Jonas and the Street

The cravings got worse and worse every day. Even when I woke up I felt that familiar tingle in my veins, my mouth was always dry, and I there wasn’t much I could do to stop the shaking.
The day was warm, which is good when you sleep on rags with cardboard over your head. The filthy smell of wet, dirty cardboard and warm urine assaulted my nose but still I felt that familiar urge. I got up and grabbed my case, out of the alley and onto the street, another day began.
My first stop of the day was the bar, a bad habit. Lotsa other guys on the streets who tried to give up boozin’ told me to keep away from the bars but I found a way around it.
Manuel, the bartender, rubbing a newly washed rag over a glass and set it on the bar, “Hola, un servesa?”
I smiled and shook my head. Every morning for the past six years I dragged myself from the gutter to the bar. Five years before that I dragged myself from my home to the gutter for crack, speed, anything I could get my hands on. I lost my wife, children, and job because of that. But that was long ago and I’ve been on the streets long enough to hear every sob story like it. My life is not that story. I will not live that story again, drugs lead to depression, and depression leads to alcohol. You’ve heard the old saying “All roads lead to Rome”? Well in an alcoholic’s life all roads lead to ruin.
“Just give me a Coke.”
I tossed a few coins on the greasy bar and left, my eyes never leaving the floor. I kept to the old routine, just replaced the bad with the good. Course now my teeth are going to erode away with the soda, but hey you take what you can get when you are getting over an addiction. You also take what you can get when you have an addiction but, again, that is the dark part of my life that I won’t go back to.
I always breath a sign of relief when I make it out of a bar sober. I walked for another ten minutes and watched as the tiny Spanish streets turned into a wide open shopping area with busy streets. I pulled my red ripped jacket closer as the nicely dressed people walked by on the streets, staring at me with disgust. I passed the usual stores and restruants. The people looked at me, the poor black man living on the streets, from their safety in a warm, well lit dining hall. They ate food I had never even heard of before at prices that I could only reach after a year of saving. But ignorance is the best medicine for the poor. The rich agree to this because it keeps the poor in line with the status quo. The poor follow this because it is the one thing that will keep us sane, for how can we lament what we have never felt?
Yes many people would say that it shouldn’t be this way, but they do nothing about it except for give us cans of pie filling and whatever else they don’t want. My philosophy came to me from one of their castaways. But thrown out of the middle classes for the same reason, he wasn’t needed by them anymore.
I had seen him many times on the streets, but that was before he lost his money. Our relationship was one of a man and dust. The man only tolerates the dust because it will always be there, he goes by it every day and does not notice or care about it.
The man just is.
The dust just is.
They do not care about each other nor do they affect each other. But just like dust is composed of man’s dead skin, so does the man become the dust.
For when he lost his money, I don’t know why or care why, he came down to the lowly ranks of dust and dirt. There again I noticed him on the streets around his same old haunts, and, for the first time, he noticed me.
Alright well I’ll take a step off my philosophical platform, I wouldn’t want anyone to think the only thing I do is think.
Well, just like all of us “street denizens”, I thought the least I could do is help. Transition from power to nothing was a big step, at least that’s what I thought. I never really had any power, just a life. I approached him one day, his suit had the tears and dirt that slowly build up on a man that lives in the streets. His eyes had the pleading pride that you will see in some of us. He wanted help but he was too proud. Like losing a dear love he thought his life would come back, all he had to do was wait and remain faithful.
The first time I spoke to him he looked at me in scorn, I guess he thought if he associated with us he would be one of us. I knew time was the only way that he would come around, so I waited.
Our second meeting was the same as the first, except he had began to pick up the habits. His breath smelled like booze and he had lost his jacket. The anger that had built up during his stays in cardboard and plastic raged forth through is mouth with the other spit and bile that now filled him. I retreated once more to my observations. I knew what happened to men like this.
I became the unknown street father for him. I saw him beg for money the first time. I saw him confront old friends and be turned away like a cockroach for the first time. I saw him dig in the trash for food for the first time. And I saw him give in to the depression and drink away his misery for the first time. Bouts of alcohol would give in to a week of work and then something would change. He would see something that would trigger his memory and he would lose himself in a glass bottle.
He followed these cycles and I met him for the third and last time.
He had just been thrown from a bar near my alley. A few minutes later I heard him shouting a rummaging in the trash cans. I myself had been able to score a whole pizza about an hour earlier and I walked over the give him the rest. Upon seeing charity from me he screamed out with rage. His voices carried up into the night sky and I stood, afraid and shivering.
“I don’t need your charity!” he shouted, spittle flying from his lips. “I had money and I will get it all back again, I’m not like you street tramps and I don’t want your filth!”
He threw the box at me and I ran back to the safety of my alley. That was the last I ever saw of him. I had heard that he was shot in an attempted robbery, but I never trust what I hear.
He had lived the good life and knew what it was like. He lived the life that all of us wanted and he lost it, but he clung to it more than ever. He would not let himself forget and because of that he could never reach it again. The only way to get better in life is through baby steps and I have had that lesson imprinted upon my heart, soul, and body.
When he did good and made money he was not satisfied. His hard work wouldn’t even yield an hour of his old life and he could not wait. It drove him insane and since then I have seen many men go that way.
But that was another time and another place I have moved on since then and I sincerely hope he has reached his old life once more, despite what I might have heard.
I was one the rungs and taking the steps, and soon I’ll be able to take a giant leap across the world. For as many baby steps as I have taken they have all led up to a goal that has been burned into my eyes since the beginning. The image of it covers my vision and paints my night in the old familiar colors. I skies themselves rearrange to become my dreams and I have looked forward to it like the birth of my first child. But I will have to wait. Because in this and all life, money takes precedence and a man can have every talent and skill in the world but without money they will never come into full bloom.
I finally reached my old familiar spot and set down my case. Inside was that old tarnished saxophone, the only thing that has stayed with me throughout my life. Everything else was gone.
But like everything in my little world it was old, used, didn’t have much life left in it. I know it but I don’t care. It has been good to me and I’ve been good to it. Many nights go by when my stomach is empty but it has been clean and polished. And so I wet my lips for another day of playing on the street.
But if you’re ever in New York, do a favor for me. You tell them old Jonas has kicked the habit and he’ll be back real soon! I been gone a long time but I’ll be back and better than ever!