Paying Customers Do Not SHOUT OUT

The L Train is not running.

My shoulders slump. It was hard enough riding the trains of the Way to get to 14th Street on the West Side. Now my East Side running train has called it quits for today. Today of all days. OBSIDIAN will be late for the SHOUT OUT today, I'm limping like a man with a broken leg, and now, because the L train has been decommissioned I'm fucked and stuck with walking across town. That's a pretty sight.

I'm also running out of mad time. I get outside and strike off towards first avenue, cutting through the crowds and the cold to make the best time possible to OTTOs. Even in my injured state I was late only about 15 minutes. The door was already opened, Cyndi Lauper had already opened the joint, the poets, who were few at first, were already inside, and so, to my relief, was OBSIDIAN. He had the mikes already set up, leaving me to set up the laptop and light. We were on the start in moments and the SHOUT OUT lurched, like a big machine, wheezed, onto the road, and rumbled off.

It was slow going because I was at the helm. I don't have the ego to lift the reading much higher than my head. It's just not in me. So the poets just sit there, suffering through my ill executed jokes, my stuttering speech, my clumsy delivery. I'm just so damned self conscious that I can't get around my own head to enjoy the Emceeing thing. I am definitely not the host with the most. Soon, OBSIDIAN comes onto the stage and saves the day. The attitude of the guests turn from tired and slumped in their chairs to alert and participating the moment he steps on the stage. Well, if OBSIDIAN constantly wants me up there, then so be it. I'll bore everyone and really will not give a fuck. It will be a mechanical first half with me lurching back and forth on the stage like an Indian walking on hot coals.

Maybe I should just cave into my dog brain and do what it is that I'm doing inside of my head. Shove my entire fist into my mouth, bulge my eyes, bugeyed at the audience, and piss myself. I bet that moment of white hot panic will fill the room with laughter at my expense.

We get through the SHOUT OUT with very little incident. Cyndi Lauper comes up to me: "Bob, you have to be done and out of here by six O'clock." Waitaminute, Nell didn't say anything about that to us. "Well, I just got off the phone with her and she just told me." Great. Once again we get shoved around by PAYING customers. I say this because I do go to the bar at the intermission today, and half of the poets either order soda or water. Like I do. I can't complain. I order water too, but I leave a two dollar tip. No wonder Cyndi Lauper and Nell are not too pleased with us. We need a big crew to come in to buy drinks like motherfuckers on the weekend, but that shit is not going to happen, especially in this economic climate. Poets are broke. If they had any money, they wouldn't be poets.

Look at me. If I had money, I would be an astronaut.

Afterward, we close up shop on time and Frank Wood meets me in the corridor just before the bar. We talk. Why? I don't fucking know. He tells me that he's been doing a lot of the bouncing work here at OTTO's over the holidays. "Yeah, with the stupid lawyers and shit," he says. "I'm bouncing these fools when they get drunk and the first thing that they want to do is sue you." He laughs, more to himself at his own humor. "I tell them: 'look buddy, we're going to court, but it's not the court you think we're going to'". He stops and looks at me with a smile. "I'm a Brooklyn boy, I'll break his head." Oh god, another one from Brooklyn. I wanted to tell him that I'm a fucking NATIVE, born and raised Brooklynite. You can't get no more Brooklyn than me, and do you know what? People like you give Brooklyn a bad name, Frank.

I don't really think that Frank would give a flying fuck. Not really. I laugh with him and walk off. He's a crackpot. He's taken one too many blows to the head if you ask me. We stroll outside and use our new filthy lucre to buy chicken and hooch. Yeah, that's right, I knuckle under and buy a pint of vodka, just to drink it. I wanted a pleasant buzz for the evening. My brother and I eat at Kennedy's fried chicken. I only get three chicken wings tonight, cutting back on my fried foods to lower the calories that I'm taking in. You may say: Hobobob, you're going to drink an entire PINT of hooch and now you're talking about lower calories? No, I'm talking about SAVING calories...for the hooch. Jeez. Can you be any harder on a dude??

We stroll back across town. I go all the way to the 2 train on 6th Avenue. One seriously long walk back the way that I came this afternoon. Here I am, fucked up in the knee and still getting my walking exercise in. My doc would be proud of me. My brother leaves at 14street station and we part company. I limp my sorry ass home. Yeah, I say it like that because I'm suffering with this damn knee. Hobbling up and down stairs, limping like an invalid. I'm in sorry shape with this fucking knee. I'm heading home for some rest and COLCHICINE.

My Internet connection stays up till after midnight.

You know that I'm happy.

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