Free Ballin’

I lost my third knit hat, the other night.  I CANNOT keep hats or gloves.  I just have to accept it, I think.  Well, the first wasn’t lost, really, I just left it behind in San Antonio.  My friends there have sent it to me, I’m told.  The next hat I lost, I definitely lost.  I was getting a drink with a buddy in Atlanta and his friend, and when I got up from the table to find my replacement knit hat, I couldn’t find it.  I must have dropped it, somewhere.  It sucked, because it was cold.  Fortunately, my friend had a bunch of knit hats at his place and gave me one.  I didn’t really lose that one either.  I was out in Hotlanta, pleasantly drunk, and left it in the backseat of some French dude’s car.  He drove us (“us” being whomever was sitting next to me, I don’t recall) home.  No one ever heard from him again.

That last sentence doesn’t really make sense, but I like it.

So two days later I’m hitchhiking on highway 25 in Greenville, SC, north to Asheville, and it’s early, overcast, and very fucking cold.  So after a half-hour of unpleasantness and failed hitchhiking, I went over to the Walgreens to get a bright Hitchhiker Blue $1.99 knit hat, and those $7 headphones I mentioned in an earlier post and will mention again when I break these.  So I’m paying and taking a minute to get the headphones out and secure the pack again (something of a process) when the girl who rang up my order  came up to me.

“I saw you out there.”  Her eyes were moist with suffering for my suffering.  “Are you hungry?  Could you use some food?”

At this point I screwed up.  Honesty, argh.  It isn’t that I have some silly delusions about honesty being the best policy, or something.  It’s just what tends to come out of me, automatically, before I think of something better to say.

A brave smile against this cold world, a little bashful, almost blushing, “Why yes, miss, I suppose I am a bit hungry.”

I didn’t say that.

If it were New York City, I might shrug and say, “I could eat.”  But I don’t think they’d understand that in South Carolina.  It means…hmmm, I can’t write a NYC Jewish shrug.  Maybe…  I suppose the shrug isn’t too demonstrative, just enough, maybe includes slight turning of the wrists, palms up, and means, “who am I, powerless before the great forces of the universe, to impose my will on anything?  What, I should argue with you?  Do what you want.  Put it in front of me and I eat.  Don’t, I don’t.”  Any Newyorker understands the shrug and comment.  I think she would worry that I’d suddenly suffered from a back spasm.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, my father’s Jewish.”

Whatever, yes, yes, she thought I was homeless.  I guess.  I mean, do I look underfed?  Ummm, yeah, I haven’t put many pics up yet, but no, I don’t look underfed.

Whatever again, this is a problem I have.  I feel I should have much more adventure here to write, but I don’t.  I’m just not nearly as much of a bastard as I really should be, if I were a more dedicated writer.  One way or the other, she thought I was in trouble, and could use help, and yes, I could have gotten a breakfast with her without difficulty, and yes, that might have been a fascinating experience, and gone in various directions, most of them innocent beyond the first lie and acceptance of her charity.  But yes, there was also something in her, some of it charitable, some of it just curious.  And I know there are guys out there who could probably turn that curiosity into a reason to stick around Greenville for another day.  But I’m not them.  And she was working at Walgreens, not raking in dough, not needing to feed me.  She wasn’t pulling up beside me in a Lotus like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, and unfortunately, I’m not a whore enough for my craft.

I said, no, thank you, I had breakfast at my friend’s place.  Just cross your fingers for me that I arrive in Asheville by noon.  She did.