Oregon, My Friend?

An update on my friend’s 48 days of sobriety:

I met my friend after work yesterday out front (actually, out back) of the LA Central Library on my way to the bus stop at 5^th and Fig. 

I asked the policemen on the steps outside what kind of services were available to a newly homeless man in his 60’s, and they directed me inside the library to the Security Desk, but I stopped at the Information Desk first because it was closer to the door, and the lady there gave me a pre-printed glossy foldout city brochure in a blue and yellow theme outlining city services for those in need.   At the Security Desk, another policeman gave me a xeroxed list of nearby places serving those in need. We reviewed the list and crossed out those that are not Downtown.

They say self-reflection and self-awareness are key skills for personal growth.  I carried my new brochures back out the back door of the library onto  5^th Street to wait for my friend and reflected on how both policemen had looked at me, a gray-goateed office worker with a Swiss Army backpack over a blue sports jacket and a white Lands End button down Oxford shirt with a little green spot of pesto from Maccheroni Republic on it, asking in my haltingly hoarse Parkinson’s whisper about services for the newly homeless “for my friend.”  Yeah, right.

He had been calling me for four days, leaving increasingly incoherent messages about needing my help.

Two weeks ago, a stranger called me at 8AM and asked if I knew my friend because he had listed me as his emergency contact.  The stranger told me he was the manager of a sober living home and my friend had begun drinking last night and become belligerent and broken a window and he couldn’t stay there anymore and could I come get him.  I said no because I was at work without a vehicle and he hung up.  I called him back when I reached the park and ride that evening, and he told me he had tried to get my friend into one of the Midnight Mission type places on Skid Row but was unsuccessful so he took him to Cedars-Sinai Hospital.  That was it.  

A week and a couple days later, my friend’s calls began.

The voice mails that I could understand rambled between stories of suicide attempts, money shortages, his son, and the institutional thievery of the sober living industry that takes money from people trying to get their feet back under them then kicks them out to the street when they have one little backslide and keeps the monthly rent money and some of their belongings.  He needed my help to get his guitar and amplifier and his laptop and phone charger and maybe his clothes and toothbrush and soap and he had it figured out that I could help him on Saturday because that wasn’t a workday.  And maybe could he stay with me for a few days.

The night before, I had taken his call when I saw his name on caller ID and he told me he was going to sleep at a school near Washington Boulevard that he had been watching and that seemed empty and accessible at night.  He said he had been in and out of hospitals during the day and sleeping on the streets at night and his phone charger worked only intermittently because his phone was the worst POS ever manufactured.

I decided to meet with him because 1) he had migrated downtown so it was only a matter of time before I encountered him; 2) in a voicemail that morning he had shared that he had a “shit drool” situation that he couldn’t control and needed a new pair of pants; 3) my Catholic upbringing; and 4) his veneration of me as expressed in “Help me, Bill. You’re my only hope.”  

And 5) I needed to tell him face-to-face that staying with me was not an option. (Like Tom Hanks in “Apollo 13,” when he urged me to argue his case, I told him, “This is my call.”)

I stood on the sidewalk outside the back door of the library and felt the conditioned air blowing out onto the Summer sidewalk.  The policemen had walked 50 feet away to deal with another person who hangs out outside the library.  Several co-workers and co-bus-riders walked by and briefly acknowledged me, but none stopped because there are always people hanging out outside the library talking to themselves or shouting at invisible demons or rehearsing conversations with someone who has wronged them or smoking weed and you don’t stop and hang out there, but there I was trying to dissolve into the space between the newspaper rack and the bicycle rack looking back and forth toward Grand and Flower to spot my friend coming when he came out the back door looking confused.

“Bill?” he asked.

He was without his usual cap.  He had open scrapes on his cheekbones and above his right eye and a bruise over his left eyebrow. He had not shaved either his head or his face in weeks.  He wore dirty white Keds without socks, blue hospital sweat pants, a clean white t-shirt over some kind of printed shirt, and a black jacket four sizes too big with rubbed bare spots on both shoulders that hung on his skeletal frame like a shower curtain. He was carrying a small torn black plastic trash bag.

I handed him the materials I had gathered, then gave him all the folding cash I had with me – $17. “Get something to eat; don’t spend it on booze.”

He stuffed the materials into the bag and said, “Your time and conversation are worth more to me than your money.  Can you sit and talk a while?”

So we sat on the built-in concrete bench outside the back door of the library. 

He began to rant about how unfair the sober living system is.  He talked loudly and shook his head wildly as he spoke and I could sense one of the policemen looking over and pedestrians veering to the street side of the sidewalk and quickening their gates. Thick saliva gathered at the corners of his lips as he spoke. I gave him my water bottle and he took a long drink.

I encouraged him to go to one of the missions for the night, and he told me about being strong-armed for $200 the last time he was there. He told me about wandering in Hancock Park and spotting what he thought was Eric Clapton’s childhood home and knocking on the door and the people inside answering the door and chatting with him for half an hour until he recognized one of the men as the guy from the sober living home who drove him around all day that day and then dropped him off at Cedars-Sinai.  He told me that the hospitals don’t care they just pump you full of de-tox drugs or some of them restrain you and tell you you have to detox on your own like cold turkey and then they dump you out on the fucking street at 3am with no money and nowhere to go and no way to get there, and it was then I told him I had to go catch my bus.

I remembered one night at a pizza parlor in high school when we had scored some beers and drank them in a car on a dark cul-de-sac we knew and he had stood on a table and sung along with Joe Cocker on the jukebox on “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,” and he sang it better than Joe and he could play like Clapton, Page, Stevie Ray, you name him he could out shred him, and my Mom always says to this day that it’s such a waste what he’s done with his life.

We stood and he grabbed my shoulder and said, “Oregon! Let’s go.” His hand was surprisingly strong, but there was a psychotic anger in his eyes that I have not seen in him before. I promised to drive in today to see to his guitars and stuff, but I guess he lost his phone charger again.

I turned away and headed for 5^th and Fig. I had to jog the last 100 yards up a slight hill to catch the last bus to the park and ride.

On my drive in this morning, I heard on the radio that the City of LA cleaned up 12 tons of trash on Skid Row overnight.