A Pilgrim’s Digression

Where do I start? Start with an image and work outwards. A man lies on his side across the top of three newspaper boxes, sleeping. He is slightly curled up, due to his height, and his arms are folded into each other across his chest. Why am I still shocked by scenes such as this? It’s been nearly three years that I’ve been living here. I’ve seen enough squalor I ought to be accustomed to it by now. On the train platform this morning, a man unzipped his pants and pissed off the edge, down onto the tracks. Lucky he didn’t hit the third rail. I wonder if he even thought of that? Everyone watched. No one said anything.

However, I was less shocked by that act than I am by people sleeping atop newspaper boxes, or on benches, or on the ground. Why shock? It’s disturbing, that’s why.

Disturbing to what? Disturbing to me.

To your self? Yes.

I don’t understand what kind of world this is. I’ve seen people holding animated conversations with no one visible, and sometimes these people are normally dressed, otherwise indistinguishable from me or people like me.

I saw a man walking a large Rottweiler on the sidewalk purposefully let its leash play out enough that it could chase a frightened woman up on the grass. The man laughed, “He’s just playing, bitch!”

One day I was waiting for a bus. There was a man lying on the concrete directly under the bus stop sign, just lying there, the hot sun shining on his sweaty face. Drunk? Sleeping? Diabetic attack? Heart attack? The bus pulled up and people stepped over his body to board the bus. I stepped over his body. I sat down on the bus, and a woman who boarded after me said to the driver, “Should someone call 9/11?” The driver hesitated, looked perturbed, then called his dispatcher on the CB. “There’s someone lying on the ground at the bus stop at [he gave the location].” The dispatcher replied, “Is he breathing?” The driver stood up and looked out. “Yeah, he’s breathing.” The dispatcher said, “Carry on.” And the bus moved on.

Now I am holding a conversation with my self, too, only I am not standing on a street corner or waiting for a bus. No one is moving away from me or avoiding eye contact, at least I don’t think so.

No coffee of the day today. I need to drink less Starbucks coffee. It is losing its punch. Used to be that first taste of good coffee would be a real kick, similar to the first cigarette for a smoker. I don’t feel anything anymore. Not so much as a tingle. So today I ate a bowl of Honey Nut Cheeriosâ„¢ and drank some milk without my usual coffee.

Song currently playing on my iPod: “Blue Angel” by Roy Orbison. I first encountered Orbison’s music in the older films of David Lynch, specifically Blue Velvet. Thus there has always seemed to me something a bit perverse about these songs. I can’t hear “In Dreams” without thinking of the manaiacal Dennis Hopper huffing on oxygen. “The candy-colored clown they call the sandman / Tiptoes to my room every night / Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper, / Go to sleep …” There is just something wierd about that song, and I think Lynch obviously detected it, too.

Listening to Orbison now reminds me of something a roommate of mine once said about Freddie Mercury. My roommate liked Queen and often listened to their songs, but one time out of nowhere he said, “You know, only a fag could sing that good.” I think we were listening to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” My roommate was no bohemian. I moved in with him in the winter of my third year of college, by which time he had already graduated with his BS in Business Administration and was working for a bank chain, but still living in our college town.

One other thing I recall about him, during the particularly cold, snowy January of 1994, he said that cities need a good freeze every once in awhile to kill off some of the homeless on the streets. I only lived with this fellow one semester. At the end of the spring semester, he wanted to move his girlfriend (a freshman) in with us, so I figured that was a good enough reason to move. The walls being thin, and myself being an unintentional celibate, I had already heard enough of their shagging during the long winter months.