# 711...

Yesterday started looking like these dark days I occasionally have. It started early in the morning in this new residential hotel I'm staying in. The tenants here staying next to me start loudly gossiping on what seemingly seems about me...'Why doesn't he he whore him", "Wound him?", "they'll get his mother!", "you better whore him"...And the people are so rude and mean about it. One ,is a couple that live next door. They don't work, and there not that old so they can't work. But they stay inside most of the day and night and I suspect they are addicts (crack). Above them is a young black single mother with her child. They are both new tenants compared to me, living in this S.R.O. near Chinatown.

Assuming there suggesting the person I need to whore is that guy in #711, back in the Oaks Hotel. This causes alot of upset with me.

Supposing if you had a dispute with someone ,or some place so you file for "due process".. Its not often you have to reconcile with someone/or someplace you attempt litigate against and there is nothing more frustrating then have to call the police on a tenant #711 whom I felt was harassing me, and then have the police do nothing...yet when I got upset an took some action, they threw me in jail. Now this is the guy they want me to go back and let put his hands on me... so say the tenants of this new hotel.

Well I get tired of having to hear this every day in this Hotel, it seems suggestible that I should leave, but I can't. I can't afford to rent somewhere else, so with my thinking, if I leave here then I will have to quit my job. Plus I need to quit my job, at this time to access money in my 401k and retirement. My mother who lives in the area, won't let me stay at her house although she has plenty of room there, and I don't want to be jobless before I find out that she will take me in. So in my thinking, unless I have somewhere else to move to, if I leave here at this time I'll have to leave my job. Initially when I moved here it was my plan to leave take my money and leave here much sooner than I have.

I don't know if I have to give up my job at this time, the job market isn't so great, although I have some confidence in my abilities to find another job...my chances are better to finding a good job if I keep the one I already have!
So I don't want to quit my job...yet though my job is becoming no fun anymore. Plus they froze my retirement benefits. So yesterday morning I felt like I wanted to leave the hotel, yet I couldn't. I tried some legal remedies like calling some people at the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing to talk with the old investigator in my case, Mrs. Richardson, then when she wasn't available I talked with a person higher up, Suzanne Chastelle. She was nice in talking with me, but she said she could do nothing for me as my original case was closed.

Then I tried to call and check with the management of this hotel to file a grievance against some of the tenants in this building..management was unavailable..
I tried calling some relatives , just someone to talk to , to help me make sense of all this. My father couldn't talk to me..he's cold irritable and mean to try to talk to and I'm 44 years old, I've run out of patience with him. My step-father couldn't talk to me... no one else was available. There was my therapist but shes not very helpful to me sometimes, I even tried consulting the I Ching but couldn't get the correct method for using pennies for consulting the oracle.. I just wanted to get out of here. The sooner, the better probably, take my money and maybe try to start a new life somewhere else.

Once again this means quitting my job, but once I give notice ..that's it..I'm on a path downhill. It would be like suicide, yet I could find no one to talk to ,to prevent me from quitting, committing maybe a kind of suicide. I thought about just getting out of here ..I'd have to give them 30 days notice first if even that ..but if I leave here first..it would cause complications and painful delays.

So what to do? I've got work chores to do, I could at least get statrted on that. I did call my work supervisor and mentioned the prospect( once again) of possibly leaving as with my employers I need to give them notice before I leave there.

I went outside heading to the property management office to pay my rent for this month and talk about filing a grievance against some of the tenants here. There was no one in the offices and I was late for my rent. But there is a weekly "Farmers Market" here in Oakland, so there were plenty of people around here shopping around.

I saw News reporter Cheryl Hurd, a lady I talked a long while back, when I was playing my guitar at the park. She said to me presently, "Gawd does anybody like you?, I grimaced at her and rode on..missing a chance to get some easy publicity, and otherwise dissing a fine woman. I rode on past a African_American store, a storekeeper said to me , "Why don't you just punk him?" "Typical", I thought as I past another AA store and one of the guys said ,"He needs to face him". presuming he talking about me..gosh why would I need to face that guy in 711 again. Three years in the same Hotel is that time enough? Are we married or something?

Desperation seeps in as I'm continually checking at the management offices, but no ones there...then while riding around the market. Then, lo and behold..theres that guy from the Oaks Hotel, #711 himself. What's he doing down here? I thought. My first reaction was just to go the other way, but as I left I thought this was an excellent opportunity to try to talk with him, find out whats going on, and what if anything he still wants from me.

So I rode around and confronted him at the other end of the street, I tried to talk to him. "Hey are you still staying at the Oaks?" He was walking around an area when I saw that indicated to me that he might be staying somewhere else. But I kept asking him and he wouldn't say anything. I took a good look at him...he looked haggard and dejected...like he could have used a friend. He was headed in the direction of the Oaks. Then I got alittle lewd with him , "Hey, they say I'm supposed to love you hey why don't you tell me whats up"? At that point he got vehement..."Look why don't you leave me alone!" , "Look you better, leave me alone or I'll call the police". At this point I'm thinking okay he doesn't want to be bothered..or at least he's acting that way. That alot different then when I was in my hotel room and I be hearing stuff from him like, "Why don't you Ho", "Suck dick".
Now he could call the cops on me and presumably get a restraining order against me!

I left him alone. This has been the second time, I confronted that guy, and he kind of shunned me like that. I guess I could presume the guy isn't interested in me, even scared of me alittle. I wonder whats up with other people telling me I have to hook up with him?

There where a few other people around to hear my little exchange with him, when I was talking with him..and some of my words were for them. maybe word of my little meeting with him got around ,some White people looked perplexed, some seemed confused, some relieved. Maybe one said, "so he doesn't want to kill him then", someone else said, "he shoot them all"....

I remember some of the teachings I've read in Eastern religions. They teach something in Buddhism called "Bodhicitta" which is placing oneself behind others, having compassion before other beings and their suffering. I'm not very good at this particularly in my situation where I'm being called upon to whore some man. Eastern religion would have me to take the suffering and loss upon myself..owing the debt to some past karma I incurred. But I cannot think of anything I did in this life to own such a debt to anyone,(well I guess we owe white society alot) but I resent all the lies, half-truths that are being perpetrated in this community, by people who are intent on destroying me. Yet for a little while I tried to whore myself to this man in #711 and he ran off. Hopefully my actions did alittle good, cause nothing else I seemed to do seemed to work much. maybe some compassion might help.

Shortly, I returned to the place where the guy in #711 aparted, where he warned me he'd called the police, 10 minutes had passed and now a cop was parked there now. I went back down to the market area where I live, people were talking. Among the Chinese and Anglo shoppers. There were of course alot of African-Americans there, a small group of AA artist there singing the blue. I couldn't help but think should be be singing "We shall overcome"? but they were playing something else. Then there were a couple of A-A children , five of them together, looking as cute as there mom could make them, and I'm wondering if I'm going to become some kind of predator like #711? If so instead of helping kids and there families like I intented..I just become a monster. I wanted to help these kids, I want to help the Cheryl Hurds of the world (N0?) but how can you do anything in this community that would have you relinquish your basic rights and basic dignity as a human being. Has Blacks, we own a small portion of the businesses,I don't know how much of the properties we own, most of us are unemployed and getting government assistance, alot of us are entangled with the Criminal justice system. We need to be more self-sufficient...lest we become refugees in our own Country, like victims in Hurricane Katrina, sometimes I think this is the calm before the storm.