Excerpt from 1996 journal.

Downtown, April 22, 1996

Fucking cramps in the worst spots. I had a tank of coffee this morning. Maybe it was that or maybe just the shitty hamburger at lunch. Codfish sounded good last night but this morning the farts smell of it. I'm in the grip of the constipator. No toilet nearby. Offal, the books are green and faded. You looked like a noose, coming to get me. Your eyes were big as the Eiffel Tower and you had a generator in you backpack. I was a swordfish and the lists got longer and blossomed into singular travails.

Fucking cramps but I can still walk. That guy he can't even stand up. From here he stinks of Listerine. It's fucking cold down here too. The Russian dude with the electric guitar was there again at Park Street. He's going to get shut down if he doesn't lower the volume and learn a few more tunes. Folks will only tip for "Dust in the Wind" so many times. Jealous of his gear though. I'm jealous, especially of the Roland synthesizer. I want one of my own and that's a fact. How can you not? But I know I won't get one either. I like what I have. Its limited, but ample, loud but not overpowering. It makes me money, see, and that's what you need down there.

The Russian gave me his name the other day (I've since forgotten, so I just call him tovarisch) and suggested sharing spots. Thankfully, he's an early riser and has no objection to sharing hour sets. So tomorrow he'll go for Park Street early, I'll join him around ten and we'll work in shifts until we drop from exhaustion. Later we'll arrange more equitable sits for the morning grab. I'll have to talk to him about migration too – he wants to play PS every day. I can't do that, don't want to piss on the spot so to speak. I'll meet him for coffee - maybe Saturday. I really want to meet the wife anyway.

Rumor is that ML hooked up with Curt Cobain at a nightclub on Landsdowne Street and blew him in the doorway. Now his chick is after her. I heard ML's agent talking about how cool it would be to set up a fight between the two of them – Rolling Stone might give it a bit of space, as Courtney's pretty hot right now.

There's a new girl at Harvard Square, playing crappy keyboard and singing Cat Stevens songs. She's not terrible at least – and she's cute, so she'll make a bit of money. Has to stop calling herself Astarte though! Everyone knows she's from the Bronx. They're already joking that her name is something a whole lot worse. I won't say what it is, but its something ugly and degrading, in fact. And of course the anti-Semite crowd is already calling her Myrtle Cohen. She'll learn, and if she's good enough, they'll learn too.

Suod is crowing about the rent again. Its more than a week before the first, but he's bugging me already. Considering that the heating oil ran out last month again, and that the oven has still not been repaired, he should be less aggressive. I've always paid him on time and in full so this anticipatory crap is a pain in the ass. The guys downstairs from the Indian Restaurant was saying that he's going to raise their rent.

I was at Passim for lunch on Thursday and was shocked to see Peter there with a brand new laptop computer. The damned things look so weird. I can't imagine wanting to use one, but Peter swears that they're great for booking gigs. He was talking about email, and all I could think of was the time we emailed a photograph from the Ranger to the JFK and it took us nearly 48 hours to do it. So Peter is becoming a technocrat. He's been staying away from the streets and working on legit gigs, so I shouldn't complain. The more gigs he books, the more often I'll be able to get Davis Square.