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Hanging around strip joints is an unusual experience. It was a trip. When Sidney Hipple got out of Solomon Mental Health, he lived on Summer Street in Lowell. It was a white building. Shit, I thought we talked about that before, in another story. Well anyways, here it is again:

So like I was saying, Sid was living in this one-room efficiency with the bathroom down the hall. It had a bed, a dresser, a sink, a refrigerator, a stove, and a cabinet, and it was on the first floor.

Next door to Sid lived a woman named Louise. She had also had past stints at Solomon Mental Health -- she was on medication. She was quite a bit overweight, and had a son named Max who came to visit her once in a while. Because of her size, she didn't bathe regularly. But when Sid was in the nut house, a shower was his salvation. A relaxing time, the hot water steaming over your back, that solitude, that serenity, that privateness. Sometimes he'd take two or three showers a day.

Louise wasn't the only person who lived in the building where Sid lived. A guy named Brad, who looked like a young Frank Zappa, lived upstairs with his cousin Lenny. They talked about itmes when they were so broke, they ate mustard on newspaper -- that's true.

Brad was an all right guy, but he was an alcoholic. He was always bitching about his ex-wife and his kids and not seeing them. Another alcoholic lived down the hall on the first floor from Sid, but he doesn't recall his name. But he was a good guy.

One day Sid came home and his apartment door had been removed from its hinges and had disappeared. Two other apartments had the same thing happen to them. As it turned out, Sid and the other two tenants were behind in their rents, and that's what the landlord did until they got paid up. For a couple of days people watched other people's apartments until they got their doors back. That's true you know. If you can imagine an apartment with no door, no entrance door, it could be an unusual experience.

Sid was on welfare, and someone had stolen his foodstamps. (Later on Sid found out that it was Brad's cousin Lenny who stole the foodstamps -- guess he didn't want to eat newspaper with mustard. He should have tried fucking ketchup, at least it won't roll off the paper like mustard will. Didn't even have money to buy a fucking vegetable to wrap it in. When you're broke like that, you?re dead broke, and nobody you know gives you any money, because they ain't got none either.

So you're waiting for your welfare check to come in. They come in twice a month. Sid was getting about $87 each check. Like everybody else's, his was usually gone in three or four days -- at best. Rent was like $21 a week for that luxurious room he had, and he usually owed people at least $20, and with the rest of it, he'd buy food or foodstamps. So he never had money.

When his check would come in, he would go down to Adams St, where the Spanish folk hung out, and he'd buy six pin joints for $5, and get high for a couple of days. Sometimes he'd have a couple of bucks, but most of the time he didn't.

And whether he did, or he didn't, he'd still find a way to hang around a club called the Three Copper Men, on Fletcher Street in Lowell. Upstairs bands would play on the weekends, and downstairs were strippers. He'd never have any money. Sometimes he'd go in there with just a buck and buy a coke, to have a place to hang around and something to do. Most of the time he wouldn't have any money, and he would tell the waitress that he was waiting for someone.

He never thought about the strippers too much, until one day, inside his building, that white building on Summer Street, a young woman moved in named Judy Gingersnaps. She must have been in her late twenties, very slender, very nice looking, very pleasant. She lived on the third floor. She had a boyfriend named John who would stop over, who was a nice guy. They became friends with Sid and some other people in the building.

When you don't have no money, and you don't have no food, there's only one thing to do: go to one of the local churches, and they'll give you a food order at some local supermarket. But, they have to come to your house to give you the check. Sid went to St. Peter's church, and talked to somebody about a food order for ten or fifteen dollars. They said they would send someone to his house the next day. It just so happened that day, that he was washing he only set of clothes. He would wash them in the shower, take off his clothes, and then shower himself. He ran the stove until they dried. And because he had thrown all of his possessions away months before, he had no other clothes but the clothes on his back. He would have a towel wrapped around himself until they dried, which might take a couple hours.

He knew the people from the church would be coming over, and he needed something to wear. So he asked his neighbor Louise if she had something he could borrow. She gave him a nightgown. He put it on, and was waiting with his door open for the people to arrive. Judy and John came down to leave the building and saw Sid in the nightgown. And remember, Louise was a big woman. They told Sid later that when they got outside, Judy said to John, "Was Sidney wearing a nightgown with ruffles?" Needless to say what the reaction of the church people was when they came by to give him his check.

The next week he was talking to Judy about washing his clothes again, and wanted to stop up and visit her, and she asked him if he wanted to borrow one of her negligees, and he said yeah. Judy said, "You want a white one or a black one?" Sid said, "A black one." To make a long story short, Sid became good friends with Judy and started to hang out at the strip joint where she worked. called Nicky's on Gorham Street.

I don't think that Sid ever saw Judy dance, and if he did, it was only once at Nicky's. Judy would hang around there when she wasn't working, and so would Sid. Judy knew Sid was broke, and sometimes she's buy him a sloe gin fizz. It was interesting hanging around the strip joint, but after a while that got tired for Sid. Eventually Judy stopped living there and Sid got a job.

Before Judy stopped stripping, she got a new boyfriend called Heck. He was from Minnesota, and a nice guy. Sid used to stop over and visit some times. Went they weren't making love, they'd let him in. That's where he went on Christmas when he was alone one year. Christmas with Judy and Heck.

Some time later, Sid saw Judy on Merrimack Street, and she said her and Heck were homeless. Sid remembered that Mike of Mike and the Spikes, who was living at 73 Fletcher Street had a doorway from his room to a vacant room. Sid told Judy about this, and took her over to see Mike. Mike, the good sort that he was, didn't mind taking the risk and let them stay next door on the QT. Judy and Heck were good people, and they liked Mike because he was a good guy. Eventually I'm sure, they had to move.

The last time Sid saw Judy, she called him up and said she was moving to New Hampshire and wanted to borrow his hotplate. She stopped over and he gave it to her.

At one time she went back to Minnesota with Heck, but she came back in a couple of weeks -- couldn't stand the boredom. She was an excitement type of woman.

Sid didn't hear anything about her for years, didn't know where she was or what she was doing. Until one day when Sid was hanging out with Johnny B, he mentioned a Judy, and Johnny B said he knew of a Judy, the one he was speaking of. She had been in AA for a number of years and she was doing good. Sid was happy to hear this.

Sid hopes to see Judy in life again some day. They haven't seen each other in eighteen years. But when a guy wears a woman's nightgown under certain circumstances, there's a bond there that can never be broken. That bond is called friendship.

And when you ain't got no money, and you ain't got no foodstamps, and you don't want to eat mustard on newspaper, and you've run out of churches in the neighborhood to hit them up for food orders, sometimes there's someone you can count on, even for just a laugh, or encouragement, or just to listen to you for a minute or two. That's called a friend.