Homeless Boomers
But it’s not just San Francisco. There’s Homeless People all over the place. The Bay Area has 37,000 homeless. That’s a lot of people. You could probably conquer Canada with that many people.
Canada has 235,000 homeless people.
The good old USA has 532,830 homeless people. (give or take a thousand). That’s 0.2 percent of the population. This low percentage makes the problem seem less of a problem.
Demographers say only 3 percent of the homeless population in the good old USA is 62 or older. This pretty much means Baby Boomers are less likely to be homeless than others on the age scale.
Homeless Boomers
A friend I’ve known since high school is moving into a tent. I’ll call him Regie. I’ve known Regie fifty five years. That’s a long ass time. His younger brother is ill with cancer. His older brother just died of cancer. Regie cared for his brother during the last weeks of his illness. When the brother died the landlord evicted Regie.
Regie picks up his tent today.
My former girlfriend, Darleen, is living in her car. With her dog. She parks up at the cemetery where her son is buried. This is not her first bout of homelessness.
I bumped into her at Target. I hadn’t seen her in a while but I assumed she’d been evicted from her four thousand dollars a month apartment. She said she was staying with friends.
She’s applying for a loan, maybe twenty grand. I told her when the money arrives she ought to find a place she can afford rather than blow half of it on first last a security and dog deposite. She found my advice unkind. But her rent problem keeps occurring…
I actually have room for both of them on Scruffy.
I should be like Jesus…offer them room on my boat.
I would do it. I actually am a caring person when it comes to old friends. What holds me back, though, is raw survival. I’m not allowed to live on my boat. I’m a sneak-aboard. Kind of. I stay at my girlfriend’s pad just enough to get by with the sneak-aboard routine. If people and a dog begin to live on my boat, I will get evicted. Maybe not. I might get away with a crowd for a while. But sooner or later…
You see I’M KIND OF HOMELESS TOO.
2 thoughts on “Homeless Boomers”
Dear Gloomy Boomer:
Regarding your post on the endless thirst that drowns its drinkers: A young reporter once asked William Faulkner why so many noted writers drank; “For the pain, “he replied — a response which the still dry-behind-the liver reporter interpreted as, to stop the pain, when Faulkner meant to keep ir alive — not masochistically but to withstand the slow shipwreck of life Read Baudelaire on drinking or recall Nietzsche’s remark:” No artist tolerates reality. Dylan Thomas, dead at 39 or Jack Kerouac at 47. Losers, some say. Really? I don’t moralize about another person’s pain. I have been around drinkers all my life – from a wounded parent to fellow Marines and merchant seamen — and later, while working at a sunset-to-sunrise Paris nightclub, To share my own introduction to drinking, I include two episodes from my novel, Shipwrecks and Other Drowning and a later piece written during my Hollywood daze and included in my novel Hollywood Sighs
Cheers!
BARS
Everyone was always smoking – as if they put out their cigarettes, they’d die out, too. He hated having to go meet his mother after work. Why couldn’t she just come home? Why did she have to stop at the Iron Horse, or Paoli’s, or The Broker’s Club? There were so many bars in the Financial District? Yet they all seemed the same to Mark.
Once or twice a week, Mark would ride the 45 Greenwich bus down to Montgomery Street to meet his mother so they could return home together, picking up food for dinner along the way.
Whenever he went into a bar to find her, it would always be dark, with people hunched over ice-cube-filled glasses, laughing about things he could never quite hear or understand. His mother would usually be in a crowded booth; and he would begin a wait only he could feel. Like a sentry guarding nothing, he would pace back and forth, until she waved him over – then one of her friends or colleagues would treat him to a soft drink.
When he went to get it, the bartender would peer down at him, asking “Want an extra cherry?” as if bestowing a gift.
The worst would be when someone stood to let him slip into a booth and Mark would be trapped between the large bodies, aching to leave, unable to move.
Coca Cola,
Seven Up,
Pepsi Cola
Ginger Ale
Dr. Pepper
He learned to hate their taste.
Sometimes he would be handed a quarter to play the jukebox that never had any records he liked – just old people singing about things they’d lost.
It was the birth of boredom in those bars. Time seemed to slow and thicken like tar. People never changed from week to week in the small, windowless rooms; always motioning for more, of what he never knew, of another, of what he never understood. No television. Nothing but bottles, glasses, ashtrays and people whispering like spies. And when he was dulled from waiting, like a pencil with nothing left but the eraser, he would tug her sleeve. “Mom, mom, can we go, please.”
“In a minute, dear,” she’d reply.
Then he would wander to the door and watch the people passing by on the sidewalk, glancing inside the darkness as if into a cave and seeing the small creature that lived there peering out at them.
-#-
The Man with Green Hair
His mother’s boyfriend spoke Mandarin, played the piano, and was handsome and charming. He also liked to drink.
On Christmas Eve, Clay Hammond brought back from an office party the one woman Mark’s mother hated – along with a crooked Christmas tree Clay thought was straight.
Mark covered his ears during the fight that erupted after the woman left. His mother was furious. Clay said it was the time of year when everyone should be friends. Then he finished the rest of the whiskey and fell asleep on the kitchen floor.
For Mark, it wasn’t the way Christmas was supposed to be celebrated, with a tree that tilted to the side and a snoring man on the kitchen floor. Taking chlorophyll gum out of his pocket, Mark chewed it up then rubbed it into Clay’s hair.
He didn’t even stir.
When Clay woke on Christmas morning, he felt the dried gum, and spent hours combing and cutting it out.
The two warred all day: Clay threatening to whip Mark for what he had done, and Mark saying Clay got what he deserved for passing out in the kitchen.
His mother said nothing to either of them as she tried again and again to get the crooked tree to stand up straight.
-#-
The Fly
Tom said he was half-Apache and half-Mexican. With his leathery skin and sleek black hair, even in his mid-40’s, he looked as though he could have run twenty miles across the Arizona desert without swallowing the apocryphal mouthful of water Mark heard braves had to keep without swallowing. Judy was salt to Tom’s pepper. Short, with her short hair in a page-boy, she looked like a Patrushka doll that had been left out in the sun.
He found them one morning sleeping on a flattened cardboard mat in front of his studio door in Santa Monica.
When he woke them up to tell them they should sleep somewhere else, they sat up like automatons. Tom motioned for Judy to get back while he neatly folded the cardboard box into a small grid he placed beside the empty Popoff bottle beside his boots. Without a word, Judy got up and took a miniature broom from her back pack and began sweeping the spot where they had slept.
“Hey, man, we really appreciate staying here,“ Tom said, with such sincerity Mark was disarmed.
“Okay, just please don’t cause any trouble out here.”
Judy put her fingers up her lips. “Shhh, you hear that?” she said.
Mark cocked his head. “No.”
“Right, that’s us.”
He couldn’t help smiling. “Charmers,” he thought.
That night when he returned, they were gone, but when he left to go teach, they were both arm in arm, snuggled under one sleeping bag on the opened sleeping bag. Their companion of the first night was right beside Tom’s frayed boots. Mark knew it wasn’t the same Popoff bottle as before unless Tom was filling the bottle with water. But he knew it wasn’t anything but what was written on the bottle: vodka. Little potato.
They reminded him of gypsies outside a castle wall. He was no prince but when he left, he felt that they tried to amuse him, make him laugh with their antics of panhandling in downtown Santa Monica, always trying to elude the dark force of their lives: the police.
Tom had a wonderful laugh that scaled the pretense off everything. Judy would wait for him to finish laughing, then she would nod and utter a tiny bird-like laugh of her own. Mark never knew whether she was laughing with Tom or at Tom.
They were well-known throughout the neighborhood.
Ramon at the liquor store saw Mark talking with them and the next time he went over, motioned him aside. “You letting them sleep there, huh?”
“Why not?”
He grinned. “They got it made. His check comes here the first of the month and now they’re sleeping free in front of your place. America, what a country.”
It was more Santa Monica, Mark thought, laid-back, easy going once you left downtown. There were many homeless people drifting in and out of the day, and from what Mark saw, the police didn’t hassle them unless they became too visible.
One morning when Mark brought his dry cleaning back, he found Tom snapping the metal fence back and forth, while Judy looked as though she was pouting in the far corner of the parking lot.
Mark parked and got out, walking over to where Tom was yanking the post. “Hey, don’t pull out the fence. I’ll get evicted.”
Tom turned around, his eyes glazed red. “Fuckin’ Ramon. He won’t let me in the store. Shit, they get my welfare check every month. They won’t give me cash. I have to spend it there, and now they won’t let me in.”
“Why not?”
“Ramon says I keep knocking bottles of wine off the shelves.”
“Do you?”
“Shit, Mike, I don’t drink wine.”
“Tom, every time I see you, you call me Mike, and I keep telling you my name is Mark.”
Tom stopped pulling the fence. “Sorry, man. I’ll get it right next time. Hey, look, will you go over there and get me a pint of Popoff? Just tell Ramon to take it off my bill?”
Mark glanced over at Judy, who was still wedged in the corner. “Can’t she go?”
“No, Ramon says we’re birds of a feather.”
“What’s wrong with her?” asked Mark.
“Oh, she’s angry cause her family doesn’t want to speak with her while she’s living with me. They think I’m a bad influence on her.”
“Tom, mind me asking where you two met?”
“At the shelter.”
“A long time ago.”
Tom nodded. “As Geronimo would say, many moons. Now look, Mike, will you go get me that bottle? I am thirsty.”
“Ever thought about going on the wagon?”
“Yep,“ muttered Tom. “But every time I get up on it, I see how small it is up there and I jump back off.”
“I’m serious, Tom.”
He ran his hand through his matted beard. “You don’t think I’m not, man. Shit, sober I’m drunker than when I’m drunk. You know what I mean?”
“No. Forget it.”
“Hey, Judy said from behind Mark. He turned as she approached holding her hand vertically above the ground just about where the top of Tom’s head stopped. Then coming over to Mark, she placed the edge of her hand against Mark’s chest.
“You know, if you were about half a foot shorter and had tan skin, dark eyes and longer hair, you could look like Tom’s twin.”
Tom laughed. “Yeah, Mike is my long lost twin.” Picking up Mark, he hugged him so hard that Mark struggled to breath.
“Okay, okay, Tom, I’ll get you a bottle. Just put me down.”
Ramon laughed when Mark asked for a pint of Popoff. “Shit, man, now they got you being their slave.”
“Never mind, Ramon. Just take it off his bill. Hey, will you let him back in if he promises not to break anything?”
Ramon put fingers in both ears.
Nodding, Mark took the bottle and started out.
“Hey, man, let me put it in a bag. I don’t want people to think this place is for drunks and bums.”
As Mark crossed the street, he saw Tom waiting on the curb as though standing on a beach watching the rescue boat approach.
“That away, Mike.”
“Yeah, that’s me, Mike. He’s your vodka, Mark.”
Tom snorted and looked up at Mark. “Man, my name is Tom. Tom, got it? It ain’t a hard name to remember. Tom Thumb. Tom Tom. Tom Cruise. Tom…a hawk,” he said laughing.
“Yeah, right, sorry. He’s your firewater Cochise.”
“Shit, Cochise, Judy, tell Mike what I think of Cochise.”
She put down the sweater she was mending and came over. “Cochise was a squaw.”
Tom patted her on the back. Smiling, she reached for the bottle. Holding it back, he spun off the cap. “Age before beauty,” he said, taking a gulp.
Mark got into his car, started the engine and backed up, careful not to knock over Tom or Judy, who were now drinking the vodka and talking as though two landed gentry pausing during a stroll across their property.
The ritual took hold quickly, and didn’t vary.
Every morning, Mark, or as Tom had come to know him, Mike, would leave and Tom would be waiting, smoking a hand rolled cigarette by the fence while Judy slept.
As soon as Mark pulled the door back from where it always dragged across the tile floor, Tom would smile and say the same thing, “A good day to die, said the old chief.”
And Mark, trying to find a formula to mirror Tom’s, found himself saying “A better day to live.”
That was their morning dialogue.
After putting his bag in the car, Mark would walk over to the store and merely come down the alley for Alfonso, Jorge or Ramon, whoever was on the duty, to reach back without having to turn and take a pint of Popoff off the shelf, slide it into a brown bag that slid over the white glass like a paper glove. Then, as Mark would nod and take the bag, the clerk would deduct the cost from the running tab of Tom’s account.
Two months it went on. Once Mark flew up to San Francisco and all the time he was gone, he worried about how Tom and Judy would get by during his absence.
But when he returned, he found them sitting on the step in front of his door, holding forth and laughing about some experience only they could understand and which Tom would disintegrate into a sort of verbal gossamer if he ever tried to follow what they talked about at night, when they would be whispering like little children underneath his window.
Saturday, he got up late and decided to drive over to Dutton’s Bookstore in Westwood.
When he came outside, Tom was standing right outside the door. “You’re late, Mike.”
“Sorry, Tom.” Thinking of myself again.
“Sorry,” Tom said, trying to let everyone off the hook with a grin.
Judy must have known Mark was tiring of being their Polish emissary, for she squeezed Mark so gently, that he looked down to her round face pressed up against his chest. “Don’t be angry at Tom. He likes you, Mike.”
“I know. I know. I’ll be right back.”
Ramon was on early. When Tom came up to the counter, Ramon was checking the shelf behind him. No more pints of Popoff.
“We had a big Friday night,” said Ramon. “All I got left is that.” He pointed to a quart bottle.
“Give me that. Maybe Tom will leave me alone until Monday.”
“Si, señor,“ said Ramon, not bothering to bag the vodka.
Mark started out of the store and crossed the street. Seeing the quart dangling down, Tom came right out into the street to meet him.
‘Jees, a big bottle.”
“All they had, Tom.”
A minute later he was merging with traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway. After visiting the bookstore, Mark gave in to impulse and went out to the Bicycle Club to play Pai-Gow. It was a crazy, ruthless game, but he loved seeing the Asians feverishly betting. And that night was even better when the Dragon Lady, with her three-inch long nails was sitting at one no-limit table playing big stakes with what a floor boss told him was her late husband’s money.
The about midnight, having lost two hundred and forty dollars, Mark drove back down Highway 1.
When he pulled in, his headlights picked up Tom and Judy, both sleeping fully dressed, Tom still wearing his shoes, and the sleeping bag rolled up beside them.
Parking across the lot, Mark walked back and stopped beside Tom. He was snoring loudly and from Judy, not a sound.
Tom saw the quart bottle lying on its side. He went to pick it up and saw the cork was off and the bottle was empty.
Opening the studio door, he turned on the light and glanced back at Tom and Judy. They looked flung up, as though washed ashore in no place that knew them.
Going back, he unzipped the sleeping bag and spread it over them, then went inside and closed the door.
During the night, Mark heard a mouse trap snap. “Good, got him,” Mark thought, and went back to sleep.
In the morning, he swept the dead mouse into the dust pan and went to empty it into the trash bin outside.
As soon as the sunlight hit him, he stopped.
Judy was kneeling just beyond the door, rocking back and forth as she shook Tom’s shoulder. Sensing his presence, she turned to Mark.
“He won’t wake up.”
Setting down the dust pan, Mark went over to Tom. A thick spool of brown syrupy drool was hanging from his lip.
He was dead. Tom could see it, but Judy couldn’t; and he wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.
Going back inside, he called the police to say a man was dead in front of his studio.
The fire department got there the same time as the police. Running over with his first aid kit, the paramedic felt Tom’s throat for a pulse. Straining forward, he seemed to be concentrating all his force, trying to feel one tremor of life.
As the policeman walked up, the paramedic looked up and shook his head.
Numbly, Judy was sitting on her knees, staring at Tom’s motionless face.
Within minutes the coroner arrived.
He didn’t want to, but he had to. Sighing, Mark walked up the chunky middle aged man holding his tie from dropping down on Tom’s body as he leaned over to press his hand against Tom’s side, then remove a thermometer from Tom’s mouth that Mark hadn’t even seen him put in.
When he stood up to scrawl something on his chart Mark came up behind him. “Sir, I bought him the quart of Vodka that he drank last night.”
The man turned, nodding. “Well, his liver was petrified. He would have gone with your bottle or someone else’s.”
Judy started crying and minutes later a female policewoman arrived. “Does she have family?” she asked Mark.
“I think so. I don’t know. They only lived in front of studio.”
The officer nodded. “We’ll, get a hold of her folks. “ Gently, the woman put Judy in the back seat and drove away.
Mark watched the police car reached the curb and pause to let a truck pass.
Judy glanced back out the rear window.
Her head looked so small, like a little balloon with a sad face painted on it. Then she was gone.
After telling the policeman all he knew about Tom and when he had last seen him conscious, Mark went into the studio.
He slumped into the chair behind the bamboo curtain, sitting with his hand on the phone, trying to figure out who to call to talk himself through what he was feeling.
Then he saw him, lying below the window, turned the other way, so that his feet couldn’t be seen, but his head was entirely visible.
Mark stared down at the stilled face, the matted beard, the crisscrossed lines beside his eyes.
Then a fly circled once and landed on Tom’s lip.
For a second, he waited for Tom to swat it away, and then he realized Tom had moved across that infinitesimally small but irreversible distance to becoming a thing, and the fly knew it, and now so did Mark.
-#-
Friends, Blog Readers, Countrymen:
I recommend Shipwreaks and other Drownings, by Stewart Lindh. You can get it on amazon. This is not a novel typical of the dreck you’ll find in abundance in the self publishing world, many of them best sellers, but a work of feeling and depth. In fact, a work of literature.
P.S. while you’re at it pick up Log Of The Yardbird!
the gloomer