We All Need Jesus

Names have been changed to protect the identities of described persons.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he started, his hands shaking, “I was wondering if I could bother you for a minute.”

The women, sipping coffee from ceramic mugs, looked up at the man speaking to them, confused. He continued, “My name is Thomas, I was wondering if I could ask you for some change.”

I wasn’t listening to the women sitting across from me before this, but I had heard them discussing Africa and Christianity before Thomas approached them. One woman reached into her purse, searching for money to give the man. The other kindly told him, “I’m sorry, I don’t have any cash on me.”

“I just got out of jail.” he told them, and immediately the woman looking for cash to give them man froze. “Where are you from?” she asked.

“Louisville, ma’am.”
“Oh that’s nice, my husband is from there.”
“That’s very nice, ma’am, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Where are you staying?”
“Nowhere right now, miss, I really am sorry to bother you.”

Thomas was an older man, probably my height, with salt colored hair. His eyes were tired, and he looked physically worn…just like a lot of homeless men in this area, of which there were plenty.

“What’s your name?” the woman asked.
“Thomas, ma’am, my name’s Thomas.”
“I’m Christina, Thomas, it’s nice to meet you.”

By this point, she had pulled at least ten dollars in ones out of her purse, and was now looking for something else.

“My husband,” she started, “is the pastor of a church around here.”
“That’s great, ma’am, where at?”
“Just down the street!” she exclaimed, finally pulling out what she was looking for.

Christina handed Thomas cash and a business card.

“If you go to that address, my husband can help you with food and maybe a place to stay for a little while.”
“What about a job, ma’am, can he help with that?”
“I’m sure he could — he knows a lot of people around here.”
“Bless you, miss, thank you so much.”
“We all need Jesus, right Thomas?”
“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry, thank you.”

With that, Thomas was on his way. Christina and her friend, Sarah, watched him walk away. I was preparing myself for Thomas to come to me next, but instead he walked away. “Do you really think he’s homeless?” asked Sarah. The two of them were on opposite sides of the spectrum, something I discovered after Thomas had left. Sarah was a cynic, someone who believed the problems of the homeless were both their own fault and their own responsibility — the fortunate should not have to aide them. Christina, though wary, believed helping others was her mission in life — something she discovered on her previous trip to Africa.

“I don’t know, but Ben’s trying to help people around here. That’s why we made those cards.”
“He smelled funky.”
“He did smell a little weird, so I don’t know if what he said was true.”
“So why did you give him money?”

Christina shrugged, “Just doing good, I guess.”

The Reader

Unlike everyone else in the store, he’s sitting at the counter. Two binders, both red, spread out on either side of him, dozens of cluttered papers between them. He flips pages back and forth, eyeing over one sheet and returning to another. A ballpoint pen dances between his fingers. He’s in uniform, Air Force it appears, and he’s obviously studying for something. I can’t imagine he’d be looking over classified documents in a place as public as Starbucks, though from the amount of black on his papers he very well may be doing just that. 

The man is of some type of Asian descent, but he has no discernable foreign accent — if anything, he speaks with a heavy Brooklyn accent instead. I hear him probably three times while I’m there: Once to ask for his first cup of tea, once to ask for a Black Eye (dripped coffee with two shots of espresso, so it’s safe to say the man’ll be up for a few more hours), and a final time to say goodnight to the employees upon closing time. When the barista hands him his Black Eye, he pounds it back like a champion. The barista is impressed, something I gauge from the way her eyes open wide and her audible “Wow!”

His pen scribbles on several sheets of paper, sometimes dotting the same location while his eyes scan back and forth. His left knee bounces up and down like a sewing machine while he goes over this mass of information. Maybe he’s studying for a promotion, or maybe he’s just going over information that he’s taking home from work. 

He keeps to himself, sometimes moving papers away from other people if the store gets a little crowded. I can’t tell if that’s out of courtesy or out of privacy — perhaps it’s out of both. Perhaps it’s just one. My mind bounces; on one hand he could simply be studying for something, on the other hand…

On the other, he might be a super secret intelligence officer going over classified documents of a pending alien invasion. What if. That’s what I enjoy about people watching — it’s as much focusing on real details as it is about letting your mind wander. 

“I just want to go through Central Park and watch folks passing by. Spend the whole day watching people. I miss that.”

Well, Mr. President, at least you can still kind of do that via drones or satellites or NSA wiretapping. You’re not ~totally out of luck, but I feel your pain. Sort of.

One of the things I wish I had had the time to do when I was in New York recently was go to Central Park. I’ve walked up one of its sides, I’ve seen the inside of it, but I’ve never actually been inside of it. I can’t begin to imagine what kind of people watching possibilities are in that place, and I can’t wait to sit there and take notes someday.

I’ve gotten a fair amount of support for this blog since it began. While most of my time is spent at Starbucks or in class or in my own home, I’ve been able to watch a lot of people and gather a lot of great details and post a lot of great posts. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is as much an education as it is a hobby for me.

It’s gotten to the point where I can’t just go somewhere without thinking of a post. Obviously not every thought manifests as a post, but it’s hard for me to not go somewhere and write out an imaginary piece. Most people people watch when it’s convenient for them, they do it when they have nothing else to do — when they’re sitting in an airport terminal or waiting for the train or, you know, wherever — but for me it has literally become second nature, and I love that. I love actually noticing the details in things instead of passing them by, and I can’t imagine what it must be like to be so immensely busy that I lose out on time to simply exist; to simply sit and gather my thoughts and observe everything around me, to take it all in, you know?

That’s the kind of position Obama’s in. He’s busy running a country (although his methods of doing so and how well he’s doing are debatable) and attempting to manage a congress that’s tearing itself apart at the seams (again, how he’s handling that is debatable). It’s a hard job, being POTUS, and it shows in his hair color and in the wrinkles on his face. The man doesn’t have a lot of time to simply exist as a human being anymore, and I don’t ever want that to happen to me.

 

Ruining The Game

“How many of you watch football?”

My Public Speaking professor starts class off with that question. How many of you watch football? She’s an older woman, short and kind of stout — not dissimilar from a teapot — with greying hair and a slight lisp. She’s nervous, something she openly admits to being, something I think is odd for a professor that’s been teaching for almost 45 years.

“How many of you watch football?” she asks again.

The whole class, all 26 of us, look around at one another. None of us want to say anything on the first day — come on, lady, this is the first day of classes…time to look over the syllabus and get dismissed early, not actually discuss things. We don’t know each other like that.

“Okay, who here likes the Redskins?”

Something in the class snaps — this question triggers a response for some reason, and the audience begins either cheering or groaning. Hands raise immediately, as if to say “I fucking LOVE the Redskins!” and are followed almost as quickly by a booing crowd and statements like “Dallas all day!”

They’re all wrong, though, clearly the only actually good team is New England. I know that, why don’t they?

The class erupts into laughter over the now heated debate over who’s better, Redskins or Cowboys, and why. One man shouts “They’re America’s team!” while another shouts something about Romo being gay, as if such a thing mattered. Under my breath I say that clearly — clearly — the Patriots are better than either team combined. The girl behind me gives off a loud “Mmmhm, damn right” and I go in for the fist bump. She reciprocates.

“And what do you all think of the new safety regulations in the NFL?” prods the professor.

Now we’re all silent. You could drop a pin and you’d probably be able to hear it. Everyone looks around again, unsure of what to say. From the left corner I hear an utterly ridiculous statement, “It’s stupid, man, it’s ruining the game!”

The comment causes everyone to look at him. He continues, “They’ve been playing rough for their whole lives and now they’re telling ’em to stop and it ain’t right.”

The speaker is a vastly overweight white male with a shaved head and ears pierced by faux-diamond studs. An illegible tattoo crawls up his neck. He’s wearing a white t-shirt that, even for someone his size, is far too large and has clearly not been washed in a long, long time, and cargo shorts that are met almost immediately by white tube socks. His forehead is perspiring.

“So you don’t like it?” the professor asks.
“Nah, I hate it.”
“What about little league? The little kids?”
“What about ’em?”
“Should they be protected?”
“Of course.”
“Then why shouldn’t pros be protected?”
“I said it — they been playin’ rough they whole lives, and now they want to change it? It’s ruining the game.”
“How so?” someone else asks.

The man can’t answer. He just shakes his head and gives off a dismissive “Y’all are just gangin’ up on me ’cause I spoke my mind.”

The professor laughs, “No, no, not at all. We’re just talking — we’re speaking about an important issue — that’s what this class is about; being open and being able to speak publicly in a level-headed manner.”

He hangs his head and begins doodling in his notebook, seemingly defeated. The subject shifts to the professor and how she’s owned an RV for some odd nine years and has only accrued about 1,100 miles on it. Minutes later, the man raises his hand.

“Yes?”
“Redskins still suck.”

One Man, Many Pasts

I once worked at an assisted living facility — a place where old people go to die, essentially. I was paid under the table to prime and paint and peel wallpaper and rip up carpet, but it was a brief stint due to my commitments to school. In the two weeks I worked there, I earned maybe $250. Not bad for a high school student — God knows it put gas in my ’93 Nissan Pathfinder.

While working at the facility, I had the pleasure of interacting with the elderly. Many of them without families, either because they had been abandoned by them or because they simply outlived their kin, and they seemed to enjoy having someone my age around to talk to. During my time there I heard countless war stories. One man claimed to be a Navajo Code Talker, another claimed he was dropped into enemy territory during Vietnam, but most sat quietly while others spoke of their war histories, probably mulling over the things they had seen instead of choosing to relive that past through words.

Of all the men I met, however, one stuck out most. I’ve since forgotten his name, and he passed away during my last few days of work there, but his stories stuck out more than any others. When I started working at the home, the manager told me about this man. “He’s delirious, you know, he suffers from dementia but he’s a great man. Every day he tells a different life story — every day he’s someone or something new.”

He was right. On my first day of work, the man rolled up in his wheelchair and introduced himself as a pastor. While I primed the walls and primed them some more, he went on about his days as a missionary in Spain and France and Germany. He told me about various miracles he had witnessed and the things that God had told him in his sleep. He said to me one day, “God told me you’d be here — said you’d be here to help.”

The man was missing on my second day of work, out for testing at the hospital. He returned on my third day, this time to tell me about his life as a major league baseball player. “Back in the day,” he said, “I struck out the greats. I beat the Yankees and the Red Sox. Rodriguez ain’t got nothin’ on me, boy.”

On my fourth day, he told me stories about his job as a pilot during Vietnam. His best friend had been shot down, his cousin tortured by the Viet Cong, and he himself narrowly escaped crashing into a mountain. “Bastards thought they could tear down the good ol’ USA, son, but we taught ’em not.”

On my fifth day he claimed to be an oilman from Texas, and said he had struck black gold some thirty years ago under the hot desert sun. “My family took the money, though, said I was crazy and left me here. I ain’t seen ’em since.”

His stories changed like the seasons, and near the end of my employment — and the end of his life — they seemed to get stranger.

One day he claimed to be Earl Warren, judge of the famous Brown v. Board of Education case. The problem with this was that Earl Warren had died in 1974 and was white — whereas this man was black and for the time being alive. Another day he claimed to have stepped foot on the moon, proudly declaring that he was the first and only black man to do so. During his stay on Luna, he interacted with “space aliens that sounded an awful lot like Russians”.

On my last day of working at the home, he pulled me aside for a quiet, brief conversation.

“I’ve been a lot of things, son, and you’re the only person who listens to me.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mmhm, but let me tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“I ain’t crazy,” he started, “I ain’t never been any of those things, but I tell everyone I had been.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because it’s the funniest damn thing to see their faces when I tell ’em I was an astronaut.”

In his delusions, in his dementia, he had not lost his humor. I left at 2pm that day, and returned a few hours later when I saw an ambulance at the facility. Upon my asking who had passed this time, because it was a regular occurrence, I discovered my friend had died of a massive heart attack after telling the new nurse one of his stories.

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The Old Gamer

He sits alone in the corner of the shop with his Toshiba laptop. I’m sitting maybe eight feet in front of him, but he doesn’t notice my watching. His eyes, enlarged by his wireframe glasses, are affixed to his screen. From here I can hear rampant clicking from a separate, gold colored mouse.

He’s been here for hours, I presume, as he usually is on the days he comes in. I’ve seen him here before in the daytime, only to see him in the same spot when I return hours later.

League of Legends, World of Warcraft, DOTA 2 — God only knows what he’s playing, but it sucks up enough of the store’s internet to slow down everyone else’s. He doesn’t appear to care, though. He’s enveloped in his mystical world, and has probably transformed himself into whatever character he’s playing as. On occasion he’ll suck his teeth in disappointment, or grunt in excitement. He constantly looks back and forth, his eyes darting from one end of the screen to the other over and over again in unison with his clicks. He’s so into it he requires a sweat rag that sits next to him on a table that also holds his drinks and his food.

The drink he ordered is now gone, replaced by ice and Brisk pink lemonade. He hasn’t touched it since I arrived, and beads of perspiration drip slowly down the sides of his cup. A scone of some kind sits on a brown wrapper,  but there only appears to be one bite taken from it. I imagine he’s too deep into his game to care about eating.

He’s a nice man — I know this from previous, brief discussion with him. One night a couple of weeks ago as he left the shop, he stopped and asked me about my laptop.

“MacBook?”
“Yessir.”
“I bet it has a great battery, I wish I could afford one.”
“It does alright.”
“You play any games?”
“I’ve been known to fall into fits of playing Civilization V for hours on end, but other than that not really, no.”
“I love games, man, I wish they had this stuff when I was your age.”
“Come here often?”
“I come here for the free wi-fi, I stay because they’re nice to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Well hey, have a good night.”

After that he sat in his car for a few minutes, scrolling through his smartphone.

He has a scruffy, peppered goatee. He’s got a gut that fights against the pull of a red Under Armour shirt, and legs like tree trunks that sprout from the openings of black basketball shorts. He’s slightly overweight, but not unhealthy. When I say he’s old, he’s maybe in his mid-50s — and I presume he has some joint problems based on the fact that he walks with a cane.

But he’s young at heart — he’s genuinely nice to everyone around him. He offered to give up his seat tonight to a family that had just gotten in from New Jersey, which I assume is a big gesture from him given how entrenched he was in his MMORPG.

As nice as he is, he sits alone. I have to wonder where his family is, or if he even has any family. I have to wonder what drives him to play games that are meant for my demographic. Is he playing vicariously for a lost child? Or does he just really love virtually killing and looting people? Does his imagination run free like, perhaps, it couldn’t when he was young?

The possibilities, I imagine, are endless. But then so is his imagination, at least so it seems.

Hostile Conversation

Names have been changed to protect the identities of described persons.

Starbucks is, admittedly, a poor place to rekindle any romance. I love it as much as the next caffeine deprived person, but it isn’t the ideal place to re-ignite the flame that a 30-year marriage can apparently put out.

But here they are. Tim, sitting barrel chested with a silver crew cut, and Betty, a Martha Stewart-esque portrayal of a woman in her fashion but not her build — they sit awkwardly opposite one another at the same small table Mike and Jennifer sat at. They got here a few minutes after I did, ordered quickly and sat quietly. For the first ten minutes there was almost no conversation, the two of them just scrolled through their iPhones (she was up to date with an iPhone 5, he was falling behind with an older iPhone 3G). The two of them face the Subway across the street. He sits on the right side of the table, she on the left. Her phone beeps and she smiles, thus initiating the first of a few awkward conversations.

“What’s that?” he asks her.
“Nothing, just something a friend sent me.”
“Which friend? Natalie?”
“Nope, you don’t know…” she starts, seemingly distracted by her phone again, “…her.”

He nods his head and continues scrolling, and has yet to even take a sip from his drink. A venti-something-or-another, I assume it’s hot because it comes in a tall white cup as opposed to a clear one. Betty places her phone into her purse and grabs her…what is that, a caramel frappuccino? Let’s call it that. She sips her frappuccino and stares blankly towards the Ross across the road.

“I should go to Ross tomorrow — see if they have any luggage.”
“Why do you need luggage?” prods Tim.
“I told you, work is sending me to Indiana next month for a conference.”
He grunts, “I must have forgotten.”

Tim’s phone goes off. His ringtone, oddly, is Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'”, which is loud enough to cause myself and the group of what appear to be Muslim men to stare directly at him. Come on, Tim, don’t you know Starbucks doubles as a library?

“Hey man,” he starts, “No, no, I’m just sitting here.”

The phrase “just sitting here” causes his wife to look at him and sigh before taking another sip of her drink (Tim has still yet to even touch his). I feel like Betty wants something more than her frappuccino, though, perhaps wine. Perhaps a large fishbowl of wine, maybe a margarita. She seems desperate for contact, but more than just simple conversation…like she wants to laugh. She hasn’t even noticed that Tim’s removed himself from his seat to walk over to their car and talk, pacing back and forth, throwing his hands in front of him like he’s talking to someone who is actually in front of him. He returns about five minutes later with a reddened face.

“What’s wrong?” his wife asks.
“Huh? Oh, nothing, we just have to get rid of a few people.”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask.”

Tim finally puts his phone away and, at long last, takes a sip of his drink. He looks at it, puzzled, and puts it back down. It’s the only time he’ll touch it all night, and he leaves it on the table when they leave.

“What’d you do today?” Tim asks his wife.
“I was off today.”
“I know, but what’d you do?”
“I had another man over and had my way with him.” she jokes, but Tim just stares at her blankly.
“And I fucked my secretary. What’d you actually do?”
“I talked to Marcia [their daughter] and I went grocery shopping, Tim, I know you wanted salami so I got some.”

Betty appeared to be joking, but now I see why Tim was so persistent in finding out who made her laugh earlier. Maybe there was some infidelity in their marriage, but on whose side? Did Tim actually fuck his secretary? Their banter went on for another ten minutes, talking about different work related things (Betty works for a pharmaceutical company, Tim works for an aviation company), before finally leaving.

Betty and I lock eye contact while she struts behind Tim, and I swear I saw the slyest smirk form on her face.

‘Round They Go

A mother and a father begin their day by jogging around the neighborhood with a stroller that contains their infant. It’s early in the morning and already the swampy heat is drowning out any possibility of a cool breeze.

The two of them are probably in their early forties, late thirties perhaps.

He’s tall, 6′-even at least, with a head full of grey that seems to be fighting a losing battle against its own hairline. He wears black frame glasses — not thick ones though, they’re sleek and stylish. His feet run their pace in white and blue running shoes and low cut white socks. Tan legs that mismatch his paper white arms are themselves covered in navy blue basketball shorts.

She’s shorter than him by a longshot, she jogs along pushing the stroller in front of her. Her hair, long and dark, is held up in a ponytail and capped off by a purple visor. She is neither morbidly pale nor overly tan, rather a fair medium on the spectrum. She’s wearing a grey sleeveless shirt, black leggings, and hot pink Nike running shoes. She wears an armband containing her iPhone, which has sprouted two long white wires that lead up to her ears.

He runs ahead of her with a short stride, his hands curl into fists and his arms bounce up and down as he goes. He struggles to maintain a steady pace while his partner flows. She’s fluid in her stride; arms extended in front of her, pushing the stroller along, her ponytail bobbing up and down, left to right. I think they’re running to get back into shape — moreover, I think she’s running to get back into shape and he’s running with her. He’s supportive, though if anyone in this relationship needs exercise it’s him.

But if we’re talking about all parties involved, perhaps it is myself that needs the exercise…I could definitely use some as well.

The run laps around the block. Two times, three times, four — I think I end up counting at least six before they disappear. On their final lap he seems to struggle even more. His right hand clutches the left side of his abdomen, so I assume he’s cramping up. Even from my location, I can see beads of sweat drip from his forehead. He breaks, taking a moment to gather his breath and clear off his lenses with his t-shirt. His pale face turned red from utter exhaustion.

His wife jogs by, bending down by the stroller to point and wave at her husband. She continues on while he gets relief, but she turns her head back to say something and I see him laugh. In my head I play off a quip she makes about her giving birth and still being able to outrun him.

He regains his balance, standing back up and starting a slow, sloppy jog. That’s the last I see of the pair.

The Regulars

“No foam havin’ people.” says the blonde barista. The two people in line — married, she’s white with pink hair and he’s black with a pointed beard — have just returned from Chesapeake, getting to the store thirty minutes before it closes. Like myself, they’re regulars here…but more regular than myself I presume, especially with the way they carry on conversation with the two people working tonight.

They’re both loaded with tattoos up and down their arms. Two particular ones stand out most on him; a hand of cards with unreadable cursive text overhead, and a flaming skull that appears to be staring right at me. On her left calf there appears to be a woman in a cape holding a gun, above which its a woman in daisy dukes and cowboy boots.

The two of them know the employees well, going back and forth with stories of their children and significant others and friends — someone named Katy (Katey? Katie?) is going to Africa sometime soon for a study abroad program. Laughter, and lots of it, erupt from both sides of the counter. Among the topics discussed are people being shot at, a guy masturbating outside of the store, and what kinds of coffee the man likes.

Oh yeah, that’s happened more than once. A homeless guy also peed on one of their windows in broad daylight.

In his hand is a large iced white mocha, something he’s never had before. He’s taken aback by the drink, unsure of whether or not he likes it. Between now and the time I leave, he’s taken maybe a few sips of the drink so I guess he doesn’t like it. His loss, I love white mocha.

Now they’re back to discussing foam in coffee. Apparently the woman was recently at a Barnes & Noble “Starbucks” (they don’t take gift cards, so they aren’t a real Starbucks) and asked for her drink with no foam, only to be served a drink with extra foam. “That barista was kind of a bitch,” she starts, “which is why I should have just come here!”

Oh, man, now they’re talking about a restaurant I used to work at. Apparently one of the employees was there last Sunday twerking, though she vehemently denies doing such a thing. “I had a few drinks!” she says, which meets laughter from all parties. They discuss making plans to go out as a group, bouncing different locations back and forth. “This place has a great Southwest burger!” clashes against “The appetizers here are perfect!”, but they all agree that they should get together.

But it’s five minutes from closing time, and I have to start making my way west for the night.