style="font-size:15px;"> It was the year of ’73 and I was living in a hovel, a basement, one room, a door, a bed, a table and 2 chairs, a high window a thin cat might have squeezed thru and a 3 burner open – flame gas stove, a firefighter’s worst case scenario. The only sure way out was to die. Wretched burrow though it was, the place reeked character. The residents were as different as the house. The junkies lived on the top floor, the speeders were on the main and us juiceheads controlled the basement. It was a comfortable and congenial arrangement. No one living there had ever been anxious to talk to a lawman or an authority figure of any description. Everyone abided and adhered to a basic policy, a natural order and design which advised each and every individual to keep his mouth shut and do his own time. It was a practical and sensible scheme and approach and it worked well and everyone was content.
Best of all, for me, was the convenience and close proximity of a liquor store. I had only to bump and grind a half block thru the alley, to purchase my daily ration of bargain – counter wine. A good thing.
Rent was $35 / month and I was 3 mos. down and behind and hadn’t eaten a morsel in 5 days and was confined to bed with the early stages of starvation and in walked the Rock. Rocky was the landlord and a serious as a judge sot and drunkard. Rocky had himself a slow look around my room, glanced briefly at my sickly condition and he understood and he knew the answer to my plight. The remedy to my infirmity was a short bottle of vodka which had been discretely hanging from his back pocket. He offered me the bottle. I took a hit. It was the ticket and a vulgar guarantee and amidst curses and cautions, gags and chokes, I shakily dressed myself. “Look at me Rocky! I’m dying!”
“Before you do, you owe me 3 months back rent. Come along.”
“Go away Rocky!”
“You’ll do fine. Let’s go.” Rocky needed me. To be his nigger. To work for him. And to convince himself and prove to the Interdenominational Association of Slumlords that his 4 – star tenant wasn’t a total dead – beat and no – account bum.
An hour later and I was splashing cheap paint on another of Rocky’s claptrap tenement rooms. Somehow, between the squalor of tawdry surroundings and the delirium tremens, I managed to slap a token coat of pink wash on the ceiling and walls of that damned room. It was a struggle and a contest.
Then Rocky fed me, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee and 3 more shots of miserable vodka. After this restorative nostrum, it was the street, a 5-dollar bill tucked neatly and deeply inside my blue – jeans pocket, enough for 2 bottles of rotten wine and a dollar to spare.
“And I’ll be seeing you next month. Have money.”
“Right.” I waved and walked away.
Now, at any time leading up to my having become halt and lame, I could have searched and found the work which had assuredly been mine for the asking and risen above my deformities but chose not to. Gracious providence has always sustained me and come to my rescue whenever the screws of mischance and misfortune have tightened down securely upon my person.
Work is slavery. The wages of work are the same as any slave ever received. Ignoble survival and inglorious existence. Work done solely to survive and exist is a twisted misrepresentation and a deprivation of living your life on your terms and in close harmony with your creator. Your remarkable gift of life, on this beautiful planet is short, too short to waste on empty work and futile labor.
When I think of the important matters in my life today, the necessities, shelter and food, books and booze, laughter and loose women, I have absolutely no need of foolish complications. Such as work. Work would only be a distraction and get in my way and bring me down. I do not need work and for the record, here I am, a bit crazy from all the years but here just the same.
I like money. Yes I do. Money is good, to pleasure a man, to please his friends, to help others and to make everyone smile. However, I’m not willing and ready to debase and demean myself to acquire and hold money. Hell, I can’t understand finances past or more than a hundred dollar bill. A C – note will get me a bail of ‘Drum’ tobacco and a packet of ‘Zig – Zag’ blue rolling papers, be my entrance fee into the Regis Hotel, buy drinks for myself, a round for the boys and hopefully leave me with a few spare dollars scattered loosely on the floor of my bachelor loft the following frightening morning, for me to take and place carefully and gently on a Tight Squeeze beer table, at 7:30 A.M., to relieve the agony and put out the righteous fires inside my head from the night before. I will never be a rich man.
People no longer puzzle me. Square – john, working people, I understand real well. Someone, at sometime and to a ridiculous purpose, told them they had to work. From this belief they developed an entire philosophy of having to be responsible and this could only be attained by working hard all their lives. These people have the bitter and cheerless excuse of having to work, the fever of having to work. They lead such senseless and superficial lives. Such a waste, of such a gift. But the way it is and the way it has to be. For the squares.
Hell, I’d skedaddle from worthless and contemptible work in a N.Y. minute. I do not believe in being a slave to another man’s guilt and greed. I refuse to bow and serve any man. I will not sell myself. Any work I have ever done, for wages, has always been a well – rehearsed act of panic and consternation.
I have never presumed to be responsible with regards to the work ethic and with a credence and conviction like mine, pity on the man daft and balmy and ready to give me a job. The man deserved his reward or punishment.
I have the word, ‘notwithstanding’, in front of me, not a pretty word but I’ll deal with the bastard. Notwithstanding and only as an extreme, there are certain considerations which would force me or inspire me to labor and work, here in Canada. Certain mitigating factors could include, a long ways from home with no money in my pocket, lack of a roof over my head and the last hopeless phases before starvation. I had all 3 of these circumstances in great abundance, the summer of ’76, in Y.K., N.W.T.
Not much else will be an inducement for me to work hard, not the need or ambition to be someone extra special or superfluously important, not the idea of affluence or materialism.
I try to maintain a line of credit, always, to pull myself out of the low spots. I’ve ever cultivated a fine balance between what I want and what I need and the wisdom to appreciate the difference and to be satisfied with what I do have. I am a simple man.
Down easy with a struggling and stray thought on this sordid and distasteful topic. In Y.K., back in ’76, I could have handed any passing itinerant swagman an ax and a pouch of stale tobacco and pointed him in the general direction of the bush and more likely than not, the brave stranger would have put up a cabin and been quite comfortable. Not I. No. I would have chucked the ax into the Great Slave Lake, sat myself down on a log and smoked the tobacco and thought on my next clever and crafty move.
Further and lastly, any man who takes and hires another man into coin is a pimp. Any man who takes coin for his hire is a whore.
The only safe and rational conclusion I can draw upon, is, I was never put on this planet with the intention I do any labor, for any man.
The fear was on me in Y.K., in ’76. I had no money and no prospects of getting any soon, from any complimentary direction. Food, beer and cigarettes were becoming urgent and impossible. I was a long mile from home, as I imagined a home to be. I could have been standing at any point on the compass and I still would have been distant and lost. I had no home.
I had done in and exhausted the mooch and hustle and life was rapidly becoming a mite intolerable. I was tired and weary of being moved from one ridiculous and absurd sleeping place to another. I was dirty and ragged and I
