“James LaFond, I must absolutely object to your stance on being arrested. Look at you, your homeless, hobo-looking ass. Eventually the cops somewhere are going to see you and demand an accounting and do their cop bullshit. And with the amount of people flooding jails and the fact that you have no criminal record—on top of the fact that you’d probably do your best writing being the biographer of the guys you were locked up with—aside from making a bunch of new friends, you’d be released in 48-hours. So, I must say that your will not be arrested policy under any circumstances is not rational. That said, do you have any other absolute demands for remaining among the suffering, for continuing to the breathe the air on this plantation of the dammed?”

-Yeti Waters

Okay, to explain my irrationality. I remain the only ghost pedestrian, man on foot of devilish pallor, to have spent any significant years—and those years were over 38 now—on foot, in the most dangerous mid-sized city in America, without either being beaten up by a Bantu pack of by the PIGz. All of the five bad-asses I know, who avoided Bantu pack defeat [including Mad Tom, RJ, who the cops beat to death, and Crazy Mark] who successfully warded off attacks by Bantu packs, were repeatedly jacked up by the PIGz. I remain, the only pale footman I know of, to never be beaten by either foe.

This ability, to be quiet and cagey among swarming Bantu hyena-men and circling PIGz was all vested in a promise that I long ago made to myself after a childhood of broad-based beatings and humiliation, to never again fall into the power of an enemy, and that to avoid this I would do the most evil thing an American can do, to defend himself with a blade rather than getting beat up and joining the victim legion or drawing a gun and then standing for my action in a court of abject supplication to the evil laws of wretched man. I have remained cool in circumstances where cops and man-hunters melt down, because of this core promise. I reject the authority of any court to require my appearance. Having rejected Mankind, how can I respect his rituals of submission?

This is my identity, the only thing I have succeeded in doing in my life. I have failed at everything else, family, work place, training, coaching, loving and writing goals and aspirations have all been forever dashed before my eyes. I was a boy who only wanted one thing, a little place to live with a room full of books. Not only do I not have a place to live and all of my books I spent 30 years collecting inhabit a landfill or a distant room somewhere, but I can no longer read. It has taken three weeks to get through 15 pages in a book I once would have read in a morning.

The other aspect of my life that I key my demand to be untouched and left alone on is that I pay my taxes—just mailed off 10% of my tiny annual income to the feds—and I never bother anyone. I don’t ask for directions, thank every cashier and waitress, step around women and children and elderly on the street, never assume or demand a pedestrian right away crossing a street, hold open doors, do not talk back to young men who threaten me, like the white college boys on the beach in Ocean City, MD this past August. People can call me anything and I do not even talk back but fade away.

I make no demand that anyone respect me—just that they do not lay hands on me. I would much rather be shot or stabbed than be put in a wrestling hold or handcuffs of hand over my wallet. I have passed this test many times.

That is were I draw my line, where I always have, why hundreds of younger, fitter, stronger, and larger men have, as they come up to me to take my tiny bit of money and my flip phone, why they have always shrunk from the look in my eyes… not an angry look, but a mere invitation to join me in hell where my more wicked shade might dine on their soul.

I’m just an old bum trying to write something above my ability with what time remains. Since I have eaten untold quantities of adrenaline and cortisol because of police, because they have always been the SWAT team waiting to punish me for defending myself against the types of folks who only abused me because it was well known that I was not permitted to have a weapon, then I will always rate police as my prime enemy, even though I am ever respectful to them. I demand only that they keep their hands off of me.

…

Lines in the sand?

-1. I will not submit to another person’s force outside of a sporting context. I’ll tap out in the ring or on the mat, but I will not return to the abject state of humiliation I occupied when my family had dinner as I was tormented on the living room floor a mere ten feet away by my man-size cousin who demanded I say uncle to escape the pain of the wrestling hold. Even as my strength sinks to the minute level of my tenth year, I refuse to become once again, “Soft little Jimmy.”

-2. I will not submit to medical experimentation or medical-political commandments.

-3. I will not permit a woman to keep a roof over my head. I have broken off relationships with two women whose company I delighted in to avoid becoming their ward, to return to childhood. This is why I have refused numerous requests by my mother and sister that I should live with the. I love them. But I would rather freeze to death in a lonely place than become a boy again.

-4. I refuse to raise my voice. This has to do with my extensive self-wiring to avoid hyenadon verbal escalation. Also, I was recently disabled for 30 hours just from coughing, as it ignited that nerve above my eye. For me to raise my voice is to risk disability, which means a state where I might be dragged off to a jail or a medical bed.

-5. I will not go into debt for any reason. Spending age 19 to 41 hopelessly in debt, until freed by what my lawyer said was “the only legitimate bankruptcy case I have ever filed” [and he did 10 a week for a decade] and then the repossession of the car, the foreclosure on the house and my being kicked out of the rental by the wife, I have had but one freedom other than my “don’t touch me meat-sack” force field. I am not in debt. In fact, when I tried to get an Amtrak credit card, I was denied. I will not go into debt.

-6. I will not agree to fight outside of a sports context.

-7. I will never have sex with a dude, which includes all notions of Slick Willy-Bantu notions of certain acts not qualifying as sex.

-8. I will not fly or cross an international border for the reason that I am not dangerous enough without a knife to require shooting. I will not put myself in a position where I can simply be wrestled or tazered. My main reason for having a knife is that police are trained to shoot knifers.

-9. I will not beg, which includes begging God for everlasting salvation. I would rather spend eternity as a damned soul or as a speck of dust, a forgotten cipher, than as the grovelling slave of He who cast me down into this fleshy cage, on this savage planet of the apes.

I think that’s it.

I’m really easy to get along with.