24 July 2000 ~ Venusians, homeless people, and Arthur the gentleman...

"He'll be a fry-cook on Venus..." --Cameron, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

I felt very much as if I was on Venus last night. It was a slow night at the bar, and so in between making orders of french fries, cheddar cheese poppers, hot wings, and pizzas to go, I spaced out.

(Okay, we call people from Mars, "MARTIANS," right? So, logically, we'd call people from Venus, "Venetians"? Like the blinds?)

I thought about Arthur. For some reason, I couldn't get my mind off Arthur. One day, I'm going to finish my play, and Arthur's going to be in it. He deserves it. Let me explain...

Did you ever come across somebody who made you completely rethink your entire life in the course of like, an hour and a half? And then, an hour and a half after you met them, they were gone and you knew you'd probably never see them again?

Arthur was a homeless guy. I've always been a little fascinated with homeless people. I was afraid to talk to the ones in Binghamton; the one I always saw downtown was so old, so used-up-looking, so quiet and lost and lonely. I knew I could have gone right up and said, "hey, how's it going?" or picked him a bunch of flowers out of Binghamton High School's flowerbeds, but there was something about all that lostness that made me afraid. I didn't think he could hurt me, and I knew he didn't have a reason to hurt me, but I was afraid being near him might make some of that lostness rub off on me. Once, Marianne and I saw him sleeping on a bench (a bench that was carelessly ripped from the ground during the fire at the Royal, those assholes...), and she slipped a dollar into his shirt pocket. "Some people need this more than I do," she said. Of course, Marianne didn't have much money either, but what she did have, she'd acquired by going through her housemate's laundry, and there was plenty more where that came from, so her sacrifice wasn't anything hugely significant, but I guess it was something. He never begged, and I don't think I ever even saw him talk to anybody. He just sat on that bench all day, thinking, and looking sad and lost. Once I ate breakfast at Paul's at 5 in the morning, and that homeless guy was there, looking as ragged and scared and frail as ever. I don't think I ever saw him after that. I don't know where he went. Maybe he finally just got lost for good...

The homeless guys in Syracuse always kind of unnerved me too, for the same reasons. They looked so pained. I used to go up there with my mom sometimes -- she went to her therapist appointment, and I went outside and took a stroll around downtown or found a quiet place to read. Sometimes I'd see this old homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk of South Salina Street. Just sitting. He had a coffee cup and that was it. And a beard that looked a lot like a very young, dark brown Pomeranian. Once, my mom told me, a homeless guy had died right there and nobody had known it. He froze to death in the winter, and he lay there frozen, and nobody did anything because they thought he was just sleeping.

I guess I'd look pained too.

In Santa Fe, the homeless people congregated on the Plaza. If you look up tourist info about Santa Fe, the only two words you'll hear are "The Plaza." The Plaza IS where all the tourists go. It's where all the art galleries and jewelry shops and pottery stores are. It's where all the stores put stickers that say "genuine Indian made!" on all their products, and then you go outside and see Native Americans sitting on the ground with blankets spread around them, selling their wares for dirt cheap. And so logically, it's where all the rich snobs from Aspen and Phoenix go to enjoy their vacation in Santa Fe. And so logically, it's where all the homeless people go, too, to beg from the rich snobs from Aspen and Phoenix.

One night, Mike and I went down to the Plaza just after dusk. Within seconds, homeless people were all over us, clamoring for a dollar. Mike had absolutely NO clue what to do. Truth to be told, neither one of us actually HAD a dollar, but I think Mike was too scared to say that. Anyway, I said, "Look, dude, we're students, we don't have any freakin' money... If we did, we'd give some to you, but we don't." And so they lightened up. Then they started teaching us the fine art of begging. You go up to somebody who looks hoity-toity, and you give them a sob story about how you're supposed to meet your brother in London in five days, and you're obviously not going to make it, because you're in Santa Fe, so you want to at least call him, and could you please have a little bit of money for the phones? I dunno -- it was something like that. Then, when you get a few dollars, you go to the liquor store.

Mike and I had a lot of fun with the homeless guys that night. One of them kept leaping back and forth and lapsing into this "I'm-a-cowboy-in-an-old-Western" voice, and pretending to shoot people. He said he'd been in "Young Guns." Or maybe it was "Young Guns 2." Whatever. Mike had seen the movie, whichever it was, and didn't remember the homeless guy. But we had fun; we spent a lot of time downtown that night. We had a duel with the cowboy-dude. He was in a good mood because some stupid Aspenlady had given him eight dollars to call him brother in London.

I met Arthur in Asheville, NC. I had a couple of hours to kill before I caught the bus home, and so I sat down to write. I'd just bought this brand-new journal, and had this lovely purple pen to write with, not to mention a million things to write down... So I found a nice bench, and I sat down to think, and write, and probably look a little bit lost... As a matter of fact, I WAS a little lost. I knew my way to the bus station, and I knew my way to the Days Inn, and I knew my way to the payphone in the Days Inn, and had memorized a number for a taxi. I knew my way back to the little balcony-thing that overlooked a big spray-painted wall and some people down below fussing around with garbage cans. But that was it.

"I don't care if I suddenly develop an extreme case of amnesia on the way to the bus station," I wrote. "Standing on that balcony, all by myself, I could hear a couple of kids playing Ithaca instruments (pipe-and-drum type stuff) and tourists from Nashville and Atlanta, and Columbia... I want an accent. I cannot explain the overwhelming feeling of peace I felt right there. I don't care if I get lost on my way to the Greyhound station. I don't care if I miss my bus. I don't care if I lose my job, and my apartment, and my family and friends. I just want to stay right here and get myself a fucking accent."

"I'm homesick, I think... Or maybe the opposite of homesick... Usually, at the end of vacations, you're so ready to go back to your own house and your own possessions that you're just counting the miles until you see that road sign that says, 'Mygatt Street, next exit,' and you know you're back in town. But I don't want to go home. In the past 33 hours or so, I've felt this sense of belonging like I've never felt before in my life."

"...I guess I'll catch my bus. I mean, I guess I don't REALLY have another option... Well... No, I guess I don't have another option... I guess I'll catch my bus and go back to my house and show off my suntan to everybody at work... But for now, I'm here, and I'm going to just sit here and take everything in..."

And that's when Arthur appeared. "You're pretty," he told me. I looked up. There was this scrawny black guy with a KILLER accent (I WANT AN ACCENT!) and an ugly shirt. "How old are you?"

"Um... thanks... I'm twenty," I replied shyly.

"No you not!" Arthur yelled. "Why you lyin' to me!? You look fifteen!"

"I'm twenty!" I insisted, sort of insulted. I was kind of a dork at fifteen. Well, more of a dork than I am now, let's put it that way.

"You look so... inn-uh-cent!" said Arthur, enunciating every syllable of his last word.

"Well, thank you, I suppose, but first of all, I'm twenty, and second, you'd be surprised at how un-innocent I am."

"You in love, ain't you?"

"WHAT?"

"You in love, girl. That what you writin' about?"

"I'm writing about Asheville," I said, selectively ignoring him.

"Oh, where you from?" asked Arthur.

"Upstate New York," I said. "Binghamton. Between Pennsylvania and Syracuse." I've come to realize that if you describe Binghamton's general location to somebody other than a native New Yorker, they start to get the hint that you're not from downtown Manhattan just because you're a New Yorker... Apparently, this didn't work with Arthur, because he went on a tirade about how much he hates New Yorkers and how he'd been there once and had taken a subway and, blah, blah, blah, he just HATED New York, and it stank and the people were rude, etc., etc...

"No, no, no, I'm not from the city," I told him. "I'm from Binghamton. It's four hours away from New York City. I've only been to the City three times in my whole life, and I don't like it either... Where I'm from, there are no subways, and I used to live in a house that was next-door to a DAIRY FARM."

Arthur still didn't get it. I don't really think he was listening anymore. "You New Yorkers!" he was bitching. "You New Yorkers are all so RUDE!"

"I don't think I'm rude," I told him. "I TRY not to be."

"No, you are. You're a New Yorker. An' I saw the look you gave me when I said hello to you and told you you was pretty. You don' trust me. You don' trust nobody. 'Cause people in New York, they're RUDE. You was gonna just pretend I wasn' here."

So Arthur and I talked for another hour and a half. I asked him a couple of times where he was from and what he did with his life, but I don't think he even heard me. He decided somewhere along the line that it was his personal mission in life to determine what my problems were, and analyze them, and solve everything that was wrong with me...

He decided I was caught in a vicious love triangle and that one party in said love triangle was trying desperately to get me to marry him and settle down and have babies and become a housewife. He said I shouldn't do it. He said I should go back to college, that he knew I was intelligent and I had to go back to college. He said I had to keep my head on straight, and not to settle down. It was beneath me, he said. He said he knew a girl who'd dropped out of high school and run away. He pointed off in the distance behind me, where a homeless guy with one leg was talking to a burned-out-looking girl who looked about 25. "She's your age," he said. "She's seventeen. She ran away from home 'cause her daddy was rapin' her. I never heard of nothing like that before. She dropped out of school an' now she's a crack junkie. She goes home with men for it. Don't know why she didn't go back in school. She could have been somethin'."

During the course of our discussion, Arthur alluded to sex several times. He thought I was sleeping with all the wrong people and they were all going to get me to drop out of school. But he never quite used the WORD "sex." Nor did he "cuss" in front of a lady. As a matter of fact, a couple of his friends came by calling each other assholes and joking around. Well, Arthur freaked and yelled at them not to cuss in front of a lady. He was weird, yeah, and his love advice sounded like a fortune-cookie written by somebody who dropped out of first-semester-English, and I'm pretty sure he was more than a little drunk, but he knew how to be a gentleman. I guess I understand a little bit why Arthur thought New Yorkers -- all Northerners, really, but New Yorkers especially -- were rude. In Binghamton, you can't walk half a mile without somebody leaning out their car window and making some obscene comment. In Binghamton, people pass you by on the street without looking at you. Kids ask you for a quarter for the phone, and you refuse, because you don't know what they're REALLY going to do with it. Apparently, in the South, if you see somebody fumbling for a quarter in front of a payphone, you give them your calling card. If you think somebody's a tourist, you give them directions, whether they asked or not. And you never cuss in front of a lady.

About the most fascinating aspect of Southern hospitality to me is that you're supposed to be helpful and friendly all the time... except when you see somebody crying. If you see somebody crying, you don't try cheering them up. You let them be alone with their tears. It's the opposite here; you ignore people until they seem like they're really in trouble, and then you wander up and pretend you're the greatest person to ever walk the planet because you help people in need. I told Arthur that. Arthur told me to move to Asheville. And to get an education.

"Don't let him get you in trouble," said Arthur. I vowed not to get into any trouble, wondering WHO the hell he was talking about and what kind of trouble they could possibly get me into. He sounded so prophetic. He was so sure he knew all the answers. I guess if you really weren't paying very close attention, he kind of sounded like he'd memorized that day's horoscopes and was repeating them upside down and backwards.

"I've never been in love," he said. "I don't know nothin' about no love. I don't never want to, neither. I don't want no wife and all."

"You can be in love without getting married," I told Arthur, realizing I'd spoken too soon. Now, of course, he knew for SURE that I was caught in a love triangle and was being pressured to get married. Yep, he called me on it.

At seven-thirty, I told him I had to go. I didn't have to go; I had another hour and a half before my bus came. But I knew that if I didn't go to the bus station, I'd keep stalling until 9.20, and by that time, it would be too late. I really had to force myself to go.

Arthur and one of his friends walked me to the bus station. "Aw c'mon, man, we don't gotta walk her there! My feet hurt! We gotta go to the liquor store before they close!" But Arthur was insistant. He was not going to let me walk that far alone. It was maybe a mile, tops, but he said it was a dangerous mile... That I'd have to go through the tunnel, and who knew what lay in wait in that tunnel... Well, NOTHING was in that tunnel except a lot of noisy motorcycles, because I'd been through it twice already, but I let Arthur and his friend accompany me.

All the way, they quizzed me about my music knowledge. "You know that one song?" asked the friend... "It goes, like, aw, wait a second..." He gathered himself together and began to rap -- sort of... You can't rap with a Southern accent. "Y'all gon' make me lose my mind, up in there, up in there! Y'all gon' make me act da fool, up in there, up in there..."

"Yeah, I know that one," I said. "It's DMX." Arthur said something about good music in Detroit. "He's not from Detroit," I said, "He's from Philly." Arthur and his friend didn't know what Philly was. I didn't know quite what to make of that; EVERYBODY knows where what Philly is: the city of brotherly love and all...? I don't know. I raised my eyebrows and didn't say anything. And so the three of us walked all the way up to the tunnel, rapping the whole way. None of the three of us knew any more words to the song than had already been sung, so we just kept repeating those ones. I felt very much as though I was "acting da fool," but it was fun anyway, and nobody could hear us over the roar of the motorcycles in the tunnel.

I hugged Arthur before I went into the bus station. He didn't smell very good. But I hugged him anyway. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure what it was that he shared with me that made me think of him at work all night last night. I suppose he made some difference in my life, even if I'm not sure what it is yet...

...Except that I say hi to people on the streets more often, so as not to be a bitchy New Yorker.

...And I want an accent.

~Helena*

(PS -- Speaking of accents, if you have any idea how my Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart videos got out of their locked box in my bedroom and disappeared, I would appreciate your sharing the information with me...)