in just 7 days, I can make you a man
Nov. 14th, 2015 03:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanI had a bunch more beers (I have lost count how many) and some maple syrup liqueur. I might be a little bit drunk. I have to close one eye to see hte screen, and that's usually a bad sign.
So
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There was a time in my life when I was not a reputable silverback who worked in a bank and shook my cane at da yout' in my spare time. There was a time when I did not have a job or an education or a steady income. None of the people I hung out with did either.
It's hard to explain to people what it's liek to live in that kind of environment. The thing that I remember from those days is how small and limiting he world was. So fer example there might be a government office downtown that will help you get access to housing but even if you knew about it and had the money to invest in traveling to it and don't get eh wrong location, there is no guarantee it's going to be open when you get there. And by "hearing about it" I mean prettty much word of mouth. I could figure out how to find stuff in the public phone booth phone books (that used a completely obscure sorting system and had half their pages ripped out to boot) but that didn't necessarily buy me any more credibility, because the information was so often obsolete. Now imagine that contact information has all moved online - where there is no control over how old information might be even if you can access it - and it gets even harder. I hear people at work saying that if people didn't want to live on the street they would just do X, Y or Z. They genuinely have no idea what it might be like not to know that X or Z exists and that Y is a thing that costs money to get at. It's depressing as hell.
I blame that for my brief stint as a criminal. Most of the time it wasn't that I didn't think that what I was doing was wrong, it was that I didn't see any other options if I wanted to eat. It was beg, steal or starve. Nobody was knocking on my door with alternatives.
Anyway.
So the point of all this is to tell you about this one time. The ex - who I have always referred to as The Wife Beater (TWB) used to work day jobs, meaning he would show up at temp offices who would tell him if they had work that day. If he got work he would eat. Sometimes that even included me.
This one time he was feeling lavish because he called me and I met up with him and his friends at a pub. There was a period when I first arrived when I couldn't find him adn I serously thought about leaving, because being out in public alone was something that usually led to accusations about what I had been up to in his absence. I got lucky that time though, by the tiem he joined us he was so full of news he forgot to be worried about what I had been doing in the meantime.
Turns out he had been speaking to some guy at the bar who was actually either drunk enough or who suffered frm poor enough judgment to offer him a "job". I don't even remember tge details of what I was told. All I know is that it had to happen that night because the victim was out of town and less than an hour later, me, TWF adn Mike (TWB's beswt friend) were jimmying our way through some poor bastards back door.
We were terrible. TWB couldn'tg et the door open so Mike picked up an old paint pot and used it to smash out the window. TWB led us into the basement, told us that was where we wer supposed to be looing for the papers, then a short time later announced that there was nothing to find there and disappeared.
I looked at Mike and shrugged and continued going through more of the crap on the tables. We were in a big square space with a bunch of desk with lab equpment and paper spread around.
The thing about having a jealous partner is yhou always want to know what's going on aroudn you in case you have to explain yourself later. So every once in a while I would look up and scanned the room around me to see what Mike was doing.
I didnt' see him anywhere.
Thing is, I knew he couldn't' leave without passing me. It was s square box-like room. Where the fuck di\d he go?
The weirdness of it actually made me drop what I was doing and go looking for him. I felt really stupid, I was essentially walking around am open square looking under tables. only when I got to one of the tbles I realized that there was a hole in the ground, dug into the basement floor through the concrete in teh shadows. I felt really stupid becaue it was so obfious yet in a dark basemtn it ascutally wasn't obvvious at all.
There was a little bit of light when I stuck my head through teh hole so I called out and I heard Mike anser me. He assured me it was safe so dropped down through the hole and found myself in another room, about the same size and shape. In teh dim light it looked completey bare except for a glass wall on one side. I spotted Mike immeditely standign adn staring into the glas.
i walked up bside him adn stared ino the daken glass. Whjat's in there? i asked.
Mike didn't anwer but he stepped back just as something ping and fleshy based again teh blass, sending echoes reverbing tough the room aroudn me. I winced at the sudden noise nad stepped back. It vanished into the murk as suddenly as it appearedd.
"What the fuck?"
I stood starinf for a while but nothing else happened. Miek moved away and started walking around teh room. He stopped at the opposite end of the room and stopped, then called me over.I followed him and quickly realized whaqt he was pointing at, hanging from teh wall and hidden the dim light where shackles for wrist adn aankels and soemting that looked like a metal cap, xomplete with clamps to hold it in place.
"That is seriously fucked up. Think he hides women down here?" said Mike.
I opned my mouth to say something and I got completely distracted. Someting smacked against the glass behind us, and when I spun around to see where the noise was coming from I saw a face. A very human face, white and round, the full lips mouthing a message to us, with the long black eel-like body trailing away int the water behind it. I opened my mouth to say somethign but my words were drowned out by the sound of TWB just above us yelling that there was somebody coming and then Mike grabbing me and boosting em out towards the hole in the ceiling.
As it turned out the guy who lived there came home early and we ran out through seperate exits, splitting up and scrambling like rats. I took the chance of dashing across a lit street to get to the cemetary across teh road, once inside the unlit grounds I just sat and listedned and chilled whike tghe oolice sirens trailed off into the distance.
Agterwards I tried to alk about what I had seen buyt people who hadn't been there din't believe me. And the people who had been there - well let's just say that a guy who didn't like hearing tha tI had spent time in a om with p;eople who werne't hear didn't like having he subjec bought up.
I still wonder what happend to the peson I had seen in that place. And tif there were any more like him
OK now i'm really drijnk and i hav eno idea what i'm tying. bed. night. thingy
------------------------
[EDIT: For some reason I had this entry locked. I have no idea what the hell I was trying to say at the end there, but anyway this was another one from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cincinnatus_c_What's he building in there?
So
There was a time in my life when I was not a reputable silverback who worked in a bank and shook my cane at da yout' in my spare time. There was a time when I did not have a job or an education or a steady income. None of the people I hung out with did either.
It's hard to explain to people what it's liek to live in that kind of environment. The thing that I remember from those days is how small and limiting he world was. So fer example there might be a government office downtown that will help you get access to housing but even if you knew about it and had the money to invest in traveling to it and don't get eh wrong location, there is no guarantee it's going to be open when you get there. And by "hearing about it" I mean prettty much word of mouth. I could figure out how to find stuff in the public phone booth phone books (that used a completely obscure sorting system and had half their pages ripped out to boot) but that didn't necessarily buy me any more credibility, because the information was so often obsolete. Now imagine that contact information has all moved online - where there is no control over how old information might be even if you can access it - and it gets even harder. I hear people at work saying that if people didn't want to live on the street they would just do X, Y or Z. They genuinely have no idea what it might be like not to know that X or Z exists and that Y is a thing that costs money to get at. It's depressing as hell.
I blame that for my brief stint as a criminal. Most of the time it wasn't that I didn't think that what I was doing was wrong, it was that I didn't see any other options if I wanted to eat. It was beg, steal or starve. Nobody was knocking on my door with alternatives.
Anyway.
So the point of all this is to tell you about this one time. The ex - who I have always referred to as The Wife Beater (TWB) used to work day jobs, meaning he would show up at temp offices who would tell him if they had work that day. If he got work he would eat. Sometimes that even included me.
This one time he was feeling lavish because he called me and I met up with him and his friends at a pub. There was a period when I first arrived when I couldn't find him adn I serously thought about leaving, because being out in public alone was something that usually led to accusations about what I had been up to in his absence. I got lucky that time though, by the tiem he joined us he was so full of news he forgot to be worried about what I had been doing in the meantime.
Turns out he had been speaking to some guy at the bar who was actually either drunk enough or who suffered frm poor enough judgment to offer him a "job". I don't even remember tge details of what I was told. All I know is that it had to happen that night because the victim was out of town and less than an hour later, me, TWF adn Mike (TWB's beswt friend) were jimmying our way through some poor bastards back door.
We were terrible. TWB couldn'tg et the door open so Mike picked up an old paint pot and used it to smash out the window. TWB led us into the basement, told us that was where we wer supposed to be looing for the papers, then a short time later announced that there was nothing to find there and disappeared.
I looked at Mike and shrugged and continued going through more of the crap on the tables. We were in a big square space with a bunch of desk with lab equpment and paper spread around.
The thing about having a jealous partner is yhou always want to know what's going on aroudn you in case you have to explain yourself later. So every once in a while I would look up and scanned the room around me to see what Mike was doing.
I didnt' see him anywhere.
Thing is, I knew he couldn't' leave without passing me. It was s square box-like room. Where the fuck di\d he go?
The weirdness of it actually made me drop what I was doing and go looking for him. I felt really stupid, I was essentially walking around am open square looking under tables. only when I got to one of the tbles I realized that there was a hole in the ground, dug into the basement floor through the concrete in teh shadows. I felt really stupid becaue it was so obfious yet in a dark basemtn it ascutally wasn't obvvious at all.
There was a little bit of light when I stuck my head through teh hole so I called out and I heard Mike anser me. He assured me it was safe so dropped down through the hole and found myself in another room, about the same size and shape. In teh dim light it looked completey bare except for a glass wall on one side. I spotted Mike immeditely standign adn staring into the glas.
i walked up bside him adn stared ino the daken glass. Whjat's in there? i asked.
Mike didn't anwer but he stepped back just as something ping and fleshy based again teh blass, sending echoes reverbing tough the room aroudn me. I winced at the sudden noise nad stepped back. It vanished into the murk as suddenly as it appearedd.
"What the fuck?"
I stood starinf for a while but nothing else happened. Miek moved away and started walking around teh room. He stopped at the opposite end of the room and stopped, then called me over.I followed him and quickly realized whaqt he was pointing at, hanging from teh wall and hidden the dim light where shackles for wrist adn aankels and soemting that looked like a metal cap, xomplete with clamps to hold it in place.
"That is seriously fucked up. Think he hides women down here?" said Mike.
I opned my mouth to say something and I got completely distracted. Someting smacked against the glass behind us, and when I spun around to see where the noise was coming from I saw a face. A very human face, white and round, the full lips mouthing a message to us, with the long black eel-like body trailing away int the water behind it. I opened my mouth to say somethign but my words were drowned out by the sound of TWB just above us yelling that there was somebody coming and then Mike grabbing me and boosting em out towards the hole in the ceiling.
As it turned out the guy who lived there came home early and we ran out through seperate exits, splitting up and scrambling like rats. I took the chance of dashing across a lit street to get to the cemetary across teh road, once inside the unlit grounds I just sat and listedned and chilled whike tghe oolice sirens trailed off into the distance.
Agterwards I tried to alk about what I had seen buyt people who hadn't been there din't believe me. And the people who had been there - well let's just say that a guy who didn't like hearing tha tI had spent time in a om with p;eople who werne't hear didn't like having he subjec bought up.
I still wonder what happend to the peson I had seen in that place. And tif there were any more like him
OK now i'm really drijnk and i hav eno idea what i'm tying. bed. night. thingy
[EDIT: For some reason I had this entry locked. I have no idea what the hell I was trying to say at the end there, but anyway this was another one from
cincinnatus_c_What's he building in there?