SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 87
SINE QUA NON
James B. Nicola
Buddy
If you knew me before, you’re probably surprised that I know all these words now. And
punctuation and grammar and all that. Once you get here, see, you start to know all sorts of
stuff. Everything, just about. No studying required. We still don’t know what it all means, but
I can tell you this: lots of things you have been wondering about for a lifetime, suddenly, you
won’t wonder about them anymore. And what’s really important, as well as what was never
really important after all, will become clear, too. In an instant.
So anyway, that’s why I’m doing this. Because I can, now. Not to set the record straight,
to use a favorite new expression of mine, but to set the record. Simply set it. My record.
In other words, this is my story. A story about me. And love. And life. Not me and a
love-life. Well, yes, I suppose so, but not how you’re probably thinking. About me and life—
living it, instead of just existing, or subsisting, or surviving. And, so, loving it.
Geez, here I am, suddenly proficient at sentences and even paragraphs, and all I can do
with this newfound gift is babble and confuse. It’s not that I don’t understand what I want to
say. I know just what my story is, and I want to tell it. It’s that I’m not sure what parts you
want to hear. Or need to hear. Or would be helpful for you to hear. Because I am not here for
me. I am here for you. Whoever you are. But especially for Jimmy. If you happen to run into
him, or if you know him already, maybe you can show him this, then, for me. Would you?
OK, here goes.
***
Part One, I guess, should be about Me Before Jimmy. Just a little bit, because there
wasn’t really much to it. To me. To my life. Before I met Jimmy. That is, before I saw Jimmy,
because I saw him long before we met—days or weeks, maybe even months before he saw
me. Anyway, I don’t think that part of my life is very interesting, but you may not agree, so
here is a quick recap.
My dad left just about when I was born, maybe even before, but I also had a mother and
a sister who, as soon as I was old enough, sent me out to start shifting for myself. I heard folks
refer to them as a couple of bitches, and those folks might not have been too far off, but it’s
not in my nature to hold grudges. I’m just reporting why I never saw my family again after I
started out on my own. Who was there to go back and see? Answer: nobody.
So there I was at age, whatever, cast as an orphan, and also cast out as a vagrant. Homeless.
But it turned out that I wasn’t the only one. Far from it. So no big deal. There were a lot of us,
and we quickly learned how to sleep under bridges or awnings when it was raining, or near
some heat duct if it was cold, and how to beg (with at least a modicum of dignity) not only
in parks or by the river but also by the rear doors of restaurants at closing time.
And I lucked out, actually. There was this one deli run by a real nice married couple.
They lived above it and let me sleep in the basement where there was a boiler furnace so I
could stay dry and warm all through the winter. If I got there too late, and the deli was closed
with the lights out, all I had to do was park myself out back and jiggle the lid on one of their
trash cans—the clangy kind, not one of the newer, quieter models—but not so loudly or
rudely as to wake up the neighbors. Anyway, in a few minutes I’d see a light go on upstairs,
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