homeless

Alex 6

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Alex is sitting on a bench in the small bus station.  A fluorescent light flickers in the fixture above his head.  It is 3 a.m. and he’s waiting for daylight.  In four hours he’ll be able to get some coffee somewhere.  For now, he’s waits. 

He’s got his iPhone plugged into an outlet.  Even if it was charged, he couldn’t call anyone.  Certainly not Gram or his father.  They’d only yell at him for getting kicked out of the Hostel.  He did think about calling, and he weighed the options for several minutes.  His dad would just add this fuck-up to the long list he keeps of all Alex’s fuck-ups, going way back to high school.  Alex hears the Interlocutor’s voice calling him to confess.  He decides not to acknowledge him.  Instead he lights the remains of a cigarette he found in the bus station’s ashtray. 

The smokes keep his dreams in their place.  That’s why he was smoking in the Hostel’s kitchen.  The dream of the black corks coming at him to stop his breath was doing that throbbing thing.  Alex had to smoke or be suffocated.  He knew he’d be locked out if he stepped outside to smoke, so he opened a window and sat by it, blowing the smoke out carefully. 

            He got caught.  Someone saw him and called the manager, an Algerian guy with a really scary face.  Alex had to pack up all his stuff. He dragged the bags down the street to the bus station.  It was only after he got there that he realized he’d left his food in the fridge.  Maybe he can pick it up in the morning.

            He’s hungry now, but he’s used to being hungry.  In the City, at his mom’s, there was hardly ever anything to eat.  Sometimes she’d make some nasty bean concoction.  After he lost his SSDI, Alex had to guilt trip his mom to get a little cash for a sandwich.  And he’d have to listen to her go on about how she couldn’t afford to support him and he had to get back to handing out fliers so he’d make some money.

            Alex looks out the window to the edge of the parking lot.  He sees a small moving shape.  It’s the fox again.  She’s never very far away, but she usually stays in the shadows, like this.  She is after his liver and Alex has to be constantly vigilant when he’s outdoors in the nighttime.  Once he fell asleep in the park after smoking some really strong weed.  It was in the summer.  He fell asleep on the grass.  The fox came so close he could hear her panting.  She tried to bite his rib cage but he rolled away and she just got his shirt with her teeth.  He sat up and yelled and slapped at her snout.  She ran back into the trees.  Alex’s friends woke up and they were scared.  Scared of Alex, not the fox.

Alex V

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Alex has a secret.  Sometimes he has a special power.  He can use his eyes in a certain way and the girl he wants to fuck just slides toward him.  The power gives Alex just the right words to say, and the golden rays shine out of his eyes.  The power, when he has it, can illuminate the girl’s aura.  It makes her glow and vibrate in a rainbow halo. 

            The problem with the power is that Alex can’t control it.  He’s been working on this for a few years now.  He knows that beer dulls the power but weed enhances it.  He figures that’s why the Rastafarians use ganja as a religious rite.  They must have a link to the same power.  He’s read a lot about the Rastas, trying to suss out more but the answers he wanted weren’t there.

            The power affects his speech and his eyes.  When he has it, he can be so incredibly deep and eloquent that he astounds himself.  Alex knows he’s intelligent.  When he has the power, he’s brilliant.  Like the time he was explaining the five levels of his dreams to Lisa and her friend Sandra.  The way they looked at him, with such wide-eyed awe.  He knocked their socks off.

            Alex can feel the power when it comes on.  It’s like a warm humming in his root chakra.  At first he thought it was the kundalini energy awakening.  He researched kundalini and decided that this power wasn’t the vital energy the Indian sages talked about.  It was something different.  Alex’s current theory is that he’s an Indigo child, part of a new, more evolved race on Earth.

Alex 4

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   Alex pulls the gray cap down over his eyebrows.  This snow can’t last forever.  His feet are wet and freezing in the sodden sneakers.  Gram was right about the boots, but Alex had been getting high with friends so he clicked off her voice on his iPhone.  Blah, blah, blah, that’s what they sounded like, Gram and Dad.  Blah, blah, blah.  Don’t you need your boots?  It’s snowing!  Have you looked for a job?  If we give you money, don’t use it to buy cigarettes.  Blah, blah, blah.

            Alex walks past houses all lit up and glowing warm against the night and the falling snow.  He imagines being inside with a happy, noisy family, and he knows he’d like it for an hour or so.  But then he’d start to feel edgy, and everyone would be looking at him, criticizing his clothes or what he did, and asking him about his life.  He’d have to leave.  Like Christmas Day at Gram’s.  All the noise and laughter and all those questions about plans and jobs and school.  Blah, blah, blah.  Alex had left before the pies and ice cream.

            Alex says aloud, “I’m a survivor.”  He knows he can stretch twenty bucks into two or three days of hanging out in town.  His friend at the taco place slips him the leftovers.  And the diner has a breakfast special that’s under $5.00.  He gets by.  His stuff is stashed behind the couch in the coffee bar.  He doesn’t have much stuff.  Alex is proud that he’s not attached to material objects.  Except his necklace with the old house key.  This is one thing he can’t lose.  It opens the door to his mom’s loft in the City.  Right now he’s pissed at her because she kicked him out.  But he may want to go hang out there sometime.

            Alex bums a cigarette off a drunk student who is leaning against the wall outside of the pub.  He keeps walking.  His iPhone dings with a text message.  It’s from Gram.  R U OK?  Call me.  Alex decides not to answer.  He already has a place to stay tonight.  He picked up this coed from NYU.  It’s her last night before the dorms reopen down on Union Square.  She’s got a friend whose roommate is out of town.  Alex can sleep in the girl’s bed for one night.  Lisa—that’s the coed’s name—says he can stay there if he takes a shower first.  Alex needs the bed but he’s a bit insulted.  Like he smells or something.  How long has he been wearing these clothes anyway?  When did he and Gram choose them at the Salvation Army?  Was it a week ago?  They picked out a good shirt, a jacket and tie, and a pair of black slacks.  The clothes were supposed to be for job-hunting.  Job-hunting.  That’s another one of those interminable lectures:  wash your hair, brush your teeth.  Always check back with the secretary or the manager.  Blah, blah, blah.  They just never shut up.