It has been three weeks since I have been with those fine folks in the Cascades. As a hobo on arrival, looking more aged then ever and having been the subject of an aging debate among the wives of The Colonel and The Captain and their patriarchs, I was asked the reason for no longer trimming my beard.

I was soon smitten with the rest by the plague hammer from the Military, as the eldest son came home fully vaxxed and super-spreading the latest upgrade of the Dread Minus. This is one of those article starters that was left by the wayside as I coughed up green slime from this narrow squib head pounding with fever.

I must admit, that recently I have been feeling good about the bushy beard as the cute Asian chicks who bring food into The Bar like to stand beneath us Yetis and reach up and pet our beards like boomer-charming sorceress’s. Sure, its a grift of sorts, but for discolored white trash, its a compliment.

But this morning as I looked into the mirror to confront the hallow-eyed visage of the creep I work for and see one side of my face flat and matted and the other with white bristles sticking out like glassine fingers from my face, I am reminded of an old homeless man with an afro that had gone nappy and revealed his habit of sleeping in his left side, making it look like he had a great tumor sprouting from the right side of his head…

Eventually, The Captain’s darling wife came to me with scissors as The Captain and I drank coffee and said, “Just the ones that are sticking way out and bouncing around and driving me crazy!”

Why she wondered [the subtext here being that she was taking me to church on Sundays, a room packed full of highly attractive single women and few single men] would I want to look like “the guy on the cover to the Stairway to Heaven album?”

If I were a successful man and made money at my craft I might well find myself entertaining thoughts of female companionship. I remain a monk through most of the year because I do not like to make lady’s cry. Once an available woman gets to know me she tends to remain attached and then the offers to put a roof over my head commence, and I cannot abide that. I do not make enough money to pay rent in any location where I could leave my computer behind a locked door with a fair expectation of the door not being kicked in and my computer gone. It is one thing to do chores for men who host me in return for a place to lay my head for a month or two. But to depend on the love of a woman for a roof over my head makes me either a boy or a whore.

So, suffice it to say that I have spent zero time grooming for female acceptance since June 2018, the time of my dispossession. To the extent that I concern myself with appearance, it is to avoid violence. My purpose is to write, no other. Everything must be in service to or at least not against writing.

My dedication not to be arrested could come into conflict with writing. I cannot write with my hand—no one can read it, not even me. I throw out 70% of my notes unable to decipher them. I do not think that I would be given a computer in jail.

So, since I will not permit myself to be molested by young men or police, this being the only reason I carry a knife always and refuse to fly, I must avoid aggression or end my writing.

I have been attacked hundreds of times by men and threatened about 30 times by PIGz. This was because I was a pedestrian and “white” in the nation’s most violent black city. I have gotten away from that save a few visits. But, since the Ascension of Floyd Christ PIGz are no longer permitted to beat the piss out of black guys—which leaves me, and maybe you Hamslice. Likewise, all of my younger fighters and friends, the guys that look fit and in their prime or young, have been fielding a lot of physical threats from men of all races since Floyd pierced the vault of heaven and took the seat of the Christ on the Right Hand of God Almighty.

It is Yeti Season from 2020 until the glaciers return.

Is it 2020 yet?

Has Canada been covered in ice yet?

Well, then it is Yeti Season.

Now, I spend most of my time in relatively nice places where what violence there is between men is either cops jacking up poor homeless white guys [like me] or basic dominance rituals or fights, which are rare, but still happen. Additionally, out west, homeless white guys are doing a lot of property crime. I do not want to appear young.

My ancient looking visage had my hosts guessing my age, with 60 and over the consensus. They called me to inquire my age and settle the debate and I said, “I’m 58 in Shanty Irish which makes me 68 in human years.” Which is why I look older than The Colonel.

The appearance problem is, that with the sloth of Covid bloating the American physique and me eating on Rick’s list and finally approaching fight weight again, at a distance, I’m built like I’m 30—the age of the feral meth heads that the PIGz are still allowed to jack up. If not for my weird, wiry bristle beard of white, at a glance or at a distance, I could appear like a challenge to a young thug of a joy stomp to a brutality-deprived cop.

I want to look as old as possible. People treat me nicer since I have begun looking so old. Yes, predators will select me in a place like Baltimore—but I have my knife and they will by sliced to ribbons...and, my experience is, that the superior Bantu instinct figures that out most of the time just before contact, where the inferior Yeti instinct, crippled as it is by such superstitions as science, rarely figures out that you are about to stab his big ass. So looking old is a homeless survival strategy I use in Outer Yetistan and could backfire in Inner Bantuistan

Additionally, my reduced weight and the recent reluctance of cops to respond to calls in a timely fashion in the places I am most likely to be attacked [Baltimore and Portland] offers the possibility of defense against thugs and then flight from their savior-allies the PIGz.

In short, I have rolled the ugly dice in a gambit to avoid violence for one more year.