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never before in my entire fucking life have i experienced so much fucking misery in one day! not first hand; just as a moral human being. all witnessed at this social center i attend frequently. its a free breakfast and cheap, solid food kind of center/café, with about 10 adjacent apartments/homes and an in-house nurse for the most helpless. all very heavy on the crazy/addicts/lonely/drunks/homeless - guess where i fit in.
i usually just get a cup of coffee in the café and then go say hi to the Cattletheif who lives there. this morning the nurse is there and it turns out they are planning his funeral. who to call and what to do when he dies. he's two months from turning 60, is wheelchair-bound and his speech is illegible, because he bit off his tongue, back in the day. back when he also drank coolant and ate a cat(!). last year we joked about shipping him to Switzerland for euthanasia. he wants to live be 60 and then die; and is to be buried with a bottle of booze, his beloved pipe and some hash.
back at the café again, i see a guy who i've been told is a kiddie fucker. knowing that these are totally false bullshit rumors coming from a crazy junkie woman, i've been wanting to talk to this guy for a while. he's been a frequent guest at the social center lately, with a leg in cast and sitting in a wheelchair - aided by what turns out to be a half-brother.
but how do you confront a total stranger with such rumors and why would you be bothered, knowing very well that the rumors are false?
i like to think that i was partly motivated to do this, because i'm such a good, moral person and the right thing to do was to let him know of the rumors, just in case he was totally oblivious to them. but in all honesty, my motivation was hate and anger towards the very same crazy junkie woman. the instigator of a violent intrusion of my home, twice, by zonked out speed freaks. this is another long story in itself and is what i used as a way to break the ice. all i knew was that he knew of the crazy junkie woman and before i got a chance to bring up the child molesting fairy tale, he told me all about it. we swapped stories about the cunt, he bummed a couple of smokes off me and we chat some more. no pedo, as suspected. his leg, by the way, was maliciously broken by bikers over debt.
at this point, the most miserably-looking person sitting at the table joins the conversation and argues that the right thing to do would be to cooperate with the police, but maybe not the safest.
we all greet each other and it turns out the miserable persons twin daughters would have turned 14 years old today. i express my sympathies and assumed that his twin daughters died together. no, they died one at a time, several years apart. getting quite affected by this surreal scenario coming from a brutally honest, 40-something year old, retired British soldier, asking for details seemed irrelevant and needless. this poor man is obviously suicidal, i suspect that is why he is so very talkative. stunned as i am at this point, the occurring order and details here get blurry.
i'm not sure if he told me when his wife had left him but it seemed recent and he did make it clear to me that she had called to tell him that she had a date, and would finally get sex from a real man. all this said in a surprisingly nonchalant tone, while looking for a funny picture for me to see on his iphone.
i declined his first incitement to see a picture of his wife while remarking that i'd prefer my imaginary picture of that devil woman he just described. then he admitted to have been aggressive but ensured me that he was never directly violent and that he still loved her. the break-up must have been recent, because he had a very hard time being alone in his seemingly empty apartment. this is exactly what the social center is for.
this man was on the verge of suicide and clearly not a drug addict; just desperate. the only thing keeping him alive was his son.
where to place the information about the brain hemorrhage or the brain tumor i really don't know. the poor man was a victim of both.
along came JS - an acquaintance, re-diagnosed from asbergers syndrome to autism - and sat down next to the miserable one, with a piece of paper and pen in hand. this was a nice handwritten list of all his friends and two columns, one for christmas and one for new years eve. i could see where this was going and wondered how many on his list are actual friends; this confirmed my suspicion that he really does considers the very little we socialized, last year, the basis for a genuine friendship. he was systematically going through his list asking people what their plans were for the holidays. i told him i had no plans yet and asked what his were. it was obvious that he was desperately looking for less lonely christmas and new years eve than last year, which he spent alone with an employee of the 'special home' he lives in.
the miserable man remarked that he too had no-one to celebrate the holidays with and most likely would be alone. JS was quick to dismiss the notion, unintentionally rude, with his characteristic lack of social skills (the kind of social skills that lead to a criminal conviction for indecent exposure; do not show randoms girls on the street a picture of your penis and ask for their opinion). i decided to interrupt the awkward moment with a loud "MEET JS" to the miserable one and mentioned the fact that one of my flatmates is - de facto - an orphan (mother deceased and alcoholic father, living in the other end of the country) and that we have no plans as such and suggest that maybe we should all get together and celebrate a Christmas of Misery.
i've changed my phone number three times in the past half year, because of the drama and consequent beef with the crazy junkie woman, and JS was one of the many insignificant ones who never got my new number(s). i gave him my current number and told him i'd keep him updated. i left the miserable one with a little note saying "come have a great shitmas with the jolly anarchists" with my phone number and our address and told home to take it easy.
outside the social center i meet a sick alcoholic in dire need of alcohol. a man i got to know years ago, back when he was a pro musician and still a part of my parents' circle of friends. i have no small change when he asks me for money, so i walk with him to the kiosk where i buy four cheap beers. and the gratitude is enormous.
yeah, i socialize with scum.
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