Diary 7-27-03

Well here I am in St. Louis, staying in a youth hostel in the French quarter, called Soulard. I’ve never stayed in a youth hostel before so I didn’t know quite what to expect. It is a people watchers heaven.

There’s Tom, who owns the place. He sounded brusque and removed on the phone, and he’s a little brusque and removed in person. He’s somewhere near 65 and an idealest at heart. You can’t hear how much he cares about people in the way he talks, but you can see it in the way he acts. For instance he only charged me 18 dollars for two nights instead of 36, because I only had 28 dollars in my wallet. He didn’t say anything to me, he just lost $18 somewhere in his computations, but I knew what was going on. I would say that almost half of the people who stay here don’t pay rent. Instead they just help out around the place, fixing things up and taking care of business when he goes out. There are a couple people who would be homeless if they weren’t staying here. He’s a big guy with a bit of a belly, and limps and uses a cane at the moment because he fell off the roof while he was working on it the other day. He fell really far, and if he hadn’t fallen on his feet he’d probably be dead.

He’s created a constantly dynamic community here, populated by characters of every age, ethnicity, heritage, political view, country, and creed. People come from all over the world and find a home here, if only for a couple days. Here are some of the other people I’ve met.

Jim is a short scrawny guy, at least 70, who works around the place helping Tom. He’d been working on the roof until Tom fell. Take a second and picture Bart Simpson in the real world at the age of 70, with a couple decades of drinking and living on the street under his belt. That’s pretty much Jim. He’s a good guy, but I wouldn’t say he really cares hard about anything much. He doesn’t really care about doing a good job or about politics, he doesn’t really care about what he looks like or how other people see him, nor does he care about religion or making a difference. He doesn’t care when big things happen around him, he doesn’t care what the reason for things are, or what’ll happen next. All he cares about is taking it easy, and that’s what he does remarkably well. I wouldn’t say Jim has a high opinion of himself of the things he does know, but he doesn’t hate himself either. I would say that Jim isn’t particularly invested in life, an attitude that he assumes everyone else has too.

Then there’s Diane. Diane is an incredible character. She’s half black and half Native American, “but all Bohemian.” By this she doesn’t refer to the Bohemian, or new Bohemian movement, she lives in the Bahamas, and has for years. She’s not beautiful like any model, the bad teeth, big feet, and presumptuous rump take her out of that category, she’s beautiful because she knows she’s beautiful, and she turns heads because of it. She loves to get dressed up, and when she does it’s in a wonderfully bohemian way. She goes full on into flashy, sparkly, bling bling, riots of color and prints, not designer pants and the newest chic. She’ one of the most genuinely nice people I’ve ever met. And she’s not nice in any submissive, deferential, girly girl, kind of way. She is just an open and good person. “I treat everybody the same. Don’t matter black or white or Puerto Rican, I treat everybody the same,” She says, and it’s true.

She’s also the only person I know who leaves a casino with a lot more money than she goes in with, consistently from just playing the machines. The machines are rigged so that you can only win a certain amount, but she’s a VIP there because she wins so much money. People give her money to gamble with because she’s so lucky. The casino moved all the machines around to throw her off. People have paid her to come stand next to them and put her hand on their shoulder while they played and then won thousands and thousands of dollars.

One time a girl from the hostel told Diane she only had a hundred dollars, “I’ll take you to the casino,” Diane had said. She hadn’t wanted to gamble the whole hundred dollars, so she said, “You give me fifty dollars, and I’ll do two hundred of my own dollars, and if I win I’ll give you half.” She left with 800 dollars. The girl had told her she would leave the money under Diane’s pillow but left a note instead “Diane, I’m sorry, I really need this money. I’ll send you the money when I get some more,” and left. Diane won’t gamble for anyone else anymore.

Then there’s Richard. Richard is a very angry and sad man. The first thing he’ll tell anybody is about how he was in the military for 20 years, in supply. Richard is the minority of the white male population who never got a whiff of the opportunity that is often associated with that demographic. He grew up in the ghetto with an abusive father and an excellent mother. He was the oldest of 10, and made his mother leave his father at the age of 14. When he was nine he heard a black girl get raped, he went down to a bar and stole every cent he could, gave it to the girl and told her “run, get as far out of town as you can, disappear or you’ll be dead. Two hours later I was lying beaten in the gutter. I had been stomped by every black male who could lay his hands on me.”

Richard is totally alone. Every single member of his family has died. 5 of whom died on the same day, in a car wreck. “A driver, high on marijuana tried to race a train,” he said. “I’d never do drugs. I’ve never drunk or smoked marijuana. I don’t agree with it. It robs the human spirit that’s what it does.” Considering this and a dozen other stories he told, it’s amazing he’s not in jail or dead by now, but he definitely hasn’t come out clean. He talks about Quotas the way Dr. Strangelove talks about fluids. You mention quotas to this guy, and you see where some of the stuff he’s gone through is festering, way down in the back of his consciousness. He was did a ridiculous number of tours in the Persian gulf during the Persian gulf war and then for years after. He was pelted with “blood and urine,” when he got back to California though. He’ll never set foot there again.

“Frankly I have been disappointed by the human race,” he says. He’s also been let down by the Democratic Party, and the UN. He, Diane, and I stayed up until 12 O’clock last night talking about life, politics, and the world in general. I learned so much about the way some people see the world in that conversation, it will stay with me for the rest of my life.

After talking to him for a while it became quite clear that while I may be looking at a beautiful sunset, he’ll only see a brick wall. Looking at the world through a film of anger and regret so thick, that a ray of sun, looks like a drop of rain. So sad.

Jim had told me about how last Sunday, Diane had made a huge dinner for everybody. How everyone had sat down together and had a huge meal with two chickens, green beans, mashed potatoes, stuffing, the works. He told me about how Tom had come down and eaten three plates and how much everybody loved it. It sounded a lot like a tradition that should be continued, so I suggested he and I cook up a little something for dinner for tonight. Everyone else got wind of the idea and soon enough, it was the plan and I was in charge. Jim made bread, I made barbecue chicken, asparagus, and cake. We put it all out on the table and invited everyone over. It was delicious and nice, but a touch awkward, Not precisely the soul food experience I was expecting, but still really neat.

Oh yeah something else happened this morning that I’ve got to talk about for a minute. Ok so this morning I got up around 8:30 and mulled about in the courtyard until I was ready to be alive again. Jim and Richard were up too and were sitting around the table chatting. I sat down with them and poked around in the conversation a while, until out of nowhere I heard the crushing, screeching, crashing, shatter of a car accident off to the left. I got up and rushed around to corner to see what happened there was an accident, a bad accident. There was a jeep, badly mangled, lying on its side on the side of the road, the roof was crushed, and the windshield had smashed and was lying all over the street. There was a young black man lying bleeding by the sidewalk. I grabbed my cell phone but then noticed someone was calling the ambulance already. I ran back around the corner to the hostel, up to my locker and rooted through my stuff for my first aid kit. I dashed back over to the accident and ran up to the wounded guy. He was totally out of it, lacking much muscular control and coherence. “Daaaamn,” he said, “Yellow light means slow man, what are you thinking.” He had only one shoe on, and a number of cuts on his legs and arms. He was bleeding out of the back of his head lightly onto the curb. “How you doing man, you alright, what’s hurting you?” I asked, putting my hand on his shoulder. It didn’t look like he had any gushing wounds, but he was definitely going to go into shock. “Everything man, Daaamn mother fucker’s got to slow dooown.” He said. “hey man you’re going to be alright, you’re doing great, you’ll be alright,” he started to curl up onto the sidewalk to rest. “No no no , hey wake up open your eyes. No come on man listen to my voice, open your eyes,” I said, “Man I’m not going to sleep I’m just resting, comon.” He said, and rested his head on his hand. “The Jeep rolled over him man, I can’t believe he’s even alive,” someone said from behind me. “What,” I said. “ I saw the whole thing, a burley black man with short dreds said, “I was coming the other way and I saw this yellow car come flying thorugh that stop light, and hit him, he got thrown half way out and the Jeep rolled on top of him,” he said. I looked over at the Jeep lying on its side, drivers side down, there was no more than 6 inches between the pavement and the ground. One sneaker was lodged under the top of the door forgotten In the scramble. “He crawled out, I don’t know how though. He crawled out all by himself, but I just don’t know how,” he said. How did he get his torso out if he couldn’t even get his shoe through that gap? I thought to myself. A question for later. “Hey man open your eyes, what’s your name?” I said to the guy lying on the street. “Jerome man,” he replied. I couldn’t think of any more questions to ask, my mind went blank, he was in a daze, flopping around on the sidewalk. I took his hand, “You’ll be alright man, you’re doing great.” Just then the ambulance squeeled up, and a bunch of guys got out, and took over. Thank goodness. I watched with the other bystanders as they did their job, as fast as could be expected, but I wished they could go faster. I wanted them to be a whirl wind of good samaritians, fix his broken body, and leave him a healed man, able to laugh and cry again. And maybe they could clean up the blood that had gotten on the sidewalk as well, just like it had never happened.

I can’t believe that was all this morning.