Finished the morning writing, shaving and backing up my files, I considered the interior of the bathroom door at the nights Inn and saw that it had been punched twice and kicked in and split long ways and ripped out of the frame once.
'I suppose that whore took all the cocaine into the bathroom and was snorting it up...'
Sitting into the rucksack and hoping my balls would not drop out, hefting the solid metal T-cane, and picking up my light hand bag, I headed downstairs to the cage with the 'Vacancy” sign in the door and dropped off the card key.
Walking south on MacArthur, then turning west on Market, the trash was thick, the traffic light and the sidewalks empty. Crossing the driveway of some vacant building I noticed a new sedan with three broken windows, and that the passenger-side window had been bent outward, as if someone had been dragged forth up out of the car. Thinking Mister Grey would like this for an urban blight picture, I stopped to photo it with my flip and immediately heard a parked blue, Bronco of some 25 years, start up. Before snapping the photo I made eye contact with a skinny, whitish Latino man, who looked at me narrowly and shook his head in the negative.
Walking past a homeless paleface packing up his shelter, then turning south on 40th, then west on 123 and then south on 45th, I noticed that the the dwellings became progressively more affluent.
A black woman scurried away form me behind her mask.
A white skateboard bum passed me by.
A black street cleaner sweeping the gutter by hand told me, “Oh, da train station way ova dat way, sir—have a nice one,” and I thanked him.
Crossing Holden a Bantu thug in sweats and red socks and shoes skulked by, noticed my pack and walked towards me, then noticed my heavy cane as I sopped and regarded him, and moved on past, looking for easier meat, Asian I presume.
As I turned right and west on Horton and crossed 53rd, the dwellings became super hero posh, with each fortress-like condo featuring a steel gated garage door out of which unhurried morning motorists, all white, male and alone, and of the vampire race, eased into the empty lane with a lazy left turn.
An elongated white vampire and her fat whelp were walking towards me down the sidewalk as jack hammers and utility trucks belted and hummed around the vast construction site which seems like it will provide hive accommodations for 500 more vampires. She looks ahead and sees this old hobo and frantically begins to mask herself and her son, who resists in his fat simpering way.
I say good morning and she cringed in horror and pushes him by me.
Avoiding a docking tractor-trailer, I pass a pretty young vampire of some thirty winters walking her dog, her morale offspring. She leaves off speaking to her companion when she sees me and then looks up sheepishly and I say, 'Good morning, miss,” and she chokes reaching into her pocket for money that seems not to be there as I pass her.
Crossing Powell, the Amtrak station is to my left, barred and under construction. So I walk around through the garden park of concrete tables and benches to stand between the Emeryville and the awesome hotels on the correct side of the tracks, as vampires bound for the First Class sleeping cars cross the sky walk and descend with their wheeled luggage to imbibe of their privilege.
90% of the passengers are masked outside in the chill, smog as we await our Steely Steed out of this paved place of outer corrections.
I lived there for a few years after I decided I couldn't really afford to live in SF anymore. I lived in an ancient building, right there on San Pab, near 40 Street. Pay and Pak right behind me. One night I woke up to someone slitting the roof on my convertible right under my window. I dropped a small TV...tried to hit the mofo with it but he stepped out of the way. I did warn him when I told him "Don't forget this". He walked straight across the street to the loading dock of Pay and Puke and retrieved his back brace and his work gloves, folded his apron and stuck it inside the door and walked off, under the barbwired overpass into Oakland. I called the cops, met them at the Pay and Quack and reviewed the DVR footage of the loading dock and other than the guy being black you couldn't tell much. His supervisor, who was present said he couldn't say who it was.....guy had obviously just clocked out......cop got pissed and grabbed the dude who spilled. Store paid for my new convertible top. It was rare that I took the hard top of the car. I had a rental car, a rental van, my own car....all of them get a window smashed out in exchange for nothing in the car. My first reverse racism, my first black attacks etc there. My apartment was fucking worth it though. Top floor, views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Richmond San Rafael Bridge, Bay Bridge, Fremont Bridge.....the city and Treasure Island at night. Huge kitchen, a scullery in a walk in pantry. 1 bedroom 500 a month. I carried a bar of soap inside a sock in one pocket, pepper spray in the other along with a utility knife and used them often enough.