Rod Amis - Unbound

"A MIGHTY COOL HAND" - CONTINUED: 27 November, 2002: IN ALL HONESTY I realize this is not "My Castle". It is more akin to "The Old Wound".

Like the Road to Hell, this was a decision forced on me by a Good-Intentioned friend, site unseen, because (in his view) it fit my limited budget. It didn't matter as much to him as it did/does to me that it had nothing to recommend it to me.

In all fairness, he has bent over backwards to help me end my days of couch-surfing instability and given more than warranted support in helping me to settle in this town. But times are hard right now. My diet is atrocious, my sleep is troubled and I never feel that I have a moment's peace.

NOTHING.

So, as I look over to my corner this time, and see the towel in their hands, I'm almost wishful.

I'm not sure if I do want to force my rubbery legs to pick me up from this mat one more time. I might have one more beating left in me, but it doesn't feel like it. As Lynda once reminded me, Hemingway said: "It's easy to be hard bitten during the day. But at night ... "

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TOMORROW, THE U.S. THANKSGIVING DAY, I am destined to be behind the bar. This came as a surprise for me during my last shift on Monday. It's supposed to work for me, I'm told. Lord knows I don't feel like it will tonight.

This edition of the magazine is larger than any I've done in months and the time I thought I'd have to complete it has been truncated. Hooray! I've gotten this wonderful castle I had hoped to clean this week, while everyone else was on holiday. Not going to happen. So I'm supposed to believe that people will be at The Cat helping me to pay my rent - due on Sunday - rather than disappearing for the holiday.

I'm gullible and impressionable. I'll believe anything once.

I'm already (mentally) composing next week's "Glass House" about how disastrous this week was for me. I believe I should begin it "The Road to Hell ... "

BECAUSE I have found very little to sincerely laugh about for days.

BECAUSE this time I want to stay down on this mat and just admit this was the last beating that even a bastard full of cussedness like me can take.

Oh wait. I forgot that I'm supposed to have the ability to turn on a dime.

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THOSE WERE SOME OF THE THOUGHTS GOING THROUGH MY HEAD LAST NIGHT, ANYWAY, AS I LAY SHIVERING HERE in my new Hobbit Hole, unable to sleep because I realized it was damned-near impossible that I'd make the $400 (USD) I need to pay my first month's rent.

I was feeling as alone as you can.

I was feeling like The Black Hole of New Orleans has finally sucked me down where that ghost who has been stalking me would finally win and I, despite my best efforts, would finally lose.

Who can you tell something like that, my little love? Only you.

It's been a hard two weeks.

The Plan, now, is to send this epistle out into the ether for you, including even those parts that my Better Mind told me I might be above because it probably won't matter what I have to say before Disaster falls on my head again.

Stay down.

Yeah. Go ahead. Throw the towel. I can't get up this time.

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29 November, 2002: OF ALL THE WOMEN WHO COME AND GO in my life, speaking of Michelangelo, J. Alfred, the only one who seems to stick is that one everyone considers "fashionable" (read "shallow") and flighty. She seems to hang with lots of characters I despise. But she is the only one who abides, returns and puts a bright spot in my days. I like being around her. I am never around her, though, when I am not behind the bar. She comes in and talks to my friends while I am working. She gives me the tidbits of her days like crumbs thrown to a bird in the park.

We run into each other on the street, as we did Thanksgiving day, and she rushes up to me with open arms and a sunlight smile and hugs and kisses me as though I'm a long-lost child. She tells me her plans and they always include coming to see me. Then she comes to see me when I am busy performing The Rod Show behind the bar. She comes in and talks to my friends while I am working.

If she is still there when my shift is over, I end up with one of my friends talking and she comes up and hugs me again and says she is off to some other club, good-bye.

"And the women come and go speaking of Michelangelo ... "

I must go back and read Elliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" again. You should read it with me, my love.

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TO FURTHER LIFT MY SPIRITS, I also received the e-mail on Thanksgiving day informing me that I did not receive the grant to cover the Drug Reform conference in Mexico next February.

To Al Giordano's credit, and that of the J-School sponsoring the program, he wrote me a personal missive in advance of Monday's announcement, explaining why I was not invited on the scholarship. It said, in part:

It was a really agonizing decision, choosing between 125 applications, the great majority of which are super people. We also determined to make at least half the recipients Latin Americans or Latinos. Thus, the spaces for English-speaking North Americans were very limited. Another factor, in your case, frankly, was that you're already soaring at authentic journalism - I loved reading through page after page of G21 - and I think that some of the other applicants simply need this program more than you. You would, in fact, be qualified as one of our professors! Maybe there's still a way to thread that needle and get you there in that role.

However, there still might be a chance that we might get you in as a substitute if somebody else can't come, or if we find more resources to be able to invite more students. You are very high up in the "waiting list" and even now I hope I did not make a huge error in not getting you in there. But resources are resources and, thus, very limited, as I'm sure you understand.

How can I be such a dweeb as to be downtrodden when somebody throws that many compliments in two paragraphs? Well, Darlin', it's like this: That was my chance to get out of this Black Hole of New Orleans, at least for a while, and do something I have a passion for. (Besides this effort, of course.) That was a link in Part Two of my Grand Plan: getting my hand back in outside of G21.

Something might yet pan out, of course, as Al suggests. I'd certainly love doing some kind of joint project with Narco News and their new J-School. I'll write him that I'd love publishing the work of some of their students, as well.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck here. I'm sad and lonely. Let's write a Country & Western tune. Or some Blues. "Woke up this mornin' ... "

I've got a mighty cool hand.

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It is the sick season here in New Orleans. Meaning that almost every bartender I know has the sniffles or a cough, or is fighting them off. The wind comes from the north one day and you have to wear layers to get around. Old buildings like the one I've moved into are quaint, but the windows are usually like sieves. Draughts are constants. These buildings were built to fight the heat and many, like mine, are only warmed by expensive space heaters. It never gets "warm and toasty" inside.

One customer comes into the bar and complains its too muggy. The next person says you should turn up the heat because she's too cold. Running back and forth from one end of the place to another, I've meanwhile broken a sweat.

The next day the wind is coming from the south, off the Gulf of Mexico, and a t-shirt and shorts are just fine. The wind shifts again the next morning and we're socked in with overcast. What with the latest round of reveling, the holiday sort this time - though we don't need much of an excuse to party here in Nawlins - not getting sick is the challenge.

This weekend is the Bayou Classic. A bowl game between Grambling and Southern, two black colleges. Canal Street becomes party central. Too many of my fellow bartenders, few of which are Black, of course, complain about this crowd and how they don't tip. Bourbon Street goes wild. Down where I am, on Frenchmen, we won't get much of the spillover from that wildness. But I need it, darling, as you know, if I am to pay my rent.

The clock is ticking and I'm only a third of the way there. But today I go back to bar after only one day off to begin a stretch of three days. I'm hoping to have made The Rod Show compelling enough by Monday to have the ducats in hand. But right now, I'm just Cool Hand Luke.

Jennifer, one of the day shift bartenders at Molly's at the Market says Not to Worry. It fits that I'm a bartender here in Nawlins because I have such a magnetic personality. It's been a long time since somebody said something like that about me. Years. I've forgotten what it was like to believe that I was fun to be around.

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2 December, 2002: THIS IS MY PERSONAL SEASON OF dodging bullets. I dodged one today with the rent thang. But only by digging the Black Hole a little deeper. I have a month to make it again while also attempting to fill the Hole.

I was late for work yesterday because I met a new woman who achieved the seemingly impossible: She made me completely forget My Darling. I could never before imagine a picture of me simply walking away from my computer, leaving it behind in a strange place. My Darling waited for me, but upset. "Who's that girl/Runnin' around with you? Tell me!" Every one of my most disastrous stories starts with a woman...

I should feel more relieved than I do. That is because I am numb today. I just want to make it through my next shift (today is analogous to Friday in my work schedule) and hide from the world for a while. I still need to get that new Web site project completed. I need to research the Water article for the World Bank competition. I need to get more settled in the Hobbit Hole. I'm a very needy person right now.

I hate feeling this way.

Things I Loathe This Week

1. The paralysis that accompanies desperation and sadness.

2. How living in/near the Quarter is indeed like having a Glass House.

3. My living conditions.

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Thanks for coming back this week.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod

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ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote on Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

This year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now our Resident Philosopher has joined the pantheon of New Orleans bartenders, works construction when he can find the right fit and still doesn't know when he'll have a "permanent residence" that he likes.. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. This town is eroding his normal sense of driven purpose. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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