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Thankful
POST DATE: 23 December 2004 This week has seemed interminably long. Sunday afternoon, after seeing my Father and Step-mother off at the railway station, I headed home. I'd wanted to catch the 3.07 train to New Haven to hear the Advent Lessons & Carols service at Christ Church, but it was 3 p.m. by the time I left them at the train, and I knew there was no way I'd get up- and across town in time to catch the last train that would've landed me in Connecticut in time for the service. So I went home, where rather than cleaning and finishing unpacking, I got online and started chatting with random folk (something I almost never do, what with my fear of talking to strangers and all). I ended up firing messages back and forth with this kid, 21, who lives down in Chelsea, who I could tell desperately wanted to talk to someone other than the drug fiends with whom he lives. He wanted to be sure I wasn't expecting sex (For a change, I wasn't, especially after I saw him), as he felt his life revolved too much around it. I thought this could be a good thing, an interesting meeting, so I boarded the train and left my home at the North Pole of Manhattan. I arrived at the building where he's living -- a decent, even nice place, if somewhat dated by its architectural style, at least on the outside. I phoned him, and he met me at the door. He's little more than a child, and obviously deeply damaged. He stands about 5'4" and is thin as a starving stray dog, an impression which is deepened by his shaved head and a face which would be pretty and boyish, but for the pock-marks from past acne outbreaks, which he apparently still gets. His grey eyes do not glitter, as they should, but merely float in their sockets, a pair of dull silvery coins, behind which there is, though, at least still some visible spark of life. He wears black work-boots, which seem too big, if not for his feet, certainly for his frame, with his trousers rolled up over their tops, along with a black t-shirt, and a tattered puffy jacket. He identifies as Goth, but he's as much skin-punk as anything else, I suppose. His eye makeup is careless, badly smudged, his lipstick a magenta smear around his chapped lips. I'm immediately struck by a sense of forlornness on meeting him. He felt some ill-conceived sense of kinship with me, though, as I used to be a Goth and was consequently able to converse with him about the music I�d loved, the old-school bands from when the darkness really was beautiful: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim, Joy Division, The Cure, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Black Tape for a Blue Girl, etc. He invited me upstairs to meet his roommates. I was, of course, hesitant -- dealing with one new person at a time is quite enough; being confronted with multiple new people often requires that I drink � but I consented. The building itself is nice enough, respectable construction of some decades ago, but on entering the apartment, my most immediate and strong desire is to flee. The living room is an unspeakable disaster of old damaged furniture, piles of broken boards, scrap metal, paper, trash, discarded computer parts -- I could not even begin to process what was there. It was like walking into an enormous junk-heap; the one in Labyrinth had little or nothing on this place. Miraculously, there was no stench, only the smell of cigarettes, which everyone seemed to be smoking ceaselessly, as if to express a death-wish in the midst of this screaming fire-hazard. Counting me, there were six guys milling around (insofar as one was actually able to move, which wasn't much) in this mess, which easily could have been declared a federal disaster area. I gave the lads most of my remaining Dunhill Reds, knowing I'd no intention of smoking them myself, and we sat and chatted uneasily for a bit. I managed to cross the room to examine the unexpectedly wide range of books on the shelves before the boy offered to give me the �grand tour�. He gestured toward the master bedroom and the bathroom, neither of which I had any desire to enter or even to see inside, then led me into what he said was a "cleaned-up" area (In truth, it was only marginally less a war-zone than the living-room had been), where two more guys were lying asleep on a small mattress on the floor, in an alcove behind the bookshelves and just beyond the savagely unsanitary kitchen. Clearly, he felt that this was an okay place to hang out and talk. I desperately wanted to leave, so I made the excuse of not wanting to wake the sleeping boys and suggested we go for a walk (Somewhere! Anywhere to escape this oppressive rubbish heap!) He assented, and as we left, one of his flat-mates urged him to be careful. I barely restrained disdainful laughter. This boy had clearly far less to fear from me than he had from the people with whom he was sharing living space, most of whom were clearly strung-out on something or other. He shared bits of his life-story with me: Born in Scandinavia, immigrated to the U.S. (no accent, though), parents dead, adopted, finished high-school, left home to escape persecution for being Goth and a white supremacist (Goth I understand; white supremacy I do not, but it's how he was raised, and he doesn't justify it, just leaves it at that, and I haven't the heart to point out the multi-racial cast of characters with whom he's living). He makes what little money he has by dominating older men; he's apparently only topping these days because in getting fucked bareback by another poz guy, he contracted a very bad case of HPV, for which he has to have an operation in about two weeks. He likes going to church and couldn't live with himself if he knowingly infected anyone else. He's clearly unable to find a sensible middle ground in most anything in his life. He picked up unfinished cigarette ends from the street as we walked, smoked them, explained that prior to living in his current hovel, he was on the streets. I guess the saddest thing of all is that he doesn't really seem to have the knowledge or desire to change his situation. After walking and chatting for awhile, I bought him, at his request, a pack of cigs and a two-litre of soda, before depositing him at his door. He thanked me profusely, gave me a hug and scampered off back to his rat-hole, saying he'd e-mail me. He hasn't, and I'm not surprised. In fact, I'm almost relieved. I wish him well, but I'm disturbed by his apparent lack of will to help himself, which I cannot comprehend. I descended into the 23rd Street station to head back uptown, and I thought how lucky I am to have the resources and the drive that I do. How true it is that this City can and does eat people, sometimes spitting them out, sometimes just sucking them in, never to be seen again, and how to some, it does worse -- those who will let it. Yes, there are a great many lost, damaged, broken souls in this place. And how lucky I am that it has given me, at so little cost, a home. r
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