Saturday, November 29, 2008

Geary Personalities Two: The Trepidatious Creeper - Plus Aghast Updates!

I have been having a delightful time, sleeping in and overeating and partaking of various other excesses.  I’ll bring the photos and quips soon enough, for my own gratification and memories - but that’s not why you come to the Chucklehut, is it?  No, you’re more about the grub’s eye view on the wonders of urban living and a healthy whiff of stale streetwise bodywash.  So let’s get back to the main event, shall we? 

The last post was about a Geary Blvd personality, and so, as it turns out, is this one as well.  This next fellow kept more to himself than the grubby groper.  It’s also been longer since I saw much of him.  Even so, for me he’s one of the key subfluences of the big boulevard.  Any taxonomy that omitted him would be by definition incomplete. 

The man I have in mind was the Trepidatious Creeper of Geary Boulevard.  A tidy Asian man with a slight figure and undistinguished visage, he must have been in his 30s but carried the weight of many decades more on the trembling reed of his slender shoulders.  He was usually dressed in a short-sleeved poplin collared shirt, buttoned all the way up and tucked into tightly-belted khaki chinos.  Sneakers rounded the ensemble, scuffed and ragged, but really, the whole vibe was pretty ragged to begin with.  His clothes appeared as clean as they’d get but very old and tired, hems frayed and fabric worn thin.  His hair, too, projected diffusion, a little longer than it had to be and all pretty much completely straight.  From one point at the top of his head a wiry stand of silver-black hair shot out in a wide flat circle, forming an essentially flat plane above his head from which was suspended a heavy mop that framed his face in a perspective-twisting convexity of stiff bristles.  But the hair was not what anyone would really have noticed about him - not at first, anyway. 

I’d see him already out in the thick of things on the Richmond district sidewalks of Geary Boulevard.  They’re not particularly mean streets, but they do get busy and they keep their own counsel.  It is a hard place to be very different, and this guy seemed a little more different than most.  He’d toe up to a crack in the sidewalk or a pavement groove or a painted line, just standing there, looking at it, glaring at it, watching it, both eyes burning with debilitating singlemindedness.  His body would tense up, as if straining at gravity; he’d shift up and down in his vertical plane like a willful little marionette, embodying somehow the will to move without actually moving.  He’d almost totter forward, but the chafed toes of his sneakers seemed locked down and he powerless to move them. 

Then he’d take a different tack: he’d try to relax, uncurling his shoulders by force of will, bellying his breathing.  One could sense a buildup within him, potentiation, a growing conviction that he could do it, and then one earthbound foot would lift at the heel, just a little, but easily, and that heel would push the toe forward, just almost a little, but a few millimeters of pavement would be eclipsed by his recalcitrant foot, and that would be a half a step.  One could see the relief and pride on his face as he looked down at his no-longer-even toes, and then the grim determination that would set in again as he steeled himself to move that other foot up to meet its mate. 

Every shred of his energy and every atom of his being were committed to every part of every step, or step towards a step, that he took, or tried to take.  He’d sweat with the effort even on foggy days and all the color seemed to seep out of his clothes and skin into the evergrey sidewalks to which he seemed anchored.  Only his hair, monochromatic though it was, seemed to reflect the intensity of mental agitation that was going on within him as it burst like a static halo from his overwrought scalp.  Man, that was some crazy hair. 

And that was the Trepidatious Creeper of Geary Boulevard.  He may be coming your way, but you’ve got plenty of advance warning now.

Or have you?  AGHAST UPDATE TIME!  I had hardly finished scrawling the above paean in my notebook and was on my way home from work yet again, as I seem to do almost every time I go to work in the first place.  The 38 dropped me at 12th and I trotted across Geary at the light.  As I came up the curb and turned to the sidewalk, I saw a man running up the block, head down and arms pumping.  His path veered a little from side to side, but not enough to slow him down much or render him a potential threat.  As he - rapidly - approached, I seized upon something about his high-waist pants, tightly belted over a tucked-in short-sleeve poplin button-up.... it was him again, the Trepidatious Creeper, reappearing as if summoned, fleet and in the flesh, running to make that cross-Geary light.  Each foot was pounding that pavement with heedless confidence and then kicking off, launching forward into the void with each eager pace, lamplit sidewalk flashing past beneath him in the autumn gloom.... and his hair, that crazy hair, was much more white than silver now, and he’d shaved it down to a tamed and mannerly nub.  It appears, therefore, to me, that the Trepitatious Creeper has left the boulevard.  Keep your eyes open, he’s on the run!

AGHAST UPDATE THE SECOND: And even as the one was summoned, were they both; and lo, tho one appeared before me, so it was with both of them.  Like catching a 90-year-old blind arthritic deer in your headlights, I was heading out a few days ago for some family fun (family included, supply your own fun) when who appeared right in front of our vehicle but the Gropester himself.  He stood curved like a beseeching hand in the middle of Anza Street, crossing at 16th Avenue with the help of a woman who seemed to be having a difficult time of it.  The Groper was rigid and motionless, frozen stiff with terror and disorientation as traffic backed up patiently on all four sides of the intersection.  We were in front (westbound) and therefore had an unimpeded view of the conflicts within and without.  The old man’s pants were rolled at the cuffs and he looked stricken, abandoned, lost in the middle of a wilderness of roaring cars and receding curbs, as if there wasn’t someone standing helplessly at his elbow trying to help him.  His helper looked anxious, using eloquent body language that was clearly illegible to him, consequently forced then to lay hands on him to urge him forward to the sidewalk twenty feet ahead, a goal to which he appeared unaccountably but very actively resistant.  I couldn’t help but notice how close her face was to his, and how she strained to remain blind to so much of what I knew she was unable to avoid seeing. 

Monday, November 24, 2008

Monday Afternoon: A Triad for your Entertainment (so-called)

I have another grubby Geary story for you but I don’t think I’m going to sit around this evening typing it up before I go home.  Maybe later on tonight?  O you should be so lucky, Mr and Mrs Lucky McFortunestein.  Let me, instead, fill the emptiness with a few items of note:

NEW RELIGION: And it’s so easy to join!  I like it because of the funny words.  You may have your own reason to like it, but if you want to go with “funny words” too, I’m okay with that.  But “neckties for the ladies” is also acceptable. Pastafarianism is so passe! 

A few weeks ago I finally finished my entire box of staples.  It took me nearly eight years of steady staple-abusing work, but I used them all up at last.  I celebrated by getting myself a new staple box.  I wrote “today’s date” on it so I could see how long the new box lasts but now I realize I probably should have actually written the date.  Live and learn.  Seven or so years from now I’ll have a chance to correct my error. 

Product alert: I am informed by those who know that people in California can now get Golden Star Jasmine Tea at Whole Foods Groceries.  My recommendation: do so, and try it with a clear palate and an open mind.  It’s sophisticamatated stuff.  Enjoy while it’s still relatively unknown, or else it’ll all be bought up by Dubai and Macronesia and places like that where double-fermented sparkling jasmine tea is the only game in town. 

Final note of note: the Department of Homeland Security ("We Give The Whole Country a Wedgie") has finally seen fit to approve a visa for my little tyro, Jesse, who languishes in Korea waiting for us to pick him up.  Should be soon, tigertyke.  Maybe not this year, but if not, soon thereafter.  And there was much rejoicing!

This, then, is enough, then, for now.  Then.  And for all of you who have been boosting my spirits while I’ve been waiting for the G-Men to get with the program and send my boy home, as well as those who have been looking for funny-sounding fulfillment, fastener-utilization updates, or refreshing and fragrant non-alcoholic sparkling beverages, thanks for stopping by.  If you were looking for the story about the guy who holds himself back, or the photos of the train exhibit in the conservatory of flowers with the SF landmarks made out of recycled chazzerai, well, come back later.  I’m done for the nonce. 

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Geary Depredations Part 1: The Grubby Groper

So there’s this guy - I’ll tell you about him: the Grubby Groper of Outer Geary.  I don’t know if he’s an inspiration or an exasperation to me, a cautionary tale or a mythic tragedy or what.  All I know is that he’s been shuffling around in my head for long enough.  Now I’m going to let him try his luck in yours. 

My piece of Geary Boulevard is broad and busy, punctuated regularly by sidestreets thick with duplexes and coruscating with cross-traffic.  Heavy buses and impertinent delivery trucks navigate six lanes of traffic amid innumerable autos observing innumerable international traditions of roadsmanship. It’s a polyglot community of bakeries, pharmacies, liquor stores and suchlike civilizational profundities.  Sidewalks are lined on one side by parking meters and parked cars, and on the other by storefronts that hiccup with recessed doorways opening inward to commercial depths.  It’s a sufficiently complex environment for any of us, but I really don’t know how the groper manages it at all. 

The groper in this case is an old man in a windbreaker and tan cordoury pants - I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in anything else; I doubt they’ve been cleaned in years, judging by the thick patches of crustspatter festooning his chest and the dank acreage of black stains rubbed into his thighs.  His skin is liver-spotted and wattle-creased; his hair is brillo-pad stiff and soap-scum grey.  But most meaningful, perhaps, are the sunglasses shielding the middle third of his face: they’re dark brown plastic jobs that make no nod to fashion, cutting crudely across his forehead in a straight line and drooping deeply down either side of his nose with humorless heaviness.  They’re the kind of shades one might receive from an opthamologist, to fit over one’s regular glasses.  They are the shades of temporary blindness, and he’s wearing them always. 

He walks down Geary, unimaginably slowly, slower than slow.  It isn’t even walking, really - it’s an incremental shuffle, a bare slip of one toe past the other with mindnumbing deliberation.  Even so, that progress, slight though it is, follows only after that of his breathlessly outstretched fingertips.  He walks, always, with one hand (if not both) extended before him protectively.  He leans forward on a creaky spine, his jacket stiff over his bent frame, his hand probing into the unknowable obscurities of the void that incessantly faces him. 

If there’s anything on the store-side of the sidewalk - a wall, a rack of newspapers, a pallet of melons, whatever - he traces his way forward using that as his guide, dragging a thick filthy fingertip almost lasciviously along, creeping at his usual glacial pace, with his other hand still reaching forward to fend off imagined, anticipated disasters.  When there’s a doorway or some other gap in his tactile orientation structure, though, he locks up.  Both hands lift up before him, and he cuts back to taking sub-measurable steps.  He seems aware enough of his environment occasionally to ask a passerby - once, me - to help him to the wall again.  His voice is an eastern european caricature as he flags you down with repeated pleas that somebody eventually answers in the same way that somebody will eventually look for a crying baby.  In my case, he started begging beside me, “Sonny, please!” They were well-chosen words and I stopped on a dime.  His hand felt like snakeskin and I couldn’t tell the dirt spots from the liver spots on his head.  “Hep me - hep me get bak t’th’ wall.” I guided him, the work of a second or less except that this guy is a brittle old twig and I couldn’t push him too fast… “Hep me,” he’d plead, “Is’t very far?” Not at all, three steps forward.  He recoiled visibly at the idea of such an audacious trek; in the end it took several minutes to get him back to the safety of the shopfront less than ten feet away. 

And then, once I’d carefully, thoughtfully, courteously catered to his helplessness, he’d had the chutzpah to try to engage me in conversation - about the weather, the neighborhood, changes, manipulations; his heavy jaws chomping at each comment, his jowls hollowing around the vowels.  I shook myself free, extricated myself and went on my way, leaving him to fend for himself with the many upcoming doorways on that friendly neighborhood block.  I had neither the time nor the energy for his incapacities.  I left him barely inching along, moving by angstroms, hands stretched out before him and tense with awful expectations, face a little averted from the impending injury he imagined as he made his anguished way down three squares of open sidewalk. 

As it turned out, I know he survived that walk because I’ve seen him many times since then, always on the same block.  He’s always in the same clothes and the same stricken posture, traveling at the same infinitesimal rate, perpetually dislocated and begging for guidance, blindly seeking his place from behind those all-obscuring sunglasses.  That is to say, he’s always exactly where he always is.  And that’s the grubby groper of Geary Boulevard.  Watch out for him.  You can be pretty sure he’s not watching out for you.