There is almost nothing better than fresh bread.  It sometimes seems to me that all the hustling people do to keep up with the Joneses, all the sacrifices we make to be the first to have the latest in everything—none of that's worth it if we have to give up fresh bread for it. 

I got accustomed to buying my bread daily when I lived in Europe, and not only is the simplest fresh-baked bread better, by far, than anything I've gotten here, there is something profoundly significant in that daily ritual.  I still get as fresh a loaf as possible here, but one of my fantasies—more modest than the one where I remake Yentl in the title role or become the next Pope (there's even one where I do Yentl as the next Pope)—is to open a tiny boulangerie here on the square that sells nothing but bread, and closes when the day's bread is sold.  No gimmicks.  Nothing fancy.  Just a bunch of really hot shirtless Brazilian boys working for me baking bread all night long. 

Because without things like little boulangeries around every corner a city is really nothing but a dirty, cramped suburb.  Only difference being, the strangers are just a little stranger, and the crazies are all out in the open instead of hiding in their basements. 

There's a guy about my age, a local boozer, hangs out on the square begging for quarters.  He's not one of these cup rattlers. That's too much work. He's got his own shtick.  He sees you coming, and kind of jumps out into your path.  He reaches out his hand to you and says, "got a quarter?"  If you say no, he says, "want one?"  And he opens his palm to reveal one.

Clever, eh?  He seems to think so.  You know, beggars have their ways to sort of remind you that just because they're soliciting money from you doesn't mean you're any better than they are.  In fact, the skillful ones can all but convince you that it's your fault they're begging you for money.  You should be begging them—for forgiveness!

I've heard this fellow's shtick about a hundred and fifty times now.  And up to about a week ago our double act was like a well-oiled machine.  I played Abbot to his Costello.  "Got a quarter?" Nope. "Want one?" Bud-dum-bump!

I decided recently it was time for a fresh routine.  So the other day when he asked "got a quarter?" I said, "yep," instead, adding: "It's not that I'm happy to see you—that's a roll of 'em in my pocket." 

He looked a little hurt, and actually missed a beat. 

"Well, can I have one?" he said, wanly.

"Nope," I said, waiting for his rapier wit to kick in.

When it didn't, I was like, "but I can always use more."

He didn't want to give me one this time, though.

The next time I saw him was after I had received a very belated response from Mayor Curtatone's office to a letter I'd sent him regarding the plague of beggars and bums you find wherever you find college students in great numbers.  Make no mistake, just as rats are host to the fleas that brought bubonic plague to Europe, it is students who host this scourge.

The funny thing is that the very day I received my emailed response from an underling of the Mayor's, I saw the local police roughing up my bum and his understudy.  They stood accused of harassment.  And I haven't seen either of them since. 

I'm not shedding any tears, either.  I stanched the bleeding in my heart for beggars long ago.  Most people give them money not out of compassion, but because the time it takes to run the cost-benefit analysis isn't worth the spare change in their pockets.  They may justify their pragmatism after the fact with all manner of self-flattering claptrap, but the truth is always more prosaic. 

Beggars are like anybody else out there in the marketplace, of course.  There are some that provide a service—usually a withering glimpse of our own parched and grizzled humanity—and then there are others that just flat-out feel entitled to your money.  Collectors of the Bum Tax.  But all beggars are alike in assuming that because you're not begging you have money to spare. 

Talk about money to spare.  According to Harper's Index this month, the total annual revenues of panhandlers in the Las Vegas metropolitan area was twenty-four million bucks last year.  And there's the reason I don't like beggars.  It's the same reason I don't like upper management:  they don't do anything, and they make way more than I do. 

We all need some way to get our daily bread, though.  Ever since I decided to go commando, jobwise, I've been dabbling in anything and everything I can think of to make a buck, with mixed results.  How many Tupperware bowls can you burp before your party bombs?  My hair's not big enough yet for Mary Kay, but it's getting there (more about that momentarily), and Amway is a cult.  And I just have this thing about cults.

Something I've had a lot of fun with in the last couple of months is cruising the second-hand shops for used books and then unloading them on Amazon.  You won't ever be a millionaire, but I pretty much paid my rent last month on what I made from it.  And I actually think I'm providing a service to people by keeping these books in circulation. 

I'd be cruising the second-hand shops, anyway, whether I was making money from it or not.  In fact, that's how I kind of fell into it.  I had some books I'd picked up that I was ready to unload again and was about to take them back to Goodwill, but thought, well, why not list them on Amazon, and see what happens?

After I made a couple hundred bucks that way, I started buying books with intent to sell. 

And, of course, I'm not the only one.  I've started to notice my competitors at the local Goodwill (which I must say has an exceptional selection).  None more formidable than the wiry middle-aged black man with the salt-and-pepper fro and long, pointy goatee.  He's started to notice me, too, I've noticed. 

I think he must go several times a day, because while I only go two or three times a week, whenever I do he's there with his stack of finds that he's got a special place to stash.  We eye each other suspiciously, maybe growl at each other at a distance, but seldom get close enough to come to blows.  When we have been digging in the same bin I can't help but notice his reek of nicotine. 

Perhaps in another life we would be allies.  But here, in this one, we are enemies. 

Before I got into the biz, I used to think he was on disability, with nothing to do all day but read.  He had the wild look and jittery energy of a schizophrenic.  My animal impulse was to stay out of his way.  I noticed, whenever I saw a stack of his stashed in his little hiding places about the store, that his reading seemed even more eclectic than the random selection of books available calls for. 

Then, last week, I mistook a stash of his in the window for just a random stack of books.  There was a collection of poems by Blake on top, and I picked it up.  In seconds he had dashed from the other end of the store and snatched it away.  "That's my stack!" he hissed.

I saw him again this morning, but had beaten him to the punch this time.  There was a brand new bin full to the brim with an insanely rich collection of nonesuch—everything from a pristine copy of Anna Akhmatova's Selected Poems and Of The Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish in perfect condition, to a rare biography of Rilke and an old copy of Celine's Journey to The End of Night. 

When he walked in the store and saw me at the golden trough he gave me the evil eye, bounded over and started digging in, himself.  I watched him from the corner of my eye, to see if he had a strategy.  He was making what seemed to be random choices based solely on the condition of the book.  He didn't even read the titles.  He might as well have been picking oranges off a fruit stand. 

I saw a kid with a blackberry a couple of weeks ago at a library book sale in Brighton.  He would examine a book, punch in the ISBN, and see if it was worth buying.  I could see the point, but the process was laborious, and frankly I prefer old-fashioned intuition.  Sooner or later you get a sense for what will sell.

I don't know, but my Goodwill nemesis doesn't seem to have it.  While I was skimming the tree for golden apples, he was gathering up the drops.  I can't imagine that this method yields him much in the way of sales.  Sure, occasionally he'll make back a bit of his investment, just as people who play the lottery get lucky with every twentieth ticket, and make ten bucks, or something. 

One thing's for sure, he's onto me.  And I'm the one stealing bread from his mouth, in his view.  This could get ugly.

When I came home from the Goodwill Games, I found a card in the mail from a friend, with what might be a subtle hint inside:  a gift certificate for a haircut with James at someplace I could never afford on my own, and might not go to if I could, called I Soci on Newbury Street.  To soften the blow, my friend wrote, "You can redeem this for a haircut or an updo."

Here is where it stands at the moment:


I've avoided growing it out for years because it's unruly and needs looking after, and I have neither the time nor the patience, not to mention the money, to keep my locks looking lustrous.  My Spartan existence left no room for bad hair days.  But I feel in some ways that my world, after contracting for a time, may be expanding again.  It may be time for big hair.  But I'll need to budget for it.