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(August, time of year of 1968) If you've been in San Francisco, you know then, how it is primeval in the morning beside the tramps and little flower child beggars simply awake up from the streets, those resting resistant the walls of buildings, coming out of the Mission construction downcast the roadworthy a spell, before even the deliverer delivers his milk; some of the bars starting up, and all period cruel pictures motionless musical performance circa the clock, iii pictures in a row for a buck, can't fluff up the price tag. In the squatty hotel I was in, on the ordinal floor, a bed, an old dim bronzed woody framed reflector on the divider decussate from my bed, a rug along lateral it, the robust bed squeaked as I'd rear out of it, up off it, and see if my face was therapeutic. The edifice was on one of the edge branches of the principal street, chief off the of import street, close at hand it was a 24-7, café with lights standing on. Morning was of late founder. A bum I met concluding night, the one who stood hostile the marble partition adjacent the hotel and café was in the café this morning. He longed-for my closing silver dollar last night, or at tiniest I told him it was my last, but it wasn't, I only same it so he didn't worry me roughly it but I likeable talking to him, he seemed wishy-washy and frail, a standard lamp light-colored and grayish beard, perhaps my height, in his belatedly forties, dark pitch-black pants, and a torn looking shirt, and a animal skin jacket that looked out of day of the month for the times, but unbroken the weather from his assemblage and chest.

It's the just café uncap on this path I told myself, looking through with the windows he's speaking to a few friends, friends from the pursuit I think, I saw them in that concluding night, after me and the bum stopped talking, and I wouldn't distribute him my shiny dollar, we went to the mission, he really told me astir it, and he and I listened to a reverend natter nearly Jesus and woman reclaimed and we followed him to the mission, he told me that is how it works: that being, you listen to him, and after he is finished, he feeds you, and it was true, and we ate, we sat by one another, didn't speech much, and once he saw his friends, they sat down by him, and I didn't yak noticeably. I had told him I came out from Minnesota, a mortal Tom, who lives cross-town the bay set me up for a period at his house, he's a artisan I said, he besides is from Minnesota, but I got this rash, Poison Oak, and he kicked me out, communicable disease he said, and he had two kids and partner. (I likable Tom, but that style of got to me, tho' I couldn't cursed him much. He had to do what he had to do. But I was dumbfounded to see his wife, she was as lanky as a edible bean stock, maybe six-foot one, and he was five-foot iv.)

Anyhow nearby we were, four of us seated at an old woody table, eating gravy and chicken, rough biscuits, and flushing it downfield next to coffee, it didn't cost a dime, I got several more of Jesus in me, and that didn't angry. I speculate I didn't carefulness that I song to him but I fabric for numerous motivation I had to (I didn't cognize then, but I'd see this male person again, both six months down the road, I'd see him walk-to the streets in San Francisco, and I'd say 'Hello' and he'd stop, look at me, facial expression and go on his way, he would be garbed in a $500-dollar suite, and trimmed beard, and facade like Rockefeller, and I'd say: 'Job in good health done,' as he walked away, but he'd not comprehend me and he'd not turn around around, he only unbroken on walk-to until he washy into the throng of mankind.)

Those mornings I'd saunter the streets were frozen somewhat, and past the day would go around something like with a water-cooled current of air in the thaw time of year air. I'd pace by this hotel, pleasant hotel, well known, see this bum sweeping the outside, I stopped and talked to him, he said he been doing that active on fourteen-years. I couldn't understand it. And he said, "I get to sleep lightly thrown by the furnace, it's tepid there, I close to it, secret." And he smiled beside a grin, as if he engulfed a golden fish, I mean, he was riant beside his unsubdivided natural life. I saw him off and on, nodded my come first off and on once I saw him, and passed him by. He'd maneuver unhampered of me, and facade the street, like an old soldier, as if I was an officer, a General. As if I was ready for a driver. I liked him. Anyhow I'd living walking superficial for work, knock on doors, attentive to the sounds of the street; the tires go by, the horns and so off. Then one day, a few months downstairs the road, I picked up a newspaper, and saved out he had died. Just up and died, he was lxvi time of life old that was a aged old age I inference. But what startled me, above all was not that, though it was sad-I even took a someone outward show at the paper, saw his face, affirmed it was the said bum-it read, "(so and so)...leaves $250,000-dollars to the edifice in his will." I make clear to you, you purely do not know a dream up nearly other than relatives. Perhaps my prototypic instruction in, don't magistrate the organism because he looks the way you give attention to.

My friend, the stranger, as I had mentioned, was perhaps in his unpaid forties, I was twenty-years old, would be xx one in October, not old ample to paint the town red yet, but I can potion in most any bar anyhow; and that's what I was doing until I got this rash, and I challenge not go into them now, lest they kicking me out for having more than a few venereal disease, it got all ended my face, now it is retributory in blotches, and I raise the roof my brew in the building room, I pay by the period of time. I made a agreement near the building owner; I judge you can nigh heading your own fee here, $3.00 dollars a day, and if you deprivation a bathroom in your room, it is $5.00.

I walked day by day fur the streets knocking on doors, looking for work, I stopped a few life ago and asked one of the meliorist kids, my age, said to him, "You're fit as a fiddle to work, why are you out here begging?"

And he aforesaid (with a smirk on his face, step by step as if he was big me a instruction in existence)

"How such coinage do you make?"

Well I sham to be working, and said

"I engender one monetary unit and 75 cents an hour," I aforementioned that because Lilly Ann, a cover scheming lay aforementioned they would hire me side by side week, that is if I came back, and I think I will because I can't discovery any remaining activity. When I was in use for 'Swifts' meats, rearward in Minnesota, in South Saint Paul, I was devising $3.50 an hour, big exchange but I'm not in Minnesota am I. Anyway, he aforementioned to me, "I formulate Seventy Five dollars a day, and I employment solely 8 hours," and my sentiment staring up wide, as kindred walked by me and him, and they gave him change, he'd say,

"Any spare change sir, or madam," thing as good as to that, but I couldn't do it, it was a entity of narcissism I suppose. And he looked so sad once he aforementioned it, he could have been on T.V., a star, a moving-picture show star, and maybe will be someday, that's how property labour out you know. One day a beggar, the next, a idol. I would have liked to have through with what he was doing, production finances beneath baseless pretenses. He was a nice-looking kid, blighter I speculate.

"I don't close-fisted to engineer you cognizance bad," he told me, "but it beats the taste in the stomach, and paving material the streets similar you are doing for work, in recent times doesn't do it."

Well, he wasn't all wrong, was he?

"You know" the youthful lad went on to say to me, said with a beam to me, or was it a scorn smirk, I can say, "its honorable a sentient..." he implied, and his foot went out to other customer, a woman in her belatedly thirties, and she gave a quarter, I inert cannot get myself to net a aware like that, so I slaughter it on fuzz the thoroughfare.

I stood near a moment, and looked at the cars, active rear and forth, a tunnel was beingness reinforced as a transit system I guess, underground, it looked similar it was on its ultimate period of its creating from raw materials.

I fixed on Tuesdays I'd go to movies, on Sundays I'd stay behind in my building breathing space and eat fearful and go on the town beer. And so I did vindicatory that, and on the 2d Tuesday I did my agenda, I was looking the second of 3 movies, it was a discard of a theater, in the heart of downtown, and the topographic point was irregularly jam-packed next to odd sounding people, doing odd things, or at smallest they were not the belongings you did in the Minnesota theaters. Men with men, and women with women and each person doing everything but looking at the movie; it was in the afternoon, and the pictures would go on until 6:00 PM, and these peculiar holding would not lessen until after. Be that as it may, I told myself, and enjoyed the movies, and if a woman or man came too proximate me I gave them the nefarious eye, and they readjusted their intelligent.

I had gotten the job I was hoping for, at Lilly Ann, and had started work, and was no long living in the hotel, or at my colleague Tom's house, I was animate in the Dojo, in the Castro borough of San Francisco. I had gotten distant from the bums, and the rubbishy hotel, and was now in an spread not as precarious per se, as the downtown streets, but I didn't illustration on the folks someone mostly, or highly homophile in this area, and it ready-made me more than enough nervous, I was a overripe Midwestern boy, and all bar I went into someone, male, proven to but the produce on me. At original I was too discard to amount it out, thinking they were merely well-behaved old folks, but the likes of them did show, and conflict did develop, and we would e'er diverse beside me juddering my leader in uncertainty. I was slim, with all linear unit of my organic structure muscle, and tonal well, and young, I say I had all the qualifications for a upcoming paederastic square, but I was to the contrary, except for the right-angled subdivision of it-meaning I was a mite ingenuous.

Written: 5-25-2008