We kicked the drifter out today. It felt wrong. I couldn’t look him square in the face for too long. He couldn’t look my way either. It’s not in my nature to turn away someone with nowhere to go, especially when I’ve got a warm dry anywhere to put him. And I do. But the cogs had been put in motion beyond my control.
The old wisdom still holds true about fish and strange, homeless fugatives. This vagrant youth’s sushi had travelled far past green, into slimy yellow, then dusty speckled, and finally a funky, fuzzy black. But I can’t lie, I had to admire him in some sense. Of course just earlier this day my clean-cut, no-smoking, no-nonsense, volunteer house-builder mountain climbing buddy and I were taking a stroll down a local bit of the AT, and he confessed to me his secret cynicism: that he saw through this drifting criminal.
Yes, the drifter is a criminal. There is a standing warrant out for his arrest. I know that now. Yes, he’s a bit of a waster. Yes, he has apparently been AWOL more than once. Yes, he’s done so many drugs he dislodged his gall bladder. No, he hasn’t showered in a while. But I still have to admire some part of his spirit, albeit it’s X flashbacks and momentary blankouts.
Anyway my buddy the saint, this D&D free American Boy golden child doctor-surgeon-ecocruisader, finally let his venear slip momentarily in my presence. Now I know the kid has a dark heart somewhere. He lived in my haÜs after all; he can’t be all vanilla. But he rarely lets this evil twin out to cut his teeth a-new, so he always seems out of character like a rusty cymbal monkey.
This homeless drifter caught a loose thread back there, somewhere below the fez on the left side past the nose, right there next to the spiders. In that dark corner. Where it looks like there should be a closet, but there isn’t. The fact that the vagabond manchild is jobless, wanted, fleeing the country, not paying to be where he is, freeloading/begging for food and cigs, and completely devoid of identification weighs more heavily for the saint. The fact that he’s 27 and followed a girl he met on the beach to her college weighs more heavily. I’m sure the fact that he drank the saint’s beer weighs heavily too. But for once, I heard this ideal of American civility, evenhandedness, and restraint full-force judge another man.
And I, of course, was all too willing to accept his argument with little fight. The guy is sleeping in the park when he isn’t sleeping on a sofa in my haÜs. And he just lost the job he just got. Oh, and that girl he met on the beach, he lost her too. But he’s living another American ideal. He wants to walk from Florida to California. Of course it’s a drugged-up dysfunctional hippie dream, but he’ll probably catch a few hitches and give up somewhere in New Mexico, get his dad to buy him a plane ticket or something.
See, he’s living a life tied to nothing. He isn’t tied to a house, or a job, or his family necessarily, or friends (if he makes any), or money. It’s a free life. He’s living however he can, wherever he can. Following his Karma and whatever. It’s an ideal, and I have to respect his courage to live the way he does. I certainly would not be pleased sleeping on cement at night with a wandering gall bladder. His life obviously isn’t charmed, and nothing in his life comes easy, but he manages what he has to live however he can make possible. Plenty of people would see a lot of potential good in that, and I happen to be one of them. Finding inventive ways to live outside the norm is a respectable past-time, as far as I’m concerned. In my opinion, his flaw is in the way he has gone about defining the perameters of his lifestyle.
For example, the drifter’s idol is Hunter S. Thompson. He’d apparently been an idol since high school. This kid doesn’t know how to pick ‘em, that’s for sure. Don’t get me wrong, the man was good at what he did. He was a revolutionary. He also managed to get away with a whole helluva lot and he was son of a bitch genius motherfucker. But he’s not someone you model your life after, necessarily. So somehow, substance and ideal are not properly matched. After all, it’s hard to live a free life if 75% of your back in metal. That’s a lot of medical loans.
I digress. I had to kick the homeless druggy fugitive out of my haÜs this morning. He was just as sniveling and dismissive as was expected. He spent less time in the haÜs this afternoon. Hopefully, he’ll find somewhere to be. I told him they were hiring at McDonald’s, and he laughed. I said ‘hey, their money’s green too.’ That didn’t get much over a chortle.
I suppose when it comes right down to it, I do need some money. Obviously there are people who can survive with little to no money, as our drifter friend has demonstrated. Obviously there are also people who can survive with distinctly less brain. Survive, not necessarily thrive. I don’t want to jeopardize my morals, but I also can’t afford to be quite as choosey as our homeless friend (points stage right) with where I’ll accept money from. See, our homeless buddy actually comes from money. Surprise surprise, he doesn’t have loans. Makes for easy travel.
Maybe we’d all love to move to Panama with our fugitive fathers and run a restaurant on the pacific coastline. Might be a sweet deal. But we’ve all got issues. After all, he’s living an unpredictable life of intruige and risk, while attempting to flee the country by foot, penniless and unemployable, and too bent all the time to see straight (no actually, he can’t see straight lines). Not all bad. It’s your trip to live, man.
Just not in my fucking livingroom.
Still doesn’t feel right.
