One of our guests came for his mail late in the morning, after most people had left, and picked up an accordion-sized package. It was filled with bubble-wrapped boxes of candy. He and his friends carried it through the Day Center, offering pieces to whoever was still around. Since I was in the middle of scrubbing toilets and wearing rubber gloves, I passed.
It seemed like there were lots of varieties of candy going around today, none of which do you find in a Whitman sampler.
D. came in, her face flushed and broken out, in her case a sign she's back on meth. When I talked to her two weeks ago, she mentioned attending her mother's court date as a surprise (mom got six months in jail). D. herself had finished her probation and treatment recently and was talking about how she was going to "mentor some kids," as if it were already under way.
I took that as aspirational talk — the kind of plan that lasts for about a day and is never heard again, because plans involve the unknown and uncomfortable. But your best and only Valentine is always there to take you back.
Another guest came in tweaking, taking apart a bandless, duct-taped Timex Ironman he'd discovered in the pocket of a vest he'd found in a dumpster.
We're on good terms, but when he's like this, I prefer not to engage him much.
Still, he told me how he could break loose some dogs being held at animal control by making off with an 18-wheeler from a truck stop and backing the trailer through the enclosure. His scenario was finely detailed, based on his own off-and-on experience as a trucker, but he conceded he wouldn't do it because it was his fault the dogs had been taken.
He also wouldn't do it because he would actually have to put together the series of steps that had already richocheted out of his mind to make room for the fact that Easter would be on April 8th this year, the same day he'd first seen his daughter.
Later I heard, not from him, that a relative of his had been taken to the emergency room after overdosing on an anxiety medication.
Another guest drifted through, looking rough around the edges. Heroin's his candy, and he's lost a job, a house and a family because of it. He reaches a point of sobriety and responsibility, and then he snatches it or it snatches him for another go.
A new guy, call him Steve, walked down the hall with his eyes fixed ahead as if he were crossing a deep chasm over a fallen cottonwood. Even standing still surrounded by people, his gaze tracked some invisible dimension where things move at lava lamp velocity.
And T. was back, almost catatonic, his arms limp at his sides. When he's not so medicated, he seems harmless enough, in his own world, checking his reflection in the two-way mirror, but lately he's been stalking a woman who used to come here. He thought she was giving him mixed signals about her interest. In reality the signals were probably no and hell no.
Before we started our shift this morning, we got an update on a new intoxicant that involves washing down a package of Coricidin with a bottle of cough syrup. Then came a reminder not to make change for guests, slip them money or give them rides. One group of volunteers had started doing this and soon were being pestered on the street for handouts.
Just remember, said the director, Ted Bundy was a nice looking young man, too, but he also happened to be a serial killer.
Our job here is to dispense acceptance and caring. And when I see our people on the street, I smile, greet them if they want to be recognized, and remind myself I already gave at the office.
