Okay, I'm a bum

3/30/80

 I've done everything and said everything to discourage her, but still she follows me.

 So now I've taken up residence in a closet with the broom handle jabbing me, and the smell of ammonia so overwhelming I can hardly breathe, only occasionally cracking the door to peer out.

 I am safe only for the moment, however, and feel more than a little foolish, especially when I think of what the band will say when they found out I ran away from my one and only personal groupie.

 But one look into those ever-loving watery eyes of hers and my stomach turns, and I shuddered in the back of the closet, wishing management had thought to put bolts on the inside of the door instead of the outside.

 At nearly 29, I'm too old for this, fearing to she will show up at every performance, peeved when those fears are realized.

 Tonight, it started the moment she walked through the front door and yelled my name. I barely had time to escape to the men's room and was forced to drag my bag of notebooks with me. Even then, it was a brief reprieve, me spending as long as I could leaning against the wall near the urinal before dark looks of the bar staff drove me outside again.

 And there she was, blonde head bobbing up and down like an excited dog's, all smiles and kisses I could not dodge, and then, managed to pull her off me with the excuse I had work to do. And thus, I made my way to the band's dressing room, where I could take comfort behind the door, knowing she could not make her way in immediately. Finally, I pulled the drum cases out from the wall a little and laid down on the floor behind them, figuring I could out last her with sleep, and would have stayed like that had not the band's volume performing begun to send down a shower of plaster on my head.

 Thirst drove me from the room again, and I caught the guitarist just finishing the first set and begged him for rescue.

 "You have to take her off my hands," I pleaded.

 He only laughed. "She'll do you some good," he said and made his way to the men's room to pee.

 The bass player was equally unsympathetic. "She'll get sick of you after a few days, they all do."

 "But it's been four weeks so far," I said.

 "Oh, well," the bass player said. "Then maybe she really does love you."

 The drummer had no comment and didn't even wish me luck.

 So, I took to the closet and here, and just now, I heard something in the hall, something like the click of heals stopping just outside.

 "Hello?" she says. "Are you in there."

 "I'm busy," I say.

 "I need your help."

 "What?"

 "With my boyfriend."

 "I didn't know you had a boyfriend from the way you've been acting."

 "Of course, I have a boyfriend," she says. "And he thinks I've been cheating on him, and says he's going to beat up whoever it is. I thought I ought to warn you."

 Then she goes away.

 "Thanks a lot!" I shout, wondering just how big a brute her boyfriend is.