More on Hooking (2 of 2): Resolution.

So we weren’t talking, but then like 2-3 weeks later I ran into my one friend who “hooks” late at night at a club, and he was obviously on some recreational drug, but I jovially greeted him and told him I’d buy him a beer to make up for my making inappropriate jokes.

He spacily accepted, and I did that.

“And I won’t even make you go sit on the bottle,” I was like.

Fortunately, he was too out of it to really process that remark, so the apologetic gesture held.

More on Hooking (1 of 2): Interpersonal Trouble.

So my one friend who “hooks” (his word; the noun he uses “hooking”) was telling me that he really likes how people choose to purchase him to have sex with, and then he was telling me about one older (white) customer who isn’t that hot, but who he gets off on since the guy holds him and calls him his princess and is totally into him...

(The guy also likes to here him talk about his laboratory research, which he’s happy to do – he says a lot of his customers like how he can talk about serious things – but he always reminds them, “I’m happy to talk about this, but I’m on the clock, and the rate’s the same.”)

In response to which, I texted him that I didn’t think that hooking was good for him.

To which my friend texted back that I had promised not to judge – which I had promised, in order to get him to open up, as well as tell him about how I don’t judge my one (female) acquaintance through the sex documentary movie series who hooks and has a once-weekly appointment with a wheelchair-bound guy with cerebal palsy who pays her to suck him off (somehow I fit that description into the 140-characters of a text).

To which I (jesuitically) responded that I had promised not to judge hooking per se, which I wasn’t doing, but I was instead discussing my take on the possible effects of hooking on him, which was an entirely different subject.

He accepted that distinction and texted back that the only reasons he was still friends with me was because I was concerned for him.

A week later, though, he got pissed because when we were texting about going to a movie or something I mentioned I couldn’t do this one early evening time because I would “be selling myself” (i.e. tutoring Greek) during that time, and things got rocky again.

Can't wait to read this book on the subway.

I can't wait to read this book on the subway:



I wonder if it will get as many looks as this one did!:



. . .

Another day at school...

1) When I was eating lunch outside on the library steps a young (Asian) guy is out there smoking, and every 20 seconds he hocks a big piece of spit on the sidewalk, and even beside him on the ledge where people usually sit. When he gets up I look and there's like 7-8 spots of wet spit like the size of a silver dollar, and his cigarette butt is there, since he tossed it on the ground rather than throwing it out. So, I yelled "hey!" after him, and after he turned around I pointed to his butt, and was like, "You forgot to throw that away," and he came back to pick it up.

2) In the library, I was making photocopies, and all of a sudden I needed to take a *huge* shit, so I finished up real quick and dashed to a restroom in the book stacks and took a big gooey dark reddish-brown shit that covered like half the side of the toilet, and it smelled *foul* too.

3) My breath smelled like really heavy garlic all day after lunch, since I had put too much into the pasta when cooking.

Sunday Trip (3 of 3): Serbfest.

After the bar, I went to Serbfest for dinner.

I had biked through a few blocks east of the church a couple years ago on a county bike trail, but somehow I had never seen the dome of the orthodox church there...

The church was tiny tiny, and near it was this big brick building with hallspace and a kitchen and concession windows and a huge patio off the side that they had turned into a beer garden with a stand at one end and a stage at the other.

There were t-shirt and CD stands as well, and some inflatable jumper things for the kids, and then some booths where they were selling roast pig, roast lamb, and roast bull, as well as cheese pies donuts cabbage etc. (the cabbage and the roast bull were sold out).

Behind the stands were grills but no spits, and there were firepits with big earthenware pots for bean soup... In the hallspace, you could see they had tablesaws in the kitchen area behind the concession window, and they had carcasses of roast lamb and pigs all sawed up, with just the bottom half of each there, the hooves and all sticking out.

You had to get tickets, though, so I went up to the table, where this (Serbian) girl with bleached blonde hair and tight t-shirt and big black sunglasses was vending them, so I asked her which was better, the pig or the lamb (there was a one-ticket difference in meal price), and she was like, in accented English, "I don't know, I am vegetarian!!!"

I ended up getting the pig, and sitting down at a table to hear a Balkan oompah band of like 8 trumpets tubas etc. and some Serbian-American people and their spouses ending up sitting down near me. The wife of the one couple gave me the lowdown on all the Serbfests within 3 hours drive of there, and the other one said she just comes because her husband is orthodox, and it's nice to be around her own kind.

"It like, 'I see white people,'", she was like, and then started telling me how her community was becoming all Mexican, and how she doesn't have a problem with that, but a bungalow meant for at most 3 people now has a lot more and there's 5 cars associated with the house, and the whole place is just too congested.

She also said that a lot of the Serbian men at the festival were hot, and she should find one for her daughter.

Sunday Trip (2 of 3): Nearby bar.

So, I checked out of hobofest and went to this bar kitty-corner the grounds, where they had thick fences over the windows and door and you had to be buzzed in.

I went up and hit the buzzer and the door buzzed and I opened it and walked in, and there was this bored-looking (black) woman sitting in an empty bar watching some daytime entertainment tv shows with the volume up high on the bar's multiple tvs.

Me and her started talking, and I was telling her about hobofest, and she had no idea it was going on, even though it was a 100 feet away.

"I thought I saw something going on over there," she was like.

I told her it sucked except for the free stew, and that it was just a handful of dirty old hippies pretending to be hobos, and she just laughed, and I said that I had seen the bar and decided to come over and check it out, though sometimes you never know if should worry about going into a bar.

"Sometimes you should," she was like, but then she added that that was a safe bar, and they never had fights unless it was between family.

"Like how?", I was like.

"Oh," she was like, "Five, six weeks ago two sisters got to fightin', and they were down rollin' around on the flo' over there, and I wanted to break them up, but on the other hand I didn't, because it was so funny."

"How old were they?", I was like.

"Fifty, no, sixties," she was like.

Then, she was like, "It was the one's birthday, but it was getting late and the other one wanted to go, so she was poking her, and then the one pulls her wig off, and the next thing you know they're on the flo'."

She also told me that there used to be a lot more lounges, especially along a major north-south street, but this one local minister got them all closed down (in fact, the local minister who tried to run for the mayorship recently); he had tried once but people circulated petitions and kept them open, but the second time he was successful.

"He said he'd get jobs for the people who lost their jobs, but heck, half his church is out of work, so you think we're gonna get in line in front of them and suddenly get jobs? Hell no," she was like.

She said the funny thing was, too, was that a strip joint opened up right next to his church but he couldn't get that shut down, though people from his church protested a lot at first.

"Does it serve liquor?", I was like.

"No," she was like, "It's B.Y.O.B., though they give you cups and set-ups."

Sunday Trip (1 of 3): Tacos and hobos.

So the other weekend I biked down to hobofest, which was way on the other side of the city from me.

I mapped out a route that minimized my biking through ghetto, and it took me 2hrs and 2min to get there, including a stop for tacos...

Right before passing through the western part of a really bad ghetto, I saw 2 Mexican guys grilling outside on the street by their house under a big tent, and there were some neon green handwritten signs taped to a Range Rover parked there, advertising -

TACOS $1.00

GORDITAS $2.00

LEMONADE $.25

- so I stopped to get some tacos.

There was a (really black) woman and a (really black) teenager with her (her son?) getting some tacos, and she told me that she loved the place, and it made tacos better than in any restaurant, and they come there every chance they get.

I wasn't too too hungry, though, so I just ordered one taco (and even spoke some Spanish, since the guy couldn't speak English too well to tell me what kind of meats they had), and I had two lemonades, since I was thirsty.

The taco was pretty good, and a Mexican woman with good English came out right when I was finishing up, and she said that they set up there Sat. and Sun. and have been doing it most of the summer and will be doing it most of the fall.

After that, I biked another 35 minutes down to hobofest...

The ghetto wasn't too bad, there were a lot of old people out watering their lawns, as well as some occasional porches where guys were smoking up. There was a really nice bike trail just south of there, too, which I was able to take.

Hobofest was a disappointment, though. The setting was cool - it was this old fenced off factory, on the grounds of which was a community garden and beehives, and in one of the buildings where a wall had collapsed there was a big cavernous hall where chairs were set up and some guy was singing union songs - but the attendees were mostly leftwing eccentrics and aging hippies, and pretty much everyone was white...

There was a campfire outside with free mulligan stew, which was nice, and there was a local youth group that had chips and pop for sale, but the music sucked, and when my one (white) friend from Mississippi asked if he could play his guitar, they said the schedule was full - even though the people playing inside and outside had no voices to speak of.

Too, I asked someone about who camped out the previous night, and they said it was invitation only.

So, it was somehow the most rigidly scheduled hobofest ever.