kanji

14 July, 2005
down to my last dollar bill

...i think the song was actually "down to my last cigarette", by BillyWalker.
but the dollar part... that's way more accurate. no... it's more like 79 cents in change, now that i look.

actually i was budgeting my last twenty since Sunday. a little bit here, a little bit there. gas. meals. newspaper. nothing else. imagine eating with ten bucks to spend for three days.

take that RachaelRay.

that's all i had left after i gave Yoko twenty to spend when she tooled down to babysit for her daughter. where she still is, and will be until Friday,or beyond... if i talk her into it.

it's come to that. i'll try anything to keep her happy... and elsewhere. it's a scenario i fucking hate... because in no way do i find this situation livable, anymore.
i dont know when it turned into this "Ward&June" thing where i was expected to assume the fifties ideal of man/breadwinner... and mechanic, electrician, banker, psychologist, doer-of-all-things... in trade for supplying the single three-basket washday, cook-for-me, stay-at-home clean-the-house drudgery... or so i'm told, it's drudgery.

i never expected or wanted it to turn out this way. i'm no stranger to clean up, or washing up after myself, or sharing in the domestic workload. i walked into this relationship with my eyes open, supposedly... ignorantly thinking we'd walk shoulder-to-shoulder, when her real dream was to hide at home and relinquish all else... and have someone else keep the world at bay.

it's been a year since she decided to give up working... yet, still expected me to take care of everything else, including building a house. buying cars. vacations.

with a little affection, perhaps i would still be led to believe it's possible. but i now, unfortunately, see the ulterior motives. and it makes me wonder if there was ever affection, freely given.

so now, i feel as if i've gone full-circle... back to the days when i was growing up:
abject poverty in a single-parent household. existing on child-support, my brother's and mine, adding up to 150 uninflated dollars a month. free-lunch lines in high school. no access to health care, outside of welfare. bad teeth. living in a trailer after the state took the house for the highway. no transportation.

i refuse to return to that. i refuse to waste away in both talent and hopefulness. i refuse to allow myself to deteriorate because of someone else's expectations and hopelessness.

where i go from here, i have no idea.

but a dollar in my pocket wouldn't hurt.

.


hit me with your rhythm stick




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