- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 764
You see them everywhere, yesterday, and now that some of them have my stuff I've taken a little more of an interest.
So & SO (homeless, see him downtown every day), leaning up against the public toilet in the shade, he's sweating, staring into space, shaking, he's just shot up...
...and down along the lake, a trio with their backpacks, another group of homeless, addled, jiving along like that "Wish" version of Johnny Depp, they've just had theirs...
...and the little drummer boy on Baker, he's back at it, now, more, the older drummer man, but he's back to his air-drumming on the street, not as intense, but when I pass him he looks straight ahead and catches my eye and I'd swear he was lucid...
***
This morning, parking lot in front of thrift shop, a man splayed out on his back. Michael and I approach, make sure he's not dead. His boots are twitching, in each hand there's loosely clenched a crack pipe, the same as I found in my car, and I'm looking over his possessions, he's a flower pot and watering can, useless rubbish, a Bowie hunting knife beside the crack pipe near his right hand in case he's rudely disturbed...suddenly he stretches...Michael and I make haste to leave, he's fine...
***
They're everywhere, a few I know, most, imported from Castlegar and Trail after they eradicated their homeless camps, these are the dodgy ones...downtown, plenty of new homeless faces, the fat girl that commutes every morning from Balfour to sit on a corner all day begging money, strangers stopping to beg a cigarette, the tourists, the liberality, it sucks them in, and they don't want to leave and the town, it needs a strategy to help them move along, maybe something along the line of what Ralf Klein did when he bought all the welfare bums a one way ticket to BC (Balfour, I'm thinking, was a popular destination), only now we need to be returning the favour, sending the junkies along to Alberta with promises of new and friendlier faces...
***
Tonight, after work, a couple of Vodka in and I pop out for a cigarette. Cops are swarming the thrift shop, the door's been left open. Text Michael, he comes down to lock up. No signs of a break in, but the truck's been rifled a few times, you can't leave anything out, the tweakers will have it and the government, it has no strategy to deal with this...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 788
And at the Cantina I run into Chris, old prospecting pal from the days of the restaurant, those days now over, he's working a different job, different schedule, but he pops by the restaurant to keep me posted on his adventures.
Now on a motorbike, now on a better one, now in the finest biker apparel, and I've come to realize his helplessness, his poverty-in-perpetuity, is, was, a sham, he denies himself nothing...
But back to the script, he gets around, a few girlfriends, and now at the bar next to a heavily tattooed but beautiful woman and he comes in, sits beside her and then sees me, he's got a timeshare in her, she's polyamorous, has a husband, and I must bite my tongue not to have a laugh, yes she's beautiful but this will come at a price...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 726
Meanwhile a list of people that I have yet to address.
Last year there was "Norm", a young girl (~14) who was wanting to switch Gender to Male.
I won't open up the can of worms that presents, but - for the moment, we were all treating her as if she was a boy. "His" name - chosen, of course by "him", was Norm, which was a pretty weird-ass name to be chosen, like "Rod" it seems a name you bestow on someone, not choose. Anyways JR and I were discussing the peculiarities of this name choice when I realized; of a sudden; that it wasn't after "Norm" in Pscho rather it was reflecting her wish to be "Normal" - Norman (Normal Man) shortened to "Norm".
***
It's as good a theory as any.
***
Mornings at the fishbowl, the slow recombobulation; an older businessman behind me talking loudly about RRSP's, Pensions, Golf...
Fuck there are some boring conversations. There's never an in-between, an intelligent conversation, it's all day to day mundanity or fucking UFO's over Baker.
I sometimes wonder if I'm the only sane one here.
Bloody Hell.
***
At the laundromat, having retired my filthy moccasins for a pair of mismatched equally filthy moccasins, "treated" with dripping motor oil in my back seat.
I recognize another of the landed gentry, a fellow middle class homeless person of close enough age, we chat, introductions, her name - "Bee". Curious, I've known a few Bea's, never a Bee. While the laundry is spinning she's rearranging her home - a yellow/black later model jeep, the color scheme (intentionally?) chosen to represent - well, herself. "Bee".
It should be noted that there are grades of homelessness here. The first grade, mental health, addictions, shopping carts & homelessness encampments.
These are the highly visible.
The second is the live-in-your-car, with some means of support (in my instance a job, in others disability, CPP, EI, Welfare, etc). We're the second class.
There's a third class, those with vans, travelers, on their way to Shambala, the Island, wherever. But they're transients or seasonal, we're not.
Anyways, a bit of chit-chat while the laundry's doing and then we go to lunch. She suggests the Mall, A&W, I pick otherwise. Clearly she's not one of the working homeless.
Chit, chat, we've a lot in common, it's nice to put a name and life to people you see around daily. I mean, really, I should know the name of everyone in this town, only; well, I've a natural reserve born of serving.
She loves Jesus, drops it in passing, attends a church in Castlegar, knows a lot of the homeless by name, many of them go to Church and profess a great love of Jesus as it avails them of the resources the Church offers. I meet a lot these, women of a certain age, men having failed them take up the Cross, Jesus the ideal man, dead and absent...
I have some theories, but wisely choose to keep them to myself.
We go for a walk, her dogs - 2 furious little chihuahuas that strain at the leash and miss no opportunity to set themselves upon any larger dog that passes.
She laughs it off.
***
She's good company, adds me to her facebook, I get to see what's up. She's an old-school evangelical, random posts of the "Get Behind Me Satan" variety.
Probably still one of the most-read books in the world and nobody gets it...
***
Reminding me of another woman of a certain age that also loves Jesus, lovely woman, likes to read (the Bible only), she passes in normal conversation until it comes round to the point, she's been dating, it's tough out there, she's decided to "save it" for marriage, save what I'm wondering but apparently she's some sort of born-again-virgin, she's looking for a man that loves Jesus more than her, Jesus, he's gotta be #1....
***
There is a part of me that wants to ask if she doesn't realize that this is a cheap power and control tactic that's only going to work on the worst quality of men, that she's limiting her relationships and made the same pact with celibacy I have (or, not the same pact, but to very much the same effect), but, damn, if they haven't figured that out by now they never will...
***
Jesus, by Golly, the most glorious savior of junkies, addicts, the homeless & middle-aged spinsters. The underdog for all occasions. I've nothing against him but he could do a lot better with his representation.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 805
And so I find out through the grapevine that I have a rave-name, "Hickory Sticks", which makes me curiously defensive.
For absolutely no reason.
I'd just like to take this moment, though, to address some concerns I have about my general presentation & hygiene, in that I've been - however reluctantly - "Kootified", of necessity gone "Local" or "Native" as they might say, the lack of readily available shower, clean mirror, laundry, storage, closet, bathroom, well, it takes it's toll, and - man oh man - what a change of routine it'll be to start getting clean, soaking in the bath, taking a shower, shaving, even paying somebody else for a haircut (I've been DIY for a while, and it shows).
I mean, I make whatever effort I can, only it's to no great effect. Some things you just need your own bathroom and laundry.
Until then "Hickory Sticks" it is...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 694
Coffee, before work at the fishbowl on Ward & Baker.
Sit inside, only E***** is there, the Big City Blonde, holding court with a table of older blonde ladies ranging from 30 to 50 odd, presumably she's selling her line of skincare and beauty products. She catches my eye, that glance of shared recognition and dismissal.
She's always a show but I'm not always up for it, move outside.
Reading my book, Hegel's "The Philosophy of History", I'm only just starting to get into it. I'm about halfway through.
Inside the café there's a beautiful girl looking out the window. She doesn't see me, or - more probably, isn't paying attention, slender with dark Semitic features, dark curly haired pulled up behind her head, gazing across the street with a melancholy, thoughtful air. She's looking at Shoe-La-La, no, she's looking into the beyond in that way that people do when they're distracted. She'd make a great painting - through the window reflecting the old apartments on Baker, the bus stop, blue sky and white clouds, the veils of reflections filling in her body, I surreptitiously snap a photo with my phone, how to paint this?
I'm interrupted from my own reveries by H*****, the fashionably dressed dog walker. We chat, about my book, about Yoga & Vedic Masters', he's studied in India, 5 years, about ...
Classical fluffy woo-Nelson conversations, but nothing out of the ordinary. It takes a turn, though, when he talks about the UFO's he's seen on Baker, a couple of years ago, why, even, just again last night - right there, over Pulpit rock, there were, then they opened a portal and just disappeared, our alien overlords, and it wasn't in the paper and why isn't anyone talking about this...
This is my cue, I've had my coffee, my refill, time to get to work...