Ah, but the beat goes on and evil men and women, the evil that they do, must be confronted and this burns in my bones and the fire is released in those hard things that I am compelled to write of rather than the soft and gentle things that would be the joy and happiness of my own soul and heart. It is the evil that stifles the music and poetry that I would far rather compose and enjoy. Once in a while, however, I let fancy have her wing and go off on a tangential journey of the heart and soul. So: I’ll call her Rosie.

She sat in the cheap, plastic-covered recliner; its cotton guts oozed from the various rips and tears in its hide. Rosie was wearing a thin, nondescript, threadbare robe that didn’t obscure the fact that she was overweight. As she said, when you are poor and stressed, you eat and cheap food is fattening. But she was going to get her weight down in order to attract a man. “I’m not someone who has to be alone.” She said this with a voice that trembled in an effort at pride and conviction.

I would guess Rosie’s age about 57 but the years had been cruel. Her face, marred with the veined and seamed tracks of the alcoholic, had once been quite lovely.  She sat there, playing with her hair, twisting the thin wisps in nervous fingers. Two plastic curlers were stuck, like an afterthought, in a few entangling strands on the right side of her head. I wondered if she was even aware they were still there?

“You’ve been a good friend, Sam.” I didn’t know how except for the fact that, knowing of her desperate circumstances and how she had suffered to try to make a life and care for her children, I had brought some groceries and listened to her try to talk about her life. I had also taken her to some essential appointments. She couldn’t afford to register her old, rusting Chevy. It needed a good deal of work and a smog check anyhow, which she couldn’t afford either. Insurance; what’s that? People like Rosie, about 50% of California drivers, among them the host of illegal aliens, not only can’t afford it they wouldn’t buy it anyhow. The taxpayers, the workers, the “system” will take care of them. They have nothing to lose so why worry?

It looked like Rosie had been a lovely girl and woman once. You needed to look beyond what the years had done to her. I had no doubt that she would, indeed, find another man. But, in all probability, he would be one of the many drunken leeches looking for someone to support him on her welfare check. I knew of too many young men looking for the same “meal-ticket” and preying on younger women, especially with children who could never expect anything much better and actually had been taught to believe they deserved such a life with their continued abuse by evil men.

Rosie wouldn’t say it. It lay unspoken between us. She would never have a chance at a decent man. Neither would her girls. Once youth and beauty are gone, the pickings get slimmer and slimmer. This together with the fact that vulgar language, drinking, lack of education dooms attracting young men of value in spite of good looks and a nice figure.  Sex may be the prominent commodity of exchange while girls and women retain their youth and beauty but once that is gone, what is left for them in our culture and society?

There is no idle, philosophical double-talk about so-called “equality” between the sexes in Rosie’s world. She knows the truth, at least in this regard, when it comes to the value of older, wrinkled women with no well-turned ankles or trim figure to catch the eye. It reminds me of the pitiful scene I witnessed in a bar. The young lady was very attractive. She had been dancing and all at once she stopped. I don’t know what caused the outburst but she said in a loud voice to her partner: “Quit looking down there, look up here (pointing to her head), I’m a person, not ‘that!’” Ah, young lady, you had my deepest sympathy. Tragically, you aren’t a “person” to most men; you are only “that!”

Rosie was staring out the dusty window of her small, drab trailer.  Cheap rent, welfare and a collection of neighbors in similar circumstances were her world. Her absent-minded gaze told me she was lost in another time and place where she had been young and full of hope. The small black and white TV had a snow-filled picture making it virtually impossible to tell, apart from the audio, what show was on. No money for cable and the rabbit ears didn’t respond well in this mountain community. But Rosie was used to not really watching TV. Just the voices were needed for companionship, not unlike the way we used radio in my youth.

There were no books or magazines about. Rosie didn’t read much.  Neither did her daughters. There was a son. He tried to make money cutting and selling firewood. But he often didn’t have enough money for the gas to take his decrepit old pickup out to find the wood. He seldom went by to see his mother and sisters and couldn’t help them in any event. I recalled seeing him, along with a few others of the same “brotherhood,” on the boulevard occasionally with his truck; a small pile of wood in front of it with a Firewood For Sale sign against the meager stack.

Years ago, when I was a freshman, high school teacher at Jordan High in Watts, I would visit families in similar circumstances, my white face being a real rarity even then. Drugs and alcohol were the curses of welfare slavery then as now and had no distinction of “color.” I was thoroughly familiar with the lifestyles of those who victimized, preyed upon one another, a “fix” or bottle not having any respect of persons, not even family or friends.

My introduction to Rosie had come about with my finding one of her daughters in a bar. Rosie had called me and asked if I would please bring her some wine. She complained of an anemic condition and stomach problems that the wine would alleviate. Now I have had enough experience with alcoholics to know the stories and the symptoms. I worked with a drug and alcohol abuse group in a professional capacity once.

But there is more to this than allowing yourself to be taken advantage of by the scheming of a boozer. Those who are familiar with “The Winter of Our Discontent” and “Cannery Row” will understand why I bought the wine and went to see Rosie. What I didn’t know was that she and her daughter had gotten an early start on the evening by consuming a twelve-pack. Now, with the wine, their life was full. They knew I wouldn’t drink with them but had, thoughtfully, made a pot of coffee for me.

Rosie’s Mexican live-in was there. But, unlike them, he drank very little and was not an addict. I had gotten to know him as a good man, unlike many I have met in similar circumstances. I could tell, through our broken conversation, that he deplored the drunkenness of the women. Jose was probably in his early 60s and retained some of the better qualities of civilized manners of his native country.

Rosie was at that point of inebriation where “confidences” were shared, congeniality reigned and all was right with the world. But the combination of the wine and beer were about to have the anticipated consequences. The music was being played louder with each glass consumed. The daughter was dancing with drunken abandon to a variety of Mexican and English tunes. She was obviously an experienced and talented dancer. She had done quite a bit of professional dancing, topless, in a number of bars and, being intoxicated, was displaying all her “talent,” the loss of inhibitions, one of the curses of drunkenness, betraying all sense of decorum.

Rosie soon joined her daughter and, grabbing a most reluctant Jose, made it a threesome. I sipped my coffee and watched the whole thing deteriorate rapidly. Evening had passed into nighttime. Rosie’s other daughter called. After a mostly incoherent conversation with her mother and sister, she asked to speak with me. She asked if I could possibly spend the night with them, as she feared what might happen if things got out of control. I said I would attempt to do so.

Jose tried to maintain some degree of sanity in the situation. The women couldn’t even pour the wine in their glasses now without spilling it on the table or floor. Rosie knocked her glass over and slipped off her chair. Jose struggled with the near dead weight of her bulk, finally getting her back up on her now precarious perch and grabbed a towel to clean up the mess.

The daughter was making drunken attempts to use the telephone to call someone but her eyes, mind and fingers weren’t cooperating. She gave it up and returned to the wine and the dancing. The music was blaring painfully now. I went outside to escape the noise and the smell. Jose joined me. He spoke sorrowfully of his circumstances. Fists clenched and clutching his crossed arms to his chest, he articulated in broken English the feeling of pain he was enduring, far from home and family, a virtual prisoner of Rosie and her welfare check, of his fear of deportation and his fear and repugnance of having to live any longer in his present surroundings, of enduring the humiliation of what we were presently experiencing.

The daughter came to the door of the trailer and shouted at us to come back inside. Jose, shoulders stooped and his head bowed down, went inside.  It took a while longer for me to gather my strength to follow him. Upon entering, I discovered Jose mopping up Rosie’s vomit. She lay on the floor in it passed out; not unexpected result of the beer, wine and dancing. We managed to get her up on the couch and left her there to sleep it off.

It was now quite late and I had to consider where I was to sleep. But the daughter had disappeared and Jose wasn’t sure where I could bed down. If Rosie came out of it during the night, he would have to take her to the bedroom. Fine. But I couldn’t stay awake long enough to use the couch she presently occupied. The stench from the floor would prevent me laying down a blanket there and sleeping. It was now 11 p.m. The phone rang. Jose answered. It was the elderly couple in the trailer next door. The daughter was over there and if someone didn’t come and get her, they were going to call the police.

I went. The girl was incoherent and staggering. The old folks were incensed. On the way back to the girl’s place, she fell down a couple of times in spite of my efforts to keep her upright. Somehow, she had managed to add a pipe or two to the combination of beer and wine. As a consequence, she was well wired and I considered whether it would even be possible to spend the night. I’ve known people in her condition to last many hours without sleep before crashing.

As it turned out, the decision was made for me. The girl began to insist that I go to the store for more wine. I refused, pointing out the fact that even if I were to do so, the stores were now closed. She turned to Jose. “Walk to the store, Jose, and get us some more wine!” In her intoxicated mind, what I was doing was refusing to accommodate her and making excuses. Jose tried to explain to no avail. Then she turned abusive when cajoling failed. At that point, I had no choice but to make my exit.

Leaving Jose to the nightmare of attending the two women, I took my leave into the cleansing air of the mountain night, sorrowful for the tragedy I was leaving but so very grateful that I could leave it. Also, I have learned that no matter how bad something is, with just a little effort I can make it worse. So I left.

Sally Jessy Raphael had a good point in “Living Without Answers.” So often in life we are left in exactly that position. Even in the working out of so much pain and grief, we are still, too often, left with no other answer than to just keep on keeping on which, of course, is no answer.

Rosie and her daughters will call me tomorrow. They will be profoundly sorry for what they did and, they will be sincere in their apology. They will tell me it will never happen again. And they will mean it. But it will; as sure as the rising of the sun. Pathetically, they know very few, if any, people like myself- educated and caring, self-supporting. The advantage they try to take of me is, pathetically, child-like as in Cannery Row, the subterfuge of acquiring the wine, for example. But the lengths to which they would go, equally pathetic, no, tragically, in order to give something in return can best be understood by the following: I could “have” the daughter for $20 or even $5 if necessary. Make no mistake, this is not the hiring of a prostitute, this is not “Love For Sale,” it is an offer of friendship by those that have nothing else of value to offer. Also, I present the image of a wealthy man to such people because of my education, independence, of owning a home, a car in no need of repair and being free of debt. Further, as a writer, they hold me in near superstitious awe. I not only read books, I write and publish them!  They don’t understand, of course, but they know this is somehow terribly important. As a consequence, the daughter would be “honored” to do this for me and I would honor her by complying.

Such folks as Rosie and her daughter know nothing of the world of F.  Ross Johnson or "Barbarians At The Gate" but they understand his reputed methods of earning money the old fashioned way; Steal it! However, they will never have the opportunity to steal, legally, on such a monumental scale as per the S&L and BCCI thieves and congressmen. They won’t even have the opportunity or know how to steal on the more equitable scale and level of lower echelon, prostituted politicians, judges and crooked cops.

To be sure, Rosie and her daughter steal. They steal every chance they get. It is a part of their “lifestyle.” One has to be very cautious around them. Human nature being what it is, envy and greed are alive and well in their lives, particularly since they are undereducated, have no job skills and face a hopeless existence, hopeless of anything ever being any better than what they now have. But the evil of welfare robs them of any of the “nobility” of poverty. Irrespective of color, those within the welfare “society” victimize each other simply because those outside the society usually have nothing to do with them, leaving one another the only choices of victims. And, admittedly, it is risky to associate with them. I have no illusions on that score.

As I drive “home” in the clean, crisp, late night air, there is the leaden weight of the feeling of failure, of the vague uneasiness of knowing I should have been able to help in a way that utterly eludes me. I know full well the futility, the heartache and grief, of trying to help boozers. But the tragedy of the scene keeps playing over and over again like a video stuck on replay. And, over the years, I have had to witness the same tragedy too many times in too many other lives. I’m far too well acquainted with The Days of Wine and Roses to give in to futile and wishful thinking of “what might have been.”

Once at my small cottage I put on an album of the kinder and softer music of a gentler time to try to wash out the destructive noise I left behind with the women and Jose. I move a folding chair out front and look up at the stars, the music providing the background I often need in order to fully appreciate God’s glory and promises in the heavens. The thought stabs in my mind that Rosie and her daughters are denied any real comprehension of the joy of such a quiet and contemplative lifestyle. They would, doubtless, consider it “boring.”