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It was back to B’More, Hon. I escaped Wilmington, North Carolina in the dead of night leaving a clean house with a big tree down in the back yard and a stack of unpaid bills that could choke a mule. I gave Chanter and her boyfriend most of my books and everything I knew I wouldn’t have a place for at my new destination. I was EMPTY, living right there in the seat of my old, uninsured water truck, Iris, expired tags and all. I did still have a bicycle. The 60 dollars from Kay Eager came in handy since most of the two thousand dollars from Baxter-Hyland Pharmaceuticals went towards the final VHS copies, mailings and film festival entries. We had gotten one invitation from Yamagata, Japan for the film, but there was no money to do anything about it. I arrived three weeks before Christmas at the home of a still living brother, Yabba Duda, and I parked the truck off the street in back of his small combination farm/junkyard. I had been totally out of the drug culture for a dozen years until trying to get money from the pharmaceutical companies that got away with killing a lot of people. I didn’t know anyone in Baltimore with hemophilia. I was officially out of the BLOOD and flat broke. Everything was normal. I crashed on the couch.

Jackal had rotten teeth and lived in a back room of the house. Jackal was an ex-con with a big heart and was Yabba’s right arm since Yabba had such horrible health. Yabba had a stroke a couple of years earlier and something called Reiter’s Syndrome which he said had caused him to have a heart valve replaced several years earlier; he wanted me to make a movie about his Reiter’s Syndrome. “What’s with this homophelia?” he asked. “It’s hemophilia, Yabba. You really should read once in awhile.”

“I do stuff—I don’t need to read,” Yabba told me on my arrival. “Look at you. You read books and you’re on my couch. I haven’t read a book since high school. I own a bar.”

Despite his ill health and constant pain and handfuls of medication and beer every day, he managed to function as a father to kids that weren’t his blood and operate a redneck bar. The problem was that his wife was still around. Yabba and Courtney had a son in the marriage that was actually Yabba’s best friend Jackal’s son though it was not something discussed openly since Yabba had this thing about collecting things and ownership for the prestige of ownership–the obvious didn’t seem to bother him outwardly—the kid looked exactly like Jackal. Yabba’s wife, Courtney, lived in an upstairs apartment with her boyfriend Bobo, a part time crack dealer who didn’t like kids. Yabba took care of Jackal and Courtney’s son Gorp who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and Courtney’s daughter Madonna from a former boyfriend, and held on to a confused set of morals and responsibilities. Besides a drug problem, Courtney also had a severe drinking problem. “I love my children,” was her Mantra—“I really love my beer,” was her activity.

The “Redneck Bar” in Essex was directly across the alley from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting room and employed some of the foxiest deranged fillies that ever bit the cap off of a bottle of beer. It was good to be home for the holidays. FaLaLaLaLa LaLa LaLAAA.

The Ricky Ray Relief Act had virtually died with the upcoming election. I got to perform my second reason for moving to North Carolina, the first being escaping from Florida, voting against Jesse Helms. On the morning of the election I hopped on my bicycle bright and early and peddled over to the armory and voted for the other guy with confidence that no one I had met the previous year and a half had admitted to voting for Jesse Helms. In fact, many had expressed opposition to his narrow, vindictive, negative style. Jesse Helms won the election easily.

Lindsay Wagner did a Book Signing in Wilmington for her vegetarian Cookbook. I bought a book and spoke with her since there was no one else in line at the time. “Sarah Lewis worked for you, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Ms. Wagner said.

“She had my screen play TRAPEZOID and said she set up a meeting with you in 1987 and I drove out and stayed in shelters and the meeting never happened. I wrote it under the name Norman Iland. What happened? ”

“Sarah never said anything to me,” Ms. Wagner said, “sorry. I’ve never seen or heard of TRAPEZOID or Norman Iland” I ran down a list of my other alter egos to no avail and left as she looked around for security.

Anyway, I picked up a car from Triangle the day of the conference and hoped to drive to Research Triangle Park with Brent who was to be one of the featured speakers at the conference, but his need to remain independent and not be stuck in a car with me over-rode any economic considerations. In my state of teetering on the edge of financial disaster and homelessness this all seemed rather silly to me but it really made sense to him to avoid me. I grabbed the smallest car I could get and counted on great gas mileage. When I arrived at the conference the first thing I noticed was the Boss’s Race Car parked out front of the hotel. It was an honest to god NASCAR car, all painted with his logo and named Factor VIII. The Boss had done well in the home care business. In the Hotel I found BG, Linda Robertson smoking in the hallway and saw many familiar faces. Laureen Kelley was in one of the conference rooms with parents conducting a morning session. BG took me around to a few of the hotel rooms where the kids of different age groups were being entertained by able volunteers. The Wet bars were stocked with fresh fruit and snacks for the kids. Many of the kids had hemophilia, but only one wore a crash helmet. Most of the parents had grown to accept the dangers of head injuries and the responsibility of aware people as opposed to being over protective of their babies. I found some old kid friends in the groups and bounced between rooms, chowing down on food that had been lacking in my diet. The blood products were much safer now, but I couldn’t help think of the number of children that were infused with blood products that contained a destructive virus, by their mothers in the past. Room service began to replace the snack trays with kid type hot lunch trays, so I made my way back up to the main conference room to catch the end of Laureen’s morning session and find out where the adults were eating.

We Tangoed after Laureen finished speaking. It was a continuation of the Dance from Philadelphia and then San Diego. For a few brief seconds, that’s all that mattered was the Dance. A lunch of cold cuts and salads was served informally in the banquet room and Brent’s quick wit provided the snappy appetizer. After lunch Dale Brisson and Brent Runyon both spoke of their childhood with hemophilia and told some blood jokes before Laureen Kelley completed her afternoon session. I asked the Boss for money so copies of the film could be sent to Richard at the treatment center for distribution. A thousand dollars would have saved me, but he agreed to five hundred. That made his total contribution to the project 2500 dollars which was less than the cost of the one day conference for thirty families. The Boss was gathering possible lifetime customers with the conference. The film would only help the community as a whole. There wasn’t enough self-interest involved even though many of the participants in the film and the credits were either his employees or North Carolina customers. Whether the film would help me personally or not was unknown to me. I had been financially trashed already with no way out so my self-interest was clouded and somewhat irresponsible.

When the conference ended I drove Laureen to the airport after she changed clothes in her room. She filled out a great pair of jeans and bought the beer at the airport while waiting for her departing flight. I returned to the hotel and ate and drank on the Boss before playing car tag with the slightly intoxicated Brent on the two and a half hour drive back to Wilmington. The five hundred dollars came and went to keep everything plugged in before I could get copies made. I was willing to renege on the deal if no other money came through. Continued pestering of Moses and Baxter-Hyland International, a weekend FedEx of my last VHS copy of the film, and a receptive blue suit got me a commitment of two thousand more dollars for copies, phone and escape. I knew I had to get out of town. Thanksgiving was upon us and I knew that there would be no new commitments in the winter. I began cleaning house and packing. Kay’s daughter never posted for the sofa-bed, so I threw it out with the trash. The bank covered a thousand dollar check to the phone company while I waited for the money from Baxter International. The FedEx check had been somewhat misdirected and was late. When I did finally get the check I noticed that it had been written on another North Carolina Bank and the option presented itself of stiffing my bank for the thousand and cashing the check at the other and using the money for the escape I was preparing for. Instead I thanked the banker woman for having faith in me–the thousand was covered plus overdraft penalties. I had the VHS copies for the treatment center made, sent Baxter 15 copies for internal use and had a few repairs done on the truck but she still smoked. Kay Eager called before the phones were unplugged and agreed to deposit the last 60 dollars directly into my account. Wayne Ward who worked for the boss came by the night before I left town to pick up the copies of the film for the treatment center and he took me out for a steak dinner and a couple of shots of Jack Daniels.