11/24/06

Thoughts \ Developed Thoughts \ Rants \ Raves \ Writing

09/04/2004 12:45 -0500 GMT

A Man, A Mistake?

I was feeling all right. I got a lot of work done on the embryology of the heart last night, and I slept a bit long. Maggie was cleaning the house, and got a few phone calls from Zambian friends, which lifted her spirits. I packed and went, taking with me some Alabina CDs. She sings in a group that makes a unique, lovely mix of Arabic, French and Spanish music. I got a high off of hearing her voice as I drove toward campus.

I stopped at the park to read a little more before locking myself in the Volker tower. I was reading about how the aortic and pulmonary valves form, when I heard a man approaching from my right. It was a white man, and I felt more at ease, in an unfortunate racist instant. I did my best to concentrate on the heart as the man approached.

When he neared twenty feet away, I heard his high-pitched, squeaky voice.

"Hey man, you know where the bathroom is around here?"

"No I don't," I said.

He looked distressed. He was maybe in his fifties, with long grey and white streaky hair, thin and mussed, falling around his face and to the crest of his shoulders. The smell that often comes with living on the street did not come from him. He hiked up his well-worn blue jeans, and sat down to my left. I wondered whether he was homeless or just wandering away from an uninteresting baseball game.

"Maybe there's one...you know where the closest one is? See that BP over there?" I asked as I pointed.

He followed my gaze, and mumbled something about being too old. "Man I gotta go to the bathroom," he squeaked again. "You know where the bathroom is around here?" he asked again. His voice tended to reach up at the end of a sentence, as if reaching on a kitchen shelf for something just a little too high. All his tone seemed to be as if we were in a building, not the great outdoors, and the bathroom should be just around the corner. I guess we were in his room, his great room.

"I don't know if there might be one up there by the baseball field," I offered.

He rose, hiking up his jeans again, and looked that way, then turned and walked on in the original direction he was going. He was urgent about it. I noticed a quarter-sized hole in his jeans, over his left buttock. He didn't have any underwear on. He stopped at one point, and turned as if to explore the option of the baseball field, then seemed to decide against it.

I went back to my studying for the moment, but I wasn't comfortable any more. I thought this guy was going to need some toilet paper, and I wondered if I had some in my car. Usually I have a roll in my car to blow my nose. I wrapped up the idea of ventral and dorsal swellings, stacked my papers, picked up my ice cold coke, and walked toward my car. The squeaky-voiced man with the urgent problem was standing over a green steel trash barrel, digging into a paper sack. I thought he might be looking for food, but then again he was more likely looking for a few sheets with which to clean. I stashed my papers and drink in the car, and saw that the man had dropped his trousers by the trash can, revealing a large belly, and the rest of his torso, down to his knees. Cars passed on Greensprings. I leaned into my car from the driver's side, and found a wad of clean napkins from Taco Bell - the brown recycled paper-looking kind.

Hopping into the car, I drove quickly toward the man, who had now hiked his trousers back up, and was walking generally away.

I pulled the car near, folded napkins in hand "Come on, man. I'll give you a ride."

"You'll give me a ride?" Gratitude and a little disbelief were the tones I heard in that squeaky, nasal voice.

"Yeah, man. Come on." I cleared the front seat of CDs and the lecture I had been studying. I pulled a bottle of water off the seat and put it behind the passenger side. I saw brown streaks on the back of the man's jeans, and I thought to lay napkins on the seat of the car, but I didn't.

"Come on, man. I'll get you to a bathroom."

"Kin you take me to north Birmingham? You can't take me to north Birmingham, Man?" Each time one of the squeaky man's sentences ended, that same high-pitched reaching sound left a lasting impression.

"No I can't do that," I said, shaking my head and turning the car.

"Man I shit," the man whined, and I could smell it, ripe and clear. I breathed through my mouth.

"Take me to that liquor store?" he half-asked.

"Which one?" I replied, intending to get to the Chevron where there was a public restroom.

"Up here on the right.  Man, you look like Jimmy Connors."

"Do I?"

"Yeah. He was a mean motherfucker. You look just like him."

At some point I handed the man the napkins.

"I love you man. I been on the streets fifteen years. I shit myself. I'm in bad shape, man."

"It's a hard time. I've been there man," I said, thinking about needing a bathroom and not having one immediately at hand.

I pulled into the front of the liquor store, but the man didn't get out.

"Can you buy me a beer?"

"No man, I don't have any money."

"Take me up to that Chevron there. I can get a beer there. I don't drink liquor."

"You don't?"

"No man. But I do drink vodka."

"That's liquor," I said quietly, reflexively.

"I'm an alky-holic. You heard of that? Alky-holic?" I was surprised by his candor, and without thinking offered honesty in return.

"Yeah I have. My dad's an alcoholic. It's a hard time."

"He have a heart bypass?"

"No, he sort of hit bottom, and got a place to stay, a sort of twelve step place, and he's been sober about 2 years now. He's ok now."

"I love you man. You sure look like Jimmy Connors."

"I wish I could play tennis like him."

"He made a million dollars. Pull me over there. I can bum over there."

I pulled past the glass entrance of the Chevron, and the man got out. Streaks of fresh, yellow-brown feces remained in the passenger seat.

"Hey man, give me some of those napkins," I called after him. He stepped back.

"You can have all of them," he said, and handed them back to me. The man grabbed a milk crate from the corner of the gas station, and walked next to the ice machine. He placed the box, and sat on it as I U-turned away. I heard his squeaky voice call out to a customer entering into the Chevron as I drove away.

The smell of shit was not strong, but not altogether gone either. I stopped at the gym, parking in front, leaving my hazard lights on. I went in, and asked to borrow some cleaning solution. Directed to an exercise room, I went and retrieved a bottle, went to the car, cleaned the seat thoroughly, and returned the bottle.

I was relieved by the familiar smell of that cleaning solution as I started up the car and drove, with the windows down, to reenter the privileged world of learning medicine in Volker Hall.

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That's a true and truly bizarre vignette that happened today. Occasionally during lapses in my study, it crossed my mind again, and I thought What a strange thing. Did that happen? Why did I help that guy? What was I thinking to let a guy into my car that shat himself freshly a moment earlier? On the other hand, the ethics...the morals...the judeo-christian-islamic-budhhist-jain impetus to serve one's fellow man...