Saturday, July 7, 2012

"Old Home Week..................................Too, Too, Too, DAMN HOT!............."DD

Good Evening;

Well....It's too freakin' hot, that's all there is to it!
I have not "slept" in 4 nights, other than passing out from exhaustion an being woken up from the heat. Last night after leaving the back of the library about 2:15 am. and spending 90 minutes in the A/C at the gas station I wandered around Pikesville looking for a place to lay down. I crashed out in front of the library entrance about 5:50 am. only to be woken up by the blazing sun and near 90 degree temperatures shortly after 7:00 am.

I then got up and stumbled to the benches I should have started on, in the shade of the building and trees facing Reisterstown Rd., where I grabbed another 90 minutes 'sleep'.
I stayed in the library until 4:00 pm then caught the buses here to the coffee shop.

I was gifted with a couple sandwiches and a few bagels last night as I was leaving here, which turned out to be a good thing. As I was riding the Light Rail to State Center to get the Metro subway I ran into a semi-homeless woman who was a bit frantic and agitated asking me for the time. It was 9:30 pm. and she kept asking if I thought she would make it to McCullough St. by 10:00 pm., as she ha to be inside her transitional housing by then.

She was almost crying and shaking with emotion as she told me how she was 7 months pregnant, (by sight, at least!!), and that she had just been chased off of the corner of Falls Rd. & Northern Pkwy. where she had been panhandling, trying to get a few bucks to get something to eat and buy some supplements her doctor wanted her to drink. Her name is Jenny and her boyfriend had slapped her around, taken her last dollar, an she thinks also her Independence card. She told me about being the only white girl in the house and  being picked on or singled out for the nastiest chores, condition non-withstanding.

I had told her I was also homeless earlier, so it was not a scam story, she knew I was broke. I had also had the same experience in a minority 'reversal' situation, so I empathized with her there, an with the whole 'not knowing' what to do or where to go on a weekend when shit hits the fan. I gave her the sandwiches and bagels except for one bagel for myself, and she burst into tears, and asked "Why?". I told her "Because it's the right thing to do" and on an impulse reached out and touched her cheek. She turned her head trapping my hand between her cheek and shoulder and reached out and pulled me into an embrace with her other arm.

After a couple heartbeats too many I managed to extricate my self from (what was rather physically obvious to both of us) a potentially dangerous and complicated situation in the making by reminding her about the curfew she was just going to make if she disentangled her self....NOW. She kissed me hard then thanked me again, and trotted of at top pregnancy speed, as I struggled to put THAT particular demon back in his box.

When I finally got back to Pikesville, in the course of my wanderings last night and today, I found 5 more homeless people in and around the library and the benches, 4 I knew or knew of, an 1 unfamiliar person. On the bus from the subway I saw the guy I've mentioned who calls himself Mike, who I saw a couple months ago for the first time in over a year, and not again since. Turns out he now has almost 2 years clean in AA. It took looking at 20 years in prison for him to 'wake up', after waking up in a synagogue staring into the muzzle, having broken in to sleep off a drunk. Last night I saw Barry, ('Rainman'), and the black dude with the rolling suitcase who is always angry, and the nameless guy was the other. The 'Crack Daddy Caddy' I saw heading into the liquor store today as I rode past on the bus.

Today was also proof that sometimes 'what goes around comes around'. Twice today a woman has asked me if she could give me a couple dollars, once in the library as I was counting out my bus fare in coins, and again here at the coffee shop after she read my piece in the City Paper. Both were non solicited, an out of the blue.
So I now have bus fare for 2 more days.

Gotta run...................closing time,

Later.........................Dave

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