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The Shiney Black Shoe
The joke was Shelton asking Mandy would she mind it too much if he went to Slidell to stay with his cousin Joe for awhile.
Mandy came home from work that first night--and these days (perhaps) sadly it is not unusual for me to barely look up from what I'm doing when she comes home, and vice-versa, but that night I made eye contact--and she said "is he gone?," like that, with total disregard for his proper name and I nodded with a sigh and she told me that joke about him asking would she mind.... It was almost a moment of bonding, old times relived, a shared total lack of caring what the fuck happens to a most disadvantaged youth from the inner city. It's too heavy sometimes. All the necessary emotions involved in the day to day dealings of this life I love cannot always co-exist. There are limits, and I have found them. Unfortunately, having found them, or defined them, doesn't make the excess less
And speaking of (often) excess(ivley) bad behavior, Shelton, and Joe just got back. Come on, that wasn't even three days was it? I came out of the bath with eyes blinking saline solution which hoped to rinse the residual Rocheblave soot away and I see, sort of, Joe sitting there on the phone, "hey joe," I say; Shelton to my flank offers his hand which I firmly grab but cut short the ritualistic long version and Joe with his hand out says, "its like that is it, Mr. Jim?" I look at Joe and realizing the insult respond, "I'm sorry, Joe, I didn't see," and grab his outstretched hand and also abbreviate firmly.
And it seemed Mandy was reaching her limits as the throngs of needy children hoping to take advantage of a Sheltonless dwelling (for example Marqin tapping on her bedroom window as soon as I left the house at 6:30 this morning), drove her to shut down Le Blanc House on Dumaine, and after a twelve hour Rocheblave Saturday the solitude would have been nice. But I get a good bit of solitude on Rocheblave so I shouldn't complain. The exception to the solitude could prove the rule as today on one of my frequent breaks, having finished eating a somewhat dry banana, and contemplating the can of sliced peaches, I was intruded upon by a sloppy drunk. Give me an HIV positive heroin addict any day over a sloppy drunk.
One of the many fine things about this little crib on Rocheblave is that it is set back from the street, unlike the Dumaine house which is right up on the sidewalk and street. A person doesn't have to trespass to annoy you on Dumaine, but on Rocheblave its a good thirty feet or so to the temporary steps on which I often find myself sitting enjoying possibly one of the better summer breezes to be had in all of New Orleans, being that I have a pretty rare New Orleans inner city circumstance with my prevailing Southwest unobstructed by building or trees for perhaps as large a dimension as 75 X 300 yards.
I have recently become the definition of zero tolerance and my brother the criminology professor can attest to that during a recent visit where he saw me taunt a rich white lady in a high end SUV after I ran a stop sign and she angrily honked and gestured. The situation allowed that after my indiscretion I was stopped by traffic only a shallow intersection away from the offended damsel and while she honked and grimaced a great deal more, I turned fully around hanging my upper body out the cab of the truck and insulted her quietly with full frontal confrontation. And boy did that seem to make her mad. Lucky for me I drive a vehicle which is instantly recognizable, and somewhat memorable. We were uptown where Carrollton meets St. Charles. She was probably a Mafia Princess. I call it the suicide of life.
But back to the downtown side of Mid-City, Rocheblave, and this drunk, who thinks he knows me because in one of my more tolerant moods I had entertained his supposition that he was the drywall man I would want to use when the time came. But today he's coming up my cracked drive carrying a cheap shoulder bag amd waving one patent "leather" high heeled men's shoe. I dismiss him with the insult of my shooing hand and he takes offense right off, gurlgling something or other about not waving my hand at him and as I mentioned before he is way into my territory by the time he stands in front of me, showing his goods. Realilzing the shoe is not to my taste he takes from his bag a used, but clean t-shirt with the slogan, "I'm a Quitter," and the picture of a cigarette inside a circle with a line through it. I insult him again by challenging his assertion that the t-shirt is new, and he, truest denizen of the street sticks to the code--lie and deny, the t-shirt is new, smell it he demands of me more than once. Have I already mentioned this, that I am not a very tolerant person right now? I am going to so to speak cut to the chase as we now have me waving my razor knife in this guy's face threatening to disembowel, repeatedly reminding him how far into my territory he has strayed, a mistake I should hope him not to make again, and him saying how I should not be trying to punk him like this, and me totally done with the sloppy drunk so much so that when he tries to save face by reaching in the back of his pants for his imaginary gun I just shake my head sadly and sit back down on my steps. I feel not as bad but similarly to the feeling of last night at ten-thirty when I yelled at little Raticia for ringing the bell and asking for water. Today I disconnected the doorbell. I know what I am right now cannot be effectively communicated to children, so I just hope for the best, and occasionally contemplate the inefficient but perhaps necessary short term move away from Dumaine, until Rocheblave can on any real level, be lived in.
I hate to write about some of this as it seems to glorify shitty behavior, which is not my intention. My only writing instructor, David Ohle, at the U. of Texas, once gave the assignment to write about something you're afraid of and it is that which keeps me going, because not unlike the young Ms. Nowottny from New Jersey I am so often so afraid of me.