Scene #3: Hobo-sexuals
I was 17 the first time I saw a real, live "homeless" person.
Let's be clear on this; homeless means a person who lives outside, all the time because that's their sole option. It does NOT mean a person who has a home they choose not to return to, or a teenager with dreadlocks who wants to spend the summer smoking weed while walking 18 miles a day and fucking girls who can't shave it because they are hippies but are somehow mysteriously on birth control (Are you on birth control? Then you probably aren't actually homeless.) or a person without a valid i.d. who's "crashing" with someone. Even if they aren't paying rent. Even if the couch monkey's name is Ray-Ray. I'm from an area of the American South East where both unemployed younger sons who live in their mother's basements and people named "Ray-Ray" are proliferate. While both groups are to be avoided, neither is actually homeless. I am related to at least 30 people who are living in or on things with wheels. They aren't homeless.
And while it can be difficult for an outsider to differentiate between a homeless man with a fancy for a fu-manchu and the average red-neck, to those of us on the V.D. side of the Bible Belt, it's pretty obvious. Consequently, I managed to go nearly 18 years without seeing a homeless person. There are reasons for this, I'm sure. I wasn't particularly well travelled as a child, and the American South is a fucking hideous place to live at least 5 months of the year if you don't have access to a box fan and a slushee. So imagine my delight when, upon departing the airport in England in 1999, I beheld, with mine own eyes, on the steps leading down to... London and junk (look, I was just happy to be there, okay?)a HOMELESS MAN! He had a tin cup at the ready, and a disengaged, vacant stare. I had a pocket full of what I was pretty sure was monopoly money and a positive genius for creating awkward social situations. I ran up to this man, allowing my eyes to feast on his ragged beard, tangled and pocked with what looked like raisins, his rheumy eyes, and discordant combination of sweater, slacks and trash-bag shoes. He was smelly... dirty... poorly dressed... he was an UNFUCKABLE!
I immediately swelled with pride at my first glimpse of the UK branch of our elite squad.
Me: "Are you a Hobo?! Like, a REAL Hobo?"
Hobo: " Fuck off, cooze."
Me: "You ARE a Hobo! HEY!! MISS.BRIDGES!! (my long-suffering spinster teacher and the trip leader) I found a HOBO!"
Miss. Bridges: "Please tell me you aren't doing what I think you're doing."
Me: " Can I give you money?"
Hobo: ::shakes cup::
The glow wore off after the 90th homeless/hobo/tramp that I encountered before getting into my very first cab, about 5 minutes later. (It was a cherry popping sort of day.)
For connoisseurs of "homeless chic," Portland provides a rare opportunity to view a seemingly endless assemblage of urchins, hobos, rapscallions, hags, beggars, runaways and vagabonds. These are punctuated by the occasional actual homeless person. They are easy to spot, as they are the people with long hair who are wearing clothing that ISN'T ripped, stained or patched. Also, they usually don't beg. (Begging is for hags. Hagging is for runaways and hobos. Urchins just hold out their pitifully chapped hands and offer to sell you matches. DON'T BUY THESE MATCHES. The quality is shitty.) Anyway, they don't so much beg, as invite you to consider the social relevance of where they are (the ground) versus where you are (not the ground.) From there, you can make a small contribution in an effort to save your soul, or you can continue to walk away and enjoy little, non-fatal doses of guilt.
The 'downwardly mobile disenfranchised' of Portland refuse to subscribe to the limiting notions of the "homeless look" popularized by Oscar the Grouch, Dick Van Dyke, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. They see limitless opportunities in self-improvement through clothing choice and accessorizing. Sure, you may have found the perfect shirt/skirt/swim-fins combo to establish your indigence, but what about the dog? That's right... you've gotta think ahead. Look among your motley menagerie. Which of the wretched mongrels is going to "sell" your vision? Something small and needy? It will remind the elitist bastards that we're the "little guys!" Something large, old and loyal? Add a splashy, nearly illegible "Homeless Gulf War Veteran" to your bit of cardboard and you've just reminded everyone that they owe SOMEBODY (maybe you?) a goddamn fiver for all this liberty and shit. There is of course, the old stand-by of multiple cats, but that can be tricky to manage unless you've been sleeping in the dumpster behind Captain D's for more than a month. Cats won't burrow in your multiple layers of clothing for long unless you smell like low-tide in Jersey. That's why this is a look best left for the ladies.
This wasn't my first visit to Portland, but I'm still a newbie at all the city has to offer. Especially it's offerings of wacky street folk. On the way back from the airport, I spied a 70-ish year old woman with huge curlers in her hair, bookin' it down the sidewalk with a panache one doesn't usually associate with the Septuagenarian crowd. Unless there was an early-bird special with her name on it somewhere, I can only assume her haste was in some way connected to the need to change her adult diaper. Or to put one on. There wasn't much room in the skin-tight black sequined spandex pants she wore for a pair of Depends. But the red and white striped "Where's Waldo?" shirt was voluminous in a way that only Theo Huxtable could have appreciated. A few days later, the Sig.Oth. and I were attempting to cross a street and somehow got embroiled in a hobo-throwdown. The Sig.Oth. took one guy and I took the other. By "took" I mean I stood several feet in front of my guy waving my arms while the Sig.Oth. grabbed his guy and helped him up out of the street (where he had been pushed). We then reassured our respective prize-fighters and said things like "Hey! It's cool, man!" and "Just calm down. It's cool!" Then, we wandered around aimlessly behind the one dude who was still screaming "QUEER!" for like, five minutes, because I didn't know that I was in charge of navigating. This turned out to be a lucky trick, because our circuitous route took us by yet another homeless guy, who had a collection of rubber newts arranged to advantage on the sidewalk in front of him at an intersection. I admired them, and he became excited and said "Finally! It's nice to meet someone who appreciates my work!" I assured him that I did and he adopted a posture of self-controlled modesty that wouldn't have been out of place on Mother Theresa, and said "I do what I can when the spirit moves me."
Chances are, the spirit is the color of anarchy, rhymes with "orange" and only appears after the concussion fairy comes in the night to help him fall asleep, but still. As a fan of "Mary Poppins," it was nice to be appreciated by a street artist.
* Updates! First, if you read this before Tuesday, July the 6th, I have re-written the ending so that it's slightly less shitty. In other business, I talked it over with some folks, and I think it would be better if I started using aliases for most of the proper nouns that are referenced in The Crotch Rot. Seems like the thing to do, and it gives me the chance to bash more people without them being able to actually get pissed and accuse me, then hit me in the mouth after I start lying about doing it. Also, the Sig.Oth. has determined that he likes that moniker so much, he just wants to be "Sigoth," which both of us assumed was an extremely esoteric Dungeons and Dragons monster. As it happens, it is popular coloquial slang for... "Significant Other." Shocking. So I have decided to press forward anyway, and in the spirit of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels of my youth, he's Sigoth, Destroyer of WORLDS!!!! His first official act as Sigoth is to patently declare that fake hobos should be called "Fauxbos," and he's totally right. Carry on.
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