2004-02-19 - 10:46 PM

Sunday night started out a night like any other. Matt and I sat in the living room, channel surfing, making humerous references to the lack of excitement designated to geeks like ourselves, in our day to day lives. Oh, sweet irony. Around midnight there was a knock at the door. A soft, persistant tapping, like a drunken woodpecker had mistook our door for a tree. Matt hopped up and opened it. I glanced curiously across the warchest and around the corner, and saw over Matt's face a scraggly, cross-eyed visage.

"Hi," a voice slurred. "I'm an artist."

Oh hell, I thought... He's selling something. I detested anyone who knocked on my door selling anything. I'm too damned passive, I always buy it. I still have that stupid subscription to EGN, and I don't even own a console. Matt can handle himself, he's not cursed with tact. So I got up and walked into my room, closed the door, and gamed for about half an hour.

Later, I walk outside, just as my name is being called. Matt ushers me over to meet his new friend.

"Alex, this is Dave."
"I'm an artist," he exclaimed, shooting out his hand to shake (and pound) mine. Then dave lowered his head very solemnly and pointed two fingers in the air.

"Peace." He half-said, half-whispered.

"Alex, I have a strange request for you. Dave needs a shower."
"I'm reeaallly dirty."
"Don't worry, I've checked Dave for weapons, and..." At this point Matt held up his 45 and shook it back and forth lightly, as though jingling car keys, for emphasis. "...We're protected."

Dave stood there and nodded very emphatically. It was at this point that the extent of this particular intersection of Weird and Mylife Ave. fully sank in, as I stood there taking stock of the situation. Standing in front of me, swaying slightly in recovery from his vigerous nodding session, was one drunk fucking transient. Dave was a traditional Tucson vagrant, dark rough skin and a slightly fried brain from too much time in the desert sun. Denim shirt (Jacket, except he had nothing on under it) and two layers of jeans. His cross-eyed gaze was friendly, intense, confused. Weird, I thought. This is getting fucking weird. Past experience has taught, however, that in life I lead, "fuckin' weird" is only ever just the beginning.

"I must show you my idea," said Dave.
"Oh yes, show Alex your idea. Alex, I really think you're going to like it. It's a great idea." The transient led me into the kitchen, where on the counter I saw a small stack of gorgeous women, meticulously cut out from what must have been the likes of Maxim or Victoria's secret. Each of these ladies was attached to a peice of green matte construction paper, with a small strip of plastic protruding from the bottom. Dave requested we turn on the music, I dutifully flipped on the stereo. Dave grabbed one of these ladies, and began moving the plastic strip up and down, left and right. This made the paper cutout of the girl curl up slightly in the middle, but rhythmically. Like she was dancing.

Dave's art was dancing magazine cutouts.

Dave was bent over so he could watch closely, focusing on his art. Dave began shaking his rear to the music. Matt and I shared a look. He decided to interrupt.

"Time to cleanse, Dave."
"I'm a genius!" He announced, stopping his ass-dancing to shoot a finger in the air and announce his own brilliance.
"Dave, did you hear me?"
"Sure. But first, we must talk business."Another meaningful glance with my comrade in arms.
"Business?"
"I need..." he paused thoughtfully. "An address. To send the magazines my idea. Here, lemme show you my idea."
"We already saw it, Dave."
"I'm a genius! Okay guyssss... (pause, either for effect or problems connecting multiple thoughts) Let's talk business."
"Okay, Dave, we'll talk business for 5 minutes, but then you have to cleanse. Alex and I are students, ya understand? We have to get up early tomorrow."
Head down again. "Peace...."
"Peace. Now talk business, Dave."

It was in those next few minutes that it became clear what we'd gotten ourselves into, the whole sick scope of this good deed gone awry. Dave wasn't selling his wares door-to-door, he was an entrapeneur. Dave needed envelopes to send his idea, which he'd spent the last 42 years of his life (he couldn't have even been that old) developing, to different major magazines. The top 5. "FHM, Victoria's Secret, Maxim.... FHM.......(head down, fingers up)Peace." He needed their addresses, as well as ours, so that they could send him his copywrite, and envelopes with checks for $75,000. In return for our services, we would each earn 10% of the profits. I took a particularly pretty cutout of Caprice (I recognized her from Maxim) and danced her speculatively.

"I'm a fuckin' genius!"
Matt whirled on him. "DAVE! WHAT have we said about using the f word?"
Dave looked sad for a moment, hurt and rejected, like a freshly kicked puppy. Then his face brightened. "Farmer!" he announced, having found a replacement f word. Dave then grinned and showed us the 4 teeth he had left, worn down and rounded like gumdrops, looking desperate to escape from his beer-drenched mouth.

"I need an address."
"We'll get you an address, while you cleanse." I leaned over and grabbed the bottle of Ajax dish/handsoap and handed it to Dave. We'd spot the man a shower, but I didn't want him touching anything I would later be applying to my own body. Even if it was soap.

Dave wandered into the bathroom, and looked in horror at the toilet, which had remnants of dried volmit on it from Matt's latest 20 beer war against sobriety. "Holy shit!" exclaimed the grungy, dirty, drunken cross-eyed transient standing in our bathroom.

"That's fuckin' disgusting!"
"DAVE!"
"Peace."

I closed the bathroom door, walked into my room, fell to the ground, and laughed. A minute later he came out, mostly dressed, with his shirt off. The apartment complex had been without hot water the entire weekend, and Dave wasn't too happy about it. "Beggers can't be choosers." I thought. But the word "Begger" had too much emphasis in this scenario to say out loud, it woulda been like saying "Watch where you're going" to a blind kid tripping on a curb. So I turned to Dave and said, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Dave. Peace." And he closed his eyes and held up the peace sign with his fingers, and I gave him a pound, and he wandered back in. Matt put on his holster so as to have the .45 handy, and we camped in the hallway. I grabbed my micro cassette recorder (any more of this, I thought, just had to be recorded) and about 5 seconds later, the door swings open and there's Dave, standing there with his shirt off, staring at us in shock, horror, and confusion.

"You guys ain't faggots, are ya?"
This time, I spoke. "Now Dave, would we love your idea as much as we do, if we were?"
"I love women!"
"Time to shower, Dave."

After Dave got out, he didn't bother putting his shoes, socks, or shirt back on. They were instead in a pile on the bathroom floor. He came back into the kitchen with Matt and I to continue discussing business, sitting cross-legged on our kitchen floor smoking an unfiltered cigarette, bumming beer, cigarettes, and half a chicken sandwich off of us.

Then, "Hey guys, I need a T-shirt." At first I was a little ticked off, he was taking the whole hospitality thing kind of far. Then I realized, his only shirt was lying on a wet bathroom floor on a february night. I walked back into my room and grabbed a Rolling Stones T-shirt. I actually had 3 completely identical ones, I wouldn't miss one of'm. So I took it to Dave.
"I'll give you this T-shirt for one of your dancing girls, Dave."
"You can have'm all!"
"I only want one, Dave."

So I grabbed the Caprice dancing 2-dimensional action figure. I looked over and saw Dave purposefully and forcefully licking one of his dancing girls across the legs. I put mine down.

"Smoothin' her out." He grinned. Good lord, those teeth.

Matt went to "the bathroom" to call Scott, Tom, and a Jon over to witness this bizarre little twilight-zone venture capitalism. It reminded me of that day, years ago, when I called Drew. Not just to have someone to laugh with me, but so that someone, some member of the outside world, would in the months to come be able to confirm that I was not mad, that it had all happened. That it had all really happened.

20 minutes later, the three walk through the door.

"Hey guys, I'd like you to meet my new friend. This is Dave. Dave, why don't you show them your idea?" Matt was grinning magnimoneously, being a perfect host and commencing introductions, as though this was some church mixer function or something. As though this wasn't the type of thing that was never supposed to happen. And they smiled and shook his hand and listened to his idea. and they heard about how he loved women, and he was a genius. Scott at one point leaned over, and very seriously, slightly hesitantly, asked if Matt was packing. I motioned to matt, who lifted up his shirt and showed Scott the weapon. Scott, secure in his safety, went back to listening to the business idea. They were, after all, the control group.

"Hey guys, I need money."
"Dave! Don't you ask our guests for money! They came over here to do you a favor and look at your idea! Don't disrespect them like that!"
"I'm not asking for money, I'm asking for forgiveness. Peace."

It sounded an awful lot like he was asking for money, but it's not like even Dave could remember. He had the memory of a goldfish. He was cold, though, and asked for a t-shirt. He was already wearing mine.

Scott and Tom, while fine folk and a good time, are not the type you'd expect to think much farther than their next bong hit, the next homework assignment, the next circle K run. While they're by no means selfish, people of this persuasion are rarely unusually generous. Which is why my eyes widened in surprise when Tom took off his jacket and handed it to Dave. And again when Scott did the same. Matt, following suit, gave Dave a pair of socks to replace his crusty holey ones, and when Dave asked for shoes, well, we just gave him his. I think he thought he'd just gotten free shoes.

Ah, Dave.

After he left, Matt and I pondered the experience. Not the strangeness of it, no, that would have taken decades. But its implications. Dave left our apartment after 3 strange, strange hours, under the impression that a check was on it's way, and that he had a peice of paper with our address on it. What was actually written was a bunch of numbers, and "Matt, Alex, Dave. We disclaim all responsibility for Dave." But Dave thought a check was coming. Which was a lie. Still, it was a lie he wouldn't remember, and it would give him comfort for the night. Dave also left our home with two new jackets, a rolling stones t-shirt, a shower, a fresh pair of socks, and a pocket full of change. So yeah, I think we did right by Dave.

Then there was the other thing. The cross-eyed drunk-assed transient's effect on our lives. Two stoners had taken off their jackets and handed them to a begger neither of them would ever so much as pass by on the street again. Matt and I, who had been faced with a Grind in tucson for what had seemed like ages, without anything truly out of the ordinary (on our scale, at least) happening in as long as we could remember... We had an adventure, a new story to tell. Nobody else in the complex would ever have had this adventure. This was the kind of thing that could only ever happen to us. And in a vague revelation-at-the-end kind of way, we wondered out loud, at the why of it. Had our paths crossed in order for us to help him, or for Dave to help us?

Right before we went to sleep, Matt stopped and looked at me.

"I want to thank and congratulate you..." he said. "A lot of people would have been weirded out by tonight, but you just rolled along with it. We gave the guy a shower, some clothes, listened to his idea... You just rolled right along with it." He paused. "Your baptist friends, they can talk conversion, throw the book at you all they want. But I truly believe that you lead a Christ-like life." I smiled and thanked him. we raised and clinked our beers, walked into our respective rooms, and called it a day.

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