The Scarlet Numbers 6.22.12

Hello world. I want to quickly tell you a true story about something that happened to me last night.  As many of you know I live a completely crazy and interesting life. Well last night was a normal night in my crazy world.  I had a horrible day yesterday as many of you know.  I had no cigarettes all day and no money and I was freaking out all day.  Finally around midnight, I couldn’t take it anymore.  I decided to leave the house and go find someone who could bum me a cigarette.

I was too drunk to drive so I started riding my bike anywhere and everywhere to a place where somone had a cigarette.  I rode my bike around the area for about an hour until finally there was this black homeless looking man walking down the sidewalk with a cigarette on his ear.  He was walking back home from the beer store with a bag of booze.  I offered to trade him my lighter for the cigarette and he accepted the trade.  He gave me the cigarette. It was a Newport which was strong as hell but I was happy because it gave me a buzz.

This guy was drunk.  He was walking down the sidewalk stumbling everywhere.  He convinced me to follow him to his home.  I looked at the bag and I said, “What do you got in there? A forty?” And he nodded his head and then I said, “Let me guess….Steel Reserve.”  And he laughed and said, “How did you know!!!!”  I told him that I’m just really good at reading people.  We walked along the sidewalk for about thirty minutes with him stumbling everywhere.

From the looks of this guy, it didn’t look like he had a job.  I asked him if he was employed and he said that he “fixed tires.”  As we walked he told me about how he was excited because his wife was about to get paid.

So we continue walking down the sidewalk to this guy’s house.  I’m riding my bike just grateful that I got a cigarette and a new friend…and suddenly this guy crawls into some bushes right along the road and says, “I’m going to lay down now.”

And I think to myself, “Wtf?”  I ride my bike into an empty parking lot on the other side of the bushes and realize that he’s lying on the ground on some cardboard boxes.

“Is this were you live?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He said, “My wife kicked me out.”  He was just lying there casually as if it weren’t a weird thing at all to be homeless.  As he was sleeping, I opened up the bottle of Steel Reserve and took a few sips and then politely said, “Well, I better get going.”  I peddled home as quickly as I could.

See you soon…

-Scarlet