I skated home up the usual path. On the other side of the intersection at the pier was a homeless women preaching love to her delusions. She moved across the sidewalk towards the corner looking at noone and noone was paying her any heed. The usual field of disapproval and avoidance surrounded her and was being respected uncomfortably by everyone walking by her loudly demanding of love in the world.

When the light changed I glided across the street and as I skated by her she looked right at me. I could feel her eyes on my left side as I studiously avoided her eye. And she said, "Hello, George Michael."

Now I have been called George Michael before. Some have said I look like him. Some of them that say that have wanted to get me in bed. So what they said was suspect. Of course the lady on the street corner was out her mind so I'm not exactly inclined to believe her either.

As soon as I had passed her attention moved on and George Michael became apart of her rant as she exclamed how George Michael knows what love is and how...she faded into my past as I made my way swiftly up the walk.

I have been channelling the insane for most of my life. The first girl I had sex with when I was all of 14 was placed in a mental hospital not 2 months after we lost our virginity to each other. When I was in college I regularly spoke to the homeless who were all convinced that somehow I could save the world. Often they would know my name. Sometimes that made me frightened. When K was only a few months old an insane woman attempted to abduct her when we were shopping in a local drugstore. When I lived in New York City I was followed for several days by a woman with a fierce look in her eyes who desperately wanted to buy the child I carried on my back.

My granny is a singular example of what an unhinged mind will do in combination with a fierce determination to be insecure and an unmeasured dose of alcohol. We used to, when I was child, drive through the hills on our way into the mountains. When we reached an old ghost town, which had long ago been used to water and rest the horses for the same trip into the mountains, we would holler as loud as we could as our celebration of our making it halfway into the mountains. After I had outgrown such trips my granny physically attacked my mom while driving on that exact spot in that same ghost town while they were driving. I never see her anymore. The confusion about who my child contributed to this. But surely the sexual come ons solidified my desire to stay away.

Then of course I married a woman who would rape me, abuse me, and attempt to destroy herself until finally she tried to kill me and abducted K. It was after she was taken away in restraints to the neuro psychiatric ward that I started examining my life and asking myself why these folks with their mental illnesses have played such a strong and ever present role in my life.

I don't know what the answer is. But I do know they keep coming. And when they do I get very nervous. They can smell me coming, of that I am sure.

2/20/03:10:30:54 PM PST    

Very witty little tale. However for any ill-informed in the audience it should be stressed that you should never store your condoms in the car. The heat of a locked up car will destroy condoms very quickly.

2/20/03:1:19:36 PM PST