San Antonio, TX
Tuesday May 21, 2002
Dude, today was such a badass day. First, it started off when I woke up this morning at six thirty. I had the alarm set to go off at seven thirty but I had gone to bed early the night before and I woke up a little earlier. I got dressed. I had taken a shower the night before.
I just moved in on the eighteenth so I did not have any food in the apartment. Man was I hungry. I had to be at my head-injury bullshit at eight thirty. I then went to check the bus-schedules. The first bus I had to catch was at my old job(which I will be returning to the seventh of next month) at six forty five, so that meant it would be by my apartments at about six fifty or seven. I got my bag and keys and went out to catch it.
I caught it and it got to where I needed to transfer to the second bus at six fifty six. At that intersection there’s a donut shop so I was like, "Cool, I can get a donut!" I went and bought a cinnamon-twist and a small thing of two percent milk. I then walked to the bus stop with it, ate it and got to smoke my after-meal cigarette while I waited for the next bus, which was due at seven nineteen.
When the bus came I had just finished my cigarette so I thought, "Hmm, this could be the start of a wonderful day." Little did I know how right I was.
I got to my head-injury bullshit at seven thirty five. It wasn’t as annoying today as most days. At lunch, I got the urge for a Thundercloud sub. We got held up in class until twelve eighteen. I asked this dude Lee if he wanted to go to Thundercloud with me and eat. He told me he didn’t have any money but he would go anyway. I then checked the schedules and Lee and I walked outside to catch the bus. Where the sandwich shop is, is very convenient and closeby so we got on this one bus(we had three different routes to choose from, all that go to the sub shop) and got there like at twelve twenty five. I ordered "the usual" and went to the bathroom. I am not charged for drinks anymore. Basically because I go there every day. Sometimes more than once in one day. Hey, it’s a shitload healthier than Sourdough Jacks, and it’s damn cheap too. You get this badass sandwich that has two halves for just three sixty five. Since they let me get free drinks, this place is perfect to eat at, especially for someone who is on a limited budget.
We got back to the head-injury place at one sixteen. I was stoked, I had just gone and gotten this badass sub sandwich, ate it, smoked a cigarette, and was back two minutes early! Shweet! After we got back, I kicked ass at what they gave me to do(as usual) all the way to three fifteen. We’re supposed to get off at three thirty but the lady was cool and let us go early.
I said to my friend and "classmate" Lee, "Hey Lee, wanna go donate plasma with me? My days are Tuesdays and Fridays. It’s real easy money and it saves lives, dude." He was like, "Donate what?" I explained to him the whole process and I assured him it was safe, that all they take is blood-plasma from you and they return everything else to you. Now blood-plasma is basically the shit your blood cells live in. It’s like ninety eight percent water and you remake the lost plasma in like a day or something. They then collect all the plasma in a big cooler and eventually ship it off to drug companies that use the plasma to make medicines that help burn victims and save lives. So it’s for a good cause and they give you money. Hell, they should. The plasma center makes about a thousand dollars off of each 900ml bottle(which I give every time) of plasma. What you get is a bit less than that though, but still worth it. They pay "donors"(I don’t know why they call it donating, I’ll be damned if I let someone stick a needle in my arm for free)fifteen dollars for the first time of the week and thirty the second time. Once you have the process down, and depending on how many people are there, it only takes about one and a half hours to complete the whole "donation".
Now you’re supposed to go two times a week. As a brand new "donor" you have to take a bullshit physical(which takes a while) before you can "donate." The first time you go, you’ll get twenty dollars and when you come again that week you’ll get forty. So that’s sixty dollars for about three hours of "work". That comes out to about twenty dollars an hour. That’s on your first time. Now every time after that, you’ll get fifteen and thirty. Shit, that’s still great for just lying there for a little bit, watching television, and listening to your CD player. Like I said, it’s easy money. I use the money I make at the plasma place to eat out, get cigarettes, buy groceries and anything else I impulse into. I feel like such a big cheater.
Okay, I got a bit off-topic again. So Lee agreed to go donate plasma with me, he could use the spare cash. Just then, I remembered that I wanted to go to the post office and weigh my bag using their scales. I was curious as to how much all the shit I carried in there weighed. Now I knew the 522 bus passed by the Post Office and it was pretty close-by. So we waited until three fifty two for the 522. It was right on time. We were already at the post office by three fifty seven. I walked in and put my backpack on the scale and got a reading of five pounds. I carry over twenty time-saving items in my bag like bus schedules, CD player/CDs, a camera, a mini-cassette recorder, my reports and dissertations, a bottle of ibuprofen, toothbrush/paste, dental floss, package of tissues, a small flashlight, a tube of lip balm, pens and pencils, fingernail clippers, a nail file, an all-purpose utility knife, a planner, and finally my neuro-psychological evaluation, just in case I ever need it. What I want to do is write a paper on the things I have in my bag and I was curious to find out how much it weighed exactly. So after I got the reading I pulled out my pocket-planner and scratched off "weigh bag at post office."
So Lee and I walked out of the post office and saw the bus pass us up, we were like, "Shit! Oh well, we can walk to the transfer center, it’s not far." Then I noticed that the bus had caught a red light so I ran across the street and shouted back at Lee, "Come on, let’s see if he’ll let us on!" Now Lee has a problem walking fast and he was hurrying as fast as he could. I got to the bus and begged the driver to let me on and he opened the door. I asked him if he could wait for my friend and he said okay. Lee, he’s got a slight limp. You should have seen him scurrying to the bus. He pushed himself so hard that right before he got to the door of the bus, he tripped and fell. I was already inside the bus so I leaned out and asked, "Are you okay?" He just bumped his knee and cut his hand a little. Other than that, he was fine.
So he got on the bus too around four and we rode it for less than five minutes until it reached the transfer-center at the hospital. He had cut his hand pretty bad so I offered him a napkin(I always keep napkins in my CD case for happenings such as this one). He took his hand out of his mouth and gratefully accepted the napkin. So we rode the bus back to the transfer center.
Then I just remembered that I had wanted to go to my apartment and turn in my move-in checklist to the leasing office. I had yet to turn it in. So we caught the bus at four ten and rode it to the intersection where the donut shop was, arriving there at four twenty six. Lee didn’t have any money so I agreed to buy him a donut. It is advisable to have some food in your stomach before you go sell your plasma. We entered the donut shop, bought two cinnamon-twists and a milk and walked to the bus stop to eat before the bus came to take me to my apartment. Once again, I had plenty of time to smoke my after-meal cigarette. What a great day this was turning out to be.
The bus finally came at four fifty one. We boarded it and arrived at my apartment at five. We went in my place and I checked the schedule for when the next bus came to take us directly to, or walking-distance from the plasma place. The next one would be around five eighteen, so I had about twenty minutes to kill. I showed Lee the first, unaired episode of South Park on my computer. He could not stop laughing. When it was over we walked to the bus stop and waited for the bus. We caught the bus at five eighteen and I remembered that the plasma place stops taking "donors" at six. I was like, "Damn, we’re cutting it close." Now the one-bus way I usually go to the plasma center requires me to walk like three-blocks length to get to the place. With Lee’s walking deficiency, I was positive we wouldn’t make it on time. I got to thinking. I pulled out the schedules and thought of maybe an alternate route that would get us there in time. Eureka! I checked and the bus that goes around the loop was due, at the intersection we were almost at, in like minutes. The time was five thirty eight. So we got off and caught the looper bus to Crossroads park-n-ride. I was hoping the 92(which runs every twenty minutes) would be there and we would take it to right in front of the plasma place.
Just as we pulled into the park-n-ride, the 92 was pulling out. "Shit," I thought. The guy driving the bus then told us that we could jump on the 520 bus that was there and it could drop us off like one block away. I told him thank you and we went and boarded the 520. The time was now five fifty.
The 520 dropped us off and I told Lee that I was going to run ahead and see if I wasn’t too late, and if I was allowed inside I would ask them to let him in too, when he got there. I got there at five fifty nine, pulled on the door handle but it was locked. I cupped my hands and looked inside and saw the people who work there shake their finger at me. I went around to the side of the building where the exit was, opened the doors and walked in and told the workers that I had arrived at five fifty nine, with one minute to spare, but the doors were locked. I ended up talking to the supervisor in charge and she was very nice. She told me that if all the equipment hasn’t been already put up that I could "donate." Alas, they told me that, in fact, all the equipment was put up already.
So Lee and I walked to the bus-stop across the street to wait for the bus back to the park-n-ride. At the stop I recognized this lady who donates plasma and works where I used to work also. I struck up a great conversation and she seemed real cool. Her name was Sandy, she was an older lady, mid thirties I’m guessing. She still had a terrific figure and was very tall for a woman.
I ended up talking to this lady on the bus. I almost didn’t notice Lee leave when we got to the park-n-ride. I told him "Later, man." I got off the bus close to the sub shop and walked over to it. One of the dudes who I have hooked up with CDs was working. He asked me if was hungry and I told him, "Hell yes!" He hooked me up with a large roast-beef sub with mayo, mustard, lettuce and tomato, and this paprika stuff they called "Thunder Sauce." They’re delicious, cheap(when I want to pay for ‘em) and a hell of a lot healthier than Sourdough Jacks at Jack-In-The-Box. Price was pro-bono of course.
Dude, I could not believe the luck I was having today. After I ate half of my sub I went out to wait for the bus and smoked a cigarette. I caught the bus to where I could walk like a couple block’s distance to my ex-girlfriend’s apartment. I was going to surprise her with that other half of the sandwich I had. When I got to her apartment no one was home though. I unlocked the door(I still had a key) and started filling a laundry bag with any clothes I could find that I had left there. I ended up with a huge bag which I lugged outside to catch the bus home. I walked to the front of her apartment complex and caught the bus back to the Medical Center Transfer Center, where I caught the bus to where I worked.
On the way to my old work, I had stopped at this one bus-bench. A couple minutes later this black dude walked up and started talking to me. We were shooting the shit and he asked me if I smoked bud. I told him I did. Turns out, he told me he sold it. I asked him how much for a quarter-ounce. He said twenty five dollars which is an average good price. He gave me his pager number, and just like that I had another source to tap if need be.
I was on the bus all day doing shit and I ended up back at the place I used to work at, the next bus wasn’t coming for forty five minutes. I went for a walk, looking for someone to bum a cigarette from. I went to the smoking hut at my old job and asked the two dudes there, "Excuse me, do you have a spare cigarette I could have?" They agreed and hooked me up.
Just then I heard some black dudes by a car that had a stereo on and they were rapping loud. At first I thought they were just singing along to the music on their stereo. After a while, I noticed they were making shit up as they went along. Wow, my first real-life free-styling session.
I was just in awe. They were making shit up as they went along, and still able to make it rhyme! I felt honored to be in their presence, hehe. As I smoked the cigarette I had bummed, I walked over to their car and asked them, "Do you mind if I hang out here and listen? I have like fifteen minutes to kill for the bus." They said "Nah man, chill out with us." They asked me if I wanted to jump in. I was like, "No way dudes, I could never." They kept busting their rhymes for like five more minutes. I interrupted them and said, "Hey, bust a rhyme about me."
What happened next kicked ass. They did! I don’t remember the exact lyrics or anything, but it all made sense and it rhymed. Whoa, it was like I was introduced to another culture tonight. I have a new-found respect for rappers now. Just possessing the intellect to think shit up "off tha brain" like that deserves a lot of respect. I wanted to ask them if they were out here every night, I wanted to invite some people up there to listen to them, but I forgot to. A couple of the dudes were wearing nametags of the telemarketing place I was at so I am sure I’ll see them when I start working there again.
I then caught the bus that takes me to my apartment. It was like already nine forty five by then. When I walked up the stairs to my front door, I noticed a note was hanging on the door. It was from my ex-girlfriend. Turns out that at the same time I was at her apartment, she had come to mine. She had cooked. I had completely forgotten we had made plans tonight to eat. I was having a blast on the bus all day, it slipped my mind completely.
I then walked to the convenience store that’s close to my apartment and asked the dude there if I could borrow his phone. I called my ex-girlfriend and she sounded mad. She said she couldn’t believe I had forgotten. I should have told her, "You’ve lived with me for four years and you still haven’t gotten use to my forgetfulness? I have had two closed head-injuries, you know(my universal excuse)."
Ok now, it’s getting late(twelve forty). I better go to sleep.
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