Well, I had to pass through this war zone before I got to my neighborhood. It was early fall and I took a little shortcut through some abandoned projects. Anyhow, I’m going along wondering where in the fuck is my Higher Power? Why is life so goddamned hard? Why was I born? You dig? Why wasn’t I consulted? I’m having thoughts of this nature when I see a light on in a window. There’s no electricity but when I get near there I look inside and see a guy sitting at the table reading the Big Blue Book by a gas lantern. He was a skinny guy in a grungy singlet. Just kicked off a pair of greasy boots. Holes in his socks. Like me, just off work. I see they got a big kerosene heater in there. A woman who looked like she just woke up was cooking over a propane stove. She was frying eggs, Spam, and potatoes. I saw a jar of Tabasco sauce on the table. Lightweight fare but it caught my interest. I just stood there on the sidewalk and watched. The guy lit an Old Gold and closed the Blue Book. His arms were covered in tattoos and I could see track marks over his veins. The woman, who was stabbing at the eggs with a spatula, didn’t look like a user to me. She could have been, I don’t know. The man got up and poured himself a cup of coffee. He had a fresh heart-shaped tattoo on his left deltoid that read BOBBY AND LAURA, ETERNAL LOVE. As Laura (?) was dishing out the food, Bobby got up, scratching his balls. He walked over to Laura and kissed her on the back of the neck, giving her a little pat on the butt. Then he flipped on a little black-and-white TV that was hooked up to a DieHard battery. A condemned building, at least one ex-junkie, and both of them were carrying some hard miles but you could also tell they loved each other. What an unlikely but well-ordered love nest they had fabricated! When I passed the building in the light of day their apartment showed no signs of life whatever. There was a padlock on the door. I wondered if I had dreamed it all. Crossing through those projects was like taking a trip through Chernobyl after the meltdown. It was the site of utter desolation, but the next night at two in the morning I saw the light again and looked in on another compelling domestic scene. Bobby had got his boots off again, and sat at the table eating his Spam and eggs. For the first time I noticed a little red-and-white-checkered oilcloth on the table. A single candle burned in an empty Chianti bottle. Bob had his left hand on the Big Book and was reading an uplifting passage to his eternal love, Laura, who sat right at his side smoking a cigarette. He looked up from the book and said something in addendum that made her laugh. Then she reached over and patted his forearm. There I was, the loneliest guy on the planet, just standing there watching them. I realized that I was pulling for them so hard that my heart was near to bursting. And just like that I found myself sobbing. I haven’t cried since I was eight years old. I guess I was feeling sorry for myself because I wanted what they had and also I was feeling sorry for every miserable creature in the world, thinking that if they might be laughing now, riding high or whatever, it will all turn to shit in the end. I appealed to the God of Rock and Roll but I got no hour-long shit session this time. I got no consolation. I got zip. I looked up in the sky, railing at heaven, “Jimbo! Morrison! Hey, man, check it out. We are all working the program down here. They got the Big Book out. How about a little help for your boy, Louis?” Nothing. I made a choking sound and Bobby got up and looked out the window. I quickly made off. Why couldn’t I find a woman who loved me like that? Why did it always go so bad? I know I’m half nuts but you would think there would be someone out there. It had been five years since I found Judith standing in the rain waiting for the bus. But for all of it, I only knew Judith those first few moments when I offered her my umbrella. Now at Vito’s I found myself desperate to reconnect with her. I’m all jacked up feeling impossible notions roiling up from deep down inside me and I can’t turn them off. I can’t shut them down. Cannot exercise a reasonable amount of disaster containment. Talk about your volcano from hell! What kind of low-self-esteem asshole pulls the sort of shit I do? How can I see myself truly one moment in a light-year and then “through a glass darkly” forever after? One bright flash of insight and then a century of blackness. Why does nothing float up from the depths other than bad? Why can’t we reach the Truth as the crow flyeth? Why must I traverse the underworld roaming in such a wilderness of pain, Jimbo, how about a little help?