"You want to know who you are? Huh? You want to know whose son you are? You don't, I do, everybody does... You're the son of a thousand fathers, all bastards like you."
--The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The date, I can't remember specifically. It was a year or so ago: I was seated at the wooden tables beside the schoolside Vons' Starbucks, waiting for the time to crawl by faster for reason I can't remember. It was then that a dark, elderly, asian man shuffled by in house slippers to the gift card section beside me that then used to be there, but now is not.
He wore no glasses, I discovered after a few moments' worth of curious peering. The hand that gripped the cane holding the rest of his body upright shook slightly each time he leaned forward to reach for a gift card that never quite seemed to be the right one. His feet never rose more than a quarter of a centimeter from the ground each time he walked, and his thin hair stuck out from beneath a neon-pink hat that probably must have been worth something to him at the time and place where he had attained it.
I watched him for a few minutes, my interest in this seemingly uninteresting person growing as the number of cards that were picked up only to be set back down rose. Realizing at last that the one he wanted was not among those displayed, he shifted the whole of his body 90 degrees to the right, chin and arm raised slightly up so as to signal an employee for assistance.
His mouth opened without word, but rather, a barely audible squeak-grunt, so the first worker to pass him walked by without noticing that his attention was required on something elsewhere than the cardboard box he carried by the arm.
The second worker noticed him, but instead of stopping, mouthed a word that began with the letter "o," and extended his forefinger into the air to indicate a silent "one second, I'll be right with you". He never came back after that second. Or minute. Few minutes.
The third worker, this time, stopped, and asked him if he needed help. The old man replied in a voice that reminded me of fountain pens scratching ink on textured paper, "Membership cards?"
The man had come to Vons seeking out a Vons card, and instead, mistakenly went to the gift cards.
The worker chuckled, said that he would go get someone that could help him, and left.
I checked my cell phone clock every minute for ten minutes; the help that was promised never arrived.
My heart filled with sadness for the old man.
And so the small asian man, I remember, put one hand atop the other on his cane and hunched over with his head tilted to the left, waiting for someone to stop by and assist him. I watched him for a good while, pity aching my insides, when at last the time had come for me to stand and leave. I did, but not before casting a final glance by the door at the man whose head was still tilted to the left, waiting for help that I still don't know today had come or not come.
When I got home that evening, I called my boyfriend (then, my ex-boyfriend now). I felt this need to tell him about the odd old man I had come across earlier that day, so I did. I told him, "that man needed help, but no one came to give it to him."
and I remember the words Tim told me that, to this day, continue to bother me greatly:
"So, why didn't you?"
I saw a funny tree this evening.
Its thin trunk was curved, as if the weight of the leaves and branches at its head forced it to grow bending downwards.
The shape of the tree reminded me of the man and his old, curved back.
Every now and then, you'll make a new acquaintance that, for the sake of conversation, will ask you what your hobbies are.
What a breed of sick bastards we are.
Continuing to find pleasure in love does naught but coax our inner masochist slowly out of the box it was born suppressed within,
In first period Chemistry, my teacher's daily dose of wisdom went something along the lines of
"Learn not to fear death, and you also shall learn not to fear life."
..What a load of crock.
Death is like Life's final guest at the end of a long celebration, someone or something that's pre-welcomed into our lives whether we choose for it to be so or not.
I've already accepted that, and I'm still terrified of living.
I haven't lived long enough to find something worth truly living for.
I wonder if most people don't, but pretend that they do.
Adults have a habit of doing that.
The distant voice that hollered at my family and I as we stepped out of the car last evening belonged to a man who had made the abandoned area in front of a former CVS building, once reserved for shopping carts, his home.
My parents' ears aren't quite what they used to be (if at any point in their lives they were any better than they are now), so what they heard at first was a sound that greatly resembled a dog's barking. They turned to look at one another, at him, then back to each other and my dad mouthed, "Maybe he has a dog behind the wall."
The man, however, had no dog. In fact, the sound that he was making wasn't some incomprehensible nonsense, but actually the word "fuck": the 'eff' being nearly silent and the 'uh' being most discernable.
It didn't make sense to them that the "barking" stopped when they turned to look at him, and resumed only when they proceeded to walk forward.
Perhaps they thought it was a smart dog. One that could see through walls.
After multiple cups of coffee at one of the thousands of Starbucks locations in Southern California, our goodbyes with the typical Fermin/Tongson Friday group were said at the door and the Mateums headed back to the car, the one furthest from all the others and in the middle of the nearly deserted parking lot.
My parents' pace quickened as they realized that the barking had resumed as soon as they were noticed crossing beneath the light of the lot lampost, and that along with the now more coherently human snarls and yapping, the man behind the wall (that had been pissing in a nearby potted plant as the three families were parting ways) had begun to toss in a few mumbled
"..fucking fuckers.. pissing cunts, fucking pricks.. fuck you, fuck YOU" between each "bark."
As soon as we were within the safety of our locked doors and our risen windows, we remained in silence listening to him continue to deliriously rage on, though it was unknown whether his jabber was meant for us or for his own ears to hear.
"He's crazy," my mom proclaimed.
