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bum behind the dumpster
Sunday, September 17 2000
On the weekend, I normally punctuate my self-assigned deskwork with excursions through nearby alleys in search of treasure. Though most dot coms have yet to realize this basic truth about the human animal, it's important for a white collar worker to periodically take physically stimulative breaks from desk work.
Lately my alley finds have been considerably less spectacular than they were when I actually needed things. Sometimes I feel like I live a charmed life; when I need things, Jehusafat generally provides. When I don't, or when I get greedy, I'm shit out of luck.
Early this morning I came upon a bum sleeping behind a dumpster in an alley just north of Santa Monica Blvd. between Amherst and Wellesley. There was nothing especially remarkable about this; I often find bums sleeping behind trash cans. I've had to sleep outdoors at times in my life, and when I did, I generally looked for places that were more natural and pleasant-smelling. But these homeless guys derive most of their sustenance from trash receptacles. For them, dumpsters are their supermarkets, their homes, their workplaces, perhaps even their churches.
I came back some hours later and the bum was still there. He hadn't moved at all. Now I was getting concerned. I sort of wanted to examine a nearby dumpster, since one of them was probably associated with a computer store on the corner of Amherst and Santa Monica. But I didn't want to disturb a sleeping bum. Besides, by now I'd begun to wonder if perhaps the bum had died. The death of bums is a continual and unremarkable thing in Los Angeles.
So later in the day I went back and looked in on the bum for a third time. He was still there, though his knees were up. For the first time I noticed that he was wearing filthy blue jeans torn with a wide gash over his white shin, which had its own accumulation of troublingly deep scars. I couldn't see the bum's face, but I did see a bottle of beer next to him in a position that implied he had brought it there full. There might not have been much life left in this bum, but there was enough for him to pull up his knees. I was pretty sure that when he died, it wasn't going to be in a hospital.
Balancing the gloomy vision of this possible life path, I came upon a far more pleasant view in this very same alley. A rather fancy condo complex on the corner of Rochester and Amherst features a swimming pool at its center, and I could see it clearly through an alley door that someone had propped open. It was an unusually hot sticky day, and had I been in a ballsier mood or had my housemate John as a co-conspirator, I would have changed into something resembling swimming clothes and taken a dip. But, alas, I chose instead to wallow in my semi-pathetic solitude.
But I'm not one to let these lonely weekends pass me by without tapping them for their marvelous lack of distraction. Today I continued work hammering out the small details of my glossary-building system. There are actually more glossaries being started in there than I expected, though few of them have more than a few entries.
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