As people, we occasionally we bear witness to some magnificent event that happens but once in a lifetime. Halley’s Comet, the Aurora Borealis, or Pam Anderson’s first sex tape. Sometimes these things are glorious, mystifying, or just too effed up to that they make you say “Wait, did that just happen?”
What I experienced last week was all three. Here is my story…
Every day during lunch, I take a little stroll around the park area near my office. During these walks, I’m treated to a veritable rogues gallery of citizens: Young professionals enjoying a bite to eat outside, students catching a smoke between class, a handsome young stranger (Oops, that’s just my reflection! I’m so silly.)
My walk nears its end as I make my way out of the park and back to the office building – a convergence of four streets that serve as a conduit to the rest of the city. This is where the action happens. A lot of traffic, both of the rubber and leather variety. (By leather, I mean shoes, not an S&M enthusiast parade.)
In other words, there are a lot of people here. And when you have a lot of people in one area, in the middle of the day, that can only mean one thing: Unemployed jukes with nothing better to do with their time than hang out. And when I say “unemployed,” I don’t mean 30-year-old account executives who were laid off. I mean people who are barely qualified to walk and chew gum at the same time. You dig?
So there are a lot of jukes hanging ’round at noon on a weekday, and as I turn the corner of the home stretch of my daily jaunt, my eyes lock onto one at about 20 yards. For some reason, this juke intrigues me. I’m a people watcher by nature, so I just watched this guy. Maybe it was his bandanna that held his ratty hair back just so, maybe it was the torn denim jacket that appears to have several blood stains (none of them his), or maybe it was the black tracksuit trousers that were tucked into his combat boots – as if to tell the world “Hey, I still use a tape deck – what of it?” Whatever the case may be, this guy reeked of something. This must be what Spiderman feels like when he senses trouble afoot, or when he gets a boner. (Come on, you’re telling me that Peter Parker’s Spidey-senses don’t go off when he is about to get a piece? HA! I said “go off!” That wasn’t even on purpose.)
Anyhow, I knew this guy wasn’t going to let me down. At 15 yards, he slows his pace as he spots something on the pavement. Yes, yes. 10 yards, he bends at the waist and picks something up. Okay…what is it? The cap to a magic marker, a rubber band? 5 yards, he stands upright, the treasure in his hand. You fool, what is it? 3 yards, he opens his hand to reveal…a cigarette. WHAT? A previously lit, used and stepped on. THAT’S GROSS! I don’t mean that it was lit for five seconds and tossed because the smoker couldn’t take it on the bus, I mean that this thing was damn near smoked all the way. All that remained was the filter. And he spotted it from 40 feet, like a nervous eagle who had the shakes.
And it’s not so bad that he picked it up (Wait, yes it is), it’s that he then examined it, smelled it, and put it in his wallet. In front of a dozen other people who were waiting for the bus or just walking by. In the middle of the day. Obviously, he was holding onto it so he can smoke it later, unless this cat just so happened to be some kind of archivist who specializes in half-smoked cigarettes, old lip gloss and used condoms.
But really, well done, sir. Well done.
It’s gross enough that he picked up a used cigarette, but it was lodged in a pavement crack. A crack, mind you, that was probably filled with urine at some point. And feces. And probably vomit. And DEFINITELY semen. These pavements are such filth traps that even the rats avoid them. THE RATS!
Which brings me to my point: Where did society fail this man? This isn’t as simple as “he wasn’t loved enough as a child,” either. This can only be the end result of some aggressive, abusive, mind-effing as a child. We’re talking Menendez brothers meets Joan Crawford meets the guy who jizzed on Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs. Something went very, very wrong with this guy at some point in his life.
And as Thoreau said: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Maybe this man was a little too quiet. A little too desperate. Maybe no one heard his cries for help or his pangs of hunger. Like so many of us, he was left in the cold to freeze, alone and naked like a penguin egg without its mother to protect it. And when life finally called to grant him a reprieve from the torment he had suffered, perhaps he chose not to answer it. For a life unearned is a life not worth having. I think that’s something we can all appreciate.
But maybe this guy was just gross, but hey, free cigarettes.
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