Moving to Montana

It's Sunday afternoon and I am back at Serrano's, blogging on the porch and sipping a margarita. It might seem to you like that's all I ever do. It isn't. It occurred to me that some people might read my stuff and think that this homeless stuff is like a vacation or something. It isn't. Yeah, I hang out here and a couple of other places where I can hit a WiFi signal, and I stay in a hotel when I can (like last night), but I pay dearly for it by spending nights at the Possum Hilton and days wandering the streets with nothing at all to do and no place to go. The boredom is terrible. If I am going to keep from going insane, I have to find something else to occupy my time. I am looking for a second job to replace the bread route, since Chester is going elsewhere, and I won't be on the route with him any more. He took a management job with Holsum.

Yeah, I spent last night at Hampton Inn. I highly recommend Hampton Inn. I didn't have quite enough money for a room, so I was headed back to the Possum Hilton, but the desk clerk, a very cute twenty-something boy-next- door type named Sean, asked me if I was a member of AARP or AAA. I said no, and he said, "Sir, the correct answer to that question would be 'yes'", and winked at me, so I said 'yes' and he knocked $10 off the room price, and I got to stay in room 712, with a lovely view of College Drive (and the Albertson's where I work). I figure I will find some way to let Hampton Inn know what a good kid they have working for them: that was way kewl of him.

Another thing happened yesterday that melted my heart. I was checking people out at work and a little old lady came through my line. She made a comment about how high the cost of food was and I said that I agreed with her, and I told her that, when you are in a situation like mine, you sometimes have to forgo food for shelter, and that I thought that this was a terrible thing to happen in a country that is so wealthy, where we can find hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out banks and the men who ran these banks and investment houses into the ground walk away from the train wreck with multimillion dollar golden parachutes, and I can't afford to live anywhere. I have been very outspoken about this kind of thing lately, not because I am whining, but because I am acutely aware of this situation, since it affects me directly, and, I am sure, a lot of other people, in the same kind of situation.

She looked very moved by what I said. I checked out several other people, and then someone tapped me on the shoulder, and it was the lady I had spoken to, and she handed me a bag and said, "Here, this is for you." I said, "No, I couldn't possibly ..." and then she put her hand on my arm and said, "I really have too much." I thanked her and took the bag from her: she had bought me an eight-piece chicken dinner, with cole slaw and potato salad. I almost started crying. So, I enjoyed fried chicken at the Hampton Inn last night, courtesy of a kind little old lady. Every once in a while, I am reminded that, with all the no-good fucking bastards in the world, there are still a few good people around.

So, I debauched myself totally in room 712: fried chicken, chardonnay (of course!) and cable TV. Wrote some on the novel I have been working on, jacked off (which I haven't done in weeks!) and got a good night's sleep between clean sheets. The hotel was full of hot little teen-aged baseball players, here for a tournament. Yum. Couldn't touch, but I could certainly look. That's another thing about this homeless shit: not much chance of sex these days. I don't remember when I actually put my arms around another guy last. I really miss that. This is a lonely existence. I miss human contact. Being touched is a luxury.

One of my co-workers is a girl from Montana, named M. I was working with her the other day and she was telling me how wonderful it is in Montana. She said that wages aren't as high, but that it is really cheap to live there, and that people are amazingly tolerant of others. She said that she was shocked at how bigoted people are in Louisiana. I agreed. A lot of people here hate anyone who even appears to be different. They sure hate bicyclists. I get yelled at, honked at and have things thrown at me, all the time.

So, maybe, when I get some money together, I will move to Montana. Reminds me of the Frank Zappa song, which features the lyrics: "I might be movin' to Montana soon, raise me up a crop of dental floss ..." Anyway, M. is a weird gal, kind of hyper ADHD-type person, but intelligent and sweet. She loves to write, and we got talking about stuff we were writing, and she invited me to spend the night in their spare room. She said she would also ask her bf if we could work out a deal where I could stay with them while I saved money for an apartment (or to move to Montana). So, I hung out with her, where we stayed up all night talking about all kinds of things, and especially stuff we were writing. Her bf finally came home (he works graveyard shifts as an aircraft mechanic) and she asked him about it, but he said no, which she had predicted. "He's kind of an asshole," she said. "But I'm used to it."

So, here I am, sitting on the porch at Serrano's, spending money I can't afford to on a margarita, so I can blog. I'm going by Travis n' Fernando's later, and we are going to the 'mall'. Yay. At least it is something to do, and I can hang out with them for a while before I retire to the Possum Hilton, where, no doubt, I will be spending the next few days. I get paid Thursday, so I can probably get a hotel room Thursday night, even though I shouldn't spend the money. Maybe I can find a place to stay before that. That would be kewl. Otherwise, Montana seems a long, long way away. Big Sky country ...