Why's It Always Me?

(February 05, 2007)

Tonight after work I bundled up for the twelve degree night (felt like -1) and hit some of Harvard and Brighton Ave with Jon Erik Johnson Memorial Benefit Series flyers. Jordan made them, they're nice. The situation is so surreal, but it's like, what else can we do? Honor the memory the best way we can, is all.

So I started at the foot of Harvard Ave at O'Briens, and I did maybe two flyers, when suddenly this reedy, shrill voice calls, "Oh, what is it, something good?" I turn around and there's a skinny woman wearing what looks like every piece of outerwear in her closet, including a white fur shrug over a coat and backpack combo that looks right out of Looney Bin Monthly. Bright orange hair peeked out from a sort of hood-hat thing that seemed to have a pink feather boa somehow wrapped under or inside it. Her eyelashes appeared to be very heavily blacked, then tipped in white, the overall lash effect taking on a distinctively butterfly-like twitter.

It was very distracting.

Before I could say that I'm postering for a series of four shows at the Baseball Tavern and The Abbey, she cuts in with "I haven't gone out in twelve years, I had a stroke. You know all my friends abandoned me when I became disabled?" She waves a cane at me. "I'm only fifty!"

She followed me all the way up Harvard Ave talking about how, putting on make-up while getting ready to go to her shrink one day, her left hand wouldn't do what she wanted. She pantomimed the loss of feeling and the subsequent crying fit, described the trip to the shrink, the shrink's assurance that she is having a stroke and should probably go to the hospital now, and the inevitable ambulence ride.

All the way up Harvard Ave, this colorful but slightly...off...manifesto on how she used to be a waitress at Bunratty's, and she thinks that she might have known Jon Johnson, what happened to him, and what is wrong with the world, she's only fifty and why do bad things happen to young people?

I have no idea, lady. I'm dealing with rather a lot at the moment, Courtney Love.

I guess I don't know why I attract the crazy people like this. It's like they can smell compassion a mile away and, out of the hundreds of other people on the Boston city streets, they pick me.

I finally extracted myself gracefully from this mostly-one-way freight-train of a conversation partly by saying "nice meeting you, stay warm" and partly by escaping into Herrell's to put some flyers on the window ledge and the back bulletin board.

And wouldn't you know it, I ran right the fucking hell into the goddamn Boojie Man.

Why's it always me? If they stand on the corner and yell at the sky, if they have intense conversations with themselves, if they stand still like a statue in empty lots, I will somehow find them. The Rock City Wackjobs. Drawn to me like moth to flame.

SO don't have time right now.

So, if you're in the area, the shows this weekend will be terrific. If you're not in the area and still wish to donate something to the fund, you can find info on The Noise Board.