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8/23/2009 3:19:48 PM: Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 2222 hrs.I think anybody who’s read much of my journals knows who I mean when
I refer here to Her, as opposed to her. I don’t want to name any names
here.

A bit blue today. I’ve been missing Her. I know it’s over and I know
I can’t go back. But there’s a hole in my life, in my slave heart,
that’s empty and bleeding now. It’s the place She filled, even though
She never got around to beating me or using me in all the other kinky
ways I crave being used. I don’t know if She ever planned on using me
those ways; at times I sincerely doubt it, thinking that the constant
putting it off might have been part of Her emotional sadism. But, even
though She never did feed those specific cravings, never the less she
did use me, used me a lot. And I need to be used. What slave doesn’t
need to be used? I think it’s the core of the heart of a slave. And now
I have no users, once again and it’s lonely and it hurts.

I think the reason the singletailing I got at my first party back at
DD wasn’t working for me, was because I wasn’t being used; I was being
served. I’m grateful to the friend who was willing to do this; but it
wasn’t and it isn’t what I need. At last week’s party another offered
to try to top me. She’s a dear friend, whom I’ve topped often myself
and who’s tried topping me before. If she reads this, I hope she
doesn’t misunderstand, it’s not that I’m finding fault with her. But
her prime motivation is to do it for me, because she knows how badly I
need it and she wants to try to help me. She can’t change her
motivations, even if she tries to, she’s trying to in order to serve
me, and so the energy exchange I haven’t had in so long, that I feel
such a need for isn’t there.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not against service tops. Hell,
when I top, I AM a service top. And I think that every reasonably sane
top is, to some degree a service top. It’s part and parcel to the sense
of empathy that’s the necessary ingredient to be a BDSM sadist, rather
than a sociopath. It’s fine by me and it works for me if a large
element in a scene is the top serving me by taking me where I need to
go. But, for me, that can’t be the sole motivation, or even the prime
one. A big part of it, maybe even the biggest has to be about what she
wants, what pleases her, what floats her boat.

At least one of my two favorite tops has forgiven me for the 4th of
July/birthday weekend fiasco and has let me know we will play again.
But, she’s 130 miles away; the economy’s got her in a bind too and
traipsing down to Tucson for a weekend on a lark is almost as undoable
for her as going up to Phoenix is for me right now. She has to plan her
trips well in advance. She’s coming down in a couple of months, but
that’s a couple of months away, and a couple of months is a LONG, long
time.

The other of the two also lives up in the north country. And I
expect to see her in only one month; but I don’t know where I stand
with her right now, don’t know if she’s forgiven me for fucking up the
plans, don’t know if she’ll ever play with me again. When I talked with
her in an IM the other night, I got the feeling that she was kind of
miffed with me; although I often get that feeling mistakenly. But, I
often hit it on the button too. She said when she comes down next
month, she’ll be bringing a friend from out of state. She didn’t
elaborate about the friend. I don’t know if the friend is a playmate, a
potential sub, or what; I don’t even know what sex the friend is. And I
have almost an allergy to prying. My instinct is to accept what
information I’m given and not ask for more.

I have no tops at DD anymore, none that will top me for their
pleasure and not just to try to please me. Hell, last Saturday’s party
was an active one, a lot of people there, a lot of people playing. But,
I’ve been away so long I don’t know half of them and a crowded, noisy
environment like a play party is about the worst possible venue for me
to communicate with people, for me to try to make friends. I’m trying
to make new friends, maybe find some new sadists, local ones, in need
of a masochist like me to serve and more importantly be served by. But
it’s hard, and it’s lonely.

Watching other people play, when I haven’t played for so long, when
I know the chances of me playing that night are just about zilch,
depresses me. So, I tend to stay out of the big room where the play
floor is and where the noise level is highest, out where I can maybe
sometimes hear what people are saying. And so I sit there, mostly
alone, catching snatches of conversations between new people who don’t
know me, but do know a lot of the other old timers with whom they’re
talking. So, I just sit there looking dumb, probably being assumed to
actually be dumb, and make no new friends.

I think my need to be used for the pleasure of another is a big part
of my craving to have my face fucked by a man. If a woman shoves her
cock down your throat, you know it’s stiff because, hell, she wouldn’t
have bought it if it wasn’t. When a man shoves his stiff cock down your
throat and fucks you till he cums, you know it’s stiff because he’s
enjoying what he’s doing, you know when he shoots his wad down your
gullet that he’s really getting off. It’s kind of hard to fake a male
orgasm.

I started to drift away from DD during the latter part of my term as
Vice President because I had no sadistic playmates left there. It felt
like all work and no play, like all I was valued for was the service I
could render the club. And unlike serving a Master of any sex; the club
doesn’t show appreciation for your service; the club doesn’t get
pleasure from it.

And the club never cums in your face.

_______________________________

8/17/2009 2:44:24 PM: 
 
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Thursday,
August 20, 2009, 1925 hrs. 251lbs. 154 days to target of 211lbs.

A quick disclaimer: I’ll be using the word “Master(s) generically a lot. Since practically everybody in the BDSM
community defines the word differently, let me say here what I mean by it. When I use it, I’m referring to the persons
to whom I submit, whether they consider themselves Tops, Dominants, Masters,
Mistresses, Lord High Executioners or Lord High Everything Elses. Their sex and sexual orientations aren’t
relevant. When I am submitting to them,
they are my Masters. When they are
helping to guide me on my, they are my Masters. If I write about any specific one of them, then I’ll use whatever title
they like, but generically I consider them all to be my Masters.

Funny, not long ago when I considered myself to be a
bottom, I didn’t like the word, “Master” and thought almost exclusively of them
as Tops. Now, when I consider myself a
slave, albeit a self owned one, it seems more natural to me to think of them as
Masters.

And now to your regularly scheduled program.

Nipples. Time
to talk about nipples. My nipples that
is. A year or two ago, I set almost a
limit against nipple play. Or was that
an almost limit? Whatever, I told my
playmates at the time that I hated nipple play and asked that they take it easy
on them. But….

The Masters I’ve played with since have gone out of
their way to accommodate that dislike. And, in fact, they’ve sometimes gone too far to do so, so far that I
could feel them holding back, causing what felt like interruptions in the
energy flow, disturbances in the Force, if you will. As some know, to me the greatest single
factor in a scene is how much fun my playmates have. The more fun they have, the more fun I have,
even if I’m not particularly loving some of the things they’re doing to
me. The more fun they have, the more fun
I have, the greater and freer the energy flow between us. This is the root of my aversion to putting
restrictions on what Masters whom I trust may do to me.

Torturing my nipples is the fastest way to make me
growl, and most of the Masters I’ve ever played with really loved my
growls. It’s the fastest way to make me
scream, and Masters seem to like my screams as well. It’s the fastest way to make me whimper. Ditto on the Masters and the whimpers. And, it’s the fastest way to wear me
out. That’s probably the worst thing
about it.

When the recent Mistress read about my weakness for
nipple play, she told me, as I expected, that she most assuredly would
use it against me, would use it to control me, would use it to break me down
and train me. She told me that the
nipple rings with the chain between them that I’d wanted before actually
getting my nipples pierced would be in my future.

Unfortunately, that future wasn’t long enough for
any of that to happen. That’s right, I
said, “unfortunately.” Because, even as
I quivered inside at the fear of that, I also was eager for it. I’ve heard it said of men, “grab them by the
balls and their hearts and minds will follow.”  Grab me by the balls and I might pull back
just to make you squeeze them harder. Grab me by the nipples, on the other hand, and I will follow just as
fast as my knees can care me.

I think it’s part of having the heart of a slave, or
at least it’s a big part of mine. I like
a Master using my weaknesses against me, using them to control me and break me
and train me.

So, I’ll ask all my Masters of whatever sex of the
future, please don’t torture my nipples too hard or too soon. Unless, of course, you really, really want
to. When that’s the case, do with me as
thou wilt. Just don’t throw me in that
there briar patch.

_______________________________

8/14/2009 1:58:35 PM: Monday, August 17, 2009, 1933 hrs.  254 lbs.I am by nature a skeptical person. I believe this started before I
was ten when I noticed that religions other than the one I was raised
in believed just as strongly that they were the “One True Faith” as our
own church did. I can recall asking my mother about this, asking how we
could know that we were right when all those other, and I’ll add much
larger, churches also seemed to “know” that they were right. She said
something to the effect that we knew we were right because we were
right, because the Writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg said they were right
and we knew he was right because God told him he was right. And, of
course, we knew God told him he was right because he told us God told
him he was right in his Writings.

Even at such a tender age, I found this circular reasoning to be,
umm, unconvincing. It wasn’t until much later, as I entered adulthood,
at least legally, that I formed a worldview that didn’t include, or
necessarily exclude, a Supreme Being. I found atheism to be just as
fanatically religious as all the other religions, so I rejected that
too. I became and remain today a devout and devoted agnostic. Ask me
how the world got here and I’ll tell you the Absolute Truth. I don’t
know, I wasn’t there. Ask me the purpose of life and I’ll tell you that
life is its own purpose.

When I rejected religion, I rejected almost everything that smacked
of religion in my view, ideas like spirituality and energy flow. I came
to believe in only what could be seen, what could be measured, what
could be definitively described in absolute terms.

When I finally joined the BDSM community and started hearing the
term “energy flow,” my thought was “what kind of hocus pocus bullshit
is this?” I remained skeptical about energy flow until I experienced it
in a scene. Since then I’ve experienced what seemed to be many
different kinds of energy exchanges, although nowhere near as many as
are possible. I think I need to explore energy flow to find the path I
need in life. I think I need to experience it and seek to experience it
in as many different varieties as possible. I’ve tasted enough
different types to feel the difference between male energy and female
energy. I think if I were blindfolded and earmuffed effectively and
were tortured by an unknown person (to me at least, not to my guardian,
which I would make sure I had before making such an experiment) who was
careful never to touch me with his skin, I would, after a while, be
able to tell you the sex of that person correctly much more often than
I’d be wrong.

Sounds like an interesting experiment, any takers?  Couldn’t be done in a single night.

Another term I started hearing a lot of was “spirituality.” This
term I associated exclusively with religion, probably because it and
variations of “spirit” were used so often in my religious education.
When I’d hear people talk about their spirituality and spiritual
quests, my mental eyes would roll back in my head and I’d move on to
something else.

I’m beginning to think that there’s something more to spirituality
than religion, or rather something entirely different from it. But what
there is to it is a foggy notion to me at best and I hardly know where
to begin exploring it. And I’m convinced I need to explore it to find
my own true path.

I’ve had this tendency until fairly recently to dismiss all of the
thoughts and words of people who I’ve heard say a lot of things I
either disagreed with or things I just couldn’t believe. I’ve finally
discovered that doing this is a bad form of prejudice and a sign of
having a closed mind.

I first came to realize this when the issue of gay marriage started
being bandied about some years ago. I’m not a fan of the far, in your
face, left. I disagree with most of what they have to say and find
their usual methods of saying it to be both undignified and offensive.
Because they were the principal proponents of gay marriage, my initial
reaction was to oppose it.

Then one day, while reading an article opposing gay marriage, I
found myself saying “Bullshit!” to every argument the writer put forth.
“Gay marriage is wrong because God’s against it.” Well, I don’t believe
in God, so that argument goes right out the window. “Marriage should be
between a man and woman because that’s the way it’s always been.” Well,
before the institution of slavery was abolished, it too was the way it
had always been. Didn’t make it right, nor did it make abolishing it
wrong. “The purpose of marriage is children.” Well, if that’s the case,
no woman past the age of menopause should be allowed to marry, no
couple should be allowed to marry without first being tested for
fertility and signing a pledge to have children. “Allowing gay people
to marry one another will destroy the institution of marriage.” Well …
how? How on earth can allowing two people who love one another to marry
harm the institution of marriage? How on earth can forbidding two
people who love one another to marry preserve the institution of
marriage? How could allowing Tom and Dick, or Jane and Sue to marry one
another possibly effect the marriage of John and Sally? What destroys
the institution of marriage is the institution of divorce, yet I hear
no clamoring to abolish that.

After that, I listened to what the pro gay marriage people were
saying, rather than dismissing it simply because of who they were. And
I found myself agreeing with them on the issue. Then I realized that
dismissing what somebody has to say simply because I’d disagreed with
everything else I’d ever heard them say was a knee jerk reaction,
totally unworthy of someone who likes to consider himself a thinking
human being.

Thinking of that reminded me of reading Hitler many years ago when I
had a more open mind. 99.9% of what he had to say was pure, hate filled
drivel. But even he managed to be right on a couple of esoteric
historical points.

If I can give one of the greatest human monsters of all time a fair
hearing and find a few pearls of wisdom in his words, is there any
human being who doesn’t deserve an equally fair hearing? Who, although
I might find 99% of what he says to be useless to me, might not be able
to teach me something that IS useful to me on my path?

My path is not your path; nor is your path mine. Our destinations,
other than the grave, are not the same. But there are certainly likely
to be points where our paths cross, possibly run together for awhile.
Although the rest of your path might be alien and incomprehensible to
me, by shedding my skepticism, opening my mind and examining your path,
so far as I can see it, I might find some guiding lights on those
points where our paths intersect or run together. And I may find that
some of those lights help illuminate for me those parts of my path that
are foreign to you.

I need to start exploring all the varieties of energy exchange
possible within the BDSM lifestyles, the masculine along with the
feminine, the gentle along with the harsh. I’ve long stated a
preference for the feminine energy over the masculine, the harsh over
the gentle. But, just because I prefer chocolate ice cream doesn’t mean
I reject strawberry. Never did much cotton to vanilla though.

While I’ve always preferred the feminine energy, the masculine has
its own rough charms that I feel a need to explore as well. Of the two
greatest scenes in my memory, one was with a very highly skilled and
sadistic man who showed me what the moon looked like from Jupiter and
Mars.

I’d rather eat a pussy than swallow a cock. But I’ve had a very
strong hunger for cocks of late, cocks up my asshole, cocks down my
throat, cocks sliming my eyes and beard and hair. I’ve been feeling a
strong urge to try to arrange a very rough all male gang bang, with me
as the guest of honor.

Filthy minded cocksucker, aren’t I?

I’ve always preferred rough play to gentle. But I feel a need to
explore the energy flows of the gentle as well. The other of the two
best scenes in my memory was the famous First Lilliputian at APEX early
last year when Mistress Skye and Wednesday first sewed me to the table
top, while a male dom just beyond my head kept tying a gorgeous girl to
the winch in various ways, then dangling her from the ceiling, two
stories almost directly above me. They took me out past Saturn that
night, higher than I’ve ever been before or since. I’ve described the
condition I got into as feeling kind of like a forty five minute, full
body orgasm, with my genitalia no more engaged than all the rest of my
body. They grew concerned after a while because of the way I was
trembling from head to toe. I was a veritable harryquake. When they
started talking with each other about that and how maybe they better
cut me loose, I wanted to say, “No! I’m fine! Continue please! Don’t
stop! Ever!” But I was almost totally beyond the ability to form words.
I could understand them, but speak them? Not quite.

The only words I could get out were, “Hands. More hands.”
Unfortunately that didn’t mean much to them and I couldn’t elaborate.
What I wanted to say was that as much as the pain was making me so
high, so equally were the ways they were simply touching me, a hand on
my chest, a caress, a gentle pat here and there. I wanted to ask for
more of that, much more, ask them to invite everybody in the building
to come over and just give me touch. It was those touches that were
feeding me the energy I was experiencing as much as, if not more than,
the pain.

Seriously, while I’ve never been higher than that scene made me,
taking me way out past Saturn, I think if I’d been able to ask for
those hands, and gotten them, they would have sent me clear to Sirius.

I need to start exploring the possibilities of spirituality. I don’t
think any one person can teach me this, as I don’t believe any
pre-existing path towards it will work for me. But I think everybody
for whom it has meaning can teach me something. It doesn’t matter if
99% of what works for any of them is of no value to me, if the other 1%
is gold, as I think it very well may be. If a prospector threw away
every pan full because 99% of what was in it was of no value to him,
nobody would ever find any gold.

Just as I asked my friends within the community to help me
financially last week and they came through more than I’d dreamed they
might, I’m now going to ask for their help, their guidance, their
suggestions and advice in this spiritual quest. This one won’t require
any money, just time and talk and patience. Patience mainly because it
takes patience to talk with me with my social awkwardness, my slow
thought processes, my deafness and the resultant occasional inability
to understand even clearly spoken words.

Show me, please, the lights that illuminate your paths so I can see
if any of them will work on mine. Tell me of your beliefs so I can see
if any of them make sense to me. Be my mentors, please, my teachers, my
guides and my Masters.

Even if you tell me that you honestly and truly believe that Mumbo
Jumbo, God of the Congo has been the Big Boss all along, I promise not
to scoff or ridicule what works for you. I don’t promise to be
converted, but I promise to listen to with an open mind and not try to
convince you that Mumbo Jumbo is a myth. I don’t promise to respond to
any particular thing you tell me right away, sometimes I’ll need time
to digest it. Some things, I have no doubt will be indigestible to me,
and I may never be able to respond to them. But, I’ll give all of them
what thought I can, and will respond to what I can when I can, even if
my response is here in this journal.

Speaking of this journal, I keep hearing from readers of my previous
journal with the last Mistress, about how much they enjoyed reading
them and seeing where my warped mind was warping out to. For the
longest time, I thought she was the only reader, that I was posting
them for nothing. I got no responses, and no comments for a long time.
I didn’t know that she was getting them, though, until she told me one
day near the end. Along with the heart of a slave, which she told me I
have and I believe she was right in that, I have the heart of a writer.
The heart of a writer feeds on knowing there are readers, on feedback
from them, both positive and negative. If you have something nice to
say, say it. If you have questions to ask, ask them. If you have
something nasty to say, say it too, I have thick skin. Ask some of
those who have beaten it just how thick my skin is. Flame on, sometimes
a little fire is good for the environment and often a writer, a slave
and a seeker can learn and gain more from the negative comments than he
can from the positive. If the comments are useful to me, I’ll use them.
If I have a useful response, you’ll get it, although it might take
awhile. If they’re just spiteful and nasty, with no value, then I’ll
ignore them and delete them in those venues they can be deleted from.

I plan on using some of the same conventions here that I used in my
last journal. Not the third person speak I adopted in the last one. I
won’t resume that unless some time in the future it feels right to me
again. But, I intend to continue the honesty and openness from it, to
continue exploring and exposing the depths of the psycho-sexual
cesspool that passes for my twisted mind. If you want to keep exploring
it with me, then tune in next time, whenever that is.

Hmm, that gives me an idea. It helps me to know that people are
reading and it doesn’t hurt to know who. If, instead of checking my
profiles on  and Collarme to see if I’ve posted anything of
late, you’d like to get it in your email, I could make an email list
and send them at the same times I post them.

For that matter, as some of you know, I also write pornographic
fiction, and occasionally autobiographical anecdotes, some of which are
posted on FL. I haven’t been doing much of that for the last few
months, but I’ll be taking it up again soon. Some of it can’t be
published on FL; it’s just too damned nasty. Nasty enough to make
Jefferson James blanch.  Free plug for that calumny.  Visit jeffersonjames.com. 
Be forewarned, some of my stuff is truly vile filth. None of it
involves children but there’s this one about a teenager who..… well,
nevermind. If you’d like to read what I’ve written so far, and get the
new stuff as I finish it, drop me a note off site. Because some of the
porn is so nasty, I’ll make two lists, if there’s any interest. One
will be for everything, the journal and the nasty (written only, no
pictures unless they’re of me) porn. The other, for those to whom the
porn is just too nasty, will be only for the journal and anecdotes.
Although the journal will be pretty nasty too in places, it just won’t
be fiction.

I use the same name everywhere, on YM, (at)gmail(dot)com and the
BDSM sites. Drop me a note; tell me which list you’d like to be on,
journal or everything. Who knows, enough interest could even inspire me
to finish taking out the “Garbage.”

Your humble servant.

_______________________________

8/12/2009 11:22:25 AM: Sunday, August 16, 2009, 0030 (That’s half past midnight to any who
don’t know how a military clock works. Hint, if the first two digits,
the hour numbers, are less than 12 then its AM, which I remember as
meaning “After Midnight”. If they’re more than 12, then subtract 12 to
get the time PM, after Noon. The last two digits, of course are the
minutes.)

It ended with Mistress Isis rather abruptly. I’m not going to give
you the sordid details because I’m only able to present my side of the
story. I learned long ago that there are two sides to every tale of woe
between two people. And I learned long ago that both people involved
can tell how they remember the same events, with neither deliberately
falsifying a thing, and yet tell two nearly entirely different stories.
Both sides get distorted by our own personal viewpoints, and the
natural human tendency to try to justify ourselves, prove that we're
right and others wrong. I learned long ago that the true story usually
lies somewhere in between the two versions.

From my viewpoint, She wronged me. From Hers, I have no doubt that I
wronged Her. I won’t say either viewpoint is entirely wrong, nor
entirely correct. I’m not going to use this, or any other forum to
attack Her. It’s over. Time to move on.

I had come to greatly underestimate the amount of caring for one
another, the depth of the friendship, within the BDSM community. When
the break happened with Mistress Isis, I was down to my last two
dollars. In my job, that’s not enough to go to work, not even close.
So, to all intents and purposes, I was unemployed. I was also expecting
an eviction notice any day. My landlord, a man with nearly the patience
of Job, but without the resources of Solomon, had given up on calling
me, it had been so long since I’d had any money I could give him. I was
down to less than a day’s worth of cat food for a party of four and
didn’t have much in the way of food for me.

I was at rock bottom. I could think of only two ways out, short of
robbery which I won’t consider, to avoid becoming homeless. I’ve been
homeless before, when I was much younger and I DIDN’T like it. At my
age, I highly doubt I’d survive it. The worse option from my point of
view, was to make a cardboard sign and stand on a street corner
begging, trying to raise the minimum amount I thought would be
necessary to get me through the weekend and enable me to work on
Monday. But, I’ve been a bum before and I didn’t like that either.

The only better option I could see was to learn if what I’d been
thinking about the shallowness of friendships within the BDSM community
was really true. I wrote an email to the lists serving the community in
Arizona, both in Tucson and Phoenix describing my financial plight and
asking if anybody would please lend me, either by themselves or in
combination, at least 60 to 70 bucks. I did mention that another
hundred to appease the landlord would be greatly appreciated also. I
made sure to say that I know the economy is bad; I know a lot of those
who got the emails are hurting for money themselves, are barely making
enough to take care of themselves and their dependants; I know they’ve
got to take care of themselves and their own, and to please not feel
guilty if they could not help me.

I really didn’t want to take that step. I hate asking for money and
I have a very strong inhibition against asking for help. But, when I
told a wise older man at the cab company about my problem, he gave me
some very good advice. He told me he’d had the same inhibition, most
people do. He said that one time when he was in a similar situation and
similarly reluctant to ask for help, somebody had asked him if he’d
ever helped a friend out of a desperate situation. When he said he had,
the other person asked him how doing that had made him feel. He
responded that it had made him feel very good. The other person told
him to do his friends the favor of allowing them to help him, of giving
them that same good feeling.

Frankly, when I posted the plea, I didn’t expect to get much help.  Frankly, I was dead wrong.

The first call came within about five minutes. More followed. The
first loan was a bit more than the bare minimum survival and work
money, plus the landlord appeasement fund. The others ,combined,
doubled the first. More offers were made, both locally and from the
Phoenix community. They're still coming in. They were and are being
gratefully declined and I want to tell those who made them that I don’t
have the words to express the depth of my appreciation for the offers..

I’d hoped that maybe somebody would at the least pull my head far
enough above the water that I could catch my breath. The pulled me far
enough up so I could breath and start swimming again. And they gave me
a life jacket.

Had I gotten the bare minimum I’d asked for, I’d have bunkered down
here all weekend hoping the landlord didn’t call or come looking for
me. Had I gotten the bare minimum plus a hundred bucks for him, I’d
have still bunkered down, albeit not in terror of the landlord at
least. But I’d have been bunkered down to avoid spending any money and
eating all the edible odds and ends in the cupboard and fridge.

And, I’d have started work Monday morning in a vicious circle like
web of dept to the company, one that I was in last week and never could
get out of. It’s kind of complicated. Normally, to take a cab out, I
have to pay the company $85 up front. But, because of my over twenty
year history with the cab company and the good relationship I have with
the boss, he did for me what he can do for almost nobody else. He set
it up so that I could take out a cab without paying in advance and pay
when I turned in that night, or when I came in to cash out my vouchers
and get a cab the next morning.

Which, while it’s very generous, leads to the vicious circle. Unless
the boss extended that late payment for another day, and maybe more
after that, as he did several times last week, it meant that the next
morning, I’d need $170 to take out a cab. Which meant I’d have to have
what is in this economy a VERY good day just to catch up. And very good
days are kind of scarce right now.

Have to pick this up tomorrow.  It’s bedtime.

Sunday, August 16, 2009, 1235

The community came through for me, not just to the minimum, not just
to that plus the landlord appeasement, but to a good bit more than
twice those amounts combined. And more was, and is still being made
available but I can’t justify accepting any more in my own mind. What I
did accept was enough to appease the landlord, enough to buy some badly
needed things, enough to pay off the cab company completely first thing
tomorrow morning, staying out of that vicious circle, and enough fuel
and change money to get me through a very good day. And what I did
accept was enough to allow me to start rejoining the community, to go
to the party last night and get a very nice and BADLY needed single
tail whipping. My shirt feels wonderful this morning and so do I, thank
you.

A small explanation: The vast majority of the company’s business
anymore is medical insurance vouchers. A bad dispatch system which
nobody will fix, along with the Great Recession, has run off almost all
of their old, cash business. I don’t get paid for the vouchers the day
I do them. I get paid for them the next morning, when I go to start
work again. The top $85 dollars goes to pay the next day’s lease. The
rest, up to a daily limit, is paid to me in cash. I can, and often
have, have a great day and end it almost broke. But, the next morning,
when I check out a cab, I get a pocket full of money. And, should my
next day be a non work day, I can still go down and get my money if I
need it, although when I can afford to, I prefer to let it wait for the
next work day.

Paying my friends in the community who helped back isn’t my top
priority. Keeping swimming, not drowning is. It would all be kind of
pointless if I drowned myself again by trying to pay them back more
quickly than I can afford to. Again, I cannot express the depth of the
gratitude I'm feeling right now.

Paying that debt back is my second highest priority.

Your humble servant.