Slept ten hours on Sunday night, napped four or five hours yesterday, and then slept eleven hours last night — which is nuts. I’m a lifelong insomniac, and haven’t slept this much since I was in a crib. Probably I should ask a doctor about it, but kissing Macy’s goodbye cost me my medical coverage, so there’s no doctor to ask.
From Pathetic Life #10
Tuesday, March 21, 1995
My self-diagnosis is, I was worried about making ends meet doing “anything legal” for a living, but since it seems to be paying enough to let me survive, I’m worrying less and sleeping more? Yeah, let’s go with that. It’s better than “I must be dying.”
Woke up with a sore back, though. Must’ve strained it doing absolutely nothing yesterday, and today’s a bad day for a backache — I have a gig in an hour and a half where I’m supposed to be Mr Heavy Lifting, helping some rich bastard organize her garage. I assume she’s a rich bastard, because who else could afford to own a home in San Francisco? Or even a garage?
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In other news, the itsy-bitsy spiders are back in our apartment, coming down from the ceiling, now in both the kitchen and the john. Walked into a few of them when I stepped out of the shower, but I didn’t say anything to Pike. He was asleep. Maybe his oh-so-green “we won’t use chemicals on God’s harmless creatures” attitude will change when he walks into their webs himself.
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OK, now I’m annoyed. My morning gig — helping that lady clean out her garage — didn’t happen. I stood at the appointed address until she was fifteen minutes late, left a note shoved through her mailslot, and walked three blocks to a phone booth to call and see what’s up.
And what’s up is, not her. She said she’d woken drowsy, so she’d rolled over and gone back to sleep, and didn’t think to call me and cancel.
Not cleaning her garage is doubtless better for my back, and I told her we could reschedule and I’ll cheerfully show up again, but first she’ll need to pay me for four hours of work this morning. I was there, and a four-hour minimum is part of the deal. Her response wasn’t literally a yawn, but it came across as ‘highly unlikely’ and couldn’t care less’.
Well, then she can fuck off. I’ll add her to the list. Let’s see — so far I’ve said fuck off to Dahlia, fuck off to Jose, and now fuck off to this lady. But Dahlia and Jose didn’t screw me out of money earned, so this will have to be something more than merely fuck off.
I literally know where this woman lives. She’ll either pay me for four hours work, or I’ll take my payment in the form of her front window pane.
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In the afternoon I wore the green cape and handed out flyers. I look damned fine in a cape, but man o man, it was cold today. Not Alaska cold, but San Francisco cold. I am not the Weather Service so I can’t fahrenheit it, but it was cold enough my fingers got numb.
Then, when my shift was over, I waited half an hour in the cold for a #8 bus home. That line runs every twelve minutes, says Muni, but Muni is a lying weasel like the lady with the garage, so I gave up and walked home.
In the near-freezing drizzle at the corner gas station’s phone booth, I checked my messages, and arranged two more gigs. Then I called my brother Clay long-distance in Seattle, confirming that yes, I’ll be flying north for a visit in May. He’s very Christian and opposed to the kind of fun I’m hoping for, so I didn’t mention that in addition to seeing the family, I’ll also be spending some time with Sarah-Katherine while I’m there.
Theoretically, I could also see Margaret while I’m in Seattle. She lives there, too. But when I miss Margaret, I can always punch myself, so I’m not planning to tell her I’m coming.
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Back at my new home, I broomed the spiders out of the way in the kitchen, and microwaved some vegetables for dinner. Pike’s girlfriend was in the apartment again, and yesterday we said a few words but didn’t really meet. Today we actually met — Pike said, “I should introduce you two” and did — and then we had a short but not short enough conversation.
I’ll leave her name out of this, because I forgot it instantly after the introduction, like I usually do. But she’s young like Pike, I’d guess fresh out of high school if she graduated, and she seems like a nice human and all, but she speaks bimbo. By that I mean, she uses bad grammar and weirdly wrong sentences — don’t instead of didn’t, me instead of I, non-ironic ain’t instead of isn’t, etc. A few times she said groups of words I knew, all bunched together like they should add up to something, but they didn’t. Arguably it’s ditzy-cute, and it would be some unknown but awful ‘ism’ to hold it against her, so I’ll try not to. She has a very nasal voice, though, and she was chewing gum while we spoke.
She comes off like a floozy character in an old movie. There, I said it.
When I mentioned the spiders again, Pike said he’d broomed them out of the kitchen, same as I had a few hours later, but his girlfriend said she hadn’t seen any spiders in the apartment since yesterday. I said OK and then said good night, but if she hasn’t seen the spiders then she hasn’t looked closely. They are lots of them, but they really are itsy-bitsy, not much bigger than a speck of dust with eight legs — hundreds of specks of dust, with eight legs each.
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