The Barton Fink-ness of Decomposing In A Shabby Veterans' Flophouse

(CLICK PICTURE ABOVE FOR RELATED VIDEO)

If a multiplicity of relationships is an avenue of growth, I must be eight lanes wide and ten foot tall by now.
---Mudhead

Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
---Carly Sheehan

I have slipped into neutral again. I'm drinking can after can after can of ca phe sua with no results. Just can't get back into gear here in my shabby homeless veterans dorm room that the ungrateful nation of America has begrudgingly rented to me..

If you've seen "Barton Fink", you know where I am. I'm at the scene where Barton is sitting at his typewriter, a blank sheet of paper in the roll, staring at the peeling wallpaper on his cheap motel room walls (much akin to this dump's nicotine-stained sheetrock), watching the wallpaper peel and being able to do nothing about the blank sheet of paper waiting to be typed on.

This blog is nothing. Skip it. There's no story here. No Jarvisonian perspective of the Felini-esque, no Jolietharian verve. Just the Barton Finkness of decomposing in an Inglewood veterans' flophouse.

The crowd is here . . . all my flophouse brethren. Get back to you later.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

It's six hours later now than when the crowd came in to my room and discombobulated my thinking / writing process. I was almost there. ALMOST. It's like being almost asleep in that fuzzy twilight place and some motherfucker snatches you awake by standing over your bed and asking, "You awake?"

That's not hyperbole. That happens to me here. A lot. At a shabby veterans' flophouse, there's no breakers between oneself and all the flotsom and jetsom. You just have to let the trash wash over you and rinse out your brain later.

I was trying to catch a wave (writing is like surfing: you swim out [start typing nothing about nothing], wait . . . . . . and when you feel the ocean swell, you ride that bad boy all the way in to the beach if you can) when Dopey, Stinky and Shaky came into my room, bringing their three-ring circus of emotions, noises and needs into my one-ring homeless shelter room of toe-stubbing clutter.

Dopey wants to play his geetahr, have me hide his thousand milligram hydrocodone painkillers from him, doling them out one at breakfast and one at bedtime "no matter how much I beg for more", and to argue with my homeless attorney (Stinky) about some ethnocentric 'hate whitey' book by Donald Goines that Stinky has brought in to my room and dropped on my dresser top like a fresh steaming dog turd on a clean dinner plate.

Stinky wants to use my phone to call his son, argue with Shaky about . . .

The wave has passed on that thought. I have to swim out and wait again.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's six and a half hours later now than when I was typing on my laptop and then the three dwarfs came in to discombobulate me. Now I'm at WORK (as a security guard) and writing this in pen on a writing tablet I found in the dumpster.

I'm sitting here, alone in the dark apartment complex clubhouse that serves as a guard shack, sitting under a small circle of weak light from a 60-watt, two foot lamp, waiting for the next wave to come in. It might be minutes or it might be hours. I have to wait.

I write four words: "I have to wait", then walk around the apartment complex I'm security guarding. I have to wait. I'm waiting for the next wave, the one you hear in "Barton Fink" just before he stops glaring at the wallpaper and starts typing like crazy, and while I'm waiting, I'm fidgety. I hate it when I don't have a story to tell.

I was going to write about The Pie Man who has a soft spot in his head for veterans and keeps giving me boxloads of cakes and pies to pass along to the rotten bastards at the U.S. Vets homeless shelter.

Or maybe I'll write about the Asian/Arabic couple who were having sex in the Casa De Toro jacuzzi the other night at 4 a.m. until --- in my capacity as security guard --- I chased them in to a building (having no idea about the consequences of actually catching them).

Or perhaps I should write about my romantic run yesterday at the Radio Shack girl (she got so scared of my attentions she asked a local homeless loiterer nicknamed 'The Mayor' to stay in the store until closing).

And I was going to write about . . .

. . . but who the fuck cares? What a worthless enterprise this journal writing is. I make more money out of writing "Patrolled parking lots B, C, and D. Checked fitness room area. Checked pool area. All appears secure" than I ever did writing about . . . .

. . . whatever the hell it is I waste my time writing about . . . my tinseltown tales of Creepy, The Mad Turk, The Angry Haitian, The Russian, The Gypsy, The Midget Pimp, The Dragon Lady, The Arconians, Ranger Mike, Gordon The Hollywood Anarchist, The Ornamental, Stir Fry and the Day Laborers, Motel Marqainsians, Amazing Grace, Betty The Bomb, The Stem People, The Park People, The Chicken Santa, Wrongway Lettner, My Homeless Attorney, Ant, Gunrunner Mike, The New Black Dahlia, Cabbage Patch, Marie The Milk Crate Stealer . . . my, uh, my journal of the damned.

HEY! "Journal of the Damned" Not bad. It's 8 hours since I started this blog and I finally got something from the effort: Journal of the Damned. I like it. Hope nobody else has thought of it already. If so, I'll just have to call it "Offline Journal of the Damned."

Tags: social conscience, Barton Fink, decomposing in a veterans flophouse, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Administration, VA, homeless veteran, homeless veterans shelter, U.S. Vets, writer'sblock, ca phe sua, shabby veterans dorm, ungrateful nation, Inglewood, Dopey, Stinky, Shaky, Donald Goines, Westside Residence Hall, apartment complex clubhouse, The Pie Man, Creepy, The Mad Turk, The Angry Haitian, The Midget Pimp, Dragon Lady, Arconians, Gordon The Hollywood Anarchist, The Ornamental, day laborers, the public park people, amazing grace, the stem people, my homeless attorney, journal of the damned

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Catching Ant's Disorder

Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr

I have resolved that from this day on, I will do all the business I can do honestly, have all the fun I can reasonably, do all the good I can WILLINGLY, and save my digestion by thinking pleasantly.---Robert Louis Stevenson

Where eerie figures caper
to some midnight music
that only they can hear.
---The Book of Counted Sorrows

I think I'm coming down with Ant's Disorder.

Ant, my ex-roommate here at the U.S. Vets homeless veterans shelter, basically hermited himself in this room playing with his machine. He didn't go downstairs for free breakfast or free dinner. Instead, he loaded up on chips and sodas from the 99 Cent Store like some sort of Mormon survivalist with a five year supply of dry goods in his bomb shelter.

Ant didn't go outside to feel the sunshine on his face or smell the roses or chat with the other inmates. He just lied there in his bunk bed, playing his beloved 'Civilization II', the controler joystick a technomorphilogical extention of his arms and hands, the irridescent glow of the game monitor his mesmerizing siren box, the place where eerie figures capered to some midnight music only Antony could hear.

I'm getting like that, especially now that I have internet access in my half of the room.

"My half of the room" : seems strange to still be saying that after having the whole room to myself for over a month since Ant bugged out.

Slowly and against my better intentions, my crap has been migrating over to what is supposed to be the vacant half of my room. The vacant half doesn't belong to me. It belongs to whomever moves up here after having completed the Veterans In Progress program downstairs . . . whether he be messiah or manic, it's not my choice.

I was reminded today that the vacant half of my room wasn't mine when the assistant property manager popped his head in my room, looked at all my migrated crap on the vacant half---towels draped over the denuded bunk bed, magazines on the otherwise empty study desk, dumpsterware strewn throughout---and he looked confused for a moment and then asked, "This is a two-man room, right? One of 'em's vacant, right?"

That's right.

"Oh, didja wanna show it?" I asked, swinging my legs out of my invention, my bedasizer.

The assistant property manager, Brian, is the guy who shows the rooms to graduating VIPs.

"No, no," he answered, handing me a notice that the rooms would be inspected tomorrow by the property management team to check for faulty smoke detectors, litter, and to ascertain what improvements need to be made or what needs to be repaired.

Ha! That'll be the day. What they're coming up here to check for is pot-motivated bypassed smoke detectors, liters (of vodka?) and to ascertain if there are any squaters living up here on the generosity (or sex-cravings) of the tenants.

The repair they prefer to do around here is to repair some contrabanding veteran out the gates. But I have digressed too much. I started out telling you how I think I may have contracted A.C.A.A.D., Ant's Chronic Accumulative Agoraphobia Disorder, known colloquially here as GPers Disease because it mostly infirms those of us living up here in General Population, where we have everything we need in our rooms and little, very little, motivation to mix with the broke-ass, begging and borrowing, cigarette-bumming, transportation-wheedling, overly needy, slow repaying, fresh-off-the-street, often hygienically challenged V.I.P.s downstairs.

I mean to tell you that I've got everything I need up here in my half of the room. I've got a two month supply of toilet paper. I've got steaming crab cakes cooling off on my dresser and popcorn popping in my microwave and coffee brewing in my Mr. Coffee and I've got a five year supply of shampoo and toothpaste and exotic soaps and 29 DVDs of recently released movies to watch if I want and 38 dumpster-provided music CDs to listen to on my boombox and an illegal refrigerator full of snacks, sodas, pickles, dumpster sushi and microwave dinners and I have the internet and a fax machine and a cell phone and a land line and books---oh my, have I got books, hundreds and hundreds under my bed, in my drawers, on my shelves and in my heart---so why the hell I need to leave this . . . this . . . this sanctuary, this overstocked place of brief surcease from the sorrows of the world, especially as they are represented downstairs?

"Brief surcease from the sorrows of the world." I like that. Nice phraseology. Gotta remember that one. So, why leave it at a brief surcease? Why not increase the peace with an extended surcease? It's Ant's Disorder, I tell ya. I think I've got it. I'm going hermit.

Tags: surcease, homeless shelter, veterans shelter, military, veterans, factotum, U.S. Vets, Ant's Disorder, hermitage, jarvis, viral video, marquisdejolie, urban nomad

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Grumpy Old Man With A Backache Doing Math

by James Jarvis

from Westside

Depressed? I'll tell you how depressed I am. I was sitting out at the Benched Players benches at noon today, sitting with a few vets and the old man (my homeless attorney who I had gotten out of county jail where he'd been sent for $26,000.00 in parking tickets), sitting there minding my own business when a beautiful woman walked by.

Under normal circumstances, I'd have said she was pretty enough to call 'kitty' in a room full of pit bulls just for the chance to jack off in her shadow, but while I am in Grayworld, she was just a momentary interruption of the direct sunlight I was getting on my face.

Sunlight. Very important for the treatment of chronic depression. Sunlight good.

Depression wasn't enough for me. I had to wake up yesterday with a backache. Oh, goody, my lower back is out again. It hurts to take in deep breaths, so I'm shallow-breathing throughout the day... and the blood pressure's acting up again. Feels like my radiator's plugged up, my oil pump ain't working, my transmission's slipping and the teeth of my differential are grinding.

I'm getting lots of diagnosis(es), mostly from part time security guards: unlicensed medical practitioners, yes, but at least I don't have to wait 4 hours in the VA waiting room to get their best guesses.

My supervisor says it's kidney stones. One of my quad mates says imminent heart attack. The American Indian security guard guy says it's cancer. Two other security guards conferred with each other and have diagnosed prostate blowatosis exacerbated by fullashit-itis.

So I'm drinking a lot of water and cranberry juice and spreading deep heat on my back and shallow breathing and answering all invitations to conversation with terse one-liners or basic grunts and doing math for the pain.

Yes, math. Algebra. I have discovered in my desperation to deal with my backache that doing algebra helps the pain. It forces me to concentrate on something other than the internal workings of my increasingly cranky body.

Take the formula 9(2+x)(x+y) + (x+y)^2. We all know that translates to (x+y)^3 (18+10x+y)^3 , but during the factoring of this, there is no pain.

So, if you're not hearing much from me lately, it's because I'm doing math.

Tags: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Vets, L.A. Vets, Westside Residence Hall, Department of veteran Affairs, Veterans Administration, homeless veterans, veterans shelter, transitional living facility, Revver, viral video, videoblogging, vloggies, vlogging, funny videos, video arcade, internet video, depression, benched players, my homeless attorney, county jail, grayworld, chronic depression, unlicensed medical practitioners, V.A., shadetree diagnosis, doing math for diversion, algebra of pain, jarvis, marquisdejolie, pageism, sputative, xanthodont

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Measuring The Night In Sanctuary

Measuring The Night In Sanctuary
by James Jarvis
02/24/04

I am holed up
in my homeless veterans' shelter dorm room
like a bank robber.

Here I sit
in my seedy warehouse district hideout
as if on the lam from the cops.

There should be the flashing neon lights
of an across-the-street all night diner
blinking into my fourth floor window

like in the old film noir movies,

but there's not.

Across the street from my window
is a trucking warehouse
and a troubled teenager re-education center,
both highly fenced
and daylight-only concerns,
so there is no blinking neon
to measure the night for me.

There is also
no ever-present roommate
to measure the night for me here...
not any more.
No Ant
playing his beloved Civilization Playstation game
in between airings of The Simpsons,
muttering under his breath
that the Zulus
or the barbarians
or the Romans
were out to get him.

I spent a fair amount of time on the internet last night
looking at recent photos of the New Orleans Mardi Gras
trying to spot him in the crowds.

I know he's down there somewhere,
having his New Orleans
hobo adventure . . .
and I could've gone, too,
leaving this Inglewood sanctuary
to add the New Orleans Mardi Gras
to my own long list
of hobo adventures . . .
but I've stayed behind
and now I must find new ways
to measure the night in sanctuary.

Tags: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Vets, L.A. Vets, Department of Veteran Affairs, Veterans Administration, V.A., homeless veterans, veterans shelter, homeless, U.S. military, Revver, viral video, videoblog, videoblogging, vlogging, internet video, measuring the night, sanctuary, holed up, warehoused people, seedy warehouse district, flashing neon lights, re-education center, Civilization, Playstation, Zulu, barbarians, barbarians at the gate, New Orleans, Mardi gras, Mardi Gras adventure, hobo adventure, jarvis, marquisdejolie

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Michael's Fifteen Minutes Of Fame On Hard Copy Running Guns And Women

Image by wallyg via Flickr

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

---Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

James Jarvis' notes from a homeless veterans shelter in Inglewood, California

Michael Neuman is one of my Benched Players buddies. Tonight he had a VHS tape he wanted to show Rubin and me. We went to the theater room and talked the veterans lounging there into letting us interrupt the sports news to play Michael's tape.

The tape was a copy of a 1992 Hard Copy show about Michael's infamous Los Angeles trial for gun running out of his Hollywood Hills mansion, part of which was also an S & M parlor, complete with dungeon.

Michael's trial was covered extensively by the media. In fact, a year later in November of '93, Michael made The Wall Street Journal in an article they ran about the year's two highest profile court cases: The Menendez brothers and Michael Neuman's sex and guns mansion.

County, state and federal prisons have since aged Michael. He looked pretty young and debonair with his expensive suits and fancy sports cars and new money pony tail in the news clips.

Anyway, now you know the kind of fellas I eat dinner with in the chow hall.

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Uncle Sam Wants Civil Service Fence Post Inspector Supervisors

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.----Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I am tentatively signed up to become a fence post in- spection supervisor trainee. Yes, you read right: a fence post inspection supervisor trainee.

I got a flyer in my mail box a few weeks ago informing me that a wonderful new job opportunity was being developed for disabled veterans such as myself and that if I was interested to bring a copy of my DD214 (record of military service) and proof of federal disability rating of 10 percent or more to the U.S. Vets job developer. A new fence post inspection company is starting up and they need service-connected disabled veterans on the team to qualify for certain federal government contracts.

Fence post inspection supervisor: who'd a thunk it? I'll be jiggered. I've been a Vulcan Fire detector salesman, a milk jugger, a house painter, a construction worker, a loan shark enforcer, a short order cook, a soldier, a graphic artist, a landlord, a hay hauler, a prepress color separator, a convenience store clerk, a concierge, an output operator, a gypsy cabbie, a regular taxi driver, a pimp, an escort agency owner, a CFO, a civil service aircraft mechanic, a U.S. Post Office mailhandler, a gas station graveyard cashier, a Star Bucks syrup squeezer, a day laborer, a security guard, a reporter, an art director, a beer and soda stockboy, a magazine editor, an ice house manager, a Dairy Queen cook, a brick jiggerer, a bus pollster, a frogleg fryer, a speechwriter, a bum and a paperboy, but I never ever ever guessed that all this experience was preparing me to become a fence post inspection supervisor.

I'm signed up. There is paperwork to be done. Forms to fill out. Screenings to pass. Hurdles to hurd. Probably ass to kiss, too. This is quasi-government semi-civil service work, you know. Not just any Tom, Dick or hairy can qualify for fence post inspection supervision.

Tags: Goethe, civil service, fencepost inspector, supervisor, trainee, Revver, videblogging, videoblog, funny videos, job opportunity, disabled veterans, DD214, record of military service, federal disability rating, federal government contracts, service-connected disability, salesman, milk jugger, house painter, construction worker, loan shark, collector, short order cook, soldier, graphic artist, landlord, hauling hay, prepress operator, convenience store clerk, concierge, gypsy cabbie, taxi driver, pimp, CFO, aircraft mechanic, mailhandler, cashier, day laborer, security guard, reporter, art director, stockboy, editor, manager, cook, brick jiggerer, pollster, speechwriter, bum, paperboy, jarvis, marquisdejolie

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Invasion of the Marshallites

by James Jarvis

excerpt from Westside (tales of living in a seaside veterans shelter in Inglewood, California)

     It's like something from The Celestine Prophesies or the plagues of Egypt. If you thought I was having trouble here in Los Angeles dealing with the Kennites, the Hittites, the Jebusites or even all the sodomites, then let me introduce you to the new invading hordes: the Marshallites.

     Marshallites in Los Angeles. Who'd a thought they had the resources to make it this far west?

     I got a knock on my homeless veterans dorm room door late last night. It was Ranger Mike, the guy who rode in my truck with me to Dallas at Christmas so he could catch a plane to see his Cajun mother in Minnesota. Don't ask me what Cajuns are doing in Minnesota. It's all part of the great Cajun diaspora.

     Anyway, Ranger Mike was downstairs at the Benched Players bench talking to one of our new inmates and Mike asked him where he was from. The guy said, "A little place in East Texas. You probably never heard of it: Marshall."

     "I was just in Marshall," Ranger Mike said, "At Christmas. I've got a buddy up in G.P. who's got family there."

     So both men snuck up to the fourth floor. They had to sneak up to my room on the fourth floor because veterans in the V.I.P. program are not allowed above the third floor. When the guy introduced himself to me as a Marshallite, I pulled down my 1972 high school yearbook and looked him up. James Osborne. There he was. We went to high school together over thirty years ago. He remembered that I was the guy who went around taking pictures for the high school newspaper. I remembered his face, though age has definitely made its changes.

     "I work for a little mom and pop security company out of Marina del Rey," I told James, "No more than thirty or forty employees in the whole company. And guess what? There are are FOUR Marshallites working there!"

     It's the invasion of the Marshallites, I tell you. Who knows how this will alter the geopolitical landscape of Los Angeles? Not me. I don't know. But I'm afraid.

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The Lips of a Strange Woman

The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains. ---John Greenleaf Whittier

For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, And her mouth is smoother than oil, But her end is bitter as wormwood . . . Her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them. ----Proverbs 5:3-6

by James Jarvis

excerpt from Westside (tales of life at a seaside veterans shelter)

My homeless attorney, Don the RV-dwelling, dog poop-smelling, 73 year-old Jewish hippie I adopted last year when we were both living in RVs on the street, spends a lot of time here at the veterans shelter.

In the mornings, he brings me fresh dumpster sushi to store in my little dorm refrigerator. We usually spend about half an hour in that little fridge, changing out the old dumpster sushi for the new. Then he usually watches TV in the mess hall or movie room downstairs until I wake up in the afternoon. Then we have a couple of hours of bible study, sometimes three or four, until the chow hall opens at 5:30 for dinner.

I am assisting Don in his conversion to Christianity and it ain't no walk in the park, let me tell you. Don is the last of the stiff-necked Jews and I have a lot of cheek turning to do while he works out the kinks. . . not to mention the smell of the two large dogs Don sleeps with in my old RV. THAT causes a lot of head turning, too.

I try to get Don to take a shower at my place as much as I can, but Don forgets. He forgets a lot of things, like where he left his keys to the RV or where he left his RV. I keep a spare set of keys to everything he has in my dorm room. I also keep the number of the prepaid cell phone I gave him and the combination to his storage. Don's soul in in God's hands alone, but his possessions are surely in mine.

Today we had to change a flat tire on Don's RV. What a pain in the butt that was. Those big 16 and a half inch tires aren't all that easy to toss around and have you ever tried to jack up an RV? That's no walk in the park, either. And we had to do it in the rain. I bitched and griped and complained for about ten minutes, as I guess I do with all of my family, but gave it up as soon as I looked in the old man's grateful eyes.

Some 38 year-old woman, a speed freak drug addict in full bloom in her addiction, is trying to get Don to move in with her in her guest house apartment behind her mother's house in lower Inglewood. She wants to set up housekeeping with the old fart. She met him on the street yesterday when he was trying to grunt off the flat tire on the RV and already has him buying groceries for her mom.

The old man lives on a tight, fixed Social Security pension income which is heavily drained already by his addict daughter. Don says this woman, Stilleta, will cook and clean for him . . . even do his laundry and sleep with him and hinted already at marriage. Don asked me what I thought of the whirlwind arrangement.

"Wormwood," I said.

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Tags: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Veteran Affairs, V.A. outsourcing, V.A., Veterans Administration, homeless, veterans shelter, transitional living facility, sober living, homeless on wheels, weird, Revver, viral video, videoblog, videoblogging, internet video, the simple heart, asks in love, Whittier, lips of a strange woman, strange, wormwood, Proverbs, Jewish hippie, dumpster, dumpsterdiving, dumpster sushi, bible study, chow hall, U.S. Vets, L.A. Vets, RV, living in a RV, in God's hands, speed freak, drug addict, full bloom of addiction, guest house, Inglewood, whirlwind, jarvis, marquisdejolie

Alive And Well And Livin' Large In The Big Easy

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation.

---George Washington

(Well, George, I don't really give a rat's ass what people think of me and besides, if I limited myself to men of good quality here in Los Angeles, I would be a very lonely, isolated hermit)

by James Jarvis

excerpt from Westside (tales of life in a seaside veterans shelter)

Guess who just called me?

My recently ex-G.P. roommate Anthony, that's who, the roomie who bugged out to Mardi Gras in New Orleans a few weeks ago . . . just gave up all his worldly possessions except a knapsack full of underwear and socks and caught a Greyhound east.

Ant is alive and well and living in a veterans' shelter in Harvey, Louisiana, just across the river from The Big Easy! Anthony says the veteran's shelter there is much nicer than the one here (townhouses with individual kitchens and toilets---OH MY!!!) and that they ARE ACTUALLY HELPING HIM THERE! Imagine that. They're ACTUALLY HELPING HIM! They've got him on anti-depression medications for chronic depression which, by the way, I suggested to him a month ago.

Yes, I know I don't have a license to make diagnosis(es?), but if anyone can recognize chronic depression, it's me.

I'm very pleased that my old roomie has landed well from his hobo adventures. Maybe, someday soon, if I ever stop acting like a desperado . . . out riding fences, I will land well, too. Or I could move to Texas.

Tags: U.S. Vets, veterans initiative, homeless veterans shelter, homelessness, vets shelter, veterans shelter, Big Easy, shelter roommate

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A Buggy Story of Pigs and Veterans Programs

by James Jarvis

from Westside (life in a seaside veterans shelter)

      Bobby’s back. Impeccably dressed Bobby, my old VIP roommate when I lived down in room 209C. Bobby the accountant, the fraud investigator, the crackhead, is back.

     I saw him coming out of the computer room one day a few weeks ago. I was surprised, but nothing beyond the surprise of recognition. No gladness to see him. No joy of reunion. Bobby had the chance to be my friend many months ago when we were bunking together in the same veterans’ shelter room, in the same foxhole as it was. But Bobby cracked out. He betrayed me . He betrayed the foxhole trust. He betrayed me by cracking out of the Veterans In Progress program.

     Now he's back from the Haven's 90-day RTC program and he's got a lot of amends to make. That's part of the recovering drug addict's program---I am gathering from snippets of hallway conversations here---to make amends to the people you screwed over when you were "in your sickness."

     I didn't talk to Bobby much the last few weeks until Bobby found a way to make amends with me this weekend. He brought me a message from Mikey in RTC.

     When Bobby cracked out of this veterans' shelter, out of the top bunk of my room in 209C, back in June or July, he was quickly replaced by Mikey. Mikey had come from a veterans' shelter in Albuquerque which had been shut down for egregious administrator theft and corruption. Mikey's the one who blew out his liver with intrevenous-administered drugs.

     Mikey and I got along fine and Mikey was doing well in the program, bicycling to his construction job every day and suffering through an annoying procession of third bed roommates like "Bonk You On The Head" Baz, our Slingblade roommate, until Mikey bugged out one day in October to go back to his ex-wife in Albuquerque.

     I moved up to General Population, being the model inmate that I am, Bobby had come in off the crack streets to enter RTC up at the Westwood V.A. hospital and Mikey up in Albuquerque learned that you can't always go home again. Bobby graduated his drug recovery program and moved back here to U.S. Vets to start the Veterans In Progress program all over again from scratch and about a week ago Mikey shows up at U.S. Vets' door so HE can start the V.I.P. program, the one I graduated back in October, all over again from scratch.

     Trouble was, Mikey tested dirty on the intake drug test. They booted him out so fast he had to spend his first night back in Los Angeles sleeping in the back seat of The Pig, my Buick that I had just bought back from my bugging out G.P. roommate Anthony.

     The next day, Mikey got into the same RTC drug recovery program in Westwood that Bobby has recently graduated. Part of Bobby's commitment to RTC is that he will continue to go to recovery meetings while he is down here in the V.I.P. program.

     So Bobby was able to make amends to me by bringing me a note from Mikey, because while Mikey is in the first 90-day phase of RTC, he is essentially in lockdown, unable to leave the compound. The only contact Mikey is allowed for a while is other RTC guys and maybe Mikey's AA sponsor Steve, who is alive and well and hasn't bugged out of the V.I.P. program yet.

     Mikey's note asked for the loan of a couple of packs of cigarettes and I was happy to send him a loaner carton through Bobby. I wouldn't be surprised if Mikey is the next veteran I sell the Buick to after Gordon, who I just sold The Pig to, gets a wild hair up HIS ass and bugs out to China again.

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Tags: United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Vets, homeless veterans, vets shelter, veterans shelter, project cloudburst, Veterans Initiative