I've been thinking a lot lately. Have you guys noticed this is a once a month pattern? I think my hormones make me lonely/depressed, and I start thinking about my past, every FUCKING month.
Anyway, I've been thinking about the people I used to know, each one of them beautiful in their own way. And I wonder what happened to all of them. What they are doing, where they are going. How many of them I grew to hate, and how many of them I've now forgiven.
And most of all, I think about the ones who are no longer with us. Today I've been thinking about the homeless people on Castro st in Mountain View. I think about how they are all but lost in our society. I think about Jack, a tiny sliver of a man, always in a good mood, one of the few "bums" who didn't harrass us young girls who were naive enough to believe the older men on the strip wouldn't try and take advantage of us.
Jack was a genuinely good person, who could not better his situation. I remember one of the last times I saw him, I had run away from home, and I was sleeping in the park, out by the storm drains. I woke up, cold and thirsty, and I walked downtown. Jack, and some of the other homeless guys were on the corner by the liquor store. Stewart, one of the guys who WOULD come on to the girls, was out there, with a boombox, and he was playing some music... Jack was dancing, having a genuinely good time. One of the only times I really saw him having a good time. I remember feeling repulsed, by how sickly he looked, how dare I feel repulsed because somebody is having a good time! But, I was, I was repulsed, maybe because he didn't care what anybody thought, he was just having fun, and that is something I couldn't do. He wanted me to dance with him, and ... I wouldn't. Two days later, Stewart came downtown. He informed us that Jack and him had rented a motel room the previous night, and, when he had gotten up that morning, he found that Jack had stopped breathing at some point in the night. That was almost 5 years ago, but I remember Jack. I remember him, and his friendly smile, and his big goofy ears, and his thick mustache, and his too large hat. I remember his plaid shirts, and his green backpack, and the way he called me "Little Miss". I know that he had family somewhere, and that he had childhood friends who might never know what happened to him. He was lost in the grid. I bet the majority of people who remember seeing him downtown don't even realize he's passed on. They're just happy something "unattractive" is off of their street.
And I think of AJ. I think of how well he's now managing to do for himself. When I met him he looked like a Jerry Garcia replica. Big bushy beard, big bushy eyebrows, huge beer belly, sloppy, and smelly. I'd still give him a hug every morning, and sit and talk with him, even though I knew it made me look bad. He was an intelligent man, with lots of good stories to tell, unable to hold down a job because he suffered mental disabilities from Vietnam. I was only 15, and I had more compassion than any of the "upstanding citizens" and adults that would come through downtown. I would spend hours talking with him about his high school years, and the war, and his dreams. I know he didn't always recognize me, he just knew that I knew his name, and that I treated him kindly. The last time I was in California I ran into him in Mountain View. I almost didn't recognize him, but I heard his voice, he was talking to another homeless man. I approached him, he didn't recognize me, but I took a five dollar bill from my pocket, offered it to him, and gave him a hug. He looked amazing! He had stopped drinking, he had lost his beer belly, he was clean, groomed, and well dressed. I could tell his self esteem was way up, and he speech was clear. He told me that he was quitting smoking as well. All this after 20 or 30 years on the streets! I was so proud of him ...
I'm not sure what the point I'm trying to make here is. I'm not one to preach compassion, and I'm not one to even care about the people in this world who don't affect my life. These people have affected my life though, and I feel like putting some kind of hard copy of their exsistence out there, captures their memory for me. They seem so insignificant, they've done nothing to better this world (well, maybe AJ has, he fought in a war), and they will live and die quietly, not touching many people. They mean something to me though.
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