Eating breakfast at Mrs Rigby’s Diner a week or so back, the neighborhood’s main homeless guy was walking around as usual, asking people for change. Not so usual, his pants were almost at his knees.
Unlike the idiot kids wearing low britches as a fashion statement, this bum was showing the world substantial butt cleavage. Half his backside was visible from my table, over my flapjacks. Guess everyone eating breakfast had the same scenic view, if they happened to be seated facing the wrong direction.He strolled casually back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, northbound, then soon he’d be back headed southbound, always with too much of him on display. From my vantage, I happily can’t say whether his hobo genitals were covered, but nobody screamed or called the cops, so I’m guessing there was underwear.That particular bum is always in sight at the diner, and whenever he’s within arm’s reach I give the man a donation. As I handed it to him I said, “Good show today, man,” but he only nodded and leaned on a wall, with a long shirt loose over his groin.
Apparently I’m not going to find a cheap apartment downtown. I’m not sure there are any, except rooms for the homeless. For the foreseeable forever, I’ll remain living with my flatmates Dean and Robert and the mysterious ‘L’, in this shared, oddly leaning old house on the westish southish side of the city.It’s not a decision, really. It’s simply inertia. Day after day after week after month, I’d rather remain in my recliner than traipse my lazy ass downtown and trudge block after block looking for a room for a reasonable rent, in a city that’s outlawed reasonable rents.And of course, if I did find a cheap room, nobody’d let me move in. SROs are illegal here, so it’ll never be simply cash for a key — a credit check will be required, but that’s a laugh. I’m unemployed, and my credit history is empty ‘cuz I haven’t done credit since the 1980s.
Yeah, where I’m at will have to do. And it’s OK, I guess. It’s cheap, the landlord’s not an ass, and it has everything I want except where it is, amidst blocks and blocks of whitebread houses.And the bus only runs twice hourly.And of course, Dean’s continued existence, but he’s old so maybe he’ll die soon.
And I shouldn’t type this — it might jinx things, but — Dean doesn’t talk at me as much as he used to. Sometimes lately he doesn’t start talking the moment he sees me, and “Hi” is enough, and he lets me pass. Sometimes.
Almost as reliably as mass shootings in America, young girls and women go missing and are never found, or they’re found in pieces. I have no grand theories about why that is; only the obvious, that humans and especially men are monsters. Judging from media coverage, and from the homemade missing-persons posters I sometimes see, every doomed one of these females seems to be white. Surely minority girls and women have at least an equal opportunity for kidnapping and whatever else, but the missing you hear about are always, always white.Megan Dunpher is missing. Age 14. She’s cute, which is probably what cost her life. The posters at the bus station startled me, not because a girl is missing, but because she’s not white. From the photocopied photo, I’d guess she’s Hispanic, or light black, or was.By American standards, this is progress.
Less pessimistically, there’s this — I’ve changed the girl’s name, above, because she’s been found, and found alive.Even the good news is tempered with bad, though. She’ll have to deal with whatever she’s been through, which you hope was only running away with her boyfriend, but most likely was something far worse.In addition to that, she gets a life sentence of lack of privacy. Wherever she attends school or college, whatever job she applies for, Googling her name will forever bring up a thousand media reports about when she was missing in 2023, with photos and quotes from her parents and teachers and friends and the cops.”Have you seen this girl?” for the rest of her life.
There are people, I’ve heard, who enjoy googling themselves and seeing their limited fame, but never have I ever understood that. I google Doug Holland once in a while, only for the reassurance of seeing again that the results lead everywhere but to me.8/14/2023
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