Sometimes when I'm driving by myself I have to resist the urge to run over pedestrians in the crosswalk. I'll see them 60, 80, 100 yards down the road, but they won't see me...generally oblivious to my right foot getting heavier and heavier as I approach. They walk blissfully unaware, snug in the oh-so-false sense of security provided by the solid white lines painted on the road. These smug little street-walking bitches amble to and fro like they're starting quarterbacks and I'm some second-team linebacker in a 9-on-7 non-contact drill. Well guess what buddy, my Explorer isn't a second string linebacker, this ain't no fucking non-con drill, and if one of us is going to get cut, it's gonna be you. Fucker.
I can't say for certain from whence this urge comes. I can only say that it does, in fact, come. Maybe it's spending the last 8 years weaving through the dirt-surfers and street merchants that constitute Berkeley city traffic. Maybe it's the 4-foot Qin TerraCotta warrior look-alikes in Chinatown with complete disregard for traffic lights and stop signs who creep unfathomably slow into the intersection as I'M BARRELING DOWN A HILL IN A CAR WITH LESS THAN QUALITY BRAKES AND AN 800 lbs PAYLOAD OF DRUNKEN FRIENDS IN THE BACK!!!! Or maybe, it's just that I hate bipedal locomotion.
I had a roast beef sandwich for lunch today. It was lovingly prepared by a sweaty, 30 yr old Afghan who used the sliding glass of the display case to wipe off his mayonnaise-covered hands. When he turned his back to me while slicing off a disturbing amount of swiss cheese from the block he had just removed from its resting place amidst a small pool of roast beef blood on the top shelf of the display case, I noticed that the sweat had completely soaked through the back of his white t-shirt--making it translucent enough to see the thicket of back hair that would insulate him for the coming winter months like a free-range bison.
As he stood there lopping off a kilo of slices, I noticed that he kept tugging at his shirt collar and rubbing his neck. I could tell he was cursing to himself in Pashto because the number of phlegm-producing words increased dramatically...to the point where I left wondering how much of that was really mayonnaise. It dawned on me though, why this guy was always so pissed off.
When he was tugging at his shirt collar I saw the glimmer of a gold rope chain around his neck. He wasn't tugging at his collar after all. He was tugging at the back hair that was repeatedly getting caught in the chain. Mmmm mmmm mmmm, lunchtime! I'd be pissed all the time too if my PELT kept getting torn from by my flea market jewelry. So I left.
As I walked up Drumm St back to my office, my lunchtime train of thought was disrupted by a woman up ahead scream out "OH DEAR GOD!" I looked up with a start hoping a panhandling "disabled veteran" had tipped over in his wheelchair or something, when out of the corner of my eye I saw something much much better.
There, across the street, next to the planters on the north side of the Embarcadero Hyatt was a filthy stumbling homeless man. He was leaning precariously against one of the benches and one of the large planters and was mumbling incoherently to himself. Once he got his feet under him, he untied the rope keeping his pants up, dropped his pants around his ankles, semi-squatted, and started shitting all over the ground. Now I'm not sure if shit always looks more voluminous and viscous when it is streaming from the ass of a homeless man in the middle of a financial district, but based purely on puddle-size and elapsed time it looked like this man was in the final stages of bleeding out from the Ebola virus.
I couldn't take my eyes off this guy and neither could a handful of other people. I may have been the only one with a huge grin on my face, but I was certainly not the only one who was astonished by the sheer quantity of human fecal waste that had pooled around this homeless man's feet like the liquid Terminator after they blew him up in the steel smelting factory. He stood there for a few beats after the last drops had drained from his anus as if to catch his breath or shake out the cobwebs. When he was satisfied that he had his wits about him again, he decided against wiping or rubbing his ass along the ground like a Springer Spaniel. He simply pulled up his pants, tied off the rope belt, and stumbled on his way.
Everyone around was speechless. Part of me wanted to applaud this brazen-yet-virtuoso rectal symphony. Instead, I did the only thing I really could do and I threw away my sandwich.
Posted by nils at 9:38 PM