

SUBTERRANEAN REDUX

little byrd books

2nd Edition 2019

www.saugustcreative.com

saugustcreative@gmail.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

For Lucy

I am subterranean, born under stars tremendously challenged - an implosion in the universe between unlikely souls - a jangle a given a regret - two lovers tumbling into each other for one night - the night which brings me to life. A memoir of my formative years would be a sad and scary read; my life between 1 and 5 dismal and not to be speaking of at length since there are worse cases than mine. Still when I speak about it in therapeutic settings it makes me cry until drowning in my own snot from a deviated septum brought on by an incident during those formative years that I would rather not review; surviving what most would deem abominable: how could all of that happen to one so young?

In those days before child welfare and foster parents were a norm, those days when families by all outward appearances were respectable well-groomed educated reliable normal, those days when what happened behind closed doors was only whispered about when the abuser was away for any length of time, when neighbors checked in on the wife / mother and children to ensure safety, in those days when the wife / mother and children were too afraid-tired-scared-brainwashed to leave their abuser: what the abominable part of the entire mess boiled down to was "what will the neighbors think"!

Still I have made it through the matrix of life, scarred yes, but no longer afraid to tell my story when the opportunity arises, for sharing is part of healing and heal we must we children born of "rape" who are then given to parents who turn the back of a hand to the cries of the little one who wets the bed instead of teaching them to toilet properly: making them sleep in the bathroom on the cold floor, naked and alone. I am not the only one who has suffered at this hand, but now you know: you have a hint at what the early part of my life was like.

In this snippet I am willing divulging bits and pieces carefully so the snot will not choke me if I begin to cry; I will not begin so much at the very beginning but at the time before I became who I am in this moment. There were those years between 6 and 13 that were awful too, though as one ages one adjusts to knowing that soon one will be free, either by death or by being cast out into life without a paddle, which is my case.

Here the story begins: changing some names as in a fictional account, for name changing is a good way to allow me to leave those who are still living a modicum of peace, yet honor the memory of those deceased who were kind and not so kind to me, since I am not writing this to be a tabloid sensation or movie of the week on one of those TV channels desperate for drama.

I was born in August, 1960 or thereabouts, to Lulu and Leon, my parents: the subject of much roil and tempest, since he being a drunkard, and she a chronic depressive had only one thing in common: they were both terrific writers. Working their craft in New York City as those Beats did then, seeking asylum from work of any kind, Leon had hooked into a group of friends that included Lulu. They were intellectuals attending parties where great literature-art-politics and societal issues were discussed, where the bongo was beaten, and the marijuana cigarette was shared. As the mind expanding consciousness of the 60's began there - so did I.

Sometime during November 1959 there were two sisters at a party enjoying jazz and cocktails, one drunkard. The younger sister, wanted to experience love for the first time with an older suave sophisticated handsome drunkard, all of an hour is what it took, the "rape" that brought me into being. But wait! It was not his doing -- but his undoing that bore me: for she seduced him!

Being in the family way, they hid her burgeoning girth under thick sweaters until she could hide no longer, then kept her at home until she could not stand it; this free spirited flower who did not realize the magnitude or consequences of her actions. Once born, they took me away from her immediately and gave me to Lulu, preparing her broken heart months in advance for what she was to become: my mother by proxy since it was her Leon who had done the deed! The romantic engagement Lulu desired became a marriage done immediately without celebration and so we became a "family" - Lulu, Leon, and me.

I was fortunate, for I had three mothers: one Jasmin, one Lulu, and one Gram who insisted I be kept, victims all, and well beyond repair long before I arrived. Our tragedy: that we could not emotionally, physically or spiritually come to some loving arrangement as kin. Tolerating each other as sisters before and after the occurrence of my being born, Lulu and Jasmin were polar opposites, one given to reading and attempting to write great literature, the other to running wild. Gram in all of this was a complicit yet docile participant, hands full of dishes and dirty diapers, forced to labor for these two spoiled products of her own loins as they tolerated her with as much respect that they did for each other: full of harangues and punishment if Gram did not comply.

Jasmin's greatest punishment was to promise me a home as a child and never supply it -- other things always seemed more important. As I have gotten older I have begun to detest her for the things she promised and did not follow through on as well as things she made me do to be close to her. I do not wish to detest her, yet how can one love a mother who births you then gives you away, promising to return to make a place for you, promising to keep you safe, then leave you with people who do not want you in the first place? Gram who advocated for my right to be, was punished for that by Lulu and Jasmin: oh it was a tangled, tangled web they wove, those subterranean daughters of an abuser. Jasmin in all of this complicit, not yet 17, sent to live with her grandparents, free in New York City to be that burgeoning sprite, with no sense of consequence or of what poor Lulu and Gram had to deal with (me). Dubbed "the slut" by her own father, "that tramp" by Lulu, all the while belittling her own mother (Gram) at every turn by running wild in Manhattan, while her grandparents slept with their earplugs in, for the bedroom in their apartment faced the street, and even after midnight the traffic rushed by in a whirl of honking horns, screaming sirens, and squealing tires. An easy deal for this errant child: Jasmin slept in the living room on a tiny couch next to the front door, had an extra key made when the grandparents were not looking, and bolted out of the building by taking the stairs down-down-down to the basement, where she then took the elevator back up-up-up to the first floor to exit that tenement on Columbia and Houston; beautiful never, a place for middle class Jews on a fixed income in the city to have a roof over their heads, and a tree outside of their fire escape window.

When the shvartza's begin moving in, my great-grandparents Berta and Misha contemplated relocating to live with their daughter, Gram. Yet that smart Jasmin talked them out of it: telling them that the real estate market in their neighborhood was burgeoning and that they would never ever find a deal on an apartment as good as the one they had, even though the smell of urine filled the hallways and graffiti marked the tired elevator walls. Once arriving safely locked in triple into their tiny one bedroom alcove, the smell of strong brewed coffee, sponge cake, and the curses in Yiddish Berta threw at Misha made one think they had arrived in a settlement somewhere in Eastern Europe.

Here is where on might ask, just who is your mother? I asked myself that question for many years until Grandpa set me straight at age 17. Driving me to the door of a restaurant he pronounced: "You will never amount to anything – you will always be a loser-tramp-bum just like your mother. Now go get a job. We are no longer taking care of you." Just like my mother the waitress, Jasmin, not the model/actress/writer Lulu who could have been a true contender, but the one who had seduced my father, Leon: one Jasmin, who at sixteen bore me as her parents stood by angry and appalled calling it "rape" by Leon, while everyone else in the family and neighborhood knew better.

Leon, that bastion of drunkenness, was very encouraged by beautiful women, Jasmin and Lulu equally beautiful, yet Jasmin more wily and less prone to temper tantrums than Lulu; proud damaged Lulu, who bore her regal beauty like a prized rose surrounded by the prickliest of thorns, while Jasmin's beauty bounded open and free like a black eyed Susan growing out of the cement sidewalk in front of a tenement building in Harlem.

Now here is where the subterranean merges:

Like Mardou and Leo out West, those darlings of Beat-ness thrown together by their mutual love of art and good books: Lulu and Leon, my "parents", East in their own city, walking arm in arm; she beautiful in late 50's garb, thick black hair piled high, Elizabeth Taylor style charcoaled eyes, plump ruby lips; he somewhat older, European suave slender mature a ladies man handsome educated wry, flying through streets of fragmented pavement in those alleyways of the West Village digging jazz and cocktails remembering some April in those lush life bars, she begging him to come home to her like the Fox Mardou begged her Percepied Leo out West. Leon on the drunk too often, his fist laying down the law, further damaging Lulu's, dignity her pride her self-respect misplaced long ago from a similar tone of fatherly love, until she craved it from him, those beatings.

These were my "parents": wounded: lost too soon to that ecstasy of despair young writers carry, beautiful and Beat in New York City, he drinking away the sins of Nazi Germany born in Vienna, forced to flee yet captured as a child ( a story I will tell in a later tome), she of being born a New York Jew begging her mother for baloney on white bread sandwiches in their upstate town to keep from being recognized as a Yid in the school lunchroom by those thick crusted meals of pastrami on rye. I remember: Leon, nursing hangovers, eating scrambled eggs with ketchup without his denture, waxing poetic about glory days when his family held court with the Queen of Austria: his family name is in that book HRH kept for visitors.

I remember, too: Lulu seeking prescription pain meds for her ongoing despair, her romance with Leon stolen from her by a younger, happier if somewhat capricious girl: her sister Jasmin. How Lulu could remain with Leon after what her sister had done to her, is another question you might ask. Yet she was forced to stay since being a "proper family" required her to put on that brave face and swallow the regret of her sister's indiscretion whole.

When Leon finally left Lulu after one too many black eyes wherein she was rescued by her older sister Bobbie's husband Stan and his brother Lawrence, she was forced to return to the chastisement of her parents who "told her so"; back to the father who ruined her in the first place, and the mother who bore the silent brunt of their incestualized Elektra. Gram's own children struggled to make sense of their father's fist too often on their mother, who back then did not know how to leave him, and began to crave it like the Fox and Percepied craved each other in their own insanity. Perhaps this is how he showed his love, my grandfather. My grandparents wounded too by life, he an orphan, she ignored by her own parents, the Depression, the Nazi's, Zionism, the Arabs, the brunt of raising five children in an upstate bungalow, Moshe Dian and Golda Myer, their only heroes.

I recall the beauty of Lulu's face, mascara running down it like black tears as she begged for some relief to an unknown voice on the dial pad telephone with the long curly cord; her sitting on the floor in agony, me a toddler; mommy is crying again and I don't know why. I remember it in droves now as waves hit my memory my flesh my bones my back my nerves screaming from those fists that flailed me (hers and grandpa's), Remembering: her face in front of me as she lay aware yet unable to speak with a tube down her throat engorging her beautiful neck in her final days; my voice caressing her to sleep: now sleep my dear Lulu, no one will flail their fists at you or I anymore.

There is something to be said for running, we are born to it, yet my crippled leg will only carry me so far. Crippled since childhood it has been a curse this bad leg of mine - shorter than the other as I grew and never really straight nor able to run fast, training myself to appear as if I am walking straight standing straight holding steady so as not to move in a crooked line always holding my body up as if it is aligned. I have hidden this crookedness; this crookedness brought on by Lulu - for she was the one who broke my leg when I was a baby holding me upside down to carry me as I howled wet and hungry, not wanting me yet forced to care. Watching insanity in the one you call mother is all the more crippling.

During the time before Leon left, Lulu and he bore me two half siblings: Tony and Sissy. Me then a toddler, Tony one year behind, and Sissy an infant raised by chronic insanity -- ravished by the only people babies can depend on, through our eyeballs to the inside of our souls. Sometimes I have to stare at myself in the mirror for a while to prove that I am still here, tracing the scars on my face from beatings and cigarette burns like a road map. They are faded to the point of only myself knowing where they are unless I invite someone to look closely; another hint of how it was back then.

With Leon gone for good, we resided with Gram and Grandpa; careful to put on a front, Lulu became exceedingly depressed angry challenged in her mothering. Gram still had a younger son at home who despised his nieces and nephew, purposely frightening Tony and me by chasing us around the house with hard objects trying to hit us, making us cower in corners behind chairs or run upstairs to hide under clothing in dark closets where he would find us and lock us in, making us cry scream beg for release until Gram heard us and lets us out.

Lulu and Grandpa were constant thorns in Gram's side, offering little support as they went off to work and school, save for money for bills and food, giving the back of a hand to Gram if she complained; hot coffee thrown in her face by Lulu one morning, a reminder that insanity still ran deeply in this clan.

Grandpa's insanity decided to make me its favorite by touching me in wrong places, forcing me to shower with him using me as sponge for his ejaculation washing me off and promising murder if I complained. His urge to touch became less and less as I grew from toddler to beyond kindergarten age; Sissy protected by Lulu and Gram was unscathed.

Here you would ask: how could Lulu care for the three of you on her own being so depressed? How could Gram stand it? Again I state that families back then who had similar challenges denied it by employing every facade imaginable. In our case, Lulu went back to school and got a job with the county, a big step beneath her bright beautiful dreams of creative success. Still she knew for all intents and purposes that she had to care for us, that much was a given, that and Grandpa's financial assistance, being that she too was his "favorite". Part of her insanity was just that - being a "favorite" \- which diminished on his part as she grew older – and was then passed on to me – that being a "favorite". It makes one recoil from the touch of a relative in an unnatural way with no one to save you for fear of the others being killed, the constant threat that you or they will be murdered if any part of the story is whispered in or outside of the home, the plastered on smiles of his friends and relatives who have a similar bent, utilizing the children at parties for their own pleasure for indeed these molesters find each other.

How it affected Tony and my dear cousin Leslie who also experienced the hands of violators at a tender age: they became addicts – turning away from their inner-selves by easing the pain with cocaine, crack, pharmaceuticals, and the lifestyle these medicines bring. On the outside, splendid, they were fine: the surface just beginning to crack under the veneer in their teens. As adults their lives chaotic, hellish: fueled with liquor drugs petty theft incarceration for Tony and a prison of insanity for Leslie – today I cannot speak of how they are doing, for I have not seen them since Lulu's passing some 8 years ago, and conjecture makes me sad except to say I hope they are doing well. I am afraid to rekindle the flame of our familial relationship for fear that it will burn me alive. Sissy escaped to some degree although she too is challenged, having becoming indulgent in her own needs and using people as she requires something from them, refusing to reach out to anyone unless it is to ask for something or complain about someone. They were like three peas in a pod Sissy, Lulu and Gram; protected from the ravishes Sissy was, although she was chosen to care for Lulu and Gram at a tender age as their confidant. In adulthood this has not served her well – she has become a bastion of do-good-ness to her disadvantage as a means of saying "I am worthy."

Upon moving to our own home so Lulu can attempt to mother us, Grandpa comes to visit, finding us in this big lonely house out in the country at the end of a road a few miles from town. I will not go near him and always hide in the tall grass allowing him to spend time with Tony and Sissy away from my 9 year old self. I cannot be in the same room with him and yet I am afraid he will hurt them, so I hide close enough to the house to ensure I can help if one of them cries out but they never do. Perhaps he has outgrown his penitent for touching in the wrong places, perhaps he senses that if he does touch, one of us will kill him, and it will be me. I lie in the tall grass in the thick heat of that summer, watching dark rain clouds drift by waiting for the heat to blow away, allowing the cool rush of heavy rain to beat my body down into the grass as Grandpa drives away right before a torrent.

We remain in this house while Lulu has an affair with a married man who promises to leave his wife, then moves that wife and his three daughters in with us because they have nowhere to go upon eviction. The wife becomes our maid while he sleeps with Lulu, and his daughters, older than myself, Tony and Sissy, help around the house, hypnotic in their beauty, reminding me of Jasmin who also comes to visit, bringing me a black kitten with mange that I name Maxwell after the silver hammer that has slipped through my child's fingers now that Grandpa has quit his games with me. Max disappears after a few weeks, let out by Tony or Sissy - always jealous if I get something, stealing my hard scrabble allowance of $1.50 every two weeks when Lulu gets paid by taking it from the handmade plaster piggy bank, pink with a yellow flower that Gram bought for me on a trip to Mexico to teach me how to save. The theft of my money and loss of my pet make me wonder if I will ever have anything of my own.

After Lulu dumps the married man she cycles through another, a nice normal Brit with a son who is Tony's age. Sadly he is not abusive enough for her, so the second man she calls husband, proves himself to be worse than Leon: an addict a thief a molester. Marrying Lulu when I am 13 after we have moved into a new house, which Grandpa helps her buy, he feigns interest in her children as a father – playing ball with Tony who is 12 teaching him how to pitch, buying a bike for Sissy who is 9 and teaching her to ride, and tucking me in at night asking me if I have begun to menstruate at 13 as he rubs my budding breasts through the blanket. I am repulsed. Spurning him, he turns on me, tells Lulu lies about me, lies that cause her to beat me because she cannot lose this man this man who has her trapped by his abusive ways no fist could be worse than, the mind fuck that is this man: "I love you, baby, but I'm going to leave you, baby, back to my other woman who still wants me". Lulu: too weakened emotionally and spiritually to defend herself, succumbing to his every antic to cajole wheedle intimidate connive and take over every bit of her soul until all she can do is hide in her home for fear of going out and losing it all, her mind attuned to his every command like a master who teaches his dog to do tricks at will with no reward, save for his evil company.

His own damaged children move in with us for a brief while; they are wild and unmanaged. Lulu despises them so he in turn begins to despise us: their common negligence as parents becoming rampant, we are all one big happy nut house. At 16 I run into the arms of Tom dear Tom who makes me a woman, stealing my heart with his tender kisses and half meant promises, making me sing to him while I am naked under his robe saying I could be a star in the universe like Ronstadt or Mitchell, us friends and lovers on and off until his passing at 49: its certain that only the good do die young. And Ruben dear Ruben who made no empty promises who wanted me after Tom quit me: a woman child, too grown already, knowing I wanted out of there, knowing that I had to get out of there to become myself as I am today, knowing that Ruben would not survive the mess of my family; me loving him in the deepest channel of my heart, for he saved me at a crucial time for something greater by letting me go.

Here I am today, a woman crippled by time with this leg, yet stronger in my soul and knowing I am in the right place. The urge to run still creeps in when I think back to Tom, Ruben; and Brinda, my dearest friend in high-school, and how she saved me that winter Lulu and her husband locked me in the basement to sleep, pretending all was well during daylight hours; her Aunt Babbs took me in too, when I had finally had enough of my cold pallet and fending off that stepfather's advances. How would I have gotten this far without those angels protecting me back then? There are others too, in the recesses of my mind that time will not forget - for better or worse \- the ones I love and still connect with know who they are, the ones I despise (at least most of them) are dead and buried.

I am old enough to leave home now and must, otherwise I will be thrown out for good. Here comes the moment where I am really on my own, moving to reside with Leslie and her mom and sister in Florida for a summer before college, graduating high-school early, alone as a class of one to get away from bad press brought on by stepdad's antics selling drugs while Lulu cares for other kids in similar straits as a probation officer. That false face appears again in her work while her own children are raised under the thumb of a tyrant and molester. Finding them guilty, a judge removes the stepfather from our home pronouncing incarceration for both of them if he returns. Somehow Grandpa intervenes to protect his "favorite", and the stepfather is allowed back in, under the condition that Grandpa and Gram manage us as surrogates who visit once a day to ensure our "safety". The nuthouse becomes a full-fledged asylum.

So I am off to Florida with a small suitcase and a couch to sleep on – to be a servant to Lulu's older sister Bobbie, Leslie, and her younger sister Darla, paying rent by working as a waitress "just like your mother", never amounting to anything". Leslie full figured blossoming brown from the sun beautiful in her last year of high-school; the boys traipsing after her with tongues lolling to the floor; she chooses Saul the neighborhood dealer for her companion and fruitfully manifests her drug filled tirades. Bobbie kicks her out right before I move back East to go to college.

College then University: something Lulu had planned for me as a means of ensuring that I would not waste my life as a child of no one: her way of giving me something meaningful, even if her love and care as I grew up were spotty at best, and who could blame her, forced into it as she had been. Her main reason for sending me to school was so I that I could meet a man: a doctor or a lawyer was what she had in mind for me. Showing a gift for music at an early age I told her I would only go if I could study just that, so off I went a few miles away to community college to reside in my own apartment, work, and study while Lulu helped pay the rent so as to maintain some dignity in her motherly obligations. By this time we were well established as "mother and daughter" even though we rarely felt comfortable in each other's presence alone together, our silence while driving somewhere together marked by her inhale of one of many cigarettes or a popular song on the radio that we would both sing to.

Lulu had a voice like an aged opera star who had succumbed to working the chorus, slightly off key high and solid with a tremolo that did not mesh well with the voices of Tony, Sissy, and me when we attempted four part harmony. Each of us sang well and on pitch, enough so that we could have been like the Osmond's or Jackson's if we had been nurtured in that direction, singing being one of the things that bound us as kin, making us relaxed in each other's company if only until the song ended, this damaged quartet of full blooded gypsies, nurturing wounds that lay too deep to heal without years of introspection and much time.

Now college was a gift that allowed me to experience life as an adult: disciplined and capable: I worked and held up my end of the bargain, achieving high marks, paying bills and eventually moving in with a boyfriend who became the father of a child that was slated for heaven early on. Drinking away his Roman Catholic upbringing and the fact that his once handsome face had been rearranged by some nutcase with a crowbar when he had been in the Navy, Billy was an amicable drunk, given to falling into death like sleep and wetting the bed until the mattress was soaked through with urine. The child that would have been his I chose to terminate at age 19. I could not see myself with a drunkard as a father, and also wanting that career as a professional in music; after two years with Billy who was kind about our parting I went off to University - we remain friends still today.

During the summer before that fateful drive to Connecticut to attend school I lived in New York with Jasmine, who by now was living with her common law husband Arturo and their son Jose. Arturo and Jasmine had set up a thriving drug dealing operation years before, selling large quantities of marijuana and cocaine across state lines. Their business enabled them to purchase part ownership in a building in Manhattan that Jasmine still owns today even though Arturo is dead and buried long ago, given that he had been an IV user and drank; his health declining as we cared for him, Jasmin and me, until he succumbed to his eternal rest when I was 23. Standing next to Jasmine and Jose at the funeral parlor as we gazed into his open coffin, I silently thanked him for being a good father, for he ensured that his nefarious crew of transporters did not molest or corrupt me during those years before I turned 18, when I would visit them at length to help Jasmin with Jose when Arturo first became ill.

Still, having just turned 18, Arturo's best friend Dan caught me in the hallway of their building to play kissy face, his drunken mouth and tongue lurching to find mine as he pressed against me sensuously to show me his manhood. Kissing him back the taste of beer lingered long afterward, and I in my idiocy of still being a teenager fell for him, if only briefly, since he was married and would not consider an affair outside of a few kisses now and then. Those denizens who seemed like a real family sitting around smoking fat marijuana cigars, talking music poetry culture politics, snacking on exotic foods, including me as an equal because I was of Jasmine's blood, born to be her servant at crucial times, her advocate at others, when I was old enough to tell Grandpa and Lulu to stop treating her like trash; given the back of a hand for defending her. Still the consistency of her presence in my life during those times when she did come to visit as promised, and later as I was able to spend more time with her as an adult, have made me circumspect. She is not my favorite person today, although I do understand why she did what she did when she did it with Leon, thereby causing my being alive to occur.

In University I met no doctor or lawyer but did engage in a brief affair with my piano teacher, a male slut of the highest order, if a brilliant educator, taking advantage of me throwing myself on him because I was seeking a mentor and was prone to falling in love with older suave handsome sophisticated brilliant if unattainable men. "Dumping" me for the music department secretary whom he had been having a relationship with well in advance of my arriving at those hallowed halls, sitting drunkenly outside of his office after hours with other students wallowing in what we thought was his greatness and wondering how he could leave us behind to spend his weekends with the secretary in Larchmont – oh it was a tangled, tangled web we wove we subterranean children attuned to jazz and cocktails remembering some April in Paris as we practiced our dissonant chords and modalities, feigning hipness yet knowing we were products of white middle class houses and summer camps where we learned to swing, before our acceptance into this higher echelon of musical education.

For me it was a lesson in distance from my family: for I was older than most of the group, more experienced and already gigging professionally in NYC on weekends when I was not sitting outside of the male slut professor's office stoned on cheap wine and pot still digging Punk and the Allman's as any girl brought up by eclectic nomadic Jewish gypsies would.

That jazz was a part of my DNA by proxy, since it had been played to me by Leon as a way to soothe my colicky stomach aches as an infant while Lulu worked nights, the only sound that would put me to rest was the gentle crooning of Leon's favorite addict trumpeter Chet Baker, whose soft lullaby's ring in my memory as if they have always been there.

After University and leaving with an honors degree with nowhere to go save back to Jasmin's, I was fortunate to have a creative friend invited me to share an apartment with him and another creative soul in Inwood right above Washington Heights, where we wrote songs and poetry and lived as responsible adults, me working a day job as a waitress in a Greek diner on 200th Street – just like Jasmine, amounting to that much as Grandpa had predicted. Finally deciding to move back downtown where it was "happening", and find work that was oriented toward more creative output, Jasmin leased me one of the apartments that she now owned at a rent a few hundred dollars below market, 5 flights above the world in Chelsea, alone and free to carry on as I would, with her and Jose a stone's throw away in the apartment below. Rebelling, paying the rent less frequently as a means of getting back at her and making her take care of me, too – all the while knowing that she would eventually be paid because the deeper part of me refused to be, and still does today, to be indebted to anyone.

Being that I was no longer indentured to her, Lulu, or Bobbie. NYC lay wide open to me, allowing me to sing and discover my musical ability on my own terms. In my naiveté I auditioned for jobs in theater thinking my brilliance would be recognized and that I would instantly catapult to stardom – to no avail – try as I might, though gifted with a voice and solid acting abilities, I could not dance given the crippled leg and a sense of direction in dance class that made me go stage left when everyone else went stage right; cast not as that triple threat that so many producers sought during cattle calls. Once: an audition for an all-black cast project at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, waiting online for my turn to be called, looking out of place as the only light colored specimen for blocks around, finally getting on stage, singing a Negro spiritual from the depths of my soul, only to be told that I was "too white" for a part as a colored girl for whom rainbows held no promise.

So my years in Manhattan lead to temp jobs and gigs, singing here and there with bands of my own design prompting me to more and more of solo design until today it has lead me to writing, for in writing there is great solitude which I often crave, to think reflect heal and prepare for whatever else life has in store.

This part comes next because it is closer to the redux and the end before a new beginning: wandering away from that family after two husbands - failures all around: one a thief, one a drunkard - what's to tell - it was in my formative DNA to choose these type of characters. Moving across the fields of the country with a third husband to begin a new life, only to be called back to care for Lulu in her dying.

This third husband and I traveled one entire year from Pittsburgh to New Mexico; he escaping his own childhood of abuse wherein he was raped; molested by his mother, and I still burying my own stories of similar circumstances; we children of molesters always find each other. Beginning to show signs of wanting to molest again, we pick up, move away before he can lay hands on an innocent, all of our belongings in an old camper, no air conditioning, and cold as hell in the living quarters even with heat on during winter. Reaching Texas: the heat is rampant, smelling of cow dung factory disembowelment, our rescue dog licks her chops at the smell as we drive by the factories, covering our noses and gagging while we are made hysterical from the gas, arriving finally in New Mexico. Green brown hilly cold mountains and sunshine coagulating the frost on the camper's windows, it's beauty appealing, yet I am always freezing and lost for what to do next stuck in this camper with a husband who has given up save for his modest disability income: he is happy with what we have and has no plans for the future. I am depressed, the brown is all I can fathom; a plan of action does not come to me readily as it usually does. I sit with my morning coffee watching the sun rise, buried in this blanket of this brown-ness, waiting.

Escape comes through a phone call from home.

"Mommy (Lulu) is ill, you are needed to help care for her and I will care for Gram", Sissy pronounces over the airwaves from thousands of miles away.

Gram now old, incontinent, and crippled, abandoned by her children except for me and Sissy; we are her lifeline as we have been since the day we were born, me a testament to the tramp daughter, Sissy to the damaged daughter, the one with the temper so violent it broke the tramp's nose with a baseball bat when they were children, or so the story goes to hide the fact that she was my real mother, since we (Jasmin) and I have similar noses, and as a toddler I would always ask why her nose was just like mine. And so the escape is planned.

After settling the third husband, in with a new dog for company, I promise to return to this lovely spot on the mountain in the forest, a single-wide pretty secure cozy for one damaged man who cannot steer clear of molesting children because of his own molestation, even after the years in prison -- he must push the urge down - hold it in so it does not explode, for this time he will be jailed indefinitely, and placed on a registry. I never return to the brown for fear that it will swallow me whole.

Making it back East, small suitcase in tow to care for Lulu under great duress; weakened by diabetes and cigarettes, her liver won't fix itself: white blood cells rampant in her body will not allow for healing: she is losing ground and gaining awareness. Stepfather as always a bastion of loathing, still hating him for the way he treated her and us as children, yet remaining courteous until he threatens to send her back to the hospital because in his own words "his life is more important than hers", this wife he claims to love; his love so negligent that it finally causes her to cease to exist.

I still see the tube in her throat, her eyes shit brown colored with the liquid of her disease, her lungs filling up with it until she literally drowns in her own crap and bile. I want to murder him this stepfather, take him out crush his skull squash his testes run a sharp knife through his heart as he stands by her bed in mock mourning. He has accomplished what he set out to do, he has killed her, gets the house, the bank accounts everything that was hers is now his. A perverse twist of fate: in two years' time he is dead and gone to dementia from Hep C after years of IV drug use, alone in that house where he killed her; those bank accounts drained by two brothers - one by blood the other by circumstance.

October comes after this cruel summer: I sit in this seaside town in Massachusetts outside of the occult shop where I have worked part time, wrapped in a blanket of deepening blue after Lulu's passing to wait, sensing that "a change" will happen soon. Showing up finally, "the change" sells travel guides for gays around the world, this salesman who pitches me an opportunity to work for him, "Call me in week and we'll tawk, we'll tawk", I in a relaxed mood for a moment, receptive and knowing this is the way out of here -- away from the stepfather -- before I commit murder or suicide or both.

November brings the rain: those Nor'easters so famous on the Cape as I sit in the basement apartment loaned to me by those occult store operators, my true brothers, watching the storm raging outside of the sliding glass doors, the wind howling, as the rage and sadness howl inside of me knowing that Lulu is now in the whirlwind of the universal consciousness. Curled up like a child in my bed wanting this salesman to protect me; hold me like a child afraid of the dark my mommy my mommy my mommy is dead and I have nowhere to go.

This salesman and I, we "tawk". I buy a bright red wool coat and decent walking shoes from a church sale to look presentable, walking the length of this seaside town selling ads to businesses just closing until next season, doing so well that I am shortly on a plane for Boston to sell there, the slippery ice under my thick soled too large men's shoes keeping me stable on this ice with extra socks for warmth.

In Boston the hotel is paid for and there is money coming in, the Hilton 16th floor $8 dollar buffet breakfast with leftovers for dinner: apples bagels lox with capers and tomatoes and cream cheese always hot coffee a thick white robe slippers a king sized bed a computer desk. Exhausted, I find some solace pretending I am a princess in another land. In the lobby they greet me as the princess "welcome, welcome, how may we serve". I want to stay here forever wrapped in this luxury away from the thought of that stepfather and those other people called family. After Lulu's death escaping the bounds of them: this unappreciative and hurtful family, seeking a place to bury my grief, to start over anywhere away from them, yet I miss them so, my rose colored glasses on through my grieving - oh my sister my brother my aunt my birth mother where are you in this time of need when we should cling together like so many grapes to a vine instead of being blown apart like so much chaff from the wheat stalks of our tenuous clan. It is only now eight years later that I can conjure them up without that deep anger sadness grief oh my cousins my uncles my Gram who bore the brunt of this group's scorn.

She could not possibly have understood what it meant to be an abused woman back in the 50's, 60's, 70's; inurned to it -- accepting it as part of her daily routine, the abuse the back of a hand from her husband, her children grown to despise her as she teaches other children in a one room school house: the 60's 70's 80's raising three more children when she should be retiring to some beach in a warm clime \- one of the slut's two of the damaged daughter's, her own hatred of herself and her condition confining her to a prison of servitude loneliness and neglect by her own sons and daughters in her dotage.

Lulu rose as a seagull there on the horizon of the bay in that seaside village, her ashes spread like fairy dust, while her own mother sat in her easy chair cared for by that lovely Jamaican nurse for a long weekend so Sissy could host a memorial: apples, bagels, lox, cream cheese always hot coffee. Gram crippled and demented, not realizing a piece of herself has now flown into the light of heaven.

After we "tawked" that salesman and I, the she-gull Lulu followed me from that village to Boston to Brooklyn, around the country as I traveled, following me all the way West to right outside of my hotel window – she was always there, watching. Thrown into the universe after Lulu's passing, sensing that my rage and despair would only abate with travel and solitude in cheap hotels, the type where soaps are given out sparingly, where toilet paper is a commodity best used in small bunches, using small bath towels for floor mats for long hot baths taken in too short tubs, baths meant for years of tears to dissolve in after many up in the air hours, aching spine and feet, towing two small suitcases one for clothing the other sales materials, my large briefcase replete with laptop cell phone pretending through grief to be making deals big deals those deals brought on by selling advertising to businesses that have no business buying ads for travel guides in the first place.

No one has any money in any city I visit except the tourists who want the shopping the shopping the shopping the shopping, but not at those places advertised in this particular travel guide. Play-hiding my sadness during daylight hours traveling from East to West coast to Vancouver then Seattle, begging my broken wounded spirit not to jump into the fray of despondency yet realizing that I am head over heels in already.

Finally reaching San Francisco selling those doomed ads for a brief moment more, before starting to come to myself again, finally landing after hustling from one state to the next for nine months of travel with little rest to keep from imploding, the sadness attached to Lulu's death like a leech eating my flesh blood sanity.

Now my redux begins: as I first saw it:

Market Street, summer 2008: teeming with humanity like a hospital waiting room, the masses on the street in sleeping bags, in long jagged lines for the church meal, squatting in doorways for the dealer needing crack; a disabled homeless man drops trou' to defecate there on the street for lack of public facilities, his urgency obvious by the size of his bowel movement, lonely men exiting the peep show across from the donut shop near the disability lawyer's office; a few hundred yards from city hall, a tent city in UN Plaza, no different than the streets in any other American city, though more condensed. The view from that first hotel on Market and McAllister, its tri-corner fifth floor window facing an entire universe, open to all who looked up at me, naked for sleeping in the humid night air, the curtains remaining drawn except to see if Lulu as a seagull had followed me here: there she is perched on the church spire waiting for a crumb from someone's church sandwich, watching!

Everyone living on the street has a church issued gray blanket with red and blue speckles; it is cold at night here in this subterranean redux; the foggy night air chills to the bone. Churches hand these blankets out - there are hundreds of people shrouded in these blankets in wheelchairs on street corners in back booths of all night eateries, hands askew on the hood of a police car: "I wasn't waitn' for no dealer officer I was squatting to relieve myself", sit-lie has not yet been established, people camp out everywhere arranged in neat rows on the sidewalk in tattered sleeping bags leaving just enough room for pedestrians to pass. I trade my red wool for another thrift store buy, a pleather platinum colored raincoat still pretending I am successful. After a week, I give this new coat to another thrift store then purchase a large gray shawl to wear over my short denim jacket so they recognize me as one of them: homeless in the land of Leo and Mardou.

San Francisco captures me: becoming intimate so quickly with its perverse beauty, its damaged underbelly of lost souls clinging to the dreams of Leo and Mardou as if they still exist in the shadows of the tall buildings as day becomes night. There they go walking after midnight together amidst the homeless and addicts, forever embedded in the city's tempest and soil. Peeking out between the plastic slatted blinds after sips of cheap red wine, a gift from the hotel as a welcome to the city, I am in their best room for a week in this city of a thousand million dreams ago where Leo and Mardou walked arm in arm.

Now Nordstrom's, H&M, Macy's, Sketcher's, sell bastions of cheaply made overpriced goods born of workers enslaved in China Bangladesh Pakistan Mexico sold along its berth, this Market Street; it's trolley running from the giant rainbow bright flags at the Castro where it is almost safe -- legal to be loving someone of your own kind, to the Embarcadero's fancy shops, uneven cobbled streets, to the Ferry building at Fisherman's Wharf opening to the teeming pedestrians, gawking tourists with money -- no one in this city has any money save for the tourists, who take photos of upper Market Street beyond the stores, marveling at the tents and filth and stench of humanity - a whiff of Calcutta this American village by the bay, before returning to their high rent hotels to call text email friends in other cities: "San Francisco is overrun with homeless people, but the shopping the shopping the shopping the shopping the shopping!"

For those of us believing that music, art and poetic writings still carry the hope of the loved and the dying, that it walks and breathes and sleeps and wakes like those lover's: forever etched in the memory of this city: there still walk Leo and Mardou.

I move to a hotel in the Castro as a part of my employ, a few weeks here to work the district, it is after all a gay travel guide. "Tawk" to everyone I possibly can my boss admonishes sell sell sell. I sell and sip cheap wine in between sales to keep myself from falling into the abyss of grief. Lulu appears as a drunken homeless woman right outside of the hotel doorstep; I recognize her running mascara from toddler days, she is bloated and blotched in torn clothing, returned from death for a moment to let me know that she prefers it to what her life was and that she has chosen this drunken body to check on me. She tells me I will be just fine, then smiling her cigarette stained smile, she asks for one but I do not smoke; still she asks so I know it is her. I turn to face the traffic for a moment – turning back to face her, Lulu is gone.

I do not like the Castro it is loud and ubiquitous: everyone is too fabulous and the drinks and food are too expensive. I keep to myself in the hotel where they allow me use of the upright piano. I play then drink cheap wine and sleep. I cannot eat, my appetite has diminished, my budget is floundering a few more days in this hotel and not knowing what will happen next causes immense anxiety: just like when I was a kid waiting for Jasmine to come visit me, such anxiety: does she love me, will she take me home with her: she never did for long until I was older and could help around the house as her servant, Lulu's servant, Gram's servant.

I walk through the Castro with extra food in my briefcase for anyone who is hungry, still serving. The Chinese woman, Betty, who cuts my hair says "Oh, you have gray hair, a sign of wisdom: do not color it". I color it a dark red for power and prosperity; wisdom can wait.

Finally quitting the traveling job that brought me there, screaming into my cell phone after bounced paychecks to that salesman on the other end of the line in New Jersey, standing outside of the rock n roll art gallery on Geary that sells prints and paintings of Mick, Elton, The Who, The Airplane, Jimmie, Janis for about what one would earn over six months' time on an average salary sell sell sell: arguing with the salesman about my overdue green and grass which is legal to smoke in SF with a card:

"Show me the money, motherfucker! By the way, the Stones made millions smoking copious amounts of the stuff!" I hold him hostage to his empty promises until my checks are paid in full and I am off to the races again.

As I wait for the money I visit Leslie near Yosemite, she had begged me to come take care of her after Lulu died, she too was molested as a child in our crazy home and has not resolved it, so is now prone to inherent narcissism and ever more serious drug usage. After two weeks an argument ensues, the police are called, I am escorted to a convenience store where I beg a ride to a bus station some twenty miles away making it back to SF with a few bucks to spare.

Holing up in the Majestic Hotel, Gough and Geary hot summer days, the lovely manager there took a shine to me when I went to pitch those travel guide ads to her. The room is gratis for one week everything else I must pay for when the check arrives. Cool and quiet above the street, I blow a short joint in the bathroom over incense while the tub runs hot and immerse myself, releasing years of tears again while thinking what to do what to do what to do, then sleep.

Morning: in my thrift store suit realizing anything is possible especially after that good joint and hot bath deciding once that check arrives to place most of it in the bank. 11 a.m. the Gold Dust lounge on Powell Street: myself and this fake haired queen drinking way too early, whiskey in coffee with whipped cream my nerves jangling like the giant cables holding the trolley cars up, walking from the hotel in the rising heat to cash that last check praying for a home job boyfriend no specific order intended.

"Excuse me." this queen asks after I program my new cell phone bought at the Walgreens next door, the type one buys minutes for, since the salesman in New Jersey had demanded I send the other one back to him for someone else to "tawk" into. The queen asks if I would like to meet a nice Jewish man who runs his own business. Of course I say yes, so we call him on my new cell phone, my first call on that phone to one Bobby, from the Bronx who has been in SF since the '60's and owns pet stores. The queen wants me as a replacement girlfriend for this Bobby since he (the queen) does not like the current one. Bobby is happy to invite me to dinner to meet him and his 13 year old son. The queen supplying the address says that he too will be there and see you at 8 its bashert!

This Bobby a gem but depressed and angry at his old lady for fucking with him over money and the kids, a nice man, generous to a fault and kind, allowing me to stay with him and the queen for a few months in exchange for housework while I find my way.

Haight Ashbury, Wells Fargo. That same summer the stock market crashes: tumbling rolling like those dice in the song: no one has any money now! I sit waiting in my thrift store suit playing dress up for the beautiful lesbian banker in necktie who denies my line of credit as nicely as can be: watching that market tumble on the big screen TV placed just behind the tellers so one knows what to or not to withdraw. Music up on the Sirrus: - "Baby, You're a Rich Man Now!"

I decide to use the last check to start a new business moving out of Bobby's to get myself together, I am bound for SRO to SRO until I meet one Kim in North Beach in the oldest saloon in the city, the smell of piss cigarettes cheap wine and beer, who says her boyfriend needs a roommate. I am certain I have found a home until the bed bugs over run us in that apartment on Geary Street, that crazy musician boyfriend of Kim's wacked out all day on expensive pot and anxiety meds, using anything to stay wasted. The bed bugs thrive on me in the closet as my bedroom office music studio, signing up for grad school for loan money to pay the rent.

Applying for GA and food stamps, I meet Gary. Thinking him to be a spy sitting next to me (I am becoming paranoid) telling me he plays music and so do I can I come work with him he's got gigs needs someone to play to spell him for a cig break 20 minutes max in fancy places mostly, where we can pretend that the jazz and cocktails lush life is still thriving, but not too many gigs. I need the money from GA and to be on record for disability that I am pending, this crippled leg of mine becoming worse, and something else now too: I cannot breathe, I shake and stutter, lassitude no energy every muscle in agony hard to eat sleep crap rest unless I drink cheap wine and smoke good soothing pot. Gary brings me sacks of groceries after waiting in line at the church while I am weakening. We play music and become friends.

Using orange oil and green alcohol to keep from jumping overboard; the bed bugs driving me slightly insane, that next hotel on Clay the worst, the one on California Street next to worse, even the one on Van Ness, the one where Gary and I entertain for tips on Wednesdays, an hour of songs and sing along "willkommen bienvenue" cheap wine free cheese and crackers, three fabulous older ladies taking us for dinner at the steam table bar across the street, large quantities of spaghetti and meatballs, more cheap wine: loving them like maiden auntie's who cared, if too briefly, about our well-being.

Before my right leg cripples up even more, walking to whichever room I held for the moment, three weeks here three weeks there, the city's way of ensuring transients remain just that. GA gives $425 a month for rent once qualified directly to the hotel. Those irrepressible fucking bed bugs cause sores, driving me mad - the pain only reduced by baths in oatmeal seeking shelter elsewhere. Finally the room in North Beach at Casa Melissa Union Street is ready: waiting a solid year to get in then not moving for two since this hotel is different – finally, a place to land as the redux continues.

But I have skipped over a part here: the part where I quit that job of sales yet not before meeting Kay, the beautiful transgender who invites me to a rally for HRC at the used to be posh Fairfield on Powell Street. Slinking up to it with venom in my eyes after explaining to my soon to be ex-boss that she (Kay) is not worthy of the same legalities under the LGBT laws -- those laws that HRC forgot to include in the workforce act. Convincing Kay to go inside and make a statement, I kiss her for luck across her meaningful mouth then walk with her arm in arm up the stairs into the lobby, past the gay kids in their punk garb, too out of date but this is San Francisco and its okay, past the trans kids in tutu's and mustaches past the front desk of this used to be posh place.

Kay dressed as any beautiful lady would be while I in staid thrift store business attire, come, Kay, now is your moment to shine. The burley blackbody guard at the door of the ballroom asking if he can assist us, Kay declining entry for fear of being a "cause celeb" even though she already is one in a manner of speaking. Taking me to that party the gay district rep held for those at the rally perhaps 100 kids in tutus mustaches punk clothing out of style, Kay and I drinking cheap wine eating pizza loudly cursing the establishment HRC, and knowing she and I will be friends and more if only briefly.

After a few weeks of Kay's hospitality where I sleep on her carpeted floor facing the ocean in Pacifica the blue surf and bright sky pound each other like the cheap wine hangover I keep during those weeks - what to do what to do. I am taken back to the city to Vallejo Street at the top of it to Russian Hill where one climbs the set of long stairs through a garden to the other side of town.

Now staying with Rainey who is more crippled than I, and in need of a paid companion after her husband Jay freaks out on bad weed and worse wine, throwing a ladder at a policeman, finally taking him away for a summertime fling in the pokey, their filthy apartment in bad need of cleaning, Maryjane plants running amok in every room except for mine. Rainey: an advocate for the movement, a nun a singer of songs about growing some funk of your own amigo, fighting for her crazy man Jay, who uses her good graces to fend off his demons. They have been growing green together for many years -- he loves she loves they love each other and lots of POT - anyone in their midst must acquiesce or leave them be.

Those of us there in North Beach then were nomads; each seeking something meaningful like Leo and Mardou, casting crumbs of friendship to each other, bits of cheese bread cheap wine short joints and art to maintain the validity of a long lost subculture: standing in the doorways of the galleries on Green Street with lit marijuana sticks couched in palms, wine in paper cups, discussing politics or science or philosophy like the Fox and Percepied, yet overrun by our need for attention and instant gratification, our collective, stumbling toward the out stretched arms of the church, as St. Paul's glistened like a giant trophy bidding the teeming mess of tourists across Union Square to step inside. Even the old Italians did not so much do mass any more unless it was Palm Sunday, and no more now since the Pope has deemed gay marriage a right.

In North Beach: anything was possible - we were all transient artistic trying our hands at anything to earn a living - the rent in those SRO's not so cheap as when Leo and Mardou lived on Heavenly Lane – our communal spirit sharing weed wine and whatever the local food banks offered; we thrived on each other's company so we would not fall through the cracks of humanity.

So many Chinese living in SF's Chinatown that the spit and boogers flung from their mouths and noses was all over the district made me first think it was some anti-American sentiment; realizing it as the only way one Chinese could have any personal space: spit or snot around one's-self kept others at a distance. Watching the women do their dancing; their red fans waving like communist banners in front of the Church, that building where God lives and who dares to defile His name: Union Square park filled each morning with the spitting snotting Chinese, for exercise, walks, meetings, me with coffee and a joint hobbling to engage in my morning of misery as my muscles shrink and my spirit lowers.

"How have I become this crippled overnight?" I ponder, then remind myself that I always have been.

The group at the Café Trieste where Eddie who welcomed me first to this carnival and became a good friend steady an uncle type who had my wellbeing in his heart wanting me to succeed in that algebra in grad school even paying for the tutor who was for dreck. Then Anthony inviting me later to help run his gallery on Greene Street that place where art was culminated on particle board or canvas paper or wood just so long as it came to life: modern young fresh, and me knowing how to sell sell sell. Anthony and I were the perfect foils! Celebrating art as life, poetry as bread, music as meat, each of us clamoring for a taste of it Fanny, Ron, Rebecca, Peter, Jessica, Momo, Hackett, and North: I love you all as art and poetry and music beyond bread and meat: you gave this bird sanctuary.

Dowling made it out first: perhaps he knew his death was imminent even though it surprised us all; thin and withdrawn after teaching ESL in VietNam though his art still tugged at us, its simple beauty weathering in the dying sunlight of poorly framed watercolors needing attention; we all responded to his passing via Facebook as the world is wont to do now, the collective crying yet so much less, jagged and raw in writing: "a great guy - we will miss him". Dowling may have preferred to remain anonymous: in the grand scheme of things his profile is still online.

Next, my dear Eddie tossed out after 25 years in the same building at 65, where to go with a tumor the size of an egg in your brain and heart failure, finally leaving his temporary SRO on Green Street for a shared walk up in the Tenderloin, now feeling fit though forgetful after so much mass was removed from his head. No more to the church does he lurch his way across the park, save to light a candle for his deceased wife and mother, still wondering why his father called him Bridget, the fist once too often on him as a child, and Eddie's mother too -- craving it like Percepied did the Fox toward the end \-- we children always find each other when mommy is crying and we don't know why.

Then Nitro's heart stopped as promised in its prime time, making blues wail from the stage of what is still just a dive bar in the guise of an historic landmark and that jazz pianist James who grew up East near where I was fomented, he too, a nomad, making his way west, allowing me to steal tip money from his jar after too many glasses of Malbec for the jazz scene that never was in this modern North Beach, his cancer a shock to my system as I sit at his piano to play, my crippled leg howling mad like Ginsburg unless soothed by strong red wine and stronger weed: a true friend will allow the theft of tip money for this purpose and wait for its return when the GA check arrives.

We all seemed to be near death except for Jimmie who cried like a baby as to why his wife would leave him after his year-long affair and why he was doomed to live in SRO's, while Steve developed nuclear fission in his tiny room, and talked of Jesus as if he'd finally found a true friend. Now Dee still drinks to his heart's content - it seems that visit to Nicaragua may have caused his cancer to vanish, his muse is still alive; valid as it ever was at the Melt. That banker I crushed on for a minute is probably six feet under after so many rounds at the bar, the tatters of his illustrious career imprinted on the seat of the bar stools in every neighborhood haunt, listening to me tell the kids at the Piazza wine bar how revolution was imminent, that they were next in line, him smiling drunkenly all the while -- a testament to the failure of banks and privileged persons whose credit cards carry large lines of dollars that have the value of a few drachmas. There in North Beach: the bouncer from that same dive bar delivered wine and marijuana to me when I could not walk, now that it is legal it holds no mystery, before though, in that tri-windowed room against the lamp light of Columbus Avenue, the swirling sweet smoke creeping through the hallway hidden behind thick incense while I threw dollar bills out the window of my lair to the drunken hobo artist, Beandro, collecting his work for a friend in New York who is now six feet under too, my dear Freddy, dead in his easy chair at 56, see what has become of my best college friend, gone too soon with punk still so in fashion in San Francisco. If Freddy had survived he would have studied at the San Francisco School of Cheese, making a name for himself - it was the curds that were his undoing! Still to this day I am keeping in touch now with one man who inspired my first jaunt of published writing: a legal eagle named MT – stone cold sexy and dark as night – a champion of art and all that is good! Our friendship akin to those souls who recognize each other from some past lifejourney, like Leo and Mardou.

By now I am completely crippled and still attempting a brave face: Eddie buys me heat wraps at $8 bucks a pack - I am swollen from head to toe with inflammation and excruciating pain, smoking weed and drinking wine to function. Grad school begins and I fail algebra once, almost pass twice but not enough to make the grade – now the banker and I will never be a team. My friend, Milly, in the room across the hallway has a breakdown and buys me pajamas as if I am her deceased husband. She has that crazy look on her face just like Lulu did when she would break down, except this time there is no running mascara, just Milly running through the building stuffing up toilets with rolls of toilet paper and cutting laundry off the line. She will not rest until finally I urge her to go to the hospital.

When the police come to remove her she lays in the street in the rain as we wait for the ambulance the cops cursing her for being nuts. I stay with her telling her it will be alright, covering her with my coat and letting her keep it -- she wants to die she says, I tell her that death is not an option -- yet in reality, I want to die too. After the ambulance takes her away I go back to my room and curl up on the bed like a child, remembering: they took my mommy away and I don't know why. I am tormented then by memories and cannot rest without my meds: wine and weed putting me into a stupor until I can fathom some sleep.

North Beach: bright and gay and phony as a carnival barker hawking his two-bit game from a ragged booth, teeming with music, art and poetry, the remnants of Leo and Mardou's last days together, the Beat Museum on Broadway their living shrine, those denizens sipping Americanos at the Trieste a testament to those days lost. SRO's now occupied by five and six to a room from Pakistan and China from Nigeria and Taiwan from Lithuania and Hoboken. Nomads still seeking asylum and the bus is always full. That time I took the number 30 bus from Chinatown to the Mission with North at 70; him almost getting in a fight with belligerent teenagers over personal space: his days in San Francisco marked by the Trans America Tower where once stood his birth place. I and Rainey, that crippled more than me roommate from Vallejo Street, bake him a tower of cupcakes in its resemblance for his 70th, wrapped with white Christmas lights leaning precariously left - we carried them by cab to Takis' joint where we ate terrific Greek and Italian food and drank good wine that night of his birthday, purchased with the last of North's inheritance from a friend, gone too soon, took the bus to heaven's door and left North a few thou, enough to buy a party and a vintage Jaguar, the chick magnet that got I and him together briefly and helped Rainey and I save him from cancer by finding him a good female doctor. Cancer seemed rampant in North Beach. I pondered, paranoid after the Japan earthquake, if fallout had reached the water, since friends were dropping like flies while I stood on death's door after tending to too much despondence and misery, wringing hands heart and mind over memories past of family indiscretions abuses and troubled times.

In North Beach I sipped espresso for breakfast with joints rolled fat and fresh while watching Mumbai burn on that Thanksgiving North brought his ex-wife Glo to dinner, while Rainey's hulking husband Jay remained in jail, a product of his own demented self. After North's cancer, Glo and I became friends: cancer and a younger girlfriend will sometimes cause ex-wives to see straight, besides: North and Glo were perfectly cranky together.

I wrote like mad at the Trieste on my tiny laptop, a gift from North, creating screenplays like Coppola in his office on Kearny high above the meatballs below: $17 bucks a pop but the wine for my whiny aching leg was solace enough: besides, I could well afford it when my student loans were in although I loathed the thought of spending that much on meatballs. Jimmy who lived in the bus shelter near the Hilton was oft times the recipient of the meal unfinished, or coffee with Dinardi the Sage of North Beach, insane and calling me up each night to say I should be his paramour, exposing himself to the world to piss on the side of a building at the corner of Kearny and Clay; how often he pissed on the side of buildings only his landlords knew for sure.

Myself now grave enough for disability and ready for a plunge into the Bay until a voice named Cameron said "get it together, sister, I ain't got time for this crap with a sick baby myself", so I cut back on the weed and wine and attempted to allow time to heal me.

Present now in green Oregon: I am housed fed loved not shoved around a cripple and indigent, living on borrowed money until my disability comes through, taking six years for the Feds to decide my fate. Now sober five years and still missing Jasmin, but not Lulu so much, although she is the cause of this writing. Safe and loved and home with a man who shows respect. How I can miss a mom who did not love me is still a mystery and there is still my hint of SAD like her in me each time the season's change, who knows the blood borne stuff we share. She never knew I knew until I told her Grandpa had told me when I was 17, and yet she still denies our common DNA.

It must have been planned that Nona's meatballs are $17 bucks a pop: just like me at 17: popped out of home into the universe. I hope that Jimmy in the bus shelter is eating well and that Dinardi has taken to using a private pissoir!

Now I after North Beach find Oregon too mundane, yet there is beauty in green space, trying my hand at this subterranean prose; the kids trudging back to school outside of my upstairs window, the football boys of summer anxious to be back out on the field; the girls have bought new clothes while mothers admonish too short skirt yet knowingly allow, for their little birds are high-school bound for glory and need that "fit-in" style.

Ah, me, that I was high school bound again instead of sciatic ridden in my easy chair thinking back to when school meant no pleasure save for being with friends vested in the same lack of wanting to learn what it was that we were being taught in the first place. That I made it to University is still a mystery and the cause of a diploma gathering moss on my windowsill, yet there is beauty in green growth, and what it has afforded me is a career solely made of my own volition \- no true work in music that one can manifest without an extra helping of temp work to offset the cost of living and saving for social security days.

And now to write about it seems almost calculated, as everyone tries to be the next YouTube sensation or Twitter pronouncement; we are caught up in a web of virtual lies and realities as Islam fights its way west and is met with one bus at the border in Hungary. Tunisians in the local post office here cause wonderment: where did these dark skinned scarf-covered women come from; nomads in America landing in a town of fat farm stock, of yuppie slim women towing three four five kids, while husbands toil somewhere laboring for the crumbs earned of minimum wage or better - that Chevy 4 by 4 large enough to tow that family and always clean because the lease fee is out of proportion to the WIC checks, their promise of security dashed to bits on the jagged rocks of the American dream. Here I am: loved at last, safe, and cared for, just as Lulu prophesied on her dying bed: "your due will come."

Great art is always born of using something other than what it was originally purposed for: Van Gough's ear for love lost, Steinbeck's misplaced wrath for grapes, and I well into my 50's now burning with rage for others whom the bus has failed to pick up: like Jimmy there in the shelter near the Hyatt on Kearny; the nomads die one by one in each other's hand me downs, a box from the Red Cross won't be opened by those refugee Muslims; ess, ess mine kint, the cross means help has arrived.

Who's to say what would have happened had I not met Mickey at that gig in Alameda on a bad sciatic day after 5 glasses of rose' not even making a dent in the pain. Mickey's entry into the room that night changed my paradigm of selfish solitude into a life of love. Not like Leo and Leon who deserted Lulu and Mardou, those men challenged by alcohol, neglecting their women and responsibilities, no, not like them - this man of mine is solid sober sincere in his want to take care of me need to love me and promise to make me well in his arms.

For these almost five years together it is working, though I still slip back into that grey between joy and misery, yearning sometimes for the bad company that comes with it, for bad company it does keep that misery.

There in San Francisco I began to reconsider my life and Lulu's life, how they intersected, how they mirrored, how we fought, how we hated each other, how we loved each other, because of her pain and my need to comfort her even in my own.

I am born of redemption in that city where China meets Italy near Columbus and the park at Union Square, in that city by the bay.

BLACKHAWK SUMMER

little byrd books

1st Edition 2019

www.saugustcreative.com

saugustcreative@gmail.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

INTRODUCTION

Blackhawk Summer is the sequel to my first memoir, Subterranean Redux, wherein I disclose the events of my formative years, the untimely death of my mother, and my move to the West coast to remake myself.

Suddenly meeting the man of my dreams at age 50, for surely dreams come true if we manifest them, I believed I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with him, given that this person helped me to achieve exactly what we were supposed to accomplish together as I had envisioned they might. I am grateful for the experience I had with him.

We separated after almost 6 years of one of the most creative and positive periods of my life. The events herein take place almost two years after leaving that man and the home we created together.

I say "that man" because the man I left is not the man I loved and cherished as a partner in music and service to a greater cause. He has changed rapidly due to aging and some memory issue he will not allow to be explored. For when I did attempt to share my concern as someone who has been a caregiver to those with reverting memory, he said he was not interested in (my) care; a first sign that one is indeed in the throus of a great learning experience on behalf of someone they love so well.

Agape isn't easy but neither is life.

For those bench sitters in Provincetown noted herein

That summer in Provincetown, I fell in amongst the homeless and inebriates; having succumbed to these straights after Mickey quit me in Oregon.

Oregon, where for 6 years a certain familiarity called home crept in to ensure that I could find a treatment for my now crippled for life sciatic condition. It could be worse, I kept telling myself as I traveled from Oregon back to San Francisco where Mickey and I had met: back to its Tenderloin district, in shock that I had fallen from grace at such a rapid rate, then on to Provincetown to drink myself into pretending not to care about anything but the party, a brief stint in Gainesville to care for an ill relative yet again under terrible familial circumstances, and back to Provincetown to take care of myself as best I could, while trying to figure out where I should be, all in the course of two years after Mickey.

I kept reminding myself that things were worse for others and that this was part of my journey. It made the physical pain of moving around that much more palpable and the pain of losing Mickey that much more bearable.

Mickey had begun to show signs of progressive memory loss. He had memory issues when he entered our relationship, short term mostly. Yet, this was something different. He was different - a bit more aggressive, more needy intimately, and less communicative than he had been. He'd say he was tired when he didn't want to talk about something then curl up in a fetal position in his tee-shirt and briefs for a nap. Needless to say I was concerned.

Addressing this issue with his sister in a private conversation, she agreed that Mickey's memory was changing, yet she was busy caring for her own husband who was disabled. So I was granted her permission to ask Mickey if he would take a memory test when he next saw his doctor. Mickey refused, stating that any idea that he may be losing his memory was intolerable to him. He began to withdraw more and more unless he required physical comfort, food, or wanted to discuss something philosophical or in the news. With my receding sciatic nerve impacting our love making and Mickey tending toward being a fairly aggressive lover, I found myself pulling the other way - wanting him as much as I always did - yet afraid to give myself all the way because it was starting to hurt physically. I would have tried anything to keep that spark alive because it worked between us and for us as creative animals.

When Mickey suddenly started inviting old girlfriends to our gigs, it made me wonder if he was taking me up on my offer to have another woman as backup for sex to keep him satisfied. As a bi-sexual person I wanted my man to be happy, and if I couldn't do it I'd show the right person how! But Mikey decided to move on without me and here is where my heart was left adrift.

Winter & Spring 2016

Back in San Francisco I immediately threw myself into helping the homeless amidst the drug scene of its Tenderloin district, as it unfolded in the depths of the belly of the beast - a true hell hole of the nasties - blood, guts, gore, feces, needles, empty packages from meth, with addicts trading blood via needles en mass on one corner while the on the other corner thugs and dealers held a disco party. The Tenderloin was a horror show nightmare - replete with the church at its center attempting to heal it. Glide and St. Boniface, a police force so overworked that they walked around in packs drinking coffee, not giving a crap about stepping in feces unless they had to run after someone in an exercise for the newbies as to show them how to "take the niggahs down". The Newbies welcomed the exercise because stepping over excrement, prostitutes, piss, vomit, and homeless people can really place a dull-shine on one's academy laces.

I thought at first that perhaps I had succumbed to a breakdown since going from my lovely life with Mickey in the space of less than 90 days after so much joy and creativity had my head spinning. Moving in briefly with that pianist, Gary, I had meet in the social security office when first applied for SSDI, Gary was much changed after working for a housing agency and residing in the Tenderloin for more than 7 years. He got me into his building: a halfway house for those coming in off the streets or out of jail or a drug program, since, if you worked in the district and wanted to keep your rent low this was how one did it!

Matriculating me in as an disabled person as his "wife" on a domestic partnership, we end that partnership after three months so I could get my own room. Plus Gary was going through some serious personal issues after the death of his mother and we began arguing, so my moving into my own space was best for both of us. I promptly got another room by reporting our distress to the worker assigned to me in this type of living arrangement, leaving behind for a while yet another friend whom I thought I could depend on with my encroaching disability and the possibility of being bound to a wheelchair.

On another note that same worker asked me to apply for a tenant manager type of position wherein people could come to me for help, advice, and such when the management was gone or when the front desk was short on people. After 6 months, I thought it best that I pack myself out of this environment as fast as I possible, given that folks were already coming to my door, there was little sleep, and the district was in the thick of a long hot stinky summer, replete with gangs and murders stretching as far as the shopping district on downtown Market Street.

I stepped out into the TL on my own terms, and not so much as for anything other than it seemed a requirement of all the things Gary and I had promised to do for our community as musicians for the glorious premise of peace. When we first met, our playing music in those places where it was most needed, like food kitchens and homeless shelters, seemed to be anointed. Given that we had also enjoyed a run of a year in some good clubs, I felt in Gary a kindred soul. To see him in his present state was distressing. Yet I had just left Mickey and was not in the best shape myself to ascertain what Gary really required as a friend. If he reads this I hope he trusts that my best interests have always been to honor the people who have assisted me, take responsibility for my end of things, and attempt to remain friendly.

Living in that fragile step between reality, inside and outside of what was happening in the TL as someone who was holding herself together after losing the best thing that had ever happened to me (my life with Mickey), made me feel as if I were traveling backwards, back to something I had yet to complete. After 2 years of missing Mickey and dosing the sorrow - I was still not certain just what that was. Since I was in San Francisco I attempted to pick up the pieces of an unfinished Master's degree in Finance.

Taking some free classes offered by City College in the Mission District to keep from going bonkers, I was thrown in with first time students and others who required these classes as a part of their employment. Sitting next to me in class was Mike from Thailand who could barely speak English. He would bring me greasy goodies like nuts and tangerines which were not to be eaten in class. Yet somehow we were able to get away with it when the teacher from El Salvador turned his back to the classroom to write on the blackboard. Mike would smile his chipped tooth grin at me, pop peanuts in his mouth, chew fast and swallow them without water, before the professor turned back to face us, making me laugh like a 6 year old holding my hand over my mouth so as not to have El Professor diga para some fruita!

Then there was the dapper 76 year old who had been released from prison after being inside for 18 years. He had been in for cooking meth and shooting his wife, and took a shine to me right away. Seeing my aptitude for numbers and after learning that I had studied Finance and had a great understanding of the stock market, he told me his dream was to open a lobster-roll sandwich truck in front of Ghirardelli's at the wharf. Not one to burst someone's creative bubble I did some research for him as a true financial consultant would do on a $20 advance which he insisted I take for doing the research and asking him questions pertinent to developing his venture. Who was supplying the lobster? Where did it hail from? Was it shipped fresh or prepackaged in frozen chunks? His response was that his former cellmate who was from Maine, was soon to be released from his hallowed prison cell and had lobster traps set to go as soon as he got back to the East coast. The claw-daddies were going to be fresh shipped every other day by FEDEX from Maine to San Francisco.

"Lobstah Mobstah Mon Dingo" as I took to calling him in private, was also seeking a kitchen where he could boil the lobsters, clean them, and prep the lobster salad to his taste. As debonaire as my Lobstah Mobstah was, I knew he could be a handful after he told me about shooting his wife. Plus, the report I gave him as to the lobster trade for that season - which was a lousy report - did not go over very well, given that most of the run had been reserved by the country of China to celebrate the year of the Fire Rooster. Exports where at an all-time high and the American lobster market was losing its "grip".

In an attempt to save face, L.M.M.D. introduced me to another prison homies who had been released on charges of bank fraud for a hedge fund he had operated. He was seeking "the new face of investing" for women who were over 50, single or widowed with no children, and Jewish. Sitting in an Arab run coffee shop sharing one donut between the three of us as we drank coffee out of giant paper cups loaded with free cream and sugar, my potential partner told me that with my Sephardic looks and Yiddishe Kepe we could make a fortune. I told him I spoke enough of various languages to get clients in if need be. In his American accented Bangli he replied, "Dat's grerrreeaaaatt - only one t'ing..." Taking a breath, L.M.M.D. and I looked on as our Bangli banker added, " My contact list is on my PC and the Feds are still holding it. Can you buy us (meaning him and L.M.M.D.) new computers at COSTCO on your credit card?"

Feigning consideration of the situation, I went back to my room in the TL with a bottle of cold cheap Andre to contemplate my fate and also have lunch: bread, cheese, salami, mustard, and sweet pickles all kept in the bottom drawer of my metal dresser, pushed well away from the hot city sun streaming in through my tenement room window. Nary a cockroach can break into a food fortress like a metal dresser, especially when it is on fire.

A few days later I told them both to have a nice life, to which they became aggressive. Becoming aggressive back I told them to fuck off and get a real life after their halfway house let them back into society.

Just like I was trying to do.

I met Mickey once that winter in San Francisco at a diner in the theater district. Begging him to take me home and with tears in my eyes I asked, "What happened, Mickey? Did I have a break down? "

"No. You had a break-out." Mickey replied as he held me at arm's length without allowing me to hug him before saying goodbye.

This was not the ending I had anticipated with him. In fact there had been no ending planned - just me wanting to hold on to him as the Mickey I had known to be my best friend and soul mate, father of my songs, and master of my love through our music. I did not have a clear sense of anything after leaving Mickey so suddenly, only that I was terribly sad and depressed without him, and that I did not care where I lived unless he was with me.

Summer 2017

Sensing that closure with Mickey might also require closure about some familial issues, I went back to Provincetown, back to where I had spread Lulu's ashes 11 years prior. Reconnecting with good friends of mine who had also employed me as a psychic reader in their popular occult store several years hence, I feel back into the bosom of my brothers, The Brillo Boyz. These two had employed and housed me for 4 seasons over a 20 year span and we had kept in touch. Why I never stuck around P-town long enough to make a mint in card reading is still something I can't fathom - except to say that after reading close to a 1,000 people face to face in a small booth over a 90 day season can leave one drained. Plus the town normally dried up after Christmas, there was no heat in the building for the winter, and the Boyz often went to warm exotic locales collecting new things for the shop, while being feted as genuine American rock stars. Like me they played music and well.

I sat around giving fantastic tarot interpretations and palm readings in between arguing with Mickey over the phone as to what to do with our now floundering publishing business that I was loathe to let go of - especially since most of my hard won SSDI settlement had gone into creating it for my future, or if Mickey kicked the bucket before me. Mickey would vascilate between being his old sweet self, yet somehow when the conversation turned to the business, he would accuse me of leaving him in debt. Since this was not the case, and since I knew that the only way to appease Mickey when he got this way I played along.

After asking for statements as to what I owed the business, he said I had to begin paying him $50 a week to make up for the deficit and that he would send receipts. Fool that I still was for Mickey I began sending him the requested amount, anticipating those statements which never came. By the end of the summer he had been "reimbursed" close to $500, not including the sale of my equipment, a good keyboard and better amp that netted him an additional $1,000.

Here is where some of you might be thinking: Oh, what a fool this woman is to still be smitten with this person. Can't she see the error of her ways? Believe me I did. Yet holding onto Mickey and what we had built together was worth more to me than money. Plus, I also knew that when Mikey started to panic about things, his first reflex was to worry about cash.

It is uncanny how family issues so readily reflect our personal relationships - unless these issues are worked out in advance. Between the TL and returning to P-town, I took a brief visit to see my brother, Tony, who had tracked me down after 11 years of no communication, to ask if I would live with him since he stated that he might be terminally ill and had very little prospects ahead of him. Falling for his plea for assistance and wanting to gain closure after Lulu's passing, I complied. 4 days in Kentucky with Tony wanting to argue with me about things from our long sordid family history that he couldn't put his finger on when I questioned him as to why he was still angry with me, cost me more heartache and money than good. We parted on poor terms, with Tony in his usual way lying to me about his illness to get what he required - confirmation that I was the bitch he believed I was. Leaving so soon for me was confirmation that I had grown beyond my family, since I was not going to stick around to take the abuse!

My first cousin Leslie found me too that season, to ask me to come help her for an eerily similar reason - she was truly very ill and in a worse way with her husband, his conniving daughter and her psuedo-gangstah boyfriend. After a few months in Florida and playing a monsterous offense for Leslie wherein we removed the daughter and gangstah, I was whipped. Calling the Brillo Boyz for respite, they urged me to come on home. So back to P-town I went for the duration of the winter. Suddenly it seemed that P-town was going to be home again, at least for the time it would take to get through another summer without Mickey.

Summer 2018

Provincetown and its live circus unfolded for season 2018. I felt welcome among those bench sitters who lived life on their own terms. One can learn mighty things from bench sitters as they watch the world go by under the blessings or curses of the general populace. Those of us who left the bench to make our way into the up-set of buying cheaply made goods from China at the t-shirt shops and welcome centers, or who sought refuge from the hustle of a big city, or those who had landed back here in P-town because we still had to figure out why we left in the first place - each seemed cozy with the other.

It was strange yet somehow comforting to be back in a place I had called home.

On those benches I sat with Tommy, Vinnie, Mousey, Teddy, three friends named Bill, Ernie, Bertha, Dana, Albert, and Rico - trying to make sense of the world at any given time of day or early afternoon before the race for fried oysters and short shorts was on at the Boat Slip. Life was one big haze of sangria and marijuana that we bench sitters openly smoked in advance of recreational legislation being passed. Given that I had certain prescribed pain medications from living out west, smoking grass worked in the moment.

I wedged my way into the heart of Provincetown again between Tommy's beer cans, Albert's wisecracks, and Rico's testament to being a badass - throwing caution to the wind for the good of the entire experience. Now this experience included several factors - not just Albert waxing poetic at the Old Colony like the Artful Dodger that he was. The most pressing was winter. One had to plan for it months in advance in Provincetown. Who was going to allow a 58 year old cripple to live with them for the winter? How was I going to walk in the winter? Would I be able to walk at all in a year or two?

"I should know this!" I said to myself, given that I had been the town clairvoyant for what would be 5 seasons over 20 years, figuring out life for everyone else, save myself! I loved the town as much as it loved me, and to that extent I wanted to support it wholeheartedly. Yet I felt marginalized when it came to finding refuge.

The bench-sitters understood and listened to me postulate; offering advice, comments, tent usage, sips from warm beer cans, and the like! I remained slightly-inebriated all summer to reduce pain, yet not unproductive, while contemplating how to walk on one leg without crutches. Here I sat as bright as Tiny Tim trying to get the hoi polloi to recognize Tommy for his genius in beer consumption and wondering if his sandy nights spent swilling cheap ones on the beach was worth it after spreading hubris at the bar of the Canteen. So without reason - I fell for Tommy, Albert, and Rico as my own cause du jour. My funky-drunk soul family was, for now, complete.

Pain is what you make it. I have walked on a bad leg for many years now and suddenly find myself floating above my pain, as if my head is a large balloon attached to my body until I am only in touch with what is happening at any given moment from the neck up. In pain and with my choice of medications, I attempt to go higher in my state of consciousness about other people's pain. The balloon fills to capacity and I can walk a few more steps without pain.  
Pain is a gift if you have friends. My friends have supported me in my pain in copious and compassionate ways. They have housed me, fed me, nurtured me, cried with me, held me, believed in me, and let me be me. True friends are the ones who understand your pain and keep accepting you in whatever state you are in. Provincetown was a home of great friends for me and in planning to leave there after not being able to find that winter home, how could I not feel blue. Especially when I'd soon be missing coffee and warm sips of beer with the bench sitting crew.

Looking at it another way, part of knowing what you want at any point in life is to make a mess of it. What you take out of the mess after you bag up the trash is golden. In this moment my mess was down to one suitcase and a walking stick. I felt bound for glory given that I could still walk (almost) straight on one leg, especially after a nice phattie and a shot of Fireball cinnamon whiskey.

A Dream

I meet Doctor John, the famous pianist, on a forest path. He takes my right arm and we walk together with our canes in our free hands. We come to the band table. It is round and filled with cocaine. People at the table are using the drug but not acting unpleasantly. I am asked to sit but refuse because I see myself further down a path walking amongst eight green marble tables. No one is sitting at these tables, still, I am smiling and walking among them as if I am preparing to teach something. I wake up.

In my quest to find pain relief that summer, and in advance of leaving P-town, I was determined to get to a place where my medical marijuana was legally recognized without making me feel as if I were a criminal and where I could afford to go completely crippled, which slowly but surely was happening. Since walking was becoming unbearable without copious amounts of pain relief for my sciatic compression and shrinking spine and since I was not going to succumb to surgery as an experiment at the hands of a doctor who said "he could work with me because I was not begging him for oxys", which I never took anyway, I retreated to the benches in front of the town hall to sit, smoke, and drink myself into a plan of action.

Tommy and Rico, had decided to foster a pigeon with a busted wing. There they sat like adoring fathers doting on this greasy black and grey bird that resembled a small vulture with it pointed beak. Between the empty bag of beer cans and canvas rucksacks filled with soiled clothing sat this small changeling, pecking food from the repurposed lid of a jar that contained a strawberry, bird seed, water, and a gingersnap cookie. Tommy sat smiling his more than slightly drunk grin at me as Rico tottered over to me to welcome me to the "nursery".

"How do ya like our son?" Rico slurred amicably as he hugged me around the neck then pulled me over for a closer view.

"He's the spitting image of you and Tommy!" I quipped, "What's your boys' name?"

Smelling as ripe as a baby's dirty diaper due to the amount of bird feces strewn all over his tee shirt, Tommy looked at the bird, looked at Rico, looked at me, then proudly announced in his unique Tommy way of "slurry-speaking":

"His name...his name... is.... Blackhawk!".

BLACKHAWK! That elusive airplane that flies through the clouds as a war machine to test the mettle of presidents, tyrants, and wanna be kings. Blackhawk! The name given to a warrior, a hero, a champion! Here sat Blackhawk amongst my favorite enibreates, contemplating his luck at not winding up as road-kill or in some seagull's gullet!

Cooing up at his daddies, Blackhawk attempted to stand up and strut around the bench with his left foot tucked under him and his right wing held close to his feathery body. Seeing that his son needed some attention, Tommy swiftly plucked his birdie from the bench, placed him against his cheek for a lovey dove coo, then placed him on his shoulder. Blackhawk promptly showed his gratitude by crapping on Tommy's tee shirt yet again. Overcome by the hilarity and wonderful magic of the situation, I bade my friend's goodbye to wander off in search of another Provincetown spectacle.

As perverse as P-town had always been: this was the epitome of what it was truly about: those bench sitters taking up not one but two of the best benches on the strip to cuddle and coo with a busted bird, just a few feet from the harangue that is Commercial Street.

Later that day I was given another opportunity to look into the depths of the town's underbelly. I had promised to assist a "friend" who owned a restaurant and who also appeared, on the surface, to be a woman of faith and honesty. She offered me a place to sleep for a month in exchange for helping her serve masalas, curries, and wine - all while standing on one leg on a slippery wet wooden deck. How I came to be a waitress after she told me she would allow me to sit at the hostess stand to bring in the customers for her tasty cuisine, only her bad planning, and lack of being able to maintain good employees knew for sure!

After a week of sleeping on an air mattress in the lobby of the restaurant owned by this "friend", I discovered that she and her husband had been dipping into the pooled tips of her employees to pay their losses for two years, and that she believed it was "completely legal". Having had enough of bad imitators professing to be do gooders for God in sheep's clothing, I took the ferry to Boston to get away from the lousy-ness of the situation.

Lukas, one of the chefs at this place, and my sweet acolyte of meditation who asked me why people were so fucked up, and who completely understood my theory in trying to find an end to PI because he was studying applied mathematics, shoved cash in my hand and carried my suitcase to the dock in the pouring rain.

"When I get to Santa Barbara I will call you!", my 6 foot 6, 21 year old baby doll of higher thinking professed as he placed me on the boat before hoisting himself onto his too short bicycle to race back to his appointed room for the season, and a date with his summer girlfriend. Just when you think you have the opportunity to connect with another Hari - you recognize that the spirit as flesh has other needs!

Fortunately the hostel in Boston near Chinatown had one bed left. Taking it for two nights, I sat in a pub the next day eating a giant hamburger and drinking tall vodka tonics with lime for lunch, hoping that one of my credit cards would increase my line of credit for being a good citizen and paying my bills on time. Fortunate again for me that I was approved for $100 on the spot because that lunch with the tip came to almost $30.00!

Trying to figure out what to do next I decided to high tail it to near where I had originally tumbled from - the mountains of upstate New York. Having made a connection there with a young couple via their Craigslist ad seeking a roommate who used medical mj, I made plans with them to visit, to see if we might be compatible for the long term.

As my bad reasoning would have it, upon arrival I discovered that these youngsters considered themselves to be modern day makers and distributors of medicinal smokables and edibles including chocolates, waxes, and imported Oregon flower stored in their freezer and the trunk of a broken down car in large amounts. Young blood-hood style, he was Irish and loco, she was Mexican and loco-doco. This pair of stand ins for Bonnie and Clyde assured me that their unlicensed operation was safe, that the guns they toted for protection were strewn about outside a few feet from the home they resided in given the young Irishman's criminal record, and that her Mexican proclivity was to protect her hombre at all costs even if he treated her like trash!

Also along for the journey was another homeless woman of no means save for the air mattress this pair allowed her sleep on as she shuttled from couch to couch and bar stool to bar stool in a town that called her friend. Bonnie and Clyde left us alone one morning to ponder the medicine before us. She professed to not have been told of my arrival and felt slighted by the "friggin' stupid mother fuckers". Feeling her pain I told her not to worry, that I did not think my being there was going to be long term, and that she had no need to fear losing her housing again. Attempting to maintain a shred of dignity in this faux pas, I gave the youngsters a brief history of my own childhood, growing up with a drug-dealing gun toting clan. Posturing as a "crazy-kinda-lady" they completely got it when I read the "friggin' stupid mother fuckers" the riot act for lying to me and their current tenant.

"Don't shit a shitter!" I laced into them with a phrase an old boyfriend used to throw at me when he didn't like my response to something.

My bravado promptly got me an invite to a lesbian commitment ceremony at a punk bar of dubious ilk - where my homeless sister was the officiant and ring bearer. Hobbling several blocks to the place where this wedding was taking place, I arrived just in time for the cake cutting ceremony and to be swooped into the arms of a 6 foot 4 ex-marine who sat perched on the first stool in the house. What can I tell you - I like them big enough to hoist me over their shoulder if for some unknown reason my crippled leg decides to go out on me.

Watching me hobble back and forth from the cake to the bar, this towering giant finally grabbed me, professed that I was beautiful, and made his move. We spent an hour playing kissy-face under a sign that said "Congratulations". Holding onto his strong slim shoulders before swooning to the demands of his yummy tongue with our eyes open as we merged, I suddenly realized there was an end to PI! Here it was right in front of me, adoring me, and wanting me in a way that I thought was gone forever after Mickey! We made plans to meet the next day. Half carrying me to the door as he staggered out for a cab home, he refused to stop kissing me until I promised to return. Watching him move up the block I realized that the sangria I had offered him on top of the beer he had before we kissed made his staggering none the worse.

The next day I sat on a bench off of a local running trail waiting for him to come see me in daylight; for the truth is there exposed. He showed up all legs and sweat after his run to gaze at me in the sunshine.

"You are much better looking in this light.", this tall hunk of testosterone quipped.

"And you still look like Michael Douglas after he lost all of his baby fat on a coke binge, AND Jimmy Stewart right after he kissed Kim Novak before she jumped into the bay in''Vertigo"!''

All 6 foot 4 inches of him smiled down at me languidly, as the scent of his runner's sweat sort of got my gander up. Thinking he might lean down to Michael/Jimmy kiss me again, in a perverse twist of fate my new found lip-locking friend said, "I've got to go to a picnic. Let's hook up sometime this week after work." POOF: there he went, sweat and all, to that picnic without me!

Now being disabled and prone to sitting around when my brain and body were not focused on writing or contemplating my sinking navel, I knew that we were never to be more than texted pictures and sexy comments sent to each other for the week the mountains kept me. Perhaps this was better since up the block was Marco, the Guatemalan restaunter who handled his brother in law's business on behalf of his beautiful and sweet sister Sonya.

"You're back!" Stewart the bartender shook my hand as he handed me one of his glorious mojitos and hollered into the kitchen, "Oye, Marco, look who's here!" Marco, adorable and steaming from preparing the brisket that he lovingly stuffed into the best enchiladas I have ever tasted, came out of the kitchen, caught my shoulder with his slender hand and said, " Hola, linda. What would you like to eat today, mija?"

Given that my pesos were short, and the mojito that Stewart mixed was more my preference, I coyly responded, "How about a basket of those lovely chips and salsa you hand-make."

So we sat and talked in our broken English/Spanish until Sonya, the brother-in-law, and Marco's adorable 4 year old niece who thought she was a kitty-cat when not being preternaturally brilliant, arrived for the night shift; each glad to see me as I sipped my second mojito. What can I tell you? When my gander gets up I get thirsty and hot!

Later that evening the preternaturally brilliant niece announced to the entire patio of patrons, "SOOO - when do you want to get a room with Uncle Marco?"

Somewhat taken aback I responded, "Can we wait until after your five year old birthday party on Sunday? It's best to ensure that the rest of the family likes me!"

Having been invited by Sonya to celebrate the sweet sprite's pending cumpleanos, this was the best answer I could muster.

"Meow, meow!" The sweet sprite came up to me, rubbing her head against my shoulder as if I were her lady-in-waiting, then toddled back into the restaurant to tell Uncle Marco that he might be getting lucky very soon.

The next day having nowhere to go in advance of the Labor Day holiday and wanting to escape the loco and his loco-doco before anyone got wind of what they were cooking, I dragged my earthly possessions in one suitcase down a flight of stairs early in the morning, hailed a cab to the Greyhound station, and got on the 8:15 am bus to NYC.

"This ought to be interesting." I told myself as I got closer to NYC.

Once in the Port Authority, I threw away almost everything I owned including my good jeans, marijuana pipe and grinder for the sake of propriety, and said suitcase, packing what I thought might be needed for the next round of travel into a small shopping bag. I have this thing about appearing homeless even though I have served many of my kind in worse situations. I refuse to appear as a bag lady and my shopping bag must match my attire. Blame it on Lulu when she and her friends used to pepper me with questions as a teenager as to what I was going to be when I grew up. Knowing that anything I said might be construed with ridicule or disdain, I would often say that I aspired to be a bag lady. I never realized the impact of my words and the fomenting of future circumstances they would lead to, until after I had slept in Lulu's car during a winter snowstorm or two because my step-dad had insisted I was not to be let into the house.

Not having made any calls to friends who might be able to let me stay with them for the weekend, I dialed the only person I knew who would definitely be in town, my reclusive friend of 35 years, B.

"Of course you can come stay for the weekend, it's been 11 years since I've seen you!'

B sounded encouraging, although I knew from the last time I visited that her sparse environs meant I would have to sleep on her carpet. Schlepping through the subway to Forest Hills, I arrived no worse for wear. B greeted me with a hug and promptly showed me to the spot on the floor that I was to occupy amongst her three cats, James after Morrison, Pamela after his wife, and Rafi. This time however, due to a bedbug infestation she had recently been subjected to, there was no carpet, just a hardwood floor and a thin mattress with sheets that B shared from her cot.

The next day B seemed perturbed. "I hate to say this, but I am so not ready for company that I am freaking out. When are you leaving?"

Attempting to shout over the LIRR that roared by her apartment every hour on the hour, I pledged to leave as soon as I could get a bus back to Oregon after the holiday. Why Oregon I had no clue, given what Mickey and I had gone through when we broke up. Plus the fact that it was almost fall there and the weather could be a bit unpredictable. Still, if one was going to go homeless one had to make provisions. So Oregon it was.

My life since leaving Mickey had been topsy turvey to say the least. After him and the music we wrote, recorded, and performed, I had gone about my own writing half-heartedly just to keep my spirits up. Productive I have always been, but to what end? Mickey and I had written 50 songs in 5 years, recorded 40 of them on CD, and written 6 books between us. We had developed a following and were making great headway in being older musicians who still wanted to work. After leaving Mickey, creative postpartum had overtaken me like a black swan who realizes that her goslings may never swim. I wondered what I could have done differently to keep Mickey and me moving forward. We were good together up until my spine became more compressed and intimacy became painful. Yet Mickey's high sexual desire and his constant need for emotional and physical attention as a part of our "creative process" left me exhausted. "It could be worse.", I told myself." I could have brain cancer.", like one of our musical followers, a lovely person who gifted me her feather earrings and velvet shawl, for being bright and keeping the music happening.

Before leaving B's home in Forest Hills, I called Vinnie, one of my favorite bench-sitters, back in Provincetown. He seemed disappointed that I was moving back West but could offer no solution to my housing issue. I thought I knew Provincetown- it's magic and mystery - the way I had fallen into it 20 years earlier. This time Provincetown moved on its own terms. Who was I to shift the vibration of a larger community of misfits now rolled into a middle-class LGBTQ experience at a premium. Even the drag-boys and girls were recherche' - last year's models - not moving forward so much as tending the garden of what Ru Paul deemed a cultural phenomenon. As long as Ru liked it there it went up the star trail. I knew that I didn't belong there anymore; perhaps I never really did.

Here in this Forest Hills sports bar the up and coming young marrieds with children in tow made me feel lonely. What was missing was that connection to family - good, bad or indifferent - that certainty that comes with knowing one can go home after the party is over.

I called Mickey to let him know I was coming back to ask if I could crash on our couch, as a friend, until I found my own place. His answer was no since he all of a sudden was dating, casually, but still dating, and it would make him feel uncomfortable. Next, I asked him if he would consider selling that couch so I could have some cash to start over with, given that I was the one who had purchased it in the first place. His clipped response was, "Then what will I have to sit on?" How could I argue with his reasoning?

I have never expected my life to be one that holds what "normal" people have in theirs, that security with someone who loves you through all of it. Perhaps we survivors of incest and domestic abuse aren't supposed to have normal lives. Even after my failed marriages and what I anticipated would be the long term with Mickey, I was still wracking my brain and heart to see what I could have done to keep us moving in a positive direction. I wondered if Leon and Lulu anticipated that they would be happy as creatives and lovers; a family born with tainted DNA. Would my parents have been better off as that perfectly normal couple raising their offspring in some suburban subdivision instead of writing, fighting, and fucking to their heart's content, at least until Leon left, in those numerous city tenements we called home?

Now I was old enough to understand that their semi-homelessness just might partly be the cause of my own. Given that I was born of Jasmin and Leon1, and Lulu hating me for having to care for me had always made me feel like a burden. And by sheer dint of doing what was expected of her - Lulu had succumbed to the societal demands of her time. Observing my favorite inebraites nurturing their son Blackhawk until he could once again take on the wild world; imagining his tiny vulture like beak carrying the last crumb of ginger-snap cookie to a new nest after his wing has healed, reminded me that we are always carrying something along for the journey.

After that phone call with Mickey I felt hot and thirsty, not for my gander being up but for the fact that we had spent the summer working together over the Internet on his memoir. He now had a new girlfriend and wasn't about to give me egress! Plus, the weather was still in the high '90's in New York and my mouth was dry from crying into the cheap cell-phone I now carried after the 4S that Mickey had made me endure for 5 years stopped working.

I sat on a bench in the park outside of B's fifth floor apartment, as the LIRR rolled by screaming at the top of my lungs into the phone after I hung up, "MOTHER FUCKER!".

Calming myself as the train rolled by and so as not to disturb the parents who sat watching their offspring dangling from short monkey bar style climbing gyms, I walked to a hookah bar up the block from B's to sooth my shaken soul with a few cold glasses of Pinot Grigio and my first taste of a spearmint flavored hookah. There I sat amongst new inebriates: Don, Kelsey, Larry, and Mike - each with a family, a story of success, a friend at hand, and somewhere to rest their heads at night. If this is what life boiled down to after a long hot working day and finding out that you have been bilked out of your entire summer, and the past 5 ½ years working on a labor of love for nothing, then so be it.

Now I knew why I had to go backward - 360 degrees - to close the aching wound in my heart. I also had to see if Mickey was still himself, or if he had slipped so unconscionably into forgetfulness, as a remedy for my own heartache in losing him.

The Wednesday after Labor Day I bade B and her kitties goodbye, and took on the Greyhound back to Oregon. I was not certain if Mickey would receive me kindly or not, though he did send me $100 for food as I traveled across the country and told me not to worry about anything, just to enjoy my trip. I found it a promising sign although my heart faltered in faith that Mickey would indeed be friendly.

Here lay my rub: all of the deals I had made with Mickey were to satisfy us as a couple. All I had left with were concessions - the deals we make when we try to be in a safe place. I was still trying to make a deal with my heart and mind not to be sad over losing Mickey or angry at myself or him for things going south so rapidly. Going back to Oregon was a means of closure for me. I had to see if my original premise about Mickey's memory was correct. Vasselating between this and the feeling that I had been royally ripped off somehow, I tried to recall those nights during the last few months of our relationship when Mickey would behave almost toddler like, wanting to nuzzle my breasts all night as if milking, and becoming angry if he were denied. I knew there was something else going on, given that the man I had first engaged in intimacy with had been wholly present, loving and kind, a real man. Plus, given the intense nature of our personal life, and how we had doted on each other in private, it was shocking to me that we had ended so suddenly.

Sitting in the NYC Port Authority several hours before the appointed departure of the bus toward the home I hoped I could salvage, my cheap cell phone went off in my jacket pocket. It was Vinnie calling me again to say he wished I wasn't leaving and that he was going to miss having someone like me to talk to every once in a while.

"Tell me, Stefanie, who is gonna take care of you?", Vinnie implored into the phone.

"I'm going to have to take care of myself, Vinnie." for I also knew deep in my heart that if Mickey had indeed moved on, then I'd have to do the same. I told sweet Vinnie to stay warm in Jamaica for the winter and promised to keep in touch. Hanging up, I bawled my eyes out right there in front of all of those traveling strangers - for surely goodbye tears in bus stations are common after hearing from a friend who truly cares

The bus as always was late in leaving the station, almost 2 hours behind schedule, which meant that I'd have to reroute myself to reach Portland in 4 days instead of 5. Fortunately, I had reconnected with one of my "adopted children through osmosis", M, who was in similar housing straights after a bad divorce. M had a station wagon I could sleep in, at least until I got myself a roof over my head. Given that the September weather was still nice enough to (almost) sleep outside in Oregon and knowing it would be temporary, I looked forward to stretching out in the back seat of this vehicle after a long bus ride.

The bus was filled with the usual suspects: couples with a small child or infant in tow, single men with large shopping bags filled with blankets and pillows, taking up two seats to accommodate their burley girth, inner city women listening to rap and hip-hop, keeping the music just low enough for the bus driver to ignore, yet talking and cursing loudly about "how dey niggah's treat each other, how many kids dey got, and how many kids dey kids got." One, just coming from having worked catering for the U.S. Open told her girls that "Serena's baby wasn't there and no one could get next to Tiger Woods while he stood online as a guest at the buffet table trying to get his-self a turkey roll-up. But damn, he smell good."

A short muscular man in sweatpants and a t-shirt entered the bus at the last minute. The sistah sitting behind took one look at muscle-man and offered him the open seat next to her along with a blanket that she put over both of them to "keep them warm for the trip". We all figured out that he was Russian and did not know English except through various hand signals. As the bus left New York sistah made a pronouncement to the seatmate across the aisle that she had been jawing with, just loud enough for me to catch it:

" Ooh, he fine - we gonna get something up here." Turns out he was a boxer, had just won a tournament and was going home. Later on in the trip I heard sistah whisper instructions to the boxer as to where to place his hands under her blanket. How they got it together so quickly only sistah herself knows for sure! At the end of her ride she told him to go sit in the back of the bus so her old man wouldn't see him.

In Chicago the bus station was crowded and cold. Me and the boxer were destined to get on a new bus together, so I helped to haul one of his bags into line since mine was just a knapsack. We stood waiting for our connection. The station was busy, crowded with travelers lining up to go to cities in all directions of the map. A homeless woman sat amidst all of this flurry - her head covered in scarves, her boots with holes in the toes, sitting on all that she owned. Her bible was spread out and marked in front of her as she leaned against a tall metal pole that held up the bus station's ceiling. Her hand pressed against that bible to ensure it remained there if she fell asleep, for how could she endure the theft of her gilded guide book. I wondered if her ponderings had brought her peace in her situation or had made her what she appeared to be in the moment.

A tall handsome black man lined up behind me and asked if this is the bus to Seattle. He introduced himself as Jay saying it was his first time traveling west. We struck up a friendly conversation. Discovering that Jay was an ex-con, he also mentioned that at age 48 he had 21 children, that he is moving across the country for work to take care of several of his younger children, and to make a better life for the few of which were still at home. It also turned out that in the slammer, he had been trained in animal husbandry and was an expert at inseminating cows. As Jay explained the process of using gloves and goo to get the milkers ready for calf-bearing, I thought it uncanny that a man who had 21 kids would be given this type of opportunity, since it suited him to a T.

As we neared Des Moines for a stop I realized that he had no money or food with him. Given that Mickey had sent me the $100 and that I don't enjoy eating alone, I invited my new friend to join me for potato cheese puffs and thick greasy egg, ham and cheese sandwiches with hot coffee. Road food at one of those convenience store bus stops where the locals hand make everything and serve you with a smile knowing they may never see you again. Jay, amazed at my offer, hugged me tightly, and assured me that when he got settled he would return the favor anyway he could.

In South Dakota we were asked to remain seated as the bus was inspected by Border Patrol. I texted Mickey to ask him if this is a legal procedure. He told me the government allowed inspections up to 200 miles from ANY border. An older white man stood up in the back of the bus and shouted "this is discrimination!" To which the sistah's all railed "Sit the fuck down. This ain't no discrimination!" To which he shouted, "We need to fight for our rights!" to which the sistahs respond, "We ain't got none!" Now this became a contentious point of discussion for about 5 minutes as the driver got back on the bus to drive toward those mountainous presidential heads.

Jay sat behind me absorbing the greenery; letting it sink in that maybe he could have a better life for his family out west. Who cares if he had 21 kids and 4 ex-wives before the age of 50! He was trying to find his way and pay for his kids, too!

As we neared Spokane were we were to separate, I woke up crying from a dream in which Mickey had completely turned away from me. Jay put his arms around and professed: "everything is going to be alright." We parted ways at the Spokane bus station. True to his word, Jay texted and called me weekly to fill me in on his progress after getting settled and to ask if I needed anything.

Arriving in Pasco, I called Mickey to tell him that M was picking me up in Portland. He seemed distant and unresponsive. Not one to beat around the bush I asked him point blank, "You don't want to see me to talk things out do you?"

"No." Mikey responded, " Not until you are settled."

After one week in M's van which was parked a few blocks from where he was living with his lovely lady KB, it was time for me to find a place to get serious about what to do about Mickey. Plus hobbling to the local Safeway 20 minutes away from the car got to be tiresome when I required use of a bathroom in the early morning hours. In the midnight hours a cup sufficed, still, it was not that easy squatting over an empty McDonalds soda cup with a bad back in cramped quarters. Calling everyone I knew to see if they had any short term lodging available, I was finally offered a room by two musician friends whom I had met while with Mikey. They had been seeking a room-mate and seemed glad that I had called them.

M got a bit ticked with me as we drove my "hotel room" into their suburban neighborhood from his downtown parking space.

"Moving in with some bourgois bitches, huh?", M remarked.

"As bougie as a Latin dude and his old lady can be.", I recanted.

Remembering that they were also practicing Christians, I added. "Jesus saves."

"At which bank?", M retorted.

Bougie 'Ville was a middle class neighborhood with tree lined streets where traffic rarely converged during the day. The local dispensary was a 15 minute walk from the house. I walked in the center of the street to avoid tripping over the uneven sidewalks. After 7 weeks, numerous emails, phone calls, and messages to Mickey in a variety of sober states, I gave up the ghost to my sexy lawyer friend, MT, in San Francisco to see if I might have a way to at least get my copyrights back - which I had given to Mickey to satisfy those production expenses he claimed I still owed him - yet somehow failed to produce statements for each time I requested them. Nearing two years of our separation, realistically, I knew deep inside that going back to Mickey might be next to impossible. Mickey did talk about his past frequently and all of the bad things women had done to him. Now he had taken to retreating into his own life without so much as a hello to someone he had just spent six lovely years with (or so I thought and friends can attest to) especially after I had just spent most of my summer typing up his memoir as a (former) business partner, and his new publisher as part of my own ventures.

I will not expound on how selfish this appeared on his part, especially after we completed the project. As Mickey moved into his own life without me, I found myself wondering why I was still holding on. Was it pride, arrogance, or a romantic notion that the man whom I had given myself to on all levels, someone whom I felt completed me and understood my core could move on so rapidly, seemingly forgetting all of the time we had spent nurturing our creative work and each other? I still wanted to love Mickey the way we had enjoyed, to be there in his arms afterwards, kissing him lightly on his moist lips to thank him for loving me the way a man should love a woman; whole-heartedly and always for her divine pleasure. I questioned now whether Mickey had really loved me for me or for my music. He seemed to liken our being together as an "experience". In fact when we parted he had used the word as if all I meant to him was just that.

Now I am not one to love or live half-heartedly. My romantic life had been fraught with the wrong connections. Marrying for the first time at age 31, and two times thereafter, I felt like I finally understood what had been missing from those relationships; what I would and would not put up with. Mickey had been so encouraging of my creative work and responsive to my care of him that I found myself wondering if I had been too good to him. Ensuring the well-being of another (damaged) yet forward oriented soul seemed right to me. When Mickey decided to stop moving forward with me, my momentum went out the window.

Back in Bougeville, the husband in this duo, decided after 3 days of my being there that it was okay for him to parade around the house in his tight boxers. He would pop out of the bathroom if he heard me coming downstairs from my room to show off his bare chest and make remarks about how underserved he was in the bedroom. After a few days of his hound-dog actions, I finally let him know in no uncertain terms that I was not interested in his advances. Nor was I interested in the advances of his wife who would "accidentally" rub up against me if we were in the kitchen together, try to make me hug her first thing in the morning, and commenting that I "did not spend enough time with her." I am not a prude in my intimate life, but this was beyond what I had in mind as a (disabled) room-mate.

After a few weeks of being left out at the dinner table for not complying with their physical demands, which seemed like a throw back to my teenage years and my blue-meanie-mother-fucker of a stepdad, I found myself an affordable spot out in Depoe Bay, with a group of professional fine artists. For all the stress these two good Christians put me through, a room (alone) at the beach seemed heavenly.

My dear friend Annie who had sort of adopted me as a daughter, helped me move to the Bay. Graciously supplying me with towels, a blanket, lamp, and a few other household items to get me started in my new digs, Annie was looking forward to taking pictures of the coast. As a serious photographer who claimed it a hobby, I knew we might have a nice time hanging out whale watching on the black cliffs surrounding the world's smallest harbor.

My new roommate was an older chap, an accomplished bronze artist whose studio was also in the home. In tow was his 7 year old Basset Hound who took a shine to me right away. I found myself becoming a dog nanny and housekeeper over the next few months and while I enjoyed the cliffs and my walks for yoga by the sea after a phattie I wondered if I was destined to be a crippled housekeeper for the long term while paying for it at a premium. Needless to say after an attempt to convince my roommate that perhaps household chores were best done by hired help, or that we assumed shared responsibilities, his response was that if I did not like the arrangement I could find other quarters.

Promptly calling another friend, K, back in Salem whom I had met while living with the horny jazz musicians, she told me to pack my bags and get back into town, to whole up with her, her husband, and her 6 children. K called me her sister from another mister, given that my skin was several shades lighter than hers. I have always had a good rapport with people in general and color has never been an issue for me. At this point I was becoming exhausted and really needed a safe place while waiting for Mickey to respond. After a few weeks of a houseful of kids and K's other family members, we parted ways when the entire house got the flu.

Handing me back a few hundred dollars I had given her for rent, I called a car service and got myself hence to a motel. Mickey and I used to drive by this locale frequently, to which he would say he would never stay in if his life depended on it. Since mine did, I checked into the place, hoping for some respite. The denizens who lived there were like me seeking refuge: affordable housing: and having a devil of a time procuring it. One man I became friendly with was holed up for months with his teenage kids, waiting for his bitchy ex to make a move in helping him raise them after 4 years of desertion. Another group of folks that I became friendly with who had moved to Oregon from Texas and who had been seeking shelter for 6 months - 4 adults and two dogs in a room meant for a weekend getaway.

The homeless crisis on Oregon had expanded rapidly due to rising property prices and lack of affordable housing. Here we shared stories about how we were going to find shelter, when landlords required 3 times the rent and some decent credit before accepting you as a tenant - not to mention the dollars expended in placing applications for digs that were becoming competitive to find. I ran out of cash for the week before my SSDI check was due, and had no prospects of writing gigs which I had been doing as a sideline to keep my own boat afloat. Fortunately two angels were on my side, one of my dear brothers from P-town, JayJay and the other HeyHey, helped me keep the roof up during two weeks of rain. I had thought about camping out under the trees in the parking lot behind the motel where stood a giant church that was surprisingly open one day per week - a waste of good space if there ever was one - with so many people in need of a place to lay their head, even if on a velvet pew. The peregrine falcon that lived high in the trees over this property promptly made it known that this was its territory by sitting on top of a dead pigeon one morning as I stood smoking my morning meds. Later that day he showed the group of us what it would be like if we were to disturb his sanctuary by ripping chunks out of another edible he had killed, letting the blood fly everywhere. Needless to say there went my camping out!

Which takes me back to Blackhawk, the pigeon in P-town and how fortunate for him that he had been rescued by my favorite inebriates, Tommy, Albert and Rico. How tenuous life is in those moments when we know not where we will be able to gain sustenance, security, support. The loving care my friends showed this tiny being made me love them all the more and long for what I had left behind with Mickey: the promise of home and a life with someone who said he loved me. For isn't love what we are meant for, the type of love that holds you and keeps you safe from harm?

I now had to decide if staying in Oregon was the right thing. Since Mickey was still not talking to me and since housing opportunities were becoming less and less it was time to make a move. And so I did: to a women's shelter in the next town over from Salem proper, where a new chapter of my life would take flight. Reminding myself that I still had some life in me, I kept my chin-up and moved into this place wondering if God truly had a plan for me since the Christian women who ran the shelter were stuffing Jesus down our throats, reminding us that we were somehow heathens for being in various states of homelessness.

If any good be found in this story of my trying to find home, then may it also be understood that my experience with Mickey and all we achieved had, at least for the moment, been everything I had ever desired. Who am I to want more than others in my same station - that place of wondering what one could have changed, just to keep a solid roof over my head. With so many other people in the world not having anything to cling to after war and violence I continued to wonder if we should we aspire to serving ourselves or others first? This question has never been an issue for me since I see the larger picture and want to change it to the positive, in whatever manifestation God allows.

My new sisters in this place were as precious to me as an unspoiled canvas, each with worst stories than the next about their situations. So I became a sort of counselor to them and they became a family to me. Bedbugs, diarrhea from old food, 6:30 am wakeups, and all day room lockouts, were abundant in this "good Christian environment".

Somehow I was grateful to be there.

And grateful, too, for those 6 years with Mickey, when we were flying high and golden.

I am redeemed yet again as Jesus has His way with me.

Amen.

To purchase "Subterranean Redux"

or other books by Stefanie August please visit:

www.stefanieaugustwrites.webs.com

Stay tuned for the third part of this memoir entitled "SHELTER"

Soon to be released by little byrd books.

If you have enjoyed this memoir, please send comments and a fat advance to:saugustcreative@gmail.com

www.saugustcreative.com

1

