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14 Year Old Fiddler — The Orange Blossom Special

Some things work to take your mind off of others.
Deference, it’s often called. But what am I thinking? 

I’m Jack Spicer drinking Purity organic coconut water 

(not from concentrate) in my SRO transitional home 

on one of the seediest blocks in the city. I’ve been 

here a month shy of a year and soon I hope to be 

somewhere else.  As I move ever so slowly back 

up the human ladder.  Despite some pretty amazing 

sightseeing along the way.  And friends falling along  

the wayside until none exist anymore in the city I love. 

A family (gone). A cat half-owned being taken, along 

with several iPhones and a laptop, while sleeping less 

than two blocks from my home of 13 years because I’d

been kicked out of it, and that night, sleeping on the 

steeped sidewalk, I screwed up and put the bag with

the cat, the laptop, and everything else deemed most
important to have with me after 50 years of living, 

between me and the cold wind rather than between 

me and the building next to which I slept. On the 

third night I was officially homeless. Months later, 

being asked to pay for a milkshake at Grubstake before 

even receiving it, after having been there dozens of times 

before and never once being asked to pay before being 

served my meal, never once being asked to leave.  

Losing a job to go to an appointment to get an 

apartment after living in a shelter for two years (well, 

6 months of that on the streets, while working a desk

job, no less!), because the meeting happened to coincide 

with my first day of work, took two hours instead of the

expected 30 minutes, and then being told to come back 

the next day for another two hours, after which being

told you could not move into the unit until further paper

work and more meetings because I’d been evicted.  

After living in a shelter where the only incentive, 

the only carrot in front of your nose was the promise 

that if you stayed there a year or so solid, you’d get a 

place to live that was your own.  But here I am, sitting 

in my lovely little SRO on the seediest street in San Francisco, 

as I love to perhaps mildly exaggerate.  Venting at you, a 

bit perturbed about someone I knew before I was kicked 

out and assaulted by my apartment manager because I 

felt the need to go to the emergency room (panic

attack). He tried to choke me in the U-haul truck
that was only full of 1/3 of the items from my
apartment, over 1/2 of which were not mine
but the asshole’s who left with no explanation,
who’d cosigned for the apartment some 13 years 

previous, and had promised just a month before that 

I’d never have to worry about leaving our apartment, 

as long as he was around (Why should I have taken that 

as the foreshadowing it was?).  He also took our phone 

bill from me to pay, since it was half his anyway.  Then,

some five years ago, he disappeared, vanished, without

one word to me since!  I had interviews lined up all week
and my phone went dead at the beginning of it.  He had

stopped paying the bill months previous. This week, I’ve
had time to reflect on these things while also having many 

interviews lined up in the coming weeks, looking at 

everything with aggravating perspective but hopefully
the right amount of focus.  How different my thoughts 

are now, how clear and mid-coherent compared with 

the past several years. My ability to make humor out 

of it has come slowly.  But all the while I’ve been triggered

by other disappointments, difficulties rising above. Another

so-called friend disappearing into the sunset, perhaps
never to be heard from again.  This becomes familiar. 

I can handle these things, perhaps.  One only
does what one can do.  Which sometimes
is enough.  All that one can.  All I can do 

seems to be growing exponentially as I 

write this.  That is new.  That feels good. 

That extends life, a real life, or the 

expectation that it will occur, will be 

extended, life as maybe I had never 

known it before, but not sheer poverty, 

not homelessness, I still have time to go 

someplace for a vacation.  There are trips 

to wine country I can make, getting out

of the city for the first time in
around 4 and and a half years.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
But how would I have ever

known what a lifetime this
last five years would be?
How is one to ever realize

the person with whom you 

happily awake each morning for

a decade plus just wanted out, 

for almost the entire duration,

and he never had the guts to say a 

word suggesting such before simply

disappearing?  Life is odd.
I deal with this, what’s been

dealt me. I think I can.

But there is so much more

to do.  Especially now that
I’ve seen what I’ve seen. Where 

does one go from that, really?  Up, up, and up. 

Until I’m high enough to have a voice again. 

Hey, my voice is back! it’ll say, and it

has something to tell you.
Yes, it will. Most likely.
Stay tuned, if you will.
The suspense nearly killed me. 

But I promise no harm. (If you will.)