
Originally Posted by
maniclion
Before my job got so demanding I used to go for walks at night and stop and buy the homeless folks some burgers, sometimes a few beers, or vodka. Then I'd sit around and listen to their stories. One guy had stowed away on ships all over the world and had finally found Hawaii was the most hospitible place to be homeless. I met an old black guy who had stowed away on a ship also he was a vietnam vet and had army retirement money, he'd collected a bunch of records that he kept in his apartment that he only had enough room for a bed, but he rarely slept there. Usually he slept in his van or at the beach. He wanted to be an elderly rapper, that was funny.
When I was in college there was an old bag woman who wore white all the time and you'd never see dirt on her clothes, she was obviously homeless as you'd see her at all hours of the day and night. My psych professor told me he had talked to her many times before and she was loaded, several hundred thousand dollars in her bank account loaded, she checked it everyday and had the ATM statements to prove it. She had just become so miserly that her money was more important than her own comfort. She never begged, never seemed crazy. Just bags of her white laundry and ATM slips I imagine.
Then you have those ones, in the black shirt that has turned dark green, you can smell from 30 yards, crazy as fuck always screaming at no one or mumbling to themselves "the devils gonna get ya, the devils gonna get ya..."
I remember this one black dude in dreads, he was new to Waikiki. Reminded me of Basquiat. One day I was working my old job renting exotic cars and mopeds. It was our sub-station where only one of us worked and only rented mopeds. It was a dead day not one rental and I had been reading a book all day doing nothing. Then I heard singing, deep operatic emotional, I thought maybe a wedding bus blaring Pavarotti or something. It was beautiful, I don't like opera much but this voice was stirring and it was coming much too slow and much too crisp to be from a vehicles stereo. I'm thinking ok maybe a famous opera singer doing a street promo with a camera crew following and a gaggle of fans and lookers on in tow, so I'm not getting up from my seat to fall for this. I sit and wait, finally it's close enough that the mystery is just a tall fence away from revelation. And he appears, the homeless Basquiat homologue in nothing but the aforementioned iconic once black t-shirt that came to the bottom curve of his gaunt thighs, gesturing grandly and bellowing like a pro! I was spellbound that someone with such talent is living on the streets in a t-shirt. Where had his life gone so wrong? How did he end up in Hawaii. Later I heard the cops who hung out at our other rental location talking about him, the had been called because a semi-nude man had been flashing tourists at the beach and yelling at them. They said when they got on scene his dick was hanging down to his knees, he was agitated and throwing sand at people. They joked that none of them wanted to go in and arrest him cause he might club them over the head with his donkey dick... The guy could have easily been an opera star or a porn star and he was living on the streets. It kind of scares me to think all it takes is a chemical imbalance or dependence to throw your whole life in a spiral flush down....