AdamSmith

You know I trust & love you without reservation. But your comment here entirely, somehow, misses my point.

My 2 (actually 3, come to think) closest friends in life are people I first met by hiring. They all taught me so much about life.

Canto III: The Gate of Hell[edit] Per me si va ne la città dolente, per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente. Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: fecemi la divina potestate, la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore. Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterno duro. Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.

Guilty as charged re body builders. Now. As for street trade, the ones I knew in Old Manahatto were, ever & always, on the lookout for the Next Thing. They were alive, they brooked no excuses, they were on the path to real life. The lazy answer is that I just idealized them too much. Permit me to say: Fuck you, in advance.

If I have to use a glycerin suppository before bottoming because I did not eat my fruits & veggies, the outcome is still the same.

OK, the brainless crack was baseless. But street survival, from my observations (both second- and first-hand), requires a fair bit of real-time computing to make it.

Or my rough tough whip-smart little street trade.

You calling us Canaanites?

'He pursued Pleasure so avidly as to have had the misfortune of catching her.'

Fairly dull & unedifying way to live, if you ask me.

Putin will run rings round Trump in Helsinki. Bad news for the rest of us Trump’s ‘America first’ rhetoric is a gift to the Russian president, who wants to use it to break up the existing European ordering https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/04/helsinki-putin-trump-america-first-russian-president

That is a very safe life strategy.

That must be it.

You will observe that, at 58 years of age, I am still here. And enjoying things. What is your life philosophy? If you have one to disclose.

TEN

I thought I did? (Your next post will accuse me of bad faith in this post. )

There exist easy -- indeed, not even requiring any action on your part -- ways to make evident to them that you are worth more to them alive than dead. As oneself (as a hirer of just-released Rikers denizens) would not have thought necessary to state.

I confess I don't really see the difference between what you said and what I said.

To be sure, I paid them in $, food/drink, clean place to sleep/poop/wash up...but we were friends too, all I'm saying. As Bloomberg accurately said of Trump, 'I'm a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one.' But OTOH, excessive cynicism about others' motives can ruin your life.

I think there is more to it than that... ...many hiring guys in NYC had way more scoots to offer than I did. But the strip-club kids who liked me I think found me funny, weird, not (too much! ) a creep, interesting over lunch the next day...so went home with me. (Even showed up uninvited in the dark of night, as heretofore described.) @Tomcal is very obviously that way with his guys, many times multiplied!

Classic image! Freedom from Want