The High Priest of Trash
By Gigi Benson for the Independent Weekly
April 29, 1981
The High Priest of Trash was standing atop his perch on a concrete bench in front of SJSU's Sweeney Hall, watching the hurried throngs of students cross the street at Seventh and San Carlos, when a mangy stray dog started begging him for food.
"You turkey!" the short, ponytailed street vendor in rainbow suspenders shouted at the sad-eyed mutt. "I'm not givin' you any more food- ya' already got me for a donut, and didn't even pay me the 30 cents."
The High Priest of Trash (otherwise known as Giovanni Clifton Panciera) started to laugh, even though the dog was his only audience. Panciera's top optimism has enabled him to see only the donuts in life, and at least laugh at, if not ignore, the holes.
Panciera's life, however, has not been all sweet. At 38, he considers himself a "failure." While most men his age sit behind desks and conduct business transactions, Panciera stands beneath the yellow umbrella of his vending cart and sells twinkies.
When asked about his past, he hids his sparkling brown eyes behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and suddenly the humor wans and his mood becomes intensly reflective. Panciera lived without a family until he was 13, and he was tossed between orphanages and homes in the Washington D.C./Northern Virginia area. He claimed that his Dad "bought" him from his uncaring natural mother.
"I was 4-foot-9 and weighted 69 pounds when Dad asked what he could give her for that kid. She told him $75 and 'get that friggin' kid outta here," he said. His stepmother taught him to read- at 13, he did not know the alphabet and could not count to 10.
"I didn't graduate from high school until I was 20," he added, "but I'm not ashamed of that."
After high school, Panciera hitchhiked around the country before returning to Washington to work at several odd jobs. He said he was a roadie for a rock band, sold used cars, worked as a bouncer, ran an art gallery, and emptied trash cans. He even had a brief taste of the fast life when he directed the Cherry Blossom Ball for the Vice President and worked as display manager for an exclusive department store.
As Panciera talked, a girl buying a granola bar interrupted the conversation to admire his rings. They adorn every finger, with a gaudy, gem-encrusted glitter and are a reminder of those more affluent days back in D.C.
"I designed this one myslef," Panciera told the girl as she fondled the ornate butterfly on his pinky. "It's solid gold."
Like the butterflies on his finger and around his neck, Panciera is a free spirit who couldn't stand the restraints of a 9-to-5 job. He left the mannequins, displays, and steady salary of the department store behind to work as a maintenance man at the posh Ravenwood Towers apartment complex in Falls Church, Virginia.
"I copped out," Panciera said. "Bein' a trash man was a lot easier. I didn't have to prove nothin' to nobody, and there was no responsibility." He wore tennis shoes with purple laces and did Groucho Marx impersonations on the job.
Panciera was more than an average garbage collector. "This congressman in the building put me on T.V., and all of the sudden everybody was calling me the 'High Priest of Trash' and coming to me with all their problems," he said.
A magnetic quality in Panciera's down-to-earth humor and advice draws students and professors alike to his vending cart for girlwatching, gossip, and good-natured small talk between classes. In a way, these people are the family he never had.
A girl teasingly touched Panciera's knee as she paid for an apple. "Hey, you owe me 40 cents," he joked, but the girl insisted that she already paid.
"No," Panciera said, laughing to himself. "That's for touching my knee."
"What do you have for 25 cents," asked another young blonde coed.
"Well, there's me," Panciera retorted, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable giggles and slapping his knee.
His ever-roving eye spotted a girl with glistening, hip-length hair riding a bicycle down San Carlos Street.
"Would you look at that," he said. "She looks like Lady Godiva without the horse." But his mood shifted to a more somber tone, and he remembered the love that led him to California, away from his job, three apartments of furniture collected from trash bins and his Washington friends.
"One day I was walking down the hallway in the apartments, and I saw a real lady. As I watched her walk down the hall, I thought, 'Lord, bring me a butterfly like that.' " Eventually, Panciera said he netted her, a former Miss Virginia contestant.
She got a modeling job in California, and Panciera flew out West to be with her. He was obsessed with her, as he is with constantly pursuing all that is beautiful in life.
"When she touched me, it was like a raindrop or a butterfly, and that was like sayin', 'Thank you God for keepin' me alive,' " Panciera said with glassy eyes.
A popular song by Barbara Streisand crackled over his transistor radio, and he swayed with the music. "Beautiful... yeah, one of my dreams is to paint a wall for Barbara Streisand, just to meet her. She sings like a butterfly."
An aspiring graphic artis, he painted more than a wall for his "lady." When they settled in Mountain View, he painted the Saint Josephs' Church there to prove his love for her. But that relationship is now over, and it left indelible wounds.
"She kicked me down the stairs," Panciera said. "I painted her a church and she dumped me for now reason. She made me a success, got me into high school. She meant so much, and she hurt me.
"Ladies are the closet things on earth to angels and butterflies," he philosophized. "You never know when they're coming. You never know when they're going. But if one lights upon you, it could last forever. I'm scared to death of ladies now.
"Geez, I'm getting old," he said, quickly evading the subject with a joke. "I'm probably the only guy in the neighborhood that has to take spray starch to bed with him." He tipped off his purple had to reveal a shiny bald spot in start contrast to his full beard and long, bushy pony tail.
"I'll be 38 in June," he said. "Every time I look in the mirror I scream."
A young guy in a wheelchair asked him what kind of fruits are for saile. In his typically self-deprecating manner, Panciera equipped, "Ya' can have me for free, I'm the best fruit here." He laughed loudly, but this time one sensed that it was at, not with, himself.
"When you don't care about nothin', nothin matters... not even the hurt," he stated softly.
But things do matter to Panciera, especially his art work- flowing freeform murals and bold, rainbow-colored graphics that splash across the living rooms of the Northern California elite. He proudly displays photos of his work to anyone who cares to look.
"I give love from my heart, and it goes to my hands," he said as he took a slow drag from his fourth Marlboro. "If everyone looked at the world like me and saw only the beauty, there wouldn't be no wars or El Salvadors."
"My people depend on me," he noted, scowling at the throngs of busy people crossing Seventh Street. "Everybody's too busy countin their pennies to help people out.
"This little girl is hungry one day and comes up and I give her a sandwhich, but my boss- some old fuddy-duddy 65 years past death, some creep in a business suit and tie- tells me, 'You hippie, you make sure that comes out of your pocket.' "
A customer interrupted us and asked, "Do you work on commission?"
"No," Panciera said. "I work on insanity."
The High Priest of Trash then delivered a sermon for the donut crowd. "I'm into trash deep. I don't have to take it away; I deliver. But, my trash is quality stuff. See, whether I become a success or not don't matter because I'm a very unique individual. I've been very rich when it comes to inward beauty."
Panciera turned around and displayed the back of his ragged red sweatshirt. A butterfly is drawn in marking pen, and beneath it, "Butterfly Designs- Custom work- art- walls murals. Call Giovanni; 297-8038. Friendship and love free."
"Great advertising," he remarked, and then changed the subject again. "You know how the post office is gonna raise postage only 18 cents and still get the packages there faster? They're gonna crush 'em first." He howled at that one, along with the scattered group of lingering customers.
The humor though, is only a mask for his serious, analytical outlook on life.
"Hey, if I make somebody smile or laugh, in the trash business we call that a score," Panciera said.
At the High Priest of Trash's vending cart, doughnuts are 40 cents and coffee is a quarter, but friendship and love are free.
