Journal

Evening of Monday May 10, 1999

I hear the sirens now. I may not get this posted. Damn. Why didn’t I start editing directly in FrontPage?

It was a fire truck anyway. I’m certain if it were the police, they wouldn’t use their sirens. They didn’t Saturday.

Being the drama queen that I am, I’ve started a little game with someone in the building, and the Rochester Police Department. Call it retaliation, or call it escalation, or call it just plain foolishness. You see, someone caused my weekend to be a living nightmare. And frankly, I’m pissed. Here’s what happened.

I ran into a friend of Debbie’s on Friday night. No one had seen or heard from her in ten days. People were calling me all week, Jeffrey included, to find out where she was, and if she was well. I told her friend what had happened and asked if she was still around, and if so, would they get a message to her. They delivered Debbie to my door at 11:30 Friday night.

Along with everything else we talked about Friday, we agreed that I’d meet her around noon on Saturday and we’d walk over to the jail together. On Saturday it was pouring rain. I was pissed that I hadn’t checked the forecast before making a promise to walk to the jail. I can use the same bus I commute on, only go in the other direction, and 15 minutes later I’m at the jail. No transfer, door-to-door service. Just like work. We took the bus back to my place afterward.

Anyway, I put on some dry clothes and walked over to The Corner Store to get some groceries. Debbie has no phone and she asked if she could use mine while I went to the store. No problem. Thirty-one dollars and change later, I returned with four bags, and started to make some tuna sandwiches.

Debbie asked if I could wait a few minutes because she had to see her friend. Well, technically, he’s her neighbor’s boyfriend. They’d had a fight and he had asked Debbie to help smooth things over. I said sure, I mean it’s only tuna sandwiches, not a soufflé in imminent danger of collapse. She went down to the lobby to wait, while I busied myself up here.

Debbie comes back a few minutes later and we have our sandwiches. We’re no sooner done and there’s a knock at the door. The new super had called Friday to say that on Saturday, she was putting deadbolts on all the apartments that didn’t have them. I’m figuring it’s the locksmith. I open the door and it’s the police.

"We have a report of suspicious drug activity in the building and we’d like to have a word with you." The fact that there is one male and one female officer is not lost on me. Male officers are not allowed to perform physical searches on female suspects.

I have nothing to hide, so I invited them in. They looked around, then explained that someone called to say they saw "a hand-to-hand purchase of drugs on the street" and indicated Debbie. Did I mention Debbie’s neighbor’s boyfriend is black?

They asked her to empty her pockets. Debbie is six months pregnant. Have you ever seen pockets on maternity clothes? They asked her to if they could look in her coat. It was hanging over the tub in the bathroom with all the other wet things.

While she went to retrieve it, the male officer, (sorry, no speaking role for the female officer) commented on the TV of all things, like he’s never seen a 27" Sony before. I graciously accept the compliment, then explain I bought it just after they came out with stereo broadcasts. Sure I paid a chunk of change for it, but it’s nearly 15 years old and has never given me a bit of trouble.

While we discuss the TV, the female officer checks Debbie’s coat and finds nothing. Not even pocket lint. Party over, our guests prepare to leave, thank me for my cooperation, then admonish us that we had better be careful because they’ll be watching us. Guilt by association.

Now the intellectual side of me says, "There was nothing here to find, they found nothing, they’re satisfied that whoever called them has an over-active imagination." The emotional side of me was shitting bricks, and did so all weekend.

I didn’t dare vacuum, clean or take the garbage out in case someone were to think I was removing evidence. The police had come just after shift change, and every eight hours all weekend I was waiting for another knock. I never left the apartment until this morning. Debbie didn’t know whether to stay here or go home. She finally decided to go home, twelve hours later. And that was the only time the door was even opened until this morning.

I half-expected to be picked up on my way to the bus stop. Then all day I was expecting visitors at work. I fully expected a search warrant to have been executed while I was at work, so tonight I dilly-dallied. I walked home through Highland Park, stopped to buy some cold-cuts, and visited with Daphne for a while. I got home fully an hour later than usual.

I can report however, the lilacs in Highland Park should be peaking this weekend, just in time for the start of the 10-day Lilac Festival. And even tonight the place was crawling with Japanese tourists. There was one Japanese guy with the biggest fucking lens I’ve ever seen, huge tripod, pointing uphill at the grove of Japanese Maple trees just below the south rim of the reservoir. The setting sun filtering through the trees was perfect.

In any event, I scouted a couple of places suitable for meditating. It’s been months since I’ve meditated. I’ve always had trouble indoors. Outdoors, even after months without having done it, I can drop right in with no problem. I need to do something. I’ll be 42 next month and my face is breaking out in zits like a teenager before the prom. Stress, anxiety, whatever.

Maybe Jim’s right. I should stop by the Zen Center for some formal training. It’s practically spitting distance from my apartment. Jim was going over there Saturday night for Buddah’s birthday. I wonder what they do?

But I digress.

I had called my "sister" Mark before leaving work. I told him this whole story and asked if he’d participate in my next big drama. He agreed. I was late getting home and hadn’t had time to change into something suitably scruffy before he called to say he was on his way. I grabbed my cordless phone and dashed downstairs to wait outside. I checked voice-mail and had a cigarette hoping this would help with the role playing.

When he pulled up, I put the phone into my pocket and ambled over to his truck, looking up, down and behind me. I handed over half of the money I owe him, he handed me his business card, which I examined and put it in my pocket. He pulled away, as I ambled back to the building making the occasional furtive glance. I came up here, closed the blinds, fired up the PC and waited. Then I heard the sirens.

Nothing since. Mission failed. But then again, I don’t have Debbie’s street urchin look, and Mark’s a white guy in a truck instead of a black guy in a car. The staging was wrong, the casting was wrong, the costume was wrong, and maybe I need acting lessons.

Some drama queen, eh?

In any event, it’s time for bed.

I made it through a bitch of a week at work. My reward? I bought a six pack tonight. I’ve had two and I’m really buzzed. It’s the combination with my meds. I don’t even know if I’ll post this. We’ll see how it turns out

There was a third hot-dog cart outside the hospital today. Somebody’s gotta keep the Cardiology Department in business. I still go to the same guy though. He was there outside Psych (pardon me, it’s Behavioral Medicine now. Imagine the fun we have with those initials!) in all but the very worst weather all winter, so I think he deserves the loyalty.

So do a lot of other people. The other guy who sets up only in the nice weather down by the Cancer Center, had about half as many people in line when I went by. The new guy, who sets up by the crosswalk to the School of Nursing, had no one at his cart when I walked by.

Now my $4.25 for two white hots, raw onions, mustard and a can of root beer isn’t going to significantly change the financial status of any of these guys. But I think loyalty is it’s own reward. So I give it.

Also this week, an old vendor from my flea marketing days was set up just down by Musculoskeletal. Kurtis never made a lot of money, but he was loyal to us, paid his rent in cash, on time, and in full with never a peep of complaint.

So when he started setting up right across the aisle from me at the Rochester Public Market, I lent him our extra tables, since we only rented one stall and didn’t have room for them anyway. That meant a lot to him because all he had was a beat up old Ford Crown Victoria. You can’t fit much in those anyway, let alone trying to get tables in there with the merchandise.

It was really nice to see him doing better. He’s got a mini-van now, and more merchandise than he used to carry. At first he didn’t remember my name, but he remembered the voice, (he was facing away from me) and then he remembered the face when he turned around.

The weekend has not gone well. On Friday morning they unexpectedly moved Jeffrey from the downtown jail to the suburban one in Brighton. They did it at the same time as Debbie’s scheduled visit. Naturally this made her extremely angry.

This made for a huge miscommunication in the Friday night phone call. Jeff asked if I would be coming out to the jail on Saturday. I said that I would. He mentioned the possibility that they would make up for Friday’s snafu and do an "add-in" visit. I said okay. There were still some unresolved issues with property he’d already released for pick-up and was waiting for us in the downtown property room. I asked him to call me first-thing Saturday to let me know what the status was. He said fine.

Then Debbie got on the phone. She took her anger with the deputies out on him. Like it was his fault the deps decided to move him at exactly the same time as her visit.

She hung out here for a while after the call until she realized no amount of begging and pleading was going to get me to go out drinking with her. So she left, with nothing said about Saturday.

They turn on the inmate phones at 10:00AM. At about five after, Jeffrey calls. He said the books he’d sent back out were still downtown.

"Okay," I said, "I’ll see you in a little while."

"I thought you were coming in the afternoon with Debbie," he said.

"I thought she wasn’t coming out."

"Sure, I told you both that."

"I don’t remember a thing about it. I thought I was going alone."

This of course lead to a big argument that ended after he accused me of having "selective memory". I shouted into the phone, "Fuck you and your visit" and hung up. In my book, accusing someone of having selective memory is just another way of calling them a liar. No matter how it’s phrased, calling me a liar is one of the surest ways to provoke my anger. Hanging up was the best way for me to begin cooling down.

I thought back to the night before. Given what two beers had done to me on top of my meds, I thought there was every possibility that I’d missed or had genuinely forgotten something.

I hung out here for two hours until noon, then trekked over to Debbie’s. I got her out of bed at 12:30, (imagine that!). She came downstairs, and I told her I must have missed something and that Jeff said we were supposed to go out the jail in the afternoon in case they’d squeeze us in for a visit. I asked when she wanted to go.

"Fuck no!" she exploded, "I’m still pissed."

"He thought we were coming out together this afternoon."

"I told that asshole I wasn’t coming out there for no visit today." Ah, sweet love.

With my full backpack, I half walked, half jogged downtown getting there just barely on time. No bus. The next one was in an hour. Hoping it was running late on account of the Lilac Festival, I let a #5 bus go by which would have gotten me just over a half-mile from the jail. The #24 in fact was running between 15 and 20 minutes late. It pulled up just five minutes after the #5 pulled away.

The #24 is a nice run. There aren’t many stops until it gets to the malls and shopping plazas out in the ‘burbs. It’s also a distance-based fare, so you pay when you get off. When I pulled the cord to request my stop, someone a few seats in front of me loudly announced, "Someone’s going to the jail." I walked to the front of the bus as it was slowing for the stop, paid my fare and got off. The light was with me and I crossed the street before the bus left the stop.

I feel no shame in visiting the jail. It makes me happy to know I’m doing something nice for Jeffrey to make his stay a little more tolerable, and to show that despite our fights on the phone, I’m still in his corner.

The jail is set back quite a ways from the road. On the walk back out I found that the next bus into the city was another #24 in around an hour. Fuck. So I walked across the lawn (there’s no fence around the jail) next-door to Monroe Community College and hopped a free shuttle from the campus parking lot to the Lilac Festival.

I kinda rushed through the park to the other side and then home. I don’t exactly remember what my big hurry was or what I did when I got home. Maybe I took a nap since the shirt I wore is still next to the bed. I really don’t remember. Hmmm. I wonder why?

Anyway, he was a little tweaked and had me read the receipt to him. His name, inmate number, pod and bunk number were all correct. I always check the receipt before I sign it to be sure the inmate number is correct. If it were not, the money could go to some criminal! J

It was a mostly older crowd and Mark had come out for the scenery, so we stayed for only a couple of songs before he said something to the effect of "I’ve got to escape all this caterwauling." I chugged the second half of my drink, which was essentially a 12 oz tumbler of Dewar's on-the-rocks with a splash.

Last night was the first night I’d been in Muther’s since 4^th of July weekend last year. Little has changed. Which is to say the place was crowded with a nice cross-section of people, and the dance music is loud, (although the equalization still could use a bit of tweaking.) Everything I look for in a bar.

Jeff the former cook is now a bartender. The three of us go back to the mid 70s. As a result of this being kind of an old home week, after pouring us our drinks he cried, "Off with you both!" Free Dewar’s on-the-rocks with a splash in another 12 oz tumbler.

After a couple of mixes, I thought I recognized a certain style in the DJing. On investigation, sure enough, it was Hector. Hector is the last one of us still spinning in the clubs. We always had a friendly competition between us. He’d been spinning to a couple of years at the old Red Carpet on Main Street, (a.k.a. The Rude Rug) when Mark and I started spinning. When the Rug closed he went to Friar’s on Monroe and was there for umpteen years.

Of all the old clubs, only Tara, Jim’s (now known as Club Marcella) Muther’s and the Forum survive. The Rug was bulldozed for the new YMCA. Friar’s kinda fizzled out after two successive owners died of the plague. Now it’s a sports bar.

Tara has gone from a piano bar to a home for hard-core alcoholics and rentboys with an obnoxiously loud jukebox. Muther’s has gone from a restaurant to a dance club. The Forum had to move for a reconstruction project on Main Street. It survives, but it’s not the same. Marcellas has changed hands several times, and has swung back and forth between gay and straight. There have been dozens of others that have come and gone through the years.

Well this called for another round since I’d already found the bottom of my glass. Back by the men’s room, we caught up with what’s been going on in our lives since last May. Turns out, he works at the Medical Center too. Last I knew he was waiting tables at the Olive Garden. We chatted a while more, then he went off to look around. Which was fine because leaning against the wall was no longer sufficient to keep me reasonably upright.

I found Mark, or rather he found me, after he'd politely wandered off while I was talking with Johnny. I informed him that I was way overserved and that I was going to stagger off home. I’m not sure if I remembered to say thanks for the night out.

Hey Mark! Thanks for the night out!

After weaving my way home, for some insane reason I thought it would be a good idea to fire off an e-mail to Johnny. The University’s Global Address List is in alphabetical order by last name. I can’t for the life of me remember his last name. Only saw it once, on his drivers license on the floor the morning after the night we met.

So then in my alcoholic and anti-depressant induced stupor I decided the next best thing would be to e-mail the PC support person in his department. Thank heavens I fat-fingered her e-mail address. In it’s hunt for the Enter key, my right pinky also hit the ] key. And so, the ".edu" became a ".edu]" When I got the bounce-back from my mail server this morning I read the note. Almost completely incoherent, and no doubt not the most appropriate thing to have sent in the first place.

I really need to have one of those breathalyzer thingys that they put in convicted DWI drivers cars installed on my PC.