Just when you think the best thing you ever did

writing-wise was lost forever, it turns up again.


(This is an R-rated blog, so if you got the iggies, OUT! NOW! Just scram, ok?)

It was under circumstances that were less than happy. Looking at it again for the first time in nearly eighteen years, I wondered where I found the energy to do that, considering all the terrible things that were happening in my life at the time.

I was still living in a 17 sq. meter one roomer with a cooking niche, my 'radio Cairo' days. Communal shower and wc out in the hall. So-called because two of my three neighbors were from there, and Sundays their radios were tuned there and overwhelming. Coptic Christians, not Islamists. And crazy Julius, 'the Joker', badly asthmatic, and so-called because he thought he had the winning numbers in the Joker part of the lottery one week, and I went ape-shit for joy for him, because it was just another sign that you can be lucky once in your life, but he mis-read and one of the numbers didn't match after all. Nada.

Their predecessors, (I'd lived there a long time...) were just as 'colorful'. First there were only two heroin addicts next door. Scary people, but they disappeared fast. A bisexual guy across the way from me, who really loved his rent-boys, and took a wealthy but rather deformed looking lady named Helga for a ride financially, and who would pound on his door and yell, 'Heli, mach AUF!' (Heli being the diminutive of Helmut, and the other, 'Open UP!' ) Usually at the most inopportune moments, btw, when he had a rent-boy in there, for example..... who had to slip out of the window and over the veranda when he let her in. High drama. Oh yes. A mess. Last I heard, he is in Thailand, working for the ministry of the exterior, and happy.

Just when you think some people would get their come-uppances, they live happily ever after..... Maybe you have to be outrageous to get on in life. Sheee-it. What do I know? I wasn't brought up that way....

And a recently divorced guy named Walter, who went nuts, I tell you, NUTS, because his window was to the side street, and all he heard nights were the whores plying their trade in the building across the way, and it frustrated the hell out of him. 'The whores, the whores! I can't TAKE this, I tell you, I can't TAKE this any more!'

And that was just in my little building. The one across the way was even MORE interesting..... But won't get into it here.

Did I mention this wasn't a classy neighborhood?

And NO, those weren't the terrible things happening in my life. I kind of liked all that, where can you find such fodder if you aspired to write, ok?

No, the terrible things were job-burn-out, and am STILL there, nearly two decades later, and a friend whom I perceived as avaricious, and whom I wanted to leave at the time. Who weasled his way into an inheritance, which is only my perception. Wanted me to move to a 'fine' new neighborhood, in a house that was a bottomless pit for needing renovations, and my first reaction was: 'Sell that sucker and buy us a little bit of land and move into a pre-fab house, and live happily ever after. please!' American Dream, anyone? Do I hear takers?

Wasn't to be.

I was trying to console my half-sister, who is sort of beautiful dark chocolate of complexion, and who married a bisexual white-bread guy who decided to have an affair with a Chinese guy, and died of AIDS.

Our mother was messing up our relationship, and the good connection we had.

She managed to ruin EVERYTHING between us, manipulator extrodinaire....

Tama was the far better writer.

The best friend I ever had was dying of AIDS, just to make things really perfect.

Stress, in other words.... You either get through it, or you jump off a bridge into the nearest river.

And with all that unbelievable crap in my life, I actually wrote a play and finished it.

God, was I naive and optimistic.

Today, I was packing, as the 'fine' house looks like a ruin again. In for a penny, in for a pound, as the English say. And my friend can't live alone any more. And I needed a carton to put some stuff in. And hey, whaddaya know? A copy of my play. With the cover letter. And the Schilling stamps to ensure a reply and return.

He said I gave it to him.

I was so distracted, I believed it for the moment.

See, am so dumb and distracted, I really believed it. Till the penny dropped.

He probably thought I might have some sucess with it, took that copy from my table when I was about to send them all out, and hid it. Oh yes, he thought it was good. And he had a LOT of experience with theater and actors, and so on before he landed back in his home town.

Huh. He was afraid.

Doesn't matter now. But I was so happy to have my baby back, I didn't think about the whys or wherefores. At first.

And that play WAS my baby. I sweat blood over it.

Just when you think you come to terms with someone, you find they betrayed you in the worst possible way, and it is so perfidious... well let's just say it's too late for anything, so why get upset about it. But this one cut to the marrow.

Just when you think, hey.

When I get back to work, I can scan it into a word doc and publish. Some of it is funny-. Some of it frightened me, because I was so angry.

And my first reaction was: where the HELL did I get that energy to DO all that?

So, next in this theater: Thanksgiving

Gonna be a bumpy ride, ok?