#ROW 80 POST – JC'S OBSERVATIONS

I live with a man. Okay, now that you’ve all recovered, picked your jaws up off the floor, told the cat, and went “well! I never!” I have to say this: I love this man whole-heartedly, completely without reason and would die for him, Truthfully. He has had a terrible life; living among a population of truly dysfunctional people and having had a pretty toxic childhood myself, this says much. His childhood and personal life have been absolute hell. JC is from west Texas and has a wonderful drawl and a colorful way of speech. He’s not the type to go out of his way to tell knee-slappers, or shaggy-dog stories, but in a non-calculated way, he places his comments perfectly, leaving me breathless with laughter. He can tell stories so prosaically and honestly, the depth of realization of the tragedy doesn't really impact until later. I mourn for hours at times.

Mama is good balm for the soul and she loves the affection. She wouldn't be here if it weren't for JC.

He never finished grade school; according to him, he can barely read. He learned to read by reading the Bible, which he knows Chapter and Verse. JC is almost Old Testament in the depth and breadth of his knowledge. He is righteous, but not judgmental and steadfast. At times, I feel he is too generous, but he must do what he feels is right. He is good and wants to help people who hurt and really need it and he is protective, but prudent. He has moral limits he will not cross. He thinks he is not “smart, but has common sense, because he doesn’t read well.” He is one of the smartest men I have ever met. He has been with me through everything; my having to be Baker Acted, my many trips to the hospital and has listened to me whine about all the weirdness from my PD-essential tremor symptoms. His is a courage found rarely and I cherish it.

 Our poor grocery store; an endless series of delights and japeries for me. I keep being warned that I will end up on You Tube for one of my idiocies, by the store employees, who are terrific in personality and customer service skills. Jim, of the Pink Pumpkin saga has taken his awesome to the front, to help with bagging, and managing the cashiers. It suits him; along with awesome, he is unflappable and unbelievably kind and generous, as everyone there is. I consider it my 2nd home. It was the first store I went to with a food voucher, no ID when I was place in the homeless shelter by Homeless Recovery.The Manager, understanding immediately, my situation, honored that voucher, so I could eat that weekend. It was the day after Thanksgiving, 2010 and all the official agencies were closed. Josh Hamilton is still there. They are my friends; no. They are family. Which means I pick on them at every chance I get. I was totally unaware that chickens had paws. I guess I slept through Biology or Chicken Anatomy at school that day, whatever. 

JC holding the chicken paws. The best part of this was getting him to smile. He has a beautiful smile. It was 10 am on a Saturday morning and we were waiting to have some prescriptions filled. It's dead quiet in the store, except for me holleriing, "SMILE, SMILE, SMILE, HA HA. COME ON. DON'T BE SUCH A WOODEN INDIAN! LOOK AT ME! HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE LATEST FORM OF URBAN VIOLENCE? DRIVE-BY VIOLA SOLOS! BLAH BLAH BLAH" No one else is in the store and it's pretty quiet, all anyone can hear is my cheerful blathering, trying to get this man to smile. Behind me, I can hear the Pharmacy department cracking up. Finally, he smiles and I quick, take a picture. Otherwise, this picture would have had all the charm of death row.

I am liberal. I am so liberal, I am an anarchist. I read and understood at a post-Graduate English level at the age of 15. I am righteous and mercurial. I want to help. He and I work so well together and watch the folks here and decide who might need a hand up. Plus, we have a bunch of fun.

This day started as many others do, with the hopes, speculations and trepidations of a Bus Ride. Ah yes, First, the inevitable 1 minute equals 7 years. This means that JC must leave the house around August 9, 1872. I hope he set the alarm early enough. So, off he goes. I sleep on and miss Garfield’s assassination and the turn of the Century, the 20^th.

JC comes in around 10:30 on August 9, on 2012; he must have taken the wormhole home, and plops down. I’m doing something different. Pounding madly on the keyboard as if possessed, typing drivel or doing my latest form of side-splitting cyber vandalism; it’s all pretty much the same thing.

“What do you make of this?” JC asks… and he proceeds to tell me about the ride home. Some cat got on the bus and pointed at JC’s shoes. Just plain lace-ups, kind of like running shoes, only black. The dude mentioned “shoes” and looked at JC. JC looked around the bus; the riders looked at him. JC looked at the dude. The dude looked back at the shoes and mumbled “shoes” again. JC shrugged and said, “Okay.” The guy proceeded to get down on the floor and pick each one up and one, by one, rub his face all over the bottoms. “What in hell? Do I have shit on them?” JC asked, but no one answered. Guy gets up and sits down.

EW M G! It wasn't this creepy, but since it happened to JC, it's happened to several other men on the HARTline bus. I'm pretty open-minded, but this is a bit much, particularly since this jerk wasn't even asking for consent; he was just helping himself. I would love to have seen it, just for a laugh. But, yikes!

Of course, JC can’t wait to get home and tell me about this squirrel. We sort of have a running competition about who runs into the biggest loon on the bus. So far, JC’s got me beat. No one’s asked to smell my purse or underarms yet. If someone asks to smell my panties, it’ll be the last thing that person ever asks in existence, or non-.

We proceed to go sit on the front porch and watch the stupid world of Nebraska Avenue go by. Here comes Jo-Jo (either “Jo-Jo, the Ho” or “Jo-Jo The Dog-Faced Girl, if I’m feeling particularly ugly that day.) She is being led by one of the newer denizens of the homeless shelter. The homeless shelter is an amalgam or payors, felons and people sent there from the state. Jo-Ho gets an SSDI check. She had a stroke, most likely due to her excessive drinking which has not abated since. Anyway, she is being “led” by a newbie, a woman. Usually it’s a man. Jo-Jo has all the grace and charm of a 58-year old cheerleader who pissed herself 40 years ago after being dragged face-down through a gravel-pit. She has the voice, face and outfit to prove it.

“Look, Jo-Jo has a new “helper” JD says to me nonchalantly. I kind of glance over that way. I get a dim impression, my eyes being kind enough to allow seeing 2 little blobs; one wavering, the other helping the other on the sidewalk to the liquor store.

JC continues on, “You know for someone so feeble and ill, there is certainly nothing wrong with the hinge in her elbow…” This is all said placidly, with the nonchalance of “nice day out. Do you want eggs?”

We are both together in a tiny apartment now, and his healths is not good, so I'm never going to be that wife who writes to Ann Landers as I once saw in the paper. Her husband had died, and she was so sorry for bitching about his snoring, not picking up after himself, and on and on. I felt so terribly bad for the woman, because even though she had not loved her husband, she had not told him, nor showed him, even in the smallest of ways. Due to the fact that we would lose our SSDI, we live in “sin.” I'm sure Rick Scott, GOP family values guy, being the asshole Republican Satan Governor of the State of Florida is just hopping mad over this. Fuck him, although he probably has some indescribable man-ware and can do himself. Anyway, as JC well knows, it is my mission to make him experience happiness, or miserable trying.

Our fair Governor, Rick Scott. Florida GOP, friend to Satanists everywhere. I believe that this is the finest Paint job I have ever achieved, and it took a whole 2 seconds, with no do-overs. Revel in the stupidity.

When we lived at the Homeless shelter, JC had all sorts of sayings. Mr. Pimp My Ride was always talking about how he “worked for a living,” and wasn't a lazy slacker like JC and I were. Well, this idiot was working under the table and getting paid daily and it couldn't have been much of a job, because Mr. PMR was not quite as bright as a sack of hammers. I'm fairly sure he was illiterate, and he spent most of his time drinking and smoking crack. He babbled something at JC and I when were in the kitchen and wanted us to look at something, I told him that due to my cataract in my left eye, I was unable to see it. Mike, aka Mr. Pimp pipes up, “Ooh, I've had about 37 o' dem.” Then he, apropos of nothing, starts talking about “cyclostopy” and wondered to JC, “is that the one where they take the balls off, too?” JC was washing the dishes, didn't turn a hair, he said, “No, that's the one where they sew up your mouth and stop the bullshit.” I had to leave the kitchen.

They say one picture tells a thousand words. This one pretty much writes the whole novel. Who in the name of all that is holy or unholy wraps tinfoil around his spokes? The only time this is acceptable is one is 11 or maybe 12 years of age. He used to get him some bungee cords and tie his boom box to his handlebars. Stylin' man. I don't want to give the impression that he was just a fool; he was mean and dangerous and his weapon of choice was a knife. He was rather impaired about what or who should be stabbed. He stabbed cars, trash cans, but seldom people. I guess his folks didn't read "Why Little Johnny Can't Stab." His brother lived there, also. They both had a younger brother who was a regular guy and would occasionally have to bail one of them out of jail and I remember him saying in an exasperated tone, "Why in the Hell can't you and Benny just get it together?" Never gonna happen; people like that will never even try to get out of that life.

The following week, Mike tried to sell us a DVD. It was like “Big Butts” are something. JC just looked at him and said “What the hell is wrong with you?” Mike launches into this story about how he'd originally bought the thing, and then lent it to someone else. It was then stolen from that person and sold to another person in the house. Mike found out about it, and bought it back from that person, and then wanted to sell it to JC “to earn a profit.” As if. After hearing this, JC, nodded his head and said “I think you're an Astronaut.” Mike says, “How you figure?” JC said, “All that space between your eyes.” I ran down the hall, cackling like a hyena.

JC tried to get me back and make me laugh. He forgets that I've spent a lifetime on stages holding in the ha-ha. Besides, I was pissed because the bed was it's usual mess. As if. I'm about as domestic as a panther.

I always laugh, when he starts recounting these stories, because of the “demonstration.” I look over to see the frantic motion of right elbow going up and down 90 degrees from chair arm to mouth. That's his Jo-Jo imitation. The motion says it all. “Nothing wrong with her smoking elbow either.” Motion repeated on left side. I fall out of chair. How many ways do I love this man? This is just one of them.