupt, so she's offering a day's wages as charity.

Either way, I was glad to have the work, and also happy to get out of the house, so maybe my gnawing depression wouldn't have all day to chew on me.

♦ ♦ ♦

On Telegraph Ave, my only nearby neighbors were Bo, who sells iron-on patches, and B N Duncan, the local street character and artist (his Telegraph Avenue Street Calendar is on my bedroom wall). I set up my stand in front of the flower shop, figuring there'd be plenty of saps and suckers in love buying roses all day, and maybe some of them would have a craving for fish.

Nope. Lots of people bought flowers, but very few saw the romance in a mylar sacrilegious sticker or magnet. Furthermore, the parade of people going in to the florist empty-handed and walking out with roses or helium hearts tended to make my gloominess even gloomier.

It was a sunny summerish day, though, so there were thousands of pretty women walking by in halter tops, very shorts, sun dresses, loosey goosey skirts, bra-less silk blouses, plunging bouncy v-neck t-shirts, too-tight tank tops, and one — oh Lordy, that one — blonde driving past in a red sports car. She was waiting to make a left turn not five feet from me as I sat on the sidewalk, and when she glanced at me, I smiled, and she smiled, so I smiled bigger and held out my arms, intended comically, and she laughed and lifted her shirt and drove away laughing.

Boobies brightened the moment, but only momentarily, and didn't substantially improve my mood.

I'm living this life alone because alone is so much better than time spent with most people, but damn, I enjoyed the time spent with Sarah-Katherine, and that time has ended. I am really feeling the aloneness now, and not in the usual good way.

♦ ♦ ♦

When vendors need to take care of non-business business, you ask a nearby vendor to watch your stand for a few minutes. That's how it possible to pee, poop, or get a cup of coffee when you're working a booth alone.

So in the early afternoon, Bo asked me to watch his table while he went down the street to feed a parking meter.

While Bo was gone and I was running both tables, some skinny blue-haired twit tried heisting one of Bo's patches (not blue-haired meaning he was old, just a fake punk kid with hair dyed blue). He wasn't even a competent thief — he looked both ways all theatrical, then stuffed a pot-leaf iron-on into his inside-jacket pocket.

He thought it was free because nobody was sitting at the table, but he jumped when I said, "It's customary to pay." He didn't argue, though. He took the patch from his pocket, and handed me three dollars. Dunno why, but the three bucks and the patch were in his same hand, so I snatched the money and the iron-on, and said, "No, it's five dollars."

At that his mouth fell open. "The sign says three dollars!" he complained, pointing at Bo's sign, which said, 'Any patch, $3'."

"Three bucks is the price for shoppers," I explained. "The price for shoplifters is five, or if you'd rather I could call a cop." I'd never call a cop, of course, but I enjoyed the frightened look on his face, and that's when Bo returned, so I added, "And this is the guy who runs this table. You want to try dickering with him?"

Bo, I should mention, is a big black man with a snarl on his face even when he's happy. "What's going on?" he asked, bewildered.

"Shoplifter," I said.

"Oh, yeah?" he said, and snarled even more, showing some teeth. The punk opened his wallet again, and gave me the five dollars I'd demanded, so now I had eight, as Bo continued. "Shoplifters piss me off. I'm poor, you poseur punk, and you're stealing from me?"

"He thinks a pot-leaf sticker is worth eight bucks," I said, showing Bo the cash. "What do you think?"

"That patch?" he said, playing along. "On no, that's one of my favorites. Can't let it go for less than ten."

"Ten dollars!" and the kid's voice cracked as he said it, so maybe he was even younger than he looked.

"Or we could call the cops," I said.

The thief scowled and handed me another five dollar bill, so now I had $13, and the patch, and it occurred to me that this early-teen with blue hair and a leather jacket had more money than I did. I handed the now very expensive patch to the punk, and to Bo I said, "Should I give him his change back?"

"Keep the change," said Bo. "Consider it your tip, for keeping your eyes open."

I gave both fives to Bo, but gave the three ones to the thief. "Here's my tip," I said, "Get the hell out of here, and don't come back."

The story should've ended there, but Bo came out from behind his table as the would-be thief was walking away, and literally kicked his ass. One swift boot to the butt, and the kid was sprawled across the sidewalk, between the young romantics waiting in line for roses.

Bo laughed heartily as the boy picked himself up and walked away, and I think the kid was crying. At about half a block's distance, he turned around and gave us two middle fingers, and Bo laughed again.

Bo was in a good mood all afternoon. Now, if you ask me, the kick was uncalled for. Bo didn't ask me, though, and it wasn't my table the kid stole from.

♦ ♦ ♦

Valentine's Day is just a marketing ply to sell candies and flowers, but it would be nice to have someone to buy candies and flowers for. Or even better, to have someone buy me candies and flowers.

To look at me, you'd think I'm a typical loser — too damned fat, wearing second-hand clothes, bad hair, rarely a smile. Get to know me, you'll find I can be friendly enough, sorta cynically chipper. Under the surface, though, I'm never far removed from utter emotional desolation.

And that's where I was for most of today, scissoring fish out of mylar, sitting in my folding chair of self-pity, and realizing for real how alone I am in the world.

♦ ♦ ♦

This being Wednesday, the new week's SF Weekly was stacked tall in their free distribution box. There were about sixty copies, and twenty at a time I took them to my table, and inserted one of my "I'll do anything" flyers in each, then returned them to the paperbox.

As I was doing this, I noticed a beautiful young woman chatting with some homeless people leaning on trash cans. She was a long-haired brunette, and I knew her from somewhere — ah, she'd been at the CopWatch meeting last week, and for Valentine's Day she was handing out roses to the bums.

Bums need roses as much as anyone does, I suppose.

She talked to my semi-friend Danny for a minute, then handed him a flower and kissed him on the cheek, and that's sweet indeed.

Then Danny walked by my table without saying a word, probably without recognizing me, or maybe in a daze from the smooch.

The woman gave out more roses than kisses, and then she walked by my table, without stopping and without recognizing me.

Well, why would she recognize me? At the CopWatch event, I hadn't said anything to her. I rarely say anything to anyone, certainly not to a pretty woman I don't know. So every pretty woman remains someone I don't know.

I was feeling invisible. Blue and invisible. Watching the never-ending river of people rushing into the florist to buy flowers, I hated them all, and wondered how many were really in love, and whether there's any such thing.

I have my doubts about "love." People talk about it endlessly, write about it and sing about it, but true romantic love is something I may have never seen in my life.

There've been two women who briefly made me consider the possibilities, but I'm skeptical. I've come to my senses.

♦ ♦ ♦

Satan came by. That's what I call him, since I don't know his name and I'll never bother to ask. He's a teenage boy, homeless I presume, with horns tattooed on his forehead, just above his eyebrows. Nice kid, though.

He said hi, so I asked him, "What's it all mean?" He shrugged and looked confused so I continued, "Why does life only get worse every day? What's the fuckin' point? What is the answer, Satan?"

"I have no answers, FishGuy. Nobody does." And he walked away.

Shouted a similar question at PinkMan when he unicycled up the block in his spandex suit and blew me a kiss.

"Think pink," he yelled at me, and then he was gone, too.

Spent a few minutes chatting amicably with Duncan and his friend Moby, so I asked them my question.

Moby only shook his head no, but Duncan said, "You get back what you give." Which is probably my problem — I don't give much.

Danny walked by again, now headed in the other direction, and this time he saw me and said, "Hi, Doug." That's twice he's remembered my name, and it made me happy so I gave him a banana from my backpack, and asked my same questions.

"There's no purpose," he said, "no point to anything at all. We're here to make the best of a bad situation," and he paused for a moment, then added, "or to make bad of the best situation. Something like that." He thanked me for the banana and smiled as he walked away.

Saw a homeless guy whose name I don't know, but I've seen him around and knew he was at least semi-sane, so I asked him, "What's the point? What's the answer?"

He thought it over, rubbing his chin. "Happiness," he announced. "Happiness is the most important part of poverty." We smiled at each other and he added, "Now get the hell away from me," so I did.

Rufus is another homeless guy I've spoken with a few times, so I continued the survey by asking him, but he sorta sidestepped the question. "There's not enough love to go around, even on Valentine's Day," he said.

Buzz the pot man was working a nearby table, so I asked him, too. His answer was, "We're all floating in the ocean without a boat, so learn to surf."

The beauty from that CopWatch meeting came by again, and this time she stopped at my table and said hello. "How's your Valentine's Day going?" she asked.

I thought about asking her the same questions I'd been asking everyone else, but instead I mumbled, "Valentine's Day is another Hallmark holiday to ignore, like Father's Day and Xmas."

She smiled and said OK, but I was obviously a waste of her time, so she flirted with Bo instead.

♦ ♦ ♦

After packing up the stand, I walked to Jay's house to stow everything for the night, but I walked a residential route instead of the main drag. It's slower, but I'd seen enough humanity for one day, and wanted some quiet time, ya know? Time to think to myself, talk to myself, and argue with myself, because half of me still wants to find a way to New York with Sarah-Katherine.

On my way, I saw two girls running a dandelion stand in the driveway of their small, kinda run-down house. They looked about six and eight years old, and one of them said to me, "10¢ for a dandelion, mister."

It was the cutest thing ever on earth, but what is this, 1956? I thought about buying one of their weeds, to make the kids smile, but what am I gonna do with a dandelion? So I smiled, but said, "No thanks," and kept pushing my fishcart down the street.

At home, I played ball with the dog, had a cup of cocoa with Judith, and alone and lonely I crawled into bed, and deeper into my funk.

THURSDAY — I've never been much of a drinker, but a reader sent me a bottle of rum, and it's sitting atop my dresser and looking better ever night. I'm tempted. I've always liked to rum from my troubles.

Sorry about the pun.

Anyway, I have plenty of troubles, and it's not enough rum to hide behind.

♦ ♦ ♦

FRIDAY — Yesterday I sat on my rumpled butt and worked on the zine, drank a little rum, ate too much, took a long nap, and never once did I think to check my voice mail. So I didn't know Andrea had called, asking me to babysit tonight, Friday night.

She also said, "Happy Sweetheart's Day," but it probably meant no more than "have a nice afternoon."

It was 11:15 this morning when I checked my voice mail, more than 24 hours after she'd called. Dingleberry pie, damn it.

I called right back, left a message on her answering machine, and she returned my call at around 4:00, saying thanks but she'd already dropped the kid at a friend's house for the night.

Dammit, I need to be checking my messages twice daily, especially with more "I'll do anything" flyers in circulation lately. Andrea's call could've been a big gig that sailed right past, instead of just another night of half-priced Shannon-sitting.

♦ ♦ ♦

Here's another voice mail, one that pissed me off:

"Your sticker says you've never been arrested, so this is a warning. If I find any more of your stickers on Chronicle newsboxes, you will be arrested."

That's all the voice said, with dramatic emphasis on will be. As if he'd call the cops, and as if the cops would care enough to track down the false name on my voice mail account. As if at my next once-weekly stop at my mail drop, the police would be there, staking the place out to arrest me for stickering on Chronicle newsboxes. Seems unlikely.

He didn't leave his name or number, of course. That would require courage. Guess his complaint's not unreasonable, though. So many bands and political causes slap stickers on the newsboxes, and now my five-dollar stickers too. Gotta be frustrating, if he's anal about having pristine newsboxes. My stickers are the only ones with a phone number, so I get a silly threat.

Outside of laundromats, there aren't many public bulletin boards where you can post signs, and I sure can't afford paid advertising. But OK, I'll be a good boy and go back to putting my stickers and flyers on telephone poles and stop signs.

Maybe some day when I'm not so poor, I'll have stickers printed up just for whoever left that message on my voice mail:

DO NOT POST STICKERS ON
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE NEWSBOXES.

And I'll stick 'em right over the coin slots.

♦ ♦ ♦

There were almost no vendors on my designated block of Telegraph, and I should've rolled my pushcart up to Bancroft Street and sold fish among the capitalists.

My tummy felt weird, though, and I was in no mood to be lectured or ticketed by the city inspector, so I sold where the permit says I'm supposed to sell. There were only two other vendors on the block, neither of whom I particularly like.

As I was setting up the stand, a young and pretty woman leaned on a shop's window and watched, and she seemed to be considering each fish as they went onto the display. Great, I figured, before there's even a chance to sit down, some Christian is going to start in on me for selling heresy and blasphemy.

But instead she waited until I was done, and promptly bought a hemp magnet and a Hippie Jesus magnet, She said she'd put them side-by-side on her refrigerator, "because Jesus was a man at peace with his soul, a man who lived on the earth, walked on the earth. He wore robes made of hemp, and I'm certain he smoked the herb. It's the surest way to walk holy."

That's very nearly word-for-word. I wrote it down as soon as she'd left, but in the instant I simply thought she was nuts and took her money.

"You make these fish?" she asked.

"Nah, I'm not creative," I answered. "I only cut 'em out of pre-printed mylar sheets, and sell 'em."

"You're creative," she said. "I can see it in your eyes. What do you do? Do you paint? Do you sculpt? What do you do with your hands?" She spoke with a soft Italian accent. "Your hands," she said again. "What do you do with your hands."

My hands still held her money, but like I said, she was cute. There were things I could do with my hands. "I write," I said, "sort of."

"You write? That's cool. We have an artists' circle. Would you like to join?"

"I'm not really a joiner."

"Ah," she answered, "you have too little self-confidence. 'You write, sort of', and 'you're not really a joiner', but maybe you're mistaken about you. We need art people, and I think you're an art person."

Maybe you're mistaken about you. I kinda loved that line, and wondered if she used it often. I am not, however, mistaken about me.

"Whatever your 'art circle' is about," I said, "you wouldn't want me around. I've got bad breath and the bad habit of speaking my mind. I'm really not artistic, and in fact I hate what most people call 'art'."

"Yeah," she said, smiling now, "you're perfect for our group."

I probably smiled, too. What I was thinking was, artists' circle my ass, but I was also thinking about her ass. "Tell me about it" is what I said, because it seemed safer than what I was thinking.

"We're assembling a group of artists to perform and create art for people who need art in their lives, people such as these," she said, sweeping an arm toward two passing bums. "Art that's not for men in tuxedos and women in fine $500 dresses."

I still smiled, so she continued.

"We might be doing opera at Sproul Plaza on the campus, or dancing for commuters on BART. Done properly, art can accomplish so much." She paused mysteriously. "But at present, I can't say any more about our project."

Her vibe was platonic, but it didn't feel like a sales pitch, and it's not often a pretty woman pursues me.

"You're nuts," I thought about saying because she obviously was, but it would've been a compliment if I'd said it. Didn't say it, of course. I simply stood there and continued smiling stupidly.

A crumpled fast-food bag blew by, and she squatted and picked it up. Snatching the pen on my table, she wrote her name and telephone number on the bag. "I'm Cinnamon," she said. "Please call me." She handed me the paper, shook my hand, and then she was gone, wandering down the street.

You don't see real hippies any more, only people wearing the look or smoking the weed or feigning the philosophy. I feign it myself, sometimes. She seemed authentic, though. Many a reefer has lingered on that woman's lips, nary a razor on her legs, and I kinda liked her.

Sometimes it feels like I'm living on the wrong side of the San Francisco Bay, like Frisco is where I ought to be and what am I doing in Berkeley? But my first genuine hippie was on Telegraph Ave, not Haight Ashbury.

I ripped the corner with her number off the bag, slipped it into my notebook, and who knows? I might call, just to ask about art and maybe see what's up Cinnamon's sarong.

♦ ♦ ♦

And I ought to call Mark, too. He left a message a week ago, wanting to get together for lunch or something, but I've misplaced his number. For the third time. I'm not fond of phones, so maybe losing his number is psychological.

Or maybe I'm drifting away. Mark's a nice enough guy, but last time we had breakfast together, we didn't have a lot to say.

♦ ♦ ♦

Satan came by, and said he'd come up with an answer to Wednesday's What's the fuckin' point? quiz about life. "Live life to the fullest," he announced, as if this was a groundbreaking concept.

"Well, yeah," I said, "but life's fullest is so shallow. Nobody says what they mean, nobody means what they say, and the price of pot is so high it's no help at all. What do you say about that?"

He made a pained face, and said he'd think about it and get back to me.

♦ ♦ ♦

Back home, after supper and typing, I checked my messages last thing before lights out, and there was another message from Andrea. She wants me to babysit her daughter on Sunday.

"I'll be there," I told her machine when I called back.

And after hanging up, while the phone was still in my hand, I thought about calling Mark and Cinnamon, but I didn't. I was in no mood to talk. I rarely am.

Dreamed of Sarah-Katherine again, which is a habit I need to break.

Wide awake at 1:00 in the morning, I couldn't get back to sleep, so I put on some pants and shoes for a pleasant but shivery walk around the block a dozen times, just for some clearheaded thinking time.

There was plenty to think and worry and wonder about. There always is, in the middle of the night.

♦ ♦ ♦

After the walk, I never got back to sleep, so I needed plenty of caffeine to make it through the day on Telegraph.

I worked next to the medical marijuana table, and Buzz asked me to watch his stand while he went to the john. I sold two pot-infused rice crispie treats while he was gone, so arrest me, I'm a drug dealer.

♦ ♦ ♦

Someone left a sack of semi-stale donuts on top of a trash can and walked away, and I was there quicker than the flies.

Gave the donuts a closer examination at my table. There were half a dozen, and they looked good to me. "Day-old" is the term, or maybe two or three days old, but still perfectly edible.

I gave one to Hate Man cuz I love that guy, but ate the other five myself. That was lunch — three chocolate, two glazed, plus the sandwiches I'd packed.

♦ ♦ ♦

Two true believers frowned at me and the table, and here we go again. They asked if I understood the meaning of the Jesus fish, which is a conversation I've had a thousand times on the Ave.

Instead of arguing, this time I heard them out, and gave them what they wanted. I pretended to listen earnestly, as they prattled on about Jesus and shared a quote from Revelations.

When they asked why I was selling sacrilege on the sidewalk, I wanted to give a ridiculous answer, so with a straight face I said, "I was desperate. It was either sell these awful fish, or sell myself in prostitution."

That's ludicrous, of course — nobody'd pay 79¢ for a blow job from me — but apparently, one you believe in Jesus you'll believe anything. They believed me, and lying was more fun than arguing.

One of them suggested a word of prayer, and we used my fish stand as an altar. Three men kneeled, two men prayed, one man struggled not to laugh.

They invited me to a prayer meeting at their church, and I promised I'd be there. We shook hands, they insisted on a group hug, and then they walked away and I returned to the business of blasphemy.

♦ ♦ ♦

There was a weird almost-argument later, though.

On fish duty, I sit at the table and say "Fish" once or twice every minute, all day. That's my sales pitch. Today, one of the hundreds of times I said "Fish," a middle-aged white woman happened to be passing by, and she stopped and scowled.

"What did you call me?" she said.

"What?" I said.

"You called me a bitch." Her eyes were blazing, but you could've driven a truck through my mouth. Anyone reading this zine knows I'm an asshole, but I'm not the kind of asshole who'd sit at a table and call strangers names.

"I didn't call you anything, lady. I said 'fish'. I say 'fish' all day."

"Oh," she said, but she still seemed skeptical so I performed an extended 'fish' chant for her: "Fish. Fish. We got fish here."

I think she was mostly convinced, and she semi-apologized and walked away.

What a bitch.

♦ ♦ ♦

Maybe the donuts were a mistake. I felt queasy by quitting time, and rolling my cart away I started puking a pungent mix of donuts and coffee and sandwiches.

It was minor pukage, though. N violent heaves, only a series of liquid belches. Every half block or so, a few more ounces came up, and after the first few times I didn't even break stride, just faced sideways and spit it out like a lumpy loogie. No dribbles on my shirt, even.

Must've been quite the sight, though, and I do hope locals and visitors enjoyed the show.

I haven't seen Brenda for a while and I like her, so I set up my fish stand next to her art stand, on Telegraph Ave.

First thing she said after "Good morning," was, "So you write Pathetic Life, eh?" And I do, but I never talk about it on the Avenue. Tried to bluff, but Brenda didn't need to be Mrs Columbo to assemble the clues.

① She reads zines, and wants to write one, and had mentioned a while back that she was looking for a cheap maildrop. I'd suggested the one that I use.

② A few days ago she was reading a zine, and saw a review of something called Pathetic Life. The review mentioned blasphemous fish and Telegraph Ave, and listed my maildrop address.

So my cover has been blown.

She offered to buy a copy, but I said I'd bring her one for free, if she'd promise not to mention the zine to anyone else on the Avenue.

"Is it a secret?" she asked. "Are you shy?"

"Sure, I'm shy," and I tried to explain. "It's my diary. If you're publishing your diary you gotta keep it a secret, or everyone will start complaining about what you write about 'em. There are vendors on the Ave that I hate, and I need to be able to write that I hate 'em, without having them in my face a month later, angry at what I wrote about them."

"Gee," she said. "I wonder what you've written about me."

"Yeah, that 'wondering' — that's why the zine is a secret."

Sending my diary to strangers is one thing, but I don't want to hear questions and comments from other vendors, from customers, from homeless people, from the guy at the sandwich shop, etc, about my every rectal itch or erectile dysfunction. I require that minimal modicum of privacy.

Brenda said she understood, and pledged to keep my secrets secret, so she gets a copy of the zine next time I see her. But I'm a little nervous about it.

♦ ♦ ♦

After work, I dragged the cart to Jay's house, then bused to Andrea's apartment to babysit her daughter again.

Taking care of Shannon was OK. We played Scrabble and she won, and not because I let her win (I'm not that nice) but because she's good with words.

Like, I played 'kaftan', even though I was pretty sure it's supposed to be 'caftan'. Thought I could fool her, but she said, "You wear it, right?"

"Well, I don't have one, but yeah, I think you wear it."

"It's usually spelled with a c," she said, "but k is an acceptable variant." This, from a 9-year-old kid.

In addition to being bright, she's also blunt. As I boiled some noodles for macaroni & cheese, she stood beside me, watching the master chef, and she said, "You know, your breath stinks."

"Yup," I said. "My teeth are rotting. It's what happens if you go twenty years without brushing."

"Yuck."

"Well, the good part is, I hardly ever catch a whiff of it myself."

She thought that was funny, and maybe it is funny when bad breath grosses out a little kid. It's more of a problem if I'm grossing out her mother, so after dinner I asked Shannon if there was a "guest toothbrush" I could use.

"Nope," she said, "but you can use my mom's."

"That's disgusting," I said.

"So's your breath," she said and smiled.

I didn't brush.

We played another game of Scrabble (this time I won), and then she suggested turning out the lights to tell scary stories. After a few nightmare-inducers it was bedtime, and she gave me a hug I hadn't earned and went to her room.

Then I sat on the couch and read zines, and long after I was pretty sure Shannon would be asleep, about twenty minutes before Andrea had said she'd be home, I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth.

It was an hour later when I heard a car door slam. The idea, at least my idea, was that Andrea and I might talk for a while when she's come in. Like the other times I've been the babysitter, though, she wasn't much in a mood for talking.

She paid me, and I walked to the bus stop. Being the babysitter isn't working out quite the way I'd hoped. Nothing much does.

♦ ♦ ♦

Typing this up before turning in, I just looked up 'kaftan', and Shannon was right. It's an acceptable variation on 'caftan'.

This whole damned zine is kinda depressing, what with my tendency to dwell on the negative, so here's something a bit different. Riding the train into the city, I found a yellowing Chronicle under a subway seat (don't they ever clean BART?) with some good news in it:

A man climbed into a suburban home through the bathroom window, just like in the song, and then he attacked a 12-year-old girl in her bedroom. She struggled and screamed, he dad came running to see what's the ruckus, and Dad and the intruder started swinging at each other, grappling, rolling around on the floor.

So the girl ran to the kitchen and came back with two frying pans, a sauce pan, and a glass casserole dish, all of which she walloped onto her attacker's head. She hit him so hard, the paper says, the glass dish shattered, and two of the pan handles broke off.

"Well-wishers — most of them strangers — have sent the family cards, checks, and more than enough kitchen pans to replace the broken ones," says the paper. "A Farberware representative who recognized the dented pans on television has promised to deliver exact replacements."

The report is mostly about the perp's court arraignment, where he wasn't able to get out of the wheelchair the county has provided him, and he had bald spots on his head where his scalp had been shaved and stapled together after treatment for his head woulds. Says here, he was moaning incoherently as he waited for his case to be called.

Well, you go, girl!

But now comes an expensive trial, followed by not enough jail time. In a few years, inevitably, that burglar and wanna-be rapist will be released.

Not to seem too bloodthirsty, but wouldn't it be a better world if that girl had found a gun in the kitchen, and blown the man's head off?

♦ ♦ ♦

On my Monday gig at the sex magazine, Black Sheets, it was just Steve and me in the office. Bill is on a business trip, or at least that's what he calls it. Actually, it's an S&M conference in Chicago. One can only wonder what happens at an S&M "conference," but calling it a business trip makes it tax-deductible.

Bill and Steve have been friends for years and years, and usually they banter all day, barbing each other with playful insults. I don't know him well enough to insult him, so today Steve had to insult himself.

"I've been thinking," he said absent-mindedly at one point, and then there was a long pause, because that's when Bill was supposed to interject with a wisecrack, probably That's not easy for you, is it? Eventually Steve said it himself: "That's not easy for me," and we laughed.

Hurry back, Bill. We miss you.

♦ ♦ ♦

On the BART back to Berkeley, the train was standing room only, but a bum was sprawled across two seats at the back. Several people were standing nearby, but nobody wanted to wake one schmuck taking two spaces?

It's a long ride under the bay and across Oakland, and I wasn't willing to stand all the way if it wasn't necessary, so I gently kicked the bum's feet out of the way, and sat down.

"Huh?" he said groggily.

I said, "Nap time's over, Sleeping Beauty," but it wasn't. He sat up a little straighter, put his feet on the floor, leaned his head on the window, and almost instantly he was asleep again.

It's OK to sleep on the train. The roar of the rail can be very soothing, so lean back and dream. But spreading yourself across two seats at rush hour? That's just bad etiquette.

When I have the money, which isn't often lately, I like going to see odd or old movies. San Francisco has several theaters that show nothing but offbeat stuff — the Castro, the Roxie, the Red Vic, Pacific Film Archive, the Stanford, the UC, maybe a few more I've forgotten. And there's also the Cinematheque, which I intentionally forget.

It's the ultimate artsy-fartsy avant-garde cinema of pretentiousness. That's an un-informed opinion, since I've never attended a film there, but yesterday I picked up the latest Cinematheque calendar, and this morning I've studied it. And again, same as every time I've looked at their listings, nothing seems worth the price of admission, let alone BART and bus fare to the Art Institute.

There was one event at Cinematheque a year or so ago that sounded so insane that I almost regret not going. They showed Yoko Ono's feature-length documentary about butts, called Bottoms, which the calendar described as "an aimless petition, signed by people with their anuses."

Tragically, I'll wander through life without the enlightenment of watching people's butts on a big screen for an hour and a half.

♦ ♦ ♦

I've been feeling off-kilter the past few days, and even off-er today. I had work lined up, though, and can't afford to call in sick, so a bus took me to Oakland, where I helped a guy clean "a complete disaster" apartment.

At least, that's what I'd been told on the phone. A stranger's uncle had died, leaving his apartment in a horrid condition, he said, so my client (the nephew) and I spent the day plowing through the mess.

But honestly, the place wasn't that bad. I've seen worse. I've lived in worse. Next to nothing was rotting, and most of the mess was newspapers.

The dear departed had subscribed to the Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Jose Mercury-News, but he didn't believe in recycling or taking out the trash. Newspapers were everywhere. Some were stacked haphazardly, but most were simply pushed up against the walls. The oldest papers were from 1991.

So my entire day was stacking and tying up newspapers, and hand-trucking the stacks to the recycling bin. I made more than a hundred trips with the handtruck, and we didn't see the floor until around 3:00.

The nephew spent his day sorting through dead uncle's possessions, and our work isn't finished, but I had to stop hauling when the dumpster got full. The last hour or so, I was just tying up more bundles of newspapers, and stacking them near the door.

The nephew was all sad and stuff, not at all interested in talking, which was fine with me. I didn't know his uncle, and wouldn't want to share the grief. Plus, of course, he's people, and I never know what to say to people even when nobody's died.

To me it was just a job, and it earned me $35 for the day's labor, plus the nephew said I could have anything I wanted from "the junk pile" — and that was the best tip ever.

I brought home an old-style wind-up alarm clock, a few books, a cool folding yardstick, a vial of prescription sleeping pills, lots of canned vegetables, and about a hundred pens that were lying around everywhere.

I'm busing back tomorrow for what looks like another half day's work, and I've already rolled up a second backpack and stuffed it inside my first backpack. That way I can take home twice as much of the dead uncle's junk.

Patrick Buchanan won yesterday's New Hampshire primary, and in a bizarre sort of way, that's good news.

He's a 19th century man, a bigot and wanna-be woman-owner, a man of despicable politics to be sure. He's a horrible human who ought to be spat on, but he's the only candidate who says what he believes.

Bob Dole and Bill Clinton will say anything to get elected, so you never know what they actually believe, if anything. Buchanan, though, seriously believes all his hateful bullshit — that homosexuality is evil, abortion should be outlawed, Jews can't be trusted, a wall should be built to keep Mexicans out of the country, Christianity should be the national religion, and all the rest. He won't back away from any of it, and if he's elected president, he seems like a man who'd keep every terrifying promise he's made. Damned scary stuff.

Say the worst about Pat Buchanan, because it's all true. He's probably the worst candidate running, and a vote for Buchanan is a horrific concept. But at least it's a vote for honesty in government.

♦ ♦ ♦

Recovering from the bad news, I took a long walk down Ashby Avenue, and along the way met Danny, my favorite bum.

Today he remembered me, though often he doesn't, and for a few blocks walking, he told me all about his economic system. He calls it Berkeley Hours, and I call Danny dollars, and if it sounds familiar, yeah, I'd heard it all before, and written about it. I didn't mind hearing it again, though. It's an intriguing idea, and I like Danny.

Something's happened to his brain, of course. He must've taken a whack on the head, or dropped too much acid, or it dropped him. His memory's not quite gone, but it can't be fine tuned.

Clearly, though, he used to be somebody with brains and potential. Now he's just Danny, a homeless man who wanders the streets of Berkeley, and that's probably all he'll do for the rest of his life.

He needs better shoes and a warm place to sleep, a reliable source for food, and access to medical care. This is America, though, so there'll be none of that, and he'll die on these streets.

THURSDAY — I'm fevered and tense, like I owe people phone calls, letters, or money. Of course, I do owe people phone calls, letters, and money, but usually I don't give a damn. Wonder if this is one of those "anxiety attacks" people talk about.

It's noon on a day off and nothing's pressing at me, but my heart is racing like I'm supposed to be somewhere important half an hour ago.

And also, what's up with the fever? I've been feeling lousy for days now, with assorted aches and a belly that keeps trying to puke, but the fever is new.

♦ ♦ ♦

Here's a letter from Sarah-Katherine, and it's polite, perfunctory, and it really says nothing. It's mighty short, too, but it's better than the rage I've been expecting since telling her I'm not moving to New York.

It's the first envelope she's sent me since before we met that came addressed to Doug instead of Doug ♥, but it's a friendly letter when I deserve worse. Glad she still likes me enough to lick a stamp.

♦ ♦ ♦

FRIDAY — Dragged the cart to Telegraph and sold fish all day, but I sure didn't want to. Puked in the street behind my table, and the sight and stench wasn't good for business, but it was behind me and my nose is clogged so it didn't bother me.

Back here at home, there was a sudden need to bawl like a baby, so I turned the radio up kinda loud and let it all out. And after that long, lonely cry, I vomited again, and then laid in bed staring at the ceiling and feeling like crap.

Still feeling lousy, I sold fish all day on Telegraph, and nothing happened worth writing about.

After that, I came home and checked my voice mail. My boss and friend Jay had called, and asked, "Want to go to dinner?"

Well, actually, no. I was blue and queasy and had no real appetite, but a free meal is free, and I figured maybe some sociability would do me good. What a fool I was.

So I called her and said yup, and when Jay got to the house she invited Judith to join us.

We three went to the Brick Hut, where I had a shallow bowl of vegetarian chili (★★★), while also nibbling on Judith's vegetarian sandwich (★★) and Jay's rather pricey vegetarian pizza with none too many veggies (★★★★, though).

After dinner, we loitered at the table while Jay read through the love-wanted ads in one of the local weeklies. She circled a few for calling back later, but mostly we laughed at the stale stupidity of most of the ads — walks on the beach and all that rot.

There was one ad that was intriguing, though, titled "The Art of Kvetching" —

Chronically exhausted, cranky, menopausal inactivist, 47 (looks and feels much older) seeks cynical, pessimistic womyn for competitive complaining, rocky romance and, hopefully, a bitter break-up. I enjoy bad weather, poorly prepared meals, foul odors, messy homes, and other conditions that call for creative critiques. Dead-end job-holders, heavy smokers, and dog-haters are encouraged to respond.

When I lived in Seattle, I sometimes advertised myself in the personals. Always tried to be frank and clever, but I never wrote an ad as good as that one. Too bad it's under "women seeking women," or I might reply.

Jay read an ad from someone looking for a golden shower, and Judith said she's never understood how someone could pee long enough to let someone else rinse and lather and shampoo.

It should've been an enjoyable time, free dinner with two people I like, and it was, for a while. I've been feeling like a stale turd all week, though, and the chili didn't help. After eating I wanted to hurry home and go straight to bed, but Jay and Judith decided to make "a quick stop" at a mall.

We ended up at some shitty place called Headlines, which isn't about newspapers. It's a knickknack store, where Disney memorabilia is shelved next to condoms and lube, and the prices for everything are high as a stoned giraffe. Jay and Judith wandered the aisles for fifteen minutes, didn't buy anything, and I stood at the store's display of magnets with bare-boobied women on 'em.

When we left I was mostly already gone, feeling fevered on a cold drizzly night, and I didn't even notice that Jay wasn't driving me home. Instead we went to some chain drug store, Walgreens or Rite-Aid or Payless or some such — they're all the same.

Jay and Judith both grabbed baskets and went down different aisles, so I grabbed a basket too, and put a few dollars worth of ramen and cough drops and aspirin into it.

And with that, my shopping was done, but Jay was looking at fabrics and Judith was mesmerized by hair clips, and half an hour later they were both looking at Ronco slicer/dicers...

They spent more than an hour in that very plastic place, while my head was filled with snot and stereotypical snide remarks about women who love to shop.

I wondered whether I knew the east bay bus system well enough to get myself home, but decided I didn't, so I paid for my groceries and waited in the car, where I fell asleep.

We'd left for dinner at a quarter to 6, and it was past 11 when I got home, tired and grumpy and clearly sick. If I'd known it would be a five-hour evening, I would've said no to dinner.

Kinda pissed off at them, and at me for going along, I collapsed into bed, and didn't write tonight's entry until tomorrow.

SUNDAY — I try to avoid overtly telling the same stories a second or third time in the zine, but with my boring life sometimes it's unavoidable.

Like, today there was too much drizzle to sell sacrilegious fish on the Avenue, so I stayed home and tried to sleep away this looming flu or cold or whatever's been eating at me for a week. And I'm certain I've already lived and written this exact same day.

Again I'm drinking plenty of fluids, and making shuttle runs to the john so frequently it seems pointless to flush.

This bug isn't as ferocious as the one I fought off in December — I've only puked twice today — but the aches and sneezes and runny nose and general grogginess is a rerun, and jeez I'd like to change the channel.

♦ ♦ ♦

MONDAY — Feeling frigid, I slept in a sweater and two pair of pants with the space heater blasting, and woke up hours too early on Monday, sweating and shivering.

Yesterday I wrote, "This bug isn't as ferocious as the one I fought off in December" — famous last words, almost mine.

♦ ♦ ♦

By the time the alarm went off, white crud was clinging to my tongue, and if I was still working at Macy's I would've called in sick, but there's no sick leave at Black Sheets.

Besides, they need me there — if I'm gone, who'll take out the trash? Who'll scrub the sink? Who'll vacuum the floor? And who'll pay my rent? I really need the money, so I put on two sweaters, four socks, clicked the space heater off for the first time in twenty hours, and BARTed to Frisco.

At the magazine, I advised Bill and Steve to keep away from me, and then tried to do my job. For half an hour I worked all bundled up and freezing, and then the sweats started and I stripped down to a t-shirt and pants, and then the chills returned so I got double-dressed again. The whole day, I was alternating between goose bumps and drenched with sweat.

Then I came home and slept twelve hours, and without exaggerating even a smidge, I have never been closer to death than I was on Tuesday the 27th.

♦ ♦ ♦

TUESDAY — It was damned awful, all day. I slipped in and out of delirium, sweating then shivering, coughing for ten minutes at a time but never finding any phlegm, staggering to the john and back over and over, wheezing like a rusty hinge with every breath, scraping white stuff off my tongue and piling it on the bedstand, and my head was full of bizarre fluffy nightmares whenever I could sleep.

I remember watching TV in my room, and seeing a basketball game where one player tackled another and he shattered to pieces. The murderer hid between channels and ran away behind an Alka-Seltzer commercial. What's weirdest about that, of course, is that I don't have a television.

Sleep drowned me and then I couldn't sleep, the dreams made no sense and awake even less, and the only coherent thought I remember is thinking, if I die, who'll clean out the piles of trash and dirty clothes and old zines littered all over my bedroom floor? And will Sarah-Katherine be sad, just a little?

♦ ♦ ♦

By late afternoon, my whole body was caked with thick, viscous sweat, and I was burning with fever, afraid to sleep because not waking up seemed like a serious possibility.

This was no normal flu and I knew it, even barely conscious, so I stumbled to the phone and called the Berkeley Free Clinic — the only medical care I can afford.

Probably I should've called a week earlier, but until the day-long dementia I kept telling myself it would pass. And being an anarchist and atheist, I'd always rather avoid going to a clinic that's partially funded by the government and housed in the basement of a church. I'm uncomfortable taking charity — my dad taught us that it's better to do without than to beg.

But I was truly desperate, Dad.

I called the clinic at 5:45, and I wanted to kiss the man on the phone who told me to be there at 7:00. And then, of course, walking through the bitter wind and mild drizzle to the clinic, the fever broke and by the time I walked in they could've convinced me it was just a touch of a cold.

Soon as I'd filled out the short questionnaire, I was ushered in to see a woman named Diana. She's not a health care professional, she's a health care amateur.

That's how it works at the Free Clinic — it's staffed with volunteers who've passed a few months of training, so they're probably about as knowledgeable an an EMT.

Hell, maybe they are EMTs. I don't know or care. Diana knows more about human biology and health than I know, and that's enough.

She examined me and asked endless questions about my medical history and my family's medical history and my sex habits, eating habits, sleeping habits, on and on. Certain answers seemed to trigger a subset of further questions, till we'd spent almost an hour talking about me. Man, you can dream about getting that much time from a doctor or nurse, but it'll never happen.

I was impressed, and I was 102.6°, which is a lifetime high for me. I'd been alternately burning and freezing all day, but at the clinic I felt so much better that the temperature really surprised me. 102° when I felt almost OK? I wonder what the reading would've been a few hours earlier, when I was melting on my mattress?

Diana said she was pretty sure it was a strep, and maybe more, and then she disappeared down a hallway. A few minutes later she returned with the clinic's one and only doctor, for a cursory review of her conclusions.

Even the doctor seemed nice. Is that allowed? The two of them talked medical lingo, then stepped out, and Diana returned with a big bottle of erythromycin. Drugs. Oh, yay.

I took the first few dose of the antibiotic there at the clinic, and on the walk home my fever started raging again. That's a good thing, I told myself — it means the reinforcements have arrived, and the war is raging between the good medicine and the bad bacteria, right?

♦ ♦ ♦

WEDNESDAY — Being a private man when I'm not spilling my soul into this zine, I hadn't told Judith or any of my flatmates I was sick, but Judith heard me hacking and puking and brought some cough syrup. Thank you, my friend.

Cough drops are enough when you're hoarse, but hoarse was the day before yesterday. The coughing had only earned me a sore neck and chest, never any of the thick yellow goop I knew was inside me. Swallowing the cough syrup, though, some of the hacking finally became productive, not merely painful.

Took an antibiotic and slept for hours again, and when my eyes opened the world felt a little better, but a piece of cardboard was in my hand. It was an amazingly mushy post card I'd written to Sarah-Katherine during my mental discombobulation, maybe the day before or the day before that. I don't even remember writing it, but it's my handwriting so I must've.

Reading it made me cry. Good thing I was too weak to take it to the mailbox, or she'd have read too much of me, things I'd never say when I'm coherent.

For the diary, I'll sum it up even briefer than the card:

Once, for a few days scattered across a few months, there was a woman who liked me, and I liked her. And then of course, I fucked everything up.

Addendum, 2023: The Berkeley Free Clinic is still there, saving people's health and lives and asking nothing in return.
A few years after these events, they were as marvelous and heroic when my wife was sick as they'd been for me, and ever since, we've been sending them twenty bucks a month. It's not much, but they're legendary, and it's a debt I can never repay.

〰 Some letters to Pathetic Life 〰
Your adventure with the jock itch spray (11/11) made me laugh out loud, because a similar thing happened to me once. You know that Tiger Balm stuff? It's a very concentrated balm for muscle aches. Once you put it on, it penetrates deep into the tissue and tingles, getting very warm.
Well, one night my girlfriend wanted a back-rub. Both naked, I rubbed it all over her, then climbed on top of her to rub it in. The Tiger Balm on her back made its way to my nuts unnoticed — until suddenly there was this intense burning sensation.
I yelled bloody murder and jumped off her, but the damage was done. I washed my privates but that damned stuff was already working and the burning got worse and worse. I could do nothing but roll into the fetal position and emit high-pitched moans until it subsided.
—Eric B, Sacramento

So what you're saying is, you have a girlfriend. Don't rub it in. —DH

♦ ♦ ♦

You're looking for someone to say something nice about New York? (11/1) Sorry, can't help you there. I hate the damned place. So why don't I move? Maybe because I'm afraid that I'll discover that it's not NYC, but myself I can't stand.
—Paul Kazee, FALaFal, Brooklyn

♦ ♦ ♦

Dear Doug — We're writing to ask you to give us yr news and yr Pathetic Life. Thanks in advance. Let us know & keep in touch. Love and peace. Earth first! Poetas del Mundo Unios,
—Daniel De Culla, Burgos, Spain

Daniel, there's always plenty of competition, but for sending no money, no stamps, nothing but a photocopied form letter across the ocean begging for a freebie, you've won my assessment as 100% scum, and you, sir, are the Sphincter of the Month. —DH

♦ ♦ ♦

I am a senior in high school, just another useless youth. My senior prom is coming, and I am not going. I don't want to spend the night with everyone I hate, which is everyone. What good is sitting there and imagining beating the living shit out of them?
So instead I just want to pick up and leave. Go to California, Barbados, or just take a car trip. By myself. All alone. I want to go to the University of Maryland; I don't know why. To be a teacher, and get beat up by my students, or just shot at?
Well, it's Friday night and I'm home again. My dirty "friends" are tripping. I really don't have one good friend. I haven't for three years. I was anorexic in 9th grade, and it ruined two years of my life. I lost my best friend, because she was afraid of my frail 92-pound body. I'm completely recovered; what's ironic is that now I'm _over_weight.
Why does it have to be so difficult? What good am I if I have not one friend? I should just slit my wrists so my body will be donated. I could give my heart to a good 9-year-old girl, and my kidney to some 30-year-old man, and my bone marrow to a 40-year-old mother or something.
No, I would never slit my wrists because I would go to Hell. I don't want that. Thank God my parents have forced me to go to church because if I was an atheist I would do it in a split second.
Anyways, is there anything in San Francisco I should see? Anything no-one knows about? Is there anything there that's in remembrance of Jack Kerouac? Give me a little info so I can have it to look forward to. Thanks, man.
—Linda D, Philadelphia

High school is awful, but once you're past that hell your life is yours to live as you choose, and once it's your choice it can get a lot better. If you choose wisely.

Before you think about slitting your wrists, try doing what you want to do with your life — whatever seems like fun or might make you happy. If it turns out it isn't fun or doesn't make you happy, try something else, but screw everyone's expectations, and do what you want to do.

You want to go to UM and become a teacher? Do it then, but not for anyone but yourself. If you go there because your parental units want you to, or because it's somehow "expected," or just because you can't think of anything better to do, you'll drive yourself crazy, like most people do every day of their lives.

Sure, come to San Francisco, if that's what you want to do. Its the most beautiful city ever, not for the architecture or parks or the big bridges, but because the people here are more live-and-let-live. You'll find some colorful subcultures — the hippies, the druggies, the beatniks, the gay and lesbian scene, and of course the just plain nuts — we're probably the most populous subculture.

As a favor to me and you, though, please don't even think about taking such a trip to any destination before you're 18, if you're not yet. Searching for meaning or happiness or just a vacation, the very last thing you need is to get tangled up and against the law.

That said, if you choose San Francisco, there are a million things to see and do, some famous, some top secret. You mentioned Kerouac, and yeah, he has his street here, though it's only an alley. If you like Mr K, you'd probably like Grant Avenue, the funky beatnik neighborhood around there, and still the highest goatee quotient in the known world. It has poetry, jazz, and City Lights (his publisher, and a terrific bookstore).

Try the Castro any weekend — that's the city's mostly gay neighborhood. I'm straight, but it's a beautiful place for anyone who's different in any way. Seeing so many men holding hands with men, women with women, and people being happily who they are, always warms my frigid heart. The aura of acceptance is a hug for anyone who's out of the ordinary.

Me, I usually hang out alone, maybe riding the buses, looking out the window, watching and thinking and all.

Of course, there's my present turf, Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. That's where Collegeville yuppies-in-training mingle with hippies-for-life and the homeless, rebels and stoners and screaming street preachers.

Half a block away, you'll find People's Park. Maybe you don't know the story? The University wanted to pave it for parking and dorms, but it was seized by radicals instead, who made it into an illegal, handmade park. The cops tried and failed to take it back, and decades later it's still a stalemate and a nice place for a picnic.

There's more, of course, so much more, but the best way is to discover it for yourself. Wear a flower in your hair, as they say, and wander your own path.

You sounded blue in your letter, so before signing off I'll harp on this again: High school is a frickin' prison. Ain't much education there, but all those young people are jammed in a building where many/most of them don't want to be, five days a week pretending to learn stuff that doesn't interest them and doesn't matter. It's a tedious sentence, and if you're not careful it'll hammer all the you out of you.

If you don't like your fellow inmates, if you find few friends in such a cruel, artificial environment, that's not a problem — it only shows that you have good taste.

When they unlock the doors and let you walk out of that place forever, think about what you want to do, and then do it. Come to San Francisco if you choose, or go to Barbados, or to college in Maryland, or surprise yourself with another idea, but following your own path is the only way to enjoy your time on this rock. —DH

♦ ♦ ♦

Some time I must tell you about my encounter with Cedric the sheep.
—Jim, somewhere in Oregon

〰 More letters to Pathetic Life 〰
Our internal rhythms connect us with nature, other people, etc. Alone we can live our own rhythm, but much of the time our rhythm is in collision with other people's rhythm and, very importantly, the rhythm of civilization, so called.
Civilization is regarded as the highest form of order, which may be true in some sense. But for the individual, civilization imposes the craziest of rhythms on all of us. Within that crazy rhythm, our separate rhythms collide and crash. Thus, our individual rhythm is assaulted on every plane by chaos.
—Don Stevens,
Council for Self-Esteem,
Escondido CA

You and I travel to the beat of a different drum… —DH

♦ ♦ ♦

I have to respond to your observations about abandoned Xmas trees in San Francisco (1/8). Here's another aspect of that holiday tradition:
Our studio is on 75 acres up in the hills. It's laid out in an 'L' shape, and the only part of the property that isn't bordered by Xmas trees is the top of the 'L'. Unfortunately, my parents sold 250 acres to the Noble Mountain Tree Farm about 15 or so years ago.
This outfit has 3,500 acres of Xmas trees up here. They use helicopters to spray fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides, and we get the drift, and then they harvest with the helicopters. They try to stay 50 feet back from our property lines (it's the law) but we find dead plants on our side occasionally, from the spraying. The noise is often intolerable. The vibration rattles our fluorescent lights.
Anyway, the Xmas tree industry is not required by federal or state law to plant a cover crop (wheat farmers are) so when we have a big rain, we get torrents of water washing tons (not an exaggeration) of top soil onto our property. The water carves out huge ditches through our pastures and deposits top soil around buildings, fences, etc. Of course much of that soil eventually makes it three miles into the Willamette River.
In the recent flood, the runoff was so bad a lot of it found its way down the county road and washed around two culverts to make the road nearly impassable. We're on a dead-end road, so [my husband] and I had to take the tractor with scoop down and do a few hours of road work so we could get in and out. We blame the tree farmers for that road problem.
They have cleared the hills of acres of old oak, fur, madrona. They have destroyed wildlife habitat for hundreds of birds and animals. I could go on and on about their ignorance and arrogance and refusal to accept any responsibility for the problems. But they'll only be here another ten years or so, until all the topsoil is gone and the trees won't grow. Nor anything else.
It's a shitty Christian tradition. Grow the trees for five or seven years, cut them down, use them to hang trinkets on for two weeks, and dump them in the streets of San Francisco or Your Town USA.
Fake Xmas trees are the perfect solution. They truly fit right in with the meaning of the holiday. "I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus."
That's the picture from our side, and Merry Fuckin' Xmas to the 'Noble' Mountain Tree Farm.
—Linda O, Salem OR

Fascinating, and infuriating. In a sane society, everything you've described would be illegal, but without a passport I can't get to a sane society.

Humanity can't continue doing this — destroying the world a few thousand acres at a time, to make a buck.

And it's not just Xmas trees. Absolutely everything that's mass-marketed — shoes and shoelaces, paper and paper clips, milk, mustard, mayonnaise, luggage and lipstick and light bulbs, everything — has a backstory that's as outrageous and ruinous as your story of the Christmas trees.

And I'm sure the manufacture of fake Xmas trees is disgusting, too.

I'm as wasteful and damaging to the world as any other ordinary guy, but you don't have to be Rachel Carson to know that this can't go on forever.

Some day, maybe some day soon, we'll have wounded the planet beyond its ability to heal. —DH

♦ ♦ ♦

I offer my sympathy (because it's free) for you and your teeth.
I can't afford to see a dentist, and my teeth are in awful shape like yours. (11/30/1995) I've had a wisdom tooth coming in for a few years now, and it's too far back to brush, so it has been rotting. It's coming out at an off angle, pointing out into my cheek. If I move my jaw the slightest bit to the left, the tooth jabs into my cheek. Compounding the problem, I grind my teeth in my sleep, and I awoke one recent morning with a mouthful of tooth fragments.
Apparently, the pressure from my molars shattered the tooth up the middle. So now when I grind my teeth, I get the sharp crag of that busted tooth carving a hole in my cheek.
The rot is spreading to the other molars now, and I have to take aspirin before going to bed, or else I get nightmares that I'm having a root canal without anesthesia (really). I'm going to have to check into the NYU dental clinic and see if those dental students can work me over on the cheap.

—Michael Jackman, Inspector 18, New York

And when all our teeth fall out, dentures will be prohibitively expensive and not covered by the insurance policies we can't afford anyway, so we'll be living on oatmeal. —DH

♦ ♦ ♦

I enjoy the fact that I can pick up your zine and read it through without wanting to retch. You're not out there doing it as an exercise to write the Great American Novel.

—Bob Flanagan, Dover NH

High praise indeed, I think.

Thank you very much, I think.

♦ ♦ ♦

Can you flush newspaper down the toilet? (4/5/1995)

— Frank R, Bay Field WI

Certainly. Not a problem at all. Anthony Lewis's columns seem especially absorbent.

If it's a serious question, my serious answer is that wiping your ass with yesterday's news can easily eliminate toilet paper from the budget. Rip out a piece of a page, fold it doubly for added protection, and wipe. You won't mistake it for Cottonelle™, but it works.

The trick is that after wiping, you fold the newspaper over itself, so the poop is inside, and then carefully rip it into smaller bits, until what you're flushing is only an inch or two wide. Assuming you need only one or two wipes to achieve adequate tidiness, it won't clog the plumbing. It's just a more direct form of recycling. —DH