Had a real nice dinner date last night

I left the pub in a bit of a melancholy mood last night. I originally went in to see if I could drum up some support for a trip to the casino but to no avail. I’m not sure why I felt a bit down, we all get a little low once in a while, after all, look at what is happening around us and without a generalized mass movement in opposition to it, it can sometimes seem overwhelming.

I was trying to decide what to do that doesn’t involve alcohol. I had originally thought I’d go play some poker at the casino which is quite relaxing for me and a lot of fun as characters abound around a poker table and there’s every nationality you can think of there. Women and men compete as equals, some people are quiet, some more vocal, some move from seat to seat when a loser gets up to leave in the hope they might find more luck there. And others emulate the poker stars on TV with their specific clothing styles, hats and eye wear.

I was undecided when I left and strolled toward my car that was parked around the corner when I noticed one of the homeless guys sitting on a bench with his bag of cans and bottles. I had seen him before although I generally don’t give money to people in the street. California, the state with most billionaires is the homeless capital of the USA. As I approached our eyes met and we exchanged greetings.

I don’t know why but this time I asked if it would be OK to sit down for a minute. There are many times when I daydream about such figures. One time, I wrote about this also, I saw a young prostitute knocked to the ground by her teenage pimp. It was sickening and don’t have time to go in to it now. But we were working on a hydrant on the corner in a fairly rough part of town and it is too dangerous to get involved, municipal workers stick out like sore thumbs and would be an easy revenge target. Also, cops often used municipal vehicles as covers in sting operations. But I did go over to see if she was OK and thought to myself as she wiped the blood from her mouth that someone held this little baby girl at one time in her life. Someone loved her and caressed here at one time, surely; but maybe not.

I think about the same things when I see homeless men and women on the streets. What is their history? Everyone has history, a mother or father held them in their arms or at the breast at one time. So I sit next to Winston who tells me he is from Berkeley but moved to Oakland and went to Castlemont High School which is close to my old neighborhood. A lot of the homeless are mentally ill people that the state abandons but he didn’t appear that way, mentally ill I mean. Mind you, if you’re not mentally ill before homelessness you surely will be after experiencing it. It must be even worse for women, especially mentally ill women who are forced in to the streets and face the prospect of rape and sexual abuse. Anyway, a whole damn lot of us are mentally ill living as we do in a sick society that places profit above human needs, both material and emotional. Plants get sick too when the soil has limited nourishment.

It turns out Winston is 55, a little bit younger than me.  He’s got a real calming aura about him and talks freely with me asking about me and where I am from.

“What the hell man; you fancy something to eat?” I said interrupting him halfway through a sentence.

“Sure” he said, “where at?”


“I know a great little Chinese place down by city hall, no MSG. We could go there.” I replied. I don’t think Winston knew what MSG was and didn’t care too much, but I have a reaction to it so I always ask.

We got up and walked towards my car him with bag of cans in hand. I could see he was a bit cautious, and why shouldn’t he be? People abuse, beat up and even murder homeless people. It’s a credit to human decency we are not attacked by them on a daily basis if you think about it. But he had seen me before and seemed OK with it.

We got to Little Nanking and ordered a big old bowl of hot and sour soup, a veggie dish, rice and a chicken eggplant dish I love. Winston wanted to make sure we had enough rice; he loved that rice and loved the hot sauce which he poured over every dish, including in the soup.

I asked him a bit about his life and he told me his wife and her sister were killed in a car accident. He had no children and I am not sure about relatives; he told me this matter of factly without much emotion. He was in the Marines for four years. At one time a third of the homeless in this country were Vietnam veterans although he wasn’t in Vietnam. Also, when a lot of these Single Room Hotels (SRO’s) were pulled down due to gentrification in neighborhoods, poor people had fewer places to go. Winston struck me as a sincere and honest man, not at all weak or ingratiating, hanging out with me for a free meal; he was interested in life and sharing his views about things. Not that ingratiating oneself for food when you’re hungry and homeless is such a bad thing. We all have to bend at some point in our lives. That is why organization is so important, collectively we can confront the forces against us in a way that we can’t as individuals.

I’m the talkative type and sometimes people think I am just being nosy which isn’t the case. We don’t find out about people and where they’re at if we don’t ask. And there is this nonsense capitalist propaganda that is especially strong in the US that we are where we are due entirely through our own efforts, that we are in charge of our own destiny. Consequently if we accept this individualistic rubbish, when we stumble (they call it failure) or hit hard times, we blame ourselves with devastating results.  But we do have to be sensitive ( I have slipped up there like everyone I suppose) so I didn’t talk much more about his personal life but maybe next time, and I didn’t want Winston to think I was some guilt ridden liberal who was simply relieving my own guilt at being in a more fortunate position than he. There’s nothing worse than that I reckon. I'll leave that to the privileged middle classes.

We talked a bit more about a homeless man, a Vietnam Veteran who was found dead in a building under construction some years ago. He remembered it and I wrote about it and distributed it at work. The guy came back from Vietnam he was a drug addict and ended up dying in a basement on a construction site.

I know that it was a really pleasant evening for me, just what I needed. Winston wasn’t bitter or beaten although he was tired, I could see that. But he still maintained that humanness; the dignity that we cling to so ferociously and I needed to experience it. He was good company and helped me feel rejuvenated; ready for the continuing struggle against the rotten system they call the “free market”.

We still had half the food left so they put it in boxes for him and I dropped him off at an intersection and we went our separate ways. But I’ll see him around town for sure.