1187
"There is no question of jail time," said the young man at the Public Defenders Office.I am not at all sure whether I should have felt happy about that or not, but I did.
The Public Defenders Office is, oddly, not anywhere near the courthouse district of Honolulu, but further down the route of the Black Hole bus. (I so hate taking that bus more than I have to, I've made it clear to Helen R that I'd rather not see films at the Dole complex, just beyond the Black Hole.)
While I was sitting in the waiting area with a bunch of people who weren't much above the "dregs of society" I see every night at the Black Hole, I twice saw the very cute young lawyer who appeared with me and the Sleeptalker in Court after the night we spent in jail. He's not local Japanese, as I thought, but Vietnamese.
Can someone please send me a ticket to Saigon?
Well, I'll see him again because it appears he will be there with me at the appearance before the Judge in March. The other young man told me, aside from assuring me there would be no jail time, that if the Judge is in a "good mood" I'll be let off with "time served". Otherwise, I'll be given a choice between a fine or "community service". [= chain gang].
If that is the case, which would I choose? I said the fine.
[shrug]. He said "less than a hundred dollars", so no worse punishment than an Ice Follies, although not nearly as much fun.
Unless that P.D. wants to play ....
I'm so bad.
I'm also annoyed with the Sleeptalker. After that "you look sharp" exchange early on Sunday morning at the mall, he has just disappeared (again). He said about the Black Hole, "I'm not going back there", which I assume means the drug-rehab program is down the tubes. I had seen him rushing out of the place on the previous Friday, but didn't mention it.
I wish he'd tell me more honestly what is going on in his life, but then I can't really do anything about it, so why should he?
When I heard the news about Massachusetts, I thought, if I were twenty years younger, I'd ask him to go with me to Provincetown and get married.
1188
"What a horrible haircut!" I said, and wished later I had been more diplomatic."My sister cut it," the Sleeptalker explained, thus telling me he had been out in the country.
She did quite a job, hardly any hair left.
He came to look for me at the Rainy Day Bench. I gave him most of my dinner, chili and rice I'd just bought, and told him about my adventure at the Public Defenders Office. He asked if people had been talking about him in the game and I said, "yes, we were just talking about you yesterday." My title in the game said I was going to forget about Valentine's Day and the Boss Lady asked why. I said because [the Sleeptalker] wasn't going to be my Valentine. Then added, "unless I get a bane". (Bane = elvenbane, a very special sword.) "You'd bribe him?" asked another player. "Of course. It wouldn't be the first time."
He enjoyed hearing about the exchange, and I was surprised he didn't appear on campus the next day. But after he finished my dinner, he gave me the closed fist "handshake" (an easy one, by local standards, where you just make a fist and touch it to the other one) and said he had to go "earn" some money. Earn, in this case, via the Angelo method. I hope he doesn't end up in jail, but people who steal inevitably, eventually, get caught.
Oh well.
I got a letter from Felix. He's had pneumonia but is recovering. He was smarter than I was and got intervention early enough to be spared hospital time. He sent me a photograph of his current bad boys. (He works at some kind of anthroposophical centre where they get four young European "interns" each year.) None of them as dazzling as the one he fell for last year, but there is one who is quite fascinating. Felix's interest in Rudolf Steiner is paying off in his old age.
The Cat Lady made an unusual appearance in the secluded grove early on Thursday morning. She normally only visits in the evenings or on weekends when there is no parking fee. She told me the latest news from the "anti-cat faction" on campus, people who want to see all the cats vanish. Their latest claim is that "cats attract rats". [!] "Must be suicidal rats," I said, adding that I've never seen a rat on this campus. Lots of cats, birds, and the occasional mongoose, but never a rat.
Kory K tells me that Harold Kama and John Feary have jobs as truckers, delivering beer to retail establishments. It's a job I certainly want someone to do, but it seems a shame that two of the most talented young musicians in these islands have to do it.
1189
Does anyone know where I can buy a bomb? One big enough to blow up the Metropolitan Opera House in NYC. (Honest, I would try to use it when no one was there.)What an extraordinarily vulgar production of Verdi's wonderful "Rigoletto" they gave us on Saturday afternoon. If they do that to "Traviata" next month, I will want to bomb the place, but maybe Fleming will save it all, despite inadequate support. (Is there a decent tenor alive these days?).
If so, certainly wasn't in that production. I was feeling a little, just a little, more kindly about the soprano until she shrilled "Caro nome" and then I put the radio back in my bag.
Once again, the weather guessers predicted several days of storms and heavy rains and it didn't happen. A few light showers now and then but, all in all, a pleasant weekend. It was so warm on Sunday I was tempted to return to shorts and tee shirt. This week they are again predicting stormy weather at the end of the week. It's fine with me if they are mistaken one more time.
Excitement at the Rainy Day Bench on Friday evening when a large local man went running by. A few minutes later he returned with another large local man, some poor bugger in handcuffs being escorted between them back into the Sears store. I was grateful I didn't know the culprit; it would be quite upsetting to see them hauling Angelo, Tanioka or the Sleeptalker along the sidewalk like that.
None of those culprits made an appearance, with or without handcuffs. Considering how enthusiastically interested in the game the Sleeptalker was during our last conversation, I assume he has gone back to the country. Otherwise, he would surely by now have appeared on campus.
The game was especially amusing on Saturday morning. Then I took a break to listen to the broadcast of "Rigoletto", inspiring the above rant. Ham-it-up tenors certainly seem to be in vogue at the Metropolitan Opera this season.
Prairie Home Companion provided much better listening later, a live broadcast from Hot Springs, Arkansas (with ample opportunities for pokes at Bill Clinton). But I deliberately skipped Lasser's show on Sunday. The last thing I need is an hour of songs about "embracing".
Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you ...
1190
"I guess I'm getting too old for you," said the Sleeptalker."I don't think you will ever get too old for me, you sweet man," I assured him.
He arrived at the Rainy Day Bench on Tuesday evening with one goal in mind, getting me to fill the glass pipe, to share it with him, and be rewarded with his ever-desirable body. I just couldn't do it. Life is in one of those times when the balance seems more than usually precarious and I knew that smoking that drug, staying up all night and suffering through the next day would do absolutely nothing to make things better, no matter how much I would have treasured the prize.
At first he was ranting about the problems "the courts" were giving him, but even though I tried several times during the conversation to get him to tell me what he'd been talking about, I still don't know. He'll undoubtedly eventually tell me.
He said he'd given up on the rehab project. Even though it offers a private room and a computer, it's "too much like being in jail." So he's staying out in the country, probably at his sister's place, traveling into town only to replenish his cash supply. I told him about seeing the man in handcuffs being led back into the department store, said if you end up running from the security guards, go in the other direction because I don't want to see you being led by here like that.
When he finally gave up, after an extended and touching effort to get me to change my mind about the pipe, said he was going "home", I told him it was always good to see him. And so it is.
I'm not at all sure I made the right decision in rejecting the opportunity he offered.
"It's so kind of you to feed those kitties," said a young lady walking through the secluded grove the next morning. "Every day," I said. How could I not feed those sweethearts?
1191
"Are you going to sleep next to me tonight?" the Sleeptalker asked flirtatiously, reminding me of that night half-a-decade ago at the hacienda when he asked, "are you ready to make love tonight?". I smiled and shook my head no. (I am convinced it is better for both of us to keep a distance at the Black Hole.)The Sleeptalker has Weekly Resolutions instead of New Year Resolutions. "Never going back there again" applied to the Black Hole lasted little more than a week, since he was there on Thursday night. He also seems to have returned to his Chinatown Patron, playing the game on both Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.
A verbatim conversation there Wednesday (on a public channel):
'i made a big mistake at court too.'
'not that big, if you aren't in jail already'
'for some reason i couldnt talk to the judge'
'(probably why he's not in jail)'
'i tried to ask the judge what the meaning of double jepardy'
'your lawyer kicked you and said shut up?'
'i want a different lawyer and a different judge'
'you don't have any choice in these things, so live with it'
'i already did community service for those charges, on the same day, and now ive got it all over again, im sorry i wasnt aware of, never had to fight in court before. the fifth amendment'
'that's totally different, where you don't have to testify if it incriminates you'
I assume what has happened is that the Sleeptalker thinks he is being tried in court twice for the same offense, one for which he has already done the punishment of "community service". Even given the unreliability of our "justice" system applied to poor people, that seems highly unlikely to me. But if I can't get him to talk about the details, there's no way I can help him adjust his misperception.
1192
"That cat has beautiful eyes," said the Sleeptalker during his most recent visit to the secluded grove. Indeed she does. I'm grateful her children inherited Lady Grey's eyes, even though otherwise they far more resemble what I am sure is their father. He came to visit on the weekend and I noticed again how closely the kittens match his color and markings. But he's missing those Cleopatra eyes.Lucky felines didn't have to endure nasty human food at all this cycle.
Every week has begun with the weather guessers telling us we could expect wet and stormy days at the end of it, but once again they were wrong. It did get much cooler (enough to send me to my locker to get the winter shirt I bought in November but haven't worn because it has been too mild for heavy flannel). It stayed pleasant, mostly sunny, and got sufficiently warmer that I finally abandoned that shirt, admitting that my "winter wardrobe" shopping this season has not been very successful.
The holiday weekend was rather dull. "Queen of Spades" is not one of my favorite operas. Ironically, the Met did a fine job of presenting it. Naughty of them to mess up one I like most and then do a decent job with a less favored one. At least they will be free of my carping next Saturday because I have no desire to participate in their Stravinsky triple-feature. (Not that I don't respect and admire him, I just don't want to listen to his music.)
Michael Lasser's show was unprecedented, the first time I have listened to his hour without ever having heard a single song he presented. Nor had I heard of the songwriter, John Wallowitch. Rather a Manhattan Noel Coward, with a very similar manner of singing his own material (and it was mostly recordings he'd done himself). Interesting, but I think there are other songwriters who perhaps more deserve an hour devoted to their work.
A fan of what is generally called "medical thrillers" has evidently sold a batch of them to the used bookshop because I've had quite a run of them. Rich people have clones made of themselves so they can harvest the poor things for organs once their own start to deteriorate; a mad scientist making clones from DNA found on religious relics (eventually coming up with You-Know-Who); a miracle drug that cures cancer, AIDS, Altzheimer's, etc., which big drug companies kill to keep secret; stuff I was grumbling about as being too far fetched on the very day I heard on the news that South Koreans have successfully cloned human foetuses. It's a brave new world ... well, a strange one, in any case.
The champ of the batch, though, was Bentley Little with his Dominion, and I'll join Stephen King in saying how much I enjoyed it, silly and improbable though it is. The "old gods", weakened through declining faith, take refuge in DNA and then with the right mating, get re-born. Dionysus, the first to return. Sexy god.
Speaking of sexy, The One hasn't been seen, in or out of the game, since that night at the Black Hole. I did see Angelo, though. Looks like he and the PL are reconciled since they were in the mall together one evening. They didn't see me. Angelo looked extremely stressed, which is not unusual when he's with the PL.
Meanwhile, the major debate raging right now is whether or not I buy a recording device for the Fleming Traviata, or do I just listen to it once and forget about "collecting". Collecting, after all, has been one of the silliest banes of my life.
the tales