Getting My Just Desserts!!!

What do you do when you’ve allowed, through compassion, an apparently bipolar person – who won’t shut up about how everyone abuses him and how he has to shut them down through prosecutions – and a drug addict are living in your house, and neither one of them (despite their continuing fall-through schemes to contribute money), comes up with money? Not only that, but both were so spoiled growing up (privileged, wealthy backgrounds) that they haven’t a clue how to use the little they have or occasionally come into, wisely? Both are bedeviled by pretzel logic that permeates almost every level of their thinking.

Sound familiar?

The Sneeden (see previous post for details) is the beneficiary of a couple of trust funds – one gives a smallish cash income, monthly, the other is a huge land-holding trust which the Sneeden expects he’ll come into control of very shortly, given the very poor health of his mother. The “radiohead’s” father (now deceased) owned an oil company in western PA. Both are estranged from their families, who won’t put up with them anymore.

The radiohead tells me in strictest confidence (the Sneeden won’t tell me of his diagnosis or that we “share” a doctor, or that my public defender is also his – long story, too long to tell here), that not only was the Sneeden diagnosed bipolar several years ago, and recently sought out a doctor who prescribed Lithium which had previously stabilized him enough to stop fixating on all the “slights” against him, but is the SAME doctor I had consulted here in Wilmington. All three of us hold her in the highest regard. But he ain’t atakin’ the Lithium, while telling his girlfriend radiohead he is. (We monitor his giant capsule bottle, which he keeps hidden, he thinks) He looks for work every day, religiously, but despite his considerable track record of excellent work, no one will take him to the interview phase because he has spent so much of his recent time telling everyone how he’s going to prosecute his slighters, and they fear his causing them trouble over the tiniest thing. He HAS caused people legal and other trouble for unimportant things.

Radiohead has the perfect voice and CONSTANT jabber personality for radio work, and has the resume to prove her distinction as a DJ. The powerful people she knows here in radio won’t help her get a new job because she let them know she’s back with the Sneeden, whom they consider poison. Her addiction to pain pills is understandable, given the deteriorated disks in her back. She actually manages it quite well. But both were locked out of a new apartment two weeks ago when the landlord, who was going to give free rent in exchange for the Sneeden’s doing some land-use-planning work for him, decided for whatever reason to renege. Landlord has run off to Israel for two weeks, and most of their belongings remain locked away – including radiohead’s pain pills and asthma inhalers – but not the Sneeden’s Lithium. Radiohead does not have the Medicaid credits (or whatever) left this month to replace them, and Ms. Asthma is also a nicotine addict. I cut her off a couple of days ago from my cigs, and now she’s smoking “ducks” (unfinished cigarettes she finds in the streets), between hacks.

Both have food stamps, which they use to buy us food. They are NOT simply leaches, although their constant buying of name-brand liter sodas and tiny-pack snacks and other prepared foods annoys the crap out of me because it wastes those government dollars that could buy far less expensive REAL food.

Both spend the bulk of their time watching old movies and “The Tudors” (he’s high Episcopalian, she Jewish) on my TV, which their makeshift beds lie in front of.

I interrupt this writing to go buy a pack of cigarettes.

Today, I’m hocking my new Panny plasma TV. I need the cash to catch up utilities, get a NC drivers’ license, and download many important papers and contacts from me.com’s cloud (I have to pay $100.00 to renew my subscription). I hate the 22% interest PER MONTH, but if the Sneeden really does get a monthly check in two weeks, I can get it back. Meantime, the lack of TV will force them to have to THINK.

The Sneeden was the first person I met in Wilmington when I moved here, and ran into him only once before finding the two of them sitting homeless on the street 10 days ago. Both are brilliant (beneath the madness), and I’m hoping I can influence them toward sanity. So far, although we’ve had some doozies of arguments, they are showing significant signs of improvements. I am tying to show the patience I wish my own family had had for me recently – and trust that in a decent environment with the basic necessities provided, they will come to their senses.

Now, here’s what’s new with me:

Since filing the appeal of my juryless conviction of “Cyber-stalking,” I have had little harassment by “thugs” or the corrupt contingent of Wilmington Police. Only twice have I caught vans from Good Shepherd (homeless) Center idling in front of my house as if surveilling me. While I’ve seen signs that I’m still cell-tower triangulated so that my adversaries know where I go, they no longer show up in my path and cause me difficulties, although I DO still get weird texts relating to the content of phone calls, web browsing, and emails sent – right after those activities. I still suspect some of my emails don’t always go where sent and my phone calls to those who can actually help me take at least two tries to get a call through – no problems calling other people. I do NOT get all the voicemails some people say they left me. This is diminishing.

I was asked yesterday to lead the next adult Sunday school class (on fasting), which is funny since I am ANTI-fasting now, trying to regain the 80 pounds I lost during five months of being homeless, which includes the month I was held in what legally qualifies as “kidnapped” in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico by “Baby Azteca” (formerly the top killer for the top drug gang in Los Angeles, whom the CIA had pulled strings to dismiss his three murder charges and other felonies, and whisked to Mexico to kill those threatening the drug traffic there. Readers of this blog might remember that I had narrowly escaped the house on Calle Coast Rico the day he swore he was going to cut my juggler one night, while making me eat the neck of a chicken that had not had that giant blood vessel removed first). I don’t even believe in the value of fasting – but studying the concept might clear my head. Will be interesting, in any case.

I have become discriminating, and no longer tell my political tales to people who clearly look like they like illegal drugs – and speak gingerly to those who look like they are Republicans (more than half the white people, but almost no people of color – and few at my church, regardless). Everyone LOVES my stories, and often rope in nearby friends to hear them too. Yes, this includes clearly successful-by-anyone’s-measure people. Actually, they, especially, like what I have to say and I promise to do as I go forward.

I have been asked to speak at a story-telling hour in a bookstore, which I’ll do soon.

This week, I am to meet with someone, I am told, would like to interview me on his TV show. We’ll see.

I learned by speaking with a clutch of marauding UNCW students that one of their favorite professors is teaching a class next semester exclusively on Tennessee Williams. I plan to meet him soon. I expect to talk to his class, and maybe share my manuscript, but it might even lead to UNC Press’s publication. Being a shirttail Kenan, I had hoped to first make some money for UNC, and a year ago, right after release of my rights by Alyson Books, had attempted to interest them in profiting from publishing my book, but back then I still had a “small head” and had contacted someone low in authority. After a month, she responded that their policy is to NOT publish the memoirs of living people, but I found on their list of published books that this is not entirely true – and – while I am living, the book’s subject matter is not. It might warrant a new try, especially if I have inside help of UNC faculty.

Don Weise, who had shepherded my book so brilliantly and sensitively at Alyson, has NOT responded to my emails or voicemail offering him the opportunity to publish it at his new company, Magnus Books. This lack of respect of even sending a turndown is either an indication that my suspicions he was part of the problem I had at Alyson are true, John Uecker’s wild claim that Don had deliberately tanked one of his former employers, publisher Carroll & Graf, by paying a half million dollar advance to a well-respected author (whom I know personally and who will remain anonymous) for a commercial dog of a book – thus deliberately killing that publishing house, OR he does not get my email and voicemail (really, folks, this is possible). Maybe he was leveraged.

Hansen Publishing, a newish publisher who has published more books on Tennessee Williams than any other subject, turned me down this past Friday, claiming they have too many projects in the pipeline now. Maybe this is true, maybe not, but at the installation of Tennessee in the Poet’s Corner at Cathedral St. John Divine in NYC 1.5 years ago, it was Thomas Keith who introduced me to Mr. Hansen, and while Thomas has done some truly wonderful things for both Tennessee Williams and me, when push came to shove, Thomas clearly was a conscious actor AGAINST both of us. So I do have my suspicions about this.

There are other publishers, and the truth always wins. I don’t worry.

Yesterday afternoon, I met and spoke with a woman for 20 minutes, whose son began a think tank on Ethics in Washington, DC about eight years ago -- and it is doing well. He is a personal friend of Thomas S. Kenan III, who, through one of the Kenan Charitable Trusts he controls, is financially supporting this think tank!

I found a professional foot massager who knows how to work with diabetic problems, and who says I am now family (after attending her garden party and yacking politics half of yesterday afternoon with her and her other guests). She says she can work on me for free a little before I get money. (Edema in my feet and ankles has returned with a vengeance, although I believe the “chemical diabetes” I’ve suffered in my lower limbs is overall diminishing.) I’ll make and take her some of my killer potato salad first – you would not believe the finger foods she had stayed up all night before her party preparing!

So yes, I am progressing – and the speed of progress is now accelerating. I am shown at least tolerance, if not actual respect, all over this town of Wilmington, North Carolina now. I am coming into my own.

All best wishes to all!

Scott