Little Corners
Written by Me
At the intersection of 44th and 3rd stood a homeless man. I usually saw him every Wednesday and Friday loitering by the same lamp post, smoking discarded cigarettes one after the other. Most of the time he would keep to himself but sometimes he would be talking to someone else who didn’t appear homeless, some man probably in his early 40’s. It seemed like they were friends judging by how they looked while conversing but I didn’t want to make a conclusive judgment. Today he was alone smoking discarded cigarettes again, staring blankly at the passing cars.
At the next block, I got on the bus bound for market square. The bus driver was a man who, in my mind, called ‘droopy’ because his eye bags always looked like it would just slip off his face. His schedule was Tuesdays and Fridays. Monday, Wednesdays and Thursdays the bus was driven by someone I called ‘snacky’ for obvious reasons.
Luckily, the bus wasn’t crowded as it wasn’t rush hour just yet so I decided to stay close to the door to make it easier for me to exit when the bus became packed. Looking to my right, I saw there were only four other people on the bus. One of them was sleeping, his mouth opening slowly and then closing again slightly after every bump the bus experienced. Another was reading a book which looked like one of those pocket novels you could buy for cheap at your local bookstore. The other two sat beside each other, maybe friends or lovers, I couldn’t say for certain, but both were wearing earphones. The man stared outside the window while the woman was looking at something on the floor. A few stops later, the bus became half full as rush hour drew closer, the man and woman got off two stops earlier and it turned out they probably didn’t know each other. I saw them walk off in different directions immediately after they got off the bus without acknowledging each other. It’s also possible they were lovers but they had a fight sometime before I got on the bus. Again, I didn’t want to make a conclusive judgment. The sleeping man was now awake and seemed lost in thought and the book reader was now wearing earphones. My stop came and I got off the bus. A gust of cool wind brushed past my face as the stench of the exhaust left behind by the departing bus assaulted my nostrils.
Today was Friday and I wanted to stop by one of my favorite places for some take home. Usually, I would flip a coin to decide which store I would buy food from but today felt like a sandwich day so I didn’t need to flip a coin. The shop or more appropriately, stall, was run by one man whose name I never bothered to ask. All I knew is that he was not a local and couldn’t speak much English which made making long conversations a little bit difficult. He saw me approaching and immediately flashed a peace sign which is how he asked me if I wanted two chicken sandwiches to which I nodded. There were quite a few people in the queue ahead of me so I guessed I had to wait around 20 minutes. I told him that I would be back after a while by drawing a horizontal circle in the air which was my signal for “I’ll walk around first”.
Crowds of people always tired me so I found a quiet spot with a wall to lean on while waiting. It was a good opportunity to catch up on some music so I decided to put on my earphones and continue listening to the last album that I didn’t finish. Today it was Dire Strait’s Love Over Gold. Across was a small park where an old lady sat. Beside her were a bunch of paper bags and slung on her arm was a long umbrella. From one of the paper bags she pulled out a loaf of bread and started eating a piece. She didn’t finish it and threw approximately one fourth of it on to the pavement, presumably for the birds, as she walked away. There were no birds that day. Less than two minutes later, a ragged man passed by and picked up the piece of bread, brushed off the ‘dirt’ and ate it in one bite, after which he sat at the same bench where the old lady had been. He took off his tattered hat and held it in his hand, looking around as if he was hoping that his next windfall was just around the corner.
By the time I got back to the sandwich stall, the line had lengthened considerably. The owner saw me and shouted “Ok lah”. I paid him and left. My apartment was a 15 minute walk away which was never the fastest choice but, considering the time of day, was the most pleasant choice. The route took me past the places that reminded me of the early days when I just moved to this city. It held a certain kind of nostalgia that was quite different from childhood nostalgia. This one felt like a thin blanket on a very cold night.
There was that lamp post near my apartment where one late night, drunk, alone and with no time to get to my toilet, I decided to pee on it. Before I finished, a car made a left from an intersection in front of me and started going down the road I was on. In a split second, I decided to hug the lamp post to hide my dangling item. The car sped up and was soon far behind me, leaving me and my metallic lover alone at last. When I decided it was safe, I let go of the lamp post then I found that my pants were wet from my zipper all the way down my left leg, apparently I forgot to stop peeing.
A couple blocks away from my apartment, there was this Thai restaurant that I used to buy from at least once every two weeks. It was family run, the husband was the cook while the wife was the cashier and waitress. I remember they had one of the best Thai pork dishes that I had ever tasted, which is why I always ordered it. I’m sure the minute I walked into their restaurant, the lady would tell her husband to cook “Sweet and Sour Thai Chicken”. There was a period when I wasn’t able to buy from them because I was a little short of money and their restaurant wasn’t that cheap. With what I ordered for a meal there, I could buy two meals in other restaurants. When I came back, I saw that the place had already been gutted by construction crews. I will never have that Sweet and Sour Thai Chicken again in my life.
There was also this large park two blocks south of my apartment where my friends and I would gather, drink, talk and play music. Funny how sometimes when we remember the fun times we had drinking, we tend to forget the hangovers that followed. Drinking with friends and strangers is always something special for me because it’s stepping into a different world. If there is an augmented reality, then drugs and alcohol are the diminished equivalent (depending on how you interpret your experiences). I have made many poor decisions while drunk including the usual, texting someone you shouldn’t or buying something online that I didn’t really need. But, I have also made a lot of great decisions, like texting someone I shouldn’t or buying something online that I didn’t really need. It really just depended on how stupid I thought I was the morning after. Seven months ago, I was having a few beers alone at this park when my then girlfriend decided to call it quits. I immediately bought two more beers and kept drinking.
I greeted the new doorman. The old one had recently passed away from injuries he sustained in a car accident. We used to share a cigarette or two while playing some gin rummy on the steps leading into the apartment building. Through this I learned that he had left his small hometown to pursue something which he didn’t even know how to describe, he said it was similar to pursuing a ‘dream’. Even though many of his friends told him that he would earn better money staying in his hometown and working as a farmer, he rejected them and said that he still hasn’t found ‘it’. At his funeral, there were only a few people. I met one of his brothers and he told me that their parents were either too busy or too drunk to come. On his coffin I placed a pack of playing cards, the same ones we used to play with, although a few of the cards had gone missing. They were quite worn around the edges and the numbers were already faded. On the 9 of clubs was the letter ‘T’ written in blue ink which was now slightly oxidized. I can’t quite remember why he wrote it down anymore just like many of the small details that we talked about. Even if we did repeat ourselves multiple times, it always got lost in the canyons of our minds. Always there but very hard to locate.
When I got into my apartment, I left the food on the dining table and decided to rest a while before eating so I took off my coat and my shoes, laid down on my bed and closed my eyes. I took out a VHS tape from the cabinets of my mind and played it over and over again. Afterimages of your smile drifted into the little corners of my life. By the lamp post, at the Thai restaurant, on the bus. My memories felt a little less lonely now that your presence had meandered into them again, leaving imprints just like stones marking riverbeds. Those imprints will still be there even when the streams that flowed ceased to exist. I began to feel warmth as I started drifting off to sleep.
It was 3 A.M. when I woke up hungry, the sandwiches no longer looked appetizing. Without any effort, the paper bag tore as I tried to pick it up. It had become soggy. The sandwiches fell to the floor, the first one broke apart, its contents strewn about as if it had been shot in the abdomen. The second one managed to stay intact. I picked the second one up, brushed off the ‘dirt’ and placed it on a plate. I brought it to the window and stared down at the street below. Other than a few passing cars and a couple of people now and then, the street was completely silent. Just like what happens after a party, the desolate aftermath of excitement and elation, the sudden ‘come-down’ after a high. I took a bite out of the cold sandwich and I suddenly remembered the ragged man. We weren’t too different at all. Both of us ate ‘dirty’ bread and both of us lie in wait for the next windfall, only our social contexts separated us. I finished the sandwich and went outside for a smoke. I sat on a bench across my apartment building and fished for the Pall-Malls from inside my coat pocket. Just then I saw the man from 44th and 3rd walking towards me. He asked me if he could bum a cigarette so I gave him two as he sat beside me, reeking of whatever stench his clothes accumulated, it almost made me gag.
“You the guy that stands at 44th and 3rd?” I asked him.
“Yep” he said as he lit his cigarette.
“What do you do there?”
“Nothing much, Just hang around.”
“I’m curious, who’s that guy that you talk to sometimes?”
His face lit up. “Man, you a spy or somethin’?” I shook my head
“That guy was my parole officer when I went to juvie back in ‘95. Heck of a good guy. The other parole officers were shit, those fuckers always had it in for me I tell you, but ole Bucky was a good egg. I think the other guys coulda used detention more than me.”
“So I take it you guys are good friends then?”
“Sure, ever since I got out of juvie, he finds time to check on me you know. I sorta wish that he was my father. That shithead wouldn’t have noticed if I had shot myself in front of his face. And even if he did, he wouldn’t have given a shit about it.” He became a little more animated. “You know he was too drunk to give a shit. My mother was like that too but thank God she died when I was 8. She used to hit me and say I would never become anything. I guess she was right about that.”
“You must have hated home then.”
“No kidding, I used to skip class and drink with the gang up until late. Crept home when my father was already passed out. That’s where I learned to jack cars. It was so easy. I only used em’ to get around though you know, sometimes I’d sell em’ if I needed the cash.”
At this point he was almost finished with the second cigarette so I gave him two more.
“How’d you get into juvie?”
“Jackin’ cars” he chuckled. “I was a little too careless one time, took a left right into a trap. But I tell you, juvie isn’t terrible. I got a bed and three square meals a day, what more could a poor boy want. And I was away from home, that was the best part. The only thing I hated was that we had to sleep early, other than that, It was like a vacation.”
“What happened after?”
He took a few moments to think. “Well after a few years, I got thrown into the slammer. Armed robbery. I needed the money, my old man finally kicked the bucket when I turned 19 and I needed to pay for the rent. I found his old .38 in a drawer and tried to stick up a liquor store. The cops were there within minutes. Got sent for a good five or six years, can’t remember which.”
“Did Bucky visit you?”
“Oh sure he did, lotsa times. I could see how disappointed he was in me and it killed me you know, the only guy that ever had faith in me, to look the way he did.” he started tearing up. “That’s when I decided to get straight, you know. I’ve been on the streets for more than 15 years now and I still don’t dream of going back to my old ways.”
He finished the third cigarette and said he’d keep the fourth for later. I told him that he could come by anytime for a visit. We shook hands and he departed.
When I got back to my room, the first sandwich was still on the floor. I washed my hands, cleaned the floor and washed my hands again. It was close to 5 A.M now and I was beginning to feel sleepy again. I poured a glass of Southern Comfort and stared again outside my window. The sun was beginning to make its presence known, the surroundings now were visible and the sky displayed a dim gray hue. It was times like these where I wished I could see you again. There was just so much I wanted to tell you, so many stories that I know you’d want to hear. How I long to hear you say “Oh, really now” again after every ridiculous story I told, to see you dance to Bach and Gershwin, to smell that certain perfume that you wore, I can’t remember what it was called anymore but every now and then I swear I could still smell it around me. Do you still remember when we used to play Uno until the sun came out? I used to be so tired but I stayed because I wanted to know you better. And the times we listened to music on the radio together. And that night where we both got drunk and held each other’s hands for the first time. It hurts so much for me to think of these things and yet it would hurt even more if I learned to forget it all. It even sucks that I can’t taste your spaghetti again even though you were such a bad cook, I would give up eating decent food for a year just to taste your spaghetti and ketchup monstrosity again. I’m eagerly awaiting the moment I can tell you all these things but for now you’ll just have to wait, I don’t plan to see you again soon but when I do, I know it would be for an eternity. I hope by then you would have learned how to cook spaghetti the right way.
The sunrise came and I finished my Southern Comfort. The world outside began to awaken from a deep slumber. Dead streets slowly being brought back to life by the traffic of cars and people. From my room, I could hear the honking of horns, the laughter of people and the sound of construction. I made my way to bed and closed my eyes, content with the knowledge that, just like the streets below, with death, there is rebirth.