The Homeless Millionaire

It's a common belief Mondays are the hardest day of the week for everyone. February the twelfth definitely was one of those Mondays for me.

It started when I was taking a shit, or rather when I'd just completed taking a shit. I did a very bad job of wiping my ass, and had to spend extra time in the shower dealing with that stuff. It was a painful exercise because it forced me to make some moves that I hadn't tried yet. Any new move in that cramped shower invited disaster, and when I banged my elbow into the tap it hit my funny bone. It felt like a jolt of strong electric current and made me drop the soap I was holding in that hand. I started cursing and bent to pick the soap up and simultaneously hit my head on the sliding door and the tap with my tailbone.

Over the next half an hour, I fucked up a pot of coffee (I put the filter in upside down), burned my finger badly enough to raise a blister while lighting a cigarette, and bit my tongue twice—very painfully the second time around—while eating a fucking corned beef sandwich.

Canned corn beef sandwiches were the kind of food you could safely serve to toothless old men. I managed to nearly bite off a part of my tongue on that. Things weren't going well. Things were going south in a big way. I should've been warned.

But because I was a stubborn fucking stupid asshole, I tried to work. I subsequently turned out several pieces of smeared shit, wasting paper and paint. Worst of all, I wasted a lot of time. It took me a lot of time to accept I wasn't going to do anything good that day.

It was very hard to accept. It meant that I wasn't a great artist. Everyone wanted to be great, and artists were no exception. In fact they were exceptional in their desire to be great. Every artist wanted to feel they were the best ever.

Great artists produced great stuff with the same ease a drunk guy belched. Great artists were great because everything they did was great. All the stuff I did Monday was shit. That about summed it up.

I was wallowing in misery by the time night started to fall. When Tony returned from work and I heard him open the front door, I felt like a survivor from a sunken ship that had just noticed a lifeboat nearby.

I monitored Tony's movements downstairs for clues to his mood. Of course, I could only pick up aural cues. Tony seemed to be sober. He didn't bump into things, and I didn't hear any curses. In fact, the sound of his footsteps implied a single-minded determination to get on with his life.

Encouraged by that, I went downstairs. Tony wasn't in the kitchen, even though his kettle had given numerous whistling hints. I thought he might be in the living room. He wasn't. I finally located him standing just outside the door to the backyard He was sucking on a cigarette and he wasn't looking as if he was enjoying life too much.

"Hi, Tony," I said.

"Hi," he said. The fact he'd opened his mouth in response seemed promising.

"I was wondering if I could make a phone call," I said.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"I guess you mean one of those calls you wanted to make the other day."

"Yeah."

"A local call and a collect call?"

"Yeah."

"If you try to fuck me over on the phone bill," said Tony, "I'll have no choice but to kill you. You understand?"

"Yeah."

"Good," said Tony. "Feel free to use the phone in the living room."

"Thank you, Tony."

"Are you going to ask your parents for money?"

"What?"

"Are you going to ask you parents for money?"

"Fuck you, Tony," I said.

It brought him back to planet Earth. He said:

"I'm sorry, pal. Lately it seems to me everything revolves around money. Go ahead, make your calls."

"Thank you," I said.

"You can use the phone in the kitchen if you prefer that."

"So that my parents know something's cooking?"

"Yeah," said Tony. "Something's cooking. Something's cooking all the time."

It seemed Tony was in the process of becoming aware of many hidden issues. I left him with that.

Instead of making my phone calls, I went back up into my flat, and proceeded to examine some issues of my own prior to telephoning. There was a very complicated dance involved in calling my parents. I was short of money and I knew they'd offer to send me some right away if I asked and it really fucking killed me.

I needed money. Everyone wanted money! Even if they had lots, they wanted more. Everyone thought more money meant more happiness. They couldn't be more wrong.

But there was a difference between a want and a need. I needed more money. I also needed to stop myself from asking my parents for some, unless I wanted one more reason to commit suicide.

I would have felt fine if I could paint or draw just one picture that would turn out well. That was all I needed. But I couldn't do it.

I tried. I tried hard, all the way into the evening. Everything I did was shit. I was shit. My continued existence was just a waste of time, money, food, and assorted intoxicants. I was in no shape to talk to anyone.

Around seven in the evening, I sat on my bed, pressed fists into my eyes, and started crying. If I had a gun, chances were I'd fire it into my stupid head to end the misery. Maybe it was lucky I didn't have a gun, and maybe it was unlucky.

That was what life was about: the uncertainty. You never really knew what was coming next. You could make all sorts of predictions and yeah, a few would come true (but always in a different way from the way you saw them coming). You had one life, so you could as well find out what was coming next. You wouldn't get another chance. That was what life was about. You didn't get another chance.

I took the chance I'd create something good, and tried to paint a picture again. I was fooled for a long time: I'd almost finished painting it before I realized it was shit. I wanted to kill myself with my own fist. I would have, if it hadn't involved so much physical effort. I just wasn't capable of that.

So instead, I smoked a ton of cigarettes while walking around my flat. I told myself I was just going through a bad period. Women went through it once month, so it was only fair I should have one too, once in a while. But I'd have preferred bleeding into a tampon or a sanitary pad from having all this shit go through my head.

The way you saw the world, the way you perceived life, depended on how you perceived yourself. I saw myself as a piece of shit circling the hole cut in the ice covering a river. The river was life. I was shit. I'd never progress without diving in deep, and letting the current carry me. But I couldn't dive, because I was just a helpless piece of shit. I was condemned to circle inside my ice hole until I fell apart.

I was ready to slice my wrists by the time I picked up the receiver to call Harry.

He wasn't in. He wouldn't be in until the coming Sunday. His mother sounded like she might not last that long. I was truly sorry for making her get up to get the phone. I didn't need another corpse on my conscience.

Harry's absence made me pause before making the call to parents. I knew my father would answer the phone. He was a professional diplomat. He was trained to hear stuff other people didn't say. He would hear I needed money just from the tone of my voice and would likely offer to send me some. I would have to turn it down—double pain. I'd have to tell him a lot of reasonably convincing lies. I just didn't feel up to it.

I gave up on calling my parents. I did stare at the whistling kettle with white-hot hate prior to leaving Tony's kitchen, and returning to my flat. Had I just a little bit extra money, I'd have bought Tony a new kettle—one of those electric jobs that shut off automatically when the water started to boil. Then, if he persisted in using the whistling kettle, I could justifiably beat him to death with it. Any sane judge in any Canadian courtroom would understand that. At worst I'd get a short sentence and thus free bed and board along with periodical medical checkups. I wasn't worried about perverted convicts raping me and so on. If anyone tried any of that stuff, I would just kill them, sooner or later. I actually fancied I could hit a very creative period, being locked up for years and years with basic existential needs being handled by the system.

I brooded on that for awhile after returning to my flat. I walked many circles—there was a fucking trail taking shape in the carpet pile—and smoked many cigarettes. I desperately tried to think of an image that would hold enough appeal to make me try and put it on paper. I couldn't.

If I had a little more money I'd have simply went out and gotten drunk, and maybe laid too: lately, I'd noticed new pressure in that department. But I didn't have any money to spend on stuff like that. I was condemned to make do with what I had: my own nice place, food, warmth, and cigarettes.

A Stone Age guy would have gladly killed all his nearest and dearest for all those comforts. A Stone Age guy would be grinning from ear to ear, given my situation. But I wasn't a Stone Age guy. I was a step ahead of being an Industrial Age guy, the guy who got all sorts of machines working for him.

I needed more, and I couldn't get it. It wasn't a problem that could be solved by putting enough money on the counter. I would have to work this one out all by myself, and there was no guarantee I'd work it out, ever. Most people died without working out this problem. Most people died without ever trying to do what they really wanted to do.

I was really fucking lucky because all I ever wanted was draw or paint something really good, and that it was within my capacity to hit that target from time to time.

It mattered more than anything else and it was achievable and I went to bed feeling contented.