The O u t skirts

                                                                    The O u t skirts



         I noticed the wind didn’t even send rumbling chills through my body anymore. By now I must’ve appeared to be seizing anyway, at least I felt like it. Better than feeling nothing, I thought. The good thing about the cold air is that it smells and feels cleaner than the heat. It feels like cleansing of the spirit to me, which was exactly what I needed at the time. I took a last drag of my cigarette and flicked it as best I could through the white mist of my breath, and smoke. I could hardly feel my hands, only the stinging pain left behind after the blood rushed from my fingertips’ to my chest. They’d been like that since the morning, and I found little comfort from the sewer vent spewing lukewarm steam into the night air. 

         I glanced at the big clock tower directly ahead of me. 11:44 it read. A wave of frustration overcame me then, knowing a new day wouldn’t begin for another quarter hour, and the sun wouldn’t rise for another seven or so. I kept looking around, as that was the only thing I had to do, at people coming from bars or going to the bar. All these people with happy lives and homes to go to, and couches to relax on I thought. It got me thinking what it was I was missing. Maybe some of them are putting on a front, I thought, Maybe this guy in a Mercedes has no idea when his world will come crashing down. Id just read about a banker who committed suicide. I knew that if any of them had to spend one day where I was, they would do the same.

         I stopped shaking for long enough to notice, then a gust of cold air swept through the street and sent my neck ducking as far as possible into the collar of my jacket. I began to move my feet a little to get my blood circulating again. I breathed out and felt the cut on the bottom of my lip throb from the slight interference.

         Better then nothing.

         “Where am I gonna go?” I whispered to myself just to feel my body moving at my discretion and not its own. Of course I didn’t answer, Id been asking myself since last night and still hadn’t figured it out. I ran through my mind, searching for people I knew, someone who could let me sleep for only a couple of nights, there were none. I realized then how alone I was, suddenly the world seemed bigger and smaller all at once. I wondered why so many people were having babies, clinging to each other and acting like being in a relationship was so cool. People only do what they see and hear on TV anyway, and anybody who isn’t doing what the hottest comedian said is treated like a leper. I felt sorry for people who tried so hard to fit in. It seemed to me that that was the ultimate waste of a life, living on the exterior, how could that make one happy memory in a person’s life? I breathed in the cold air, satisfied that at least I was an individual.

         My hands felt angry. I jammed them in my pants pockets and clenched my thighs. I became frustrated that I should have to stand on the street all night, nowhere to go. I thought of all the homeless people on the street. Where were they? It seemed like I was the only one truly with nowhere to go. I wished someone was with me, someone to share my frustration and anger. At least then Id have someone to talk to, someone to help me make some kind of plan, If I had at least one other person with me, Id probably rob somebody, I thought. I would rob one of the bar people and use the money they would other wise spend on booze. But things were just so hard to do all alone, with nobody at all to dream with, and to go with.

It doesn’t seem fair, I thought. Everybody should have at least four walls and a roof in this kind of weather. Instead, people like me were standing outside trying to control their bodies from shaking, looking around with their hands in their pockets, nowhere to go.

         I looked down the street again. Small groups of drunken people scattered about, talking about nothing. I began to wonder why midnight was considered as a new day. Nobody was doing anything productive at this time of night, it seemed like the term day should be reserved for productive hours. From midnight to five A.M, people were sleeping, or getting drunk. I decided the day shouldn’t start until sunrise, when people were in mass numbers, commuting and working. Until then it was still today, because at midnight there was very little one could do to be productive, to work and find a place to rest their head. There’s no such thing as today until department stores open, apartment managers start accepting calls, and the homeless can attempt to make something of it. Otherwise, there was no day, no time, only the frigid air that turns your breath into a cloud when you sigh in frustration.

         I sighed in frustration. 

         I thought about moving, trying to find a warmer place to hang out, but I couldn’t think of anywhere. “How did I get here?” I thought.

         CRASHHH! Two men about a block up from me had just tipped over a trash can in a drunken stupor. They stumbled, leaning on each other down the sidewalk, laughing and talking.

         “Dude, no way those girls are gonna call you! Do you know what you said? You said-you said-I-I wanna touch your butt-or…

         “Naw, naw, that’s not what I said!”

         “Dude they totally dissed you!”

         My first thought when I heard the voices was to move. I recognized one of them as I looked down the block. I was certain it was Derrick Fisher. I went to high school with him and had seen him around the city here and there. We hung out a little in school and I didn’t want him to know I was on the streets. He would probably go and tell everybody he knew about it. “Hey, guess who I saw, that we went to school with, who’s a bumming Johnson now!” He was probably doing much better than I was I figured, He probably had a home and a good job and friends that will do favors for him, and wouldn’t let him stand outside in the cold. I wanted to move, but I decided to stay. Why should I run from him? What made him so much better then me? When I see him, I should tell him, I’m homeless right now, but I’ll be okay. Then if he tried to offer me help, I wouldn’t take it, I would tell him I don’t need his help, but if he wants to get a drink with me, then that would be okay…

         We made eye contact as they approached. Derrick looked away, then back at me again. I wasn’t sure if he remembered me. His friend kept talking, rambling on in slurred speech, but Derrick was still looking at me. When he got close enough for me to reach out and touch him I said: “what’s up derrick?” As cordially as I could.

         He walked up to me. His eyes were low and bloodshot. He raised a hand absently for me to shake, and I shook it.

         “Si’rn?” he asked.

         “Yeah,” I said. I was glad he didn’t act like he didn’t remember. People do that all the time. They act like they don’t remember something like they’re too important to have space in their brain for it.

         “What’s up man, what you been up to?” He asked.

         “Not much man, just hanging out, you know?”

         “I guess,” he looked unimpressed and a lot less interested.

         “What about you?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going just so he wouldn’t leave yet.

         “Gettin drunk as fuck!” His friend cut in. He and Derrick laughed hysterically at that, even though it wasn’t much of a joke. 

         “I work for a financial consulting firm,” he shrugged. “My uncle owns it so he gave me a job.”

         “Well, it’s something man.” I tried to sound like I was doing something way more important with my life then he was. 

         “So what about you man? Where did your diploma take you?” He chuckled.

         “Um…”

         His friend cut in. “Hey look at that fuckin bum over there dude, he’s gonna fall or something! Watch, he’s gonna fall!”

         We looked down the block at a man stumbling with his head down, using a building for support.

         “What a fucking asshole dude,” the friend said. “Look, he’s gonna fucking fall on his bum face!”

         The man stopped in yellow light from the building holding him up, and leaned into it with his shoulder. He stood for a moment; his back jerking like the top of his spine was trying to escape his body. After a moment, he made a gagging sound and vomited on the pavement. He grunted violently and coughed as the contents of his stomach spilled on the ground. He heaved and grabbed his midsection in pain for a few moments after he was done, and sat down where he was with his knees pressed against his chest.

         “That’s fuckin gross,” Derrick said quietly, and lit a cigarette.

         “Somebody’s gotta clean these bums off the streets-why don’t they just send them all to Africa where it’s crappy already?” The friend asked.

         I looked at him, mostly because I was too frozen to do anything else. I hated him at that moment. He looked to me like he’d lived with a silver spoon in his mouth since he was born, and never learned to wrap his lips around it and shut up.

         “What will they do in Africa that they can’t do here?” I asked.   

         He looked at me like he didn’t understand what I said.

         “Some people can’t have everything handed to them, you know?” I said the words like a knife, and a warm feeling went through my body.

         “What are you, freaking the bum spokesman?” The friend asked, stepping to me in a drunken fighting stupor.

         “Alright man,” Derrick said. “We bout to dip out, be cool man.” He lifted his hand and I took it. This time he gave me a much more respectable shake. His friend just stood there looking at me until Derrick walked a few steps ahead. Then he turned and went about his business.

         “I gotta get off this corner.” I whispered to myself, but I didn’t move. I stood looking at the man sitting on the frozen pavement in his own juices, and suddenly I felt pity. Not for the man on the street or myself, but for Derrick’s friend. I wondered if one day he would watch the safety net wither away from under him. If he did, I knew, if he ever had to suffer one night in the frozen air, he would die slow. First inside, his own brain would pick away at his soul, eating his confidence and his hope in small portions, until there was nothing left. I imagined the man sitting as Derrick’s friend, suffering in the cold and longing for the time when his life was an insult to anybody that ever had to try, and anybody that felt the cold grip of life’s playful rejections. He would reflect on all of his mistakes, and all the small tasks he didn’t do, as if they made such a difference on a large scale. I felt him and his pain, as if it was happening as I wished about it, mostly because that was the way I felt at the moment. I wished I could be a kid again, and help my mother do dishes one time, or play on a team that competed for the glory of finishing a task, rather than chasing small amounts of cash, and the small pleasure of sexual conquest. When I thought these things, I didn’t feel depressed, as I had so often through the day, instead I felt empowered, and a rush of action went through my body, telling me that the world was at my fingertips, if I wished it so.

         I knew I had to move. I had half a rolled up weed cigarette in my pocket, but decided to save it for later, it was too damn cold to be getting high. I stretched my limbs to get some blood circulating through my body, took another look at the man, and decided to walk east, in the direction of the oncoming day.