Sailor's Secret Kiss


He is a shabby old guy. I first noticed him hauling a big square suitcase covered with baggage stickers. He slipped off Irving Street into the Wishing Well saloon. It is one of those San Francisco joints that died a lingering death, with four faithful alcoholics holding the wake. Then it was reborn as a trendy twenty-something place, nothing changing but the sudden invasion and occupation by youth.

He might have been the angel of death for the Wishing Well, because he did go in when the place was invisible to all but a wanderer looking for a very modest foothold into neighborhood society. It wasn't long after that when there was the sudden rejuvenation. There's always that last straw that tips the load and turns the energy back into its opposite.

Sailor looked to be on the bottom. He had an accordion in the case, and he began to play on the corner of Irving and 9th. I call him Sailor because he puts a cob pipe in his mouth and squints his face like Popeye the Sailor when he plays. Sometimes he does, anyway. I have a feeling some people don't quite get his schtick, and just think he's crazy.

What is crazy except being cut off from your story? There is a documentary called Jupiter's Wife, in which a filmmaker followed a "crazy" person in Central Park. By the end of the film there was a familiarity with the woman's story, and with it came an understanding of her insanity, which was more a disorienting grief when it was aligned with the underlying true story.

Sailor is homeless, and his behavior is eccentric enough that he is identifiable as an outsider, but he shows up in the cafes, and is a regular guy, buying his own, thank you. And slowly it has dawned on me that Sailor is a professional musician. He plays accordion. He pretends to be a living cartoon as he plays and caricatures Popeye. Except he's more the build of Brutus or Bluto. You have to get on his wave length. He's got the best gig he could figure out.

The people who live at the bottom of the food chain in the Inner Sunset neighborhood are willing to beg for their money. They don't think of it as begging, maybe. Each person might have a different justification for why the hat is on the sidewalk. Some of them are victims and they'll tell you about it. They're desperate. Some of them just live that way, and they want donations to keep on living that way. Some are reduced to it as a job that pays something, at least. But the musicians are just working for a living. They play, and if you want to support them, donate.

There is an old oriental guy on the street who seems to have one word: "Chanze?"

Once in awhile I give him a buck. He hasn't even got the social skills to beg. "Just a dollar to get the bus across town, Chief. I got my pocket picked ... you sure I can't mail this back to you, Chief?" that sort of thing. No, he stands there with his gut out and his eyes glazed over, intoning in a barely audible voice, "Chanze?"

I want to grab hold of him and say "tighten those abs and thrust that pelvis forward so that you align yourself over your pelvic basin, man! Align that head over those shoulders for the love of god, do you know how much energy you waste carrying your head around like it's in a tow sack?" But of course I'd just be joining the ranks of the crazy if I did that. And he'd take off running from me. The last thing he wants is to come up against somebody who's crazy. Life's hard enough on the street without that.

One day I saw Sailor chasing him down the street. It was one of those rare moments when your eyes see what cannot be revealed through selective bits of information. Sailor would run at this guy, who I think is Korean, and the guy would run away, terrified, and this tickled Sailor pink, and he'd do it again.

They were little children. This big, grimacing guy with the cob pipe is a little boy. The old guy he was chasing down the street is a terrified child. He begs because he is dependent on some outside source for direction. What direction he is capable of following depends on his emotional development, and how retarded it is. He might be about six years old. He might be ten. He might be four. "Chanze?"

Another old guy seemed really normal to me, and I asked him once why he was on the street. He gave me a good explanation, which then began to drift off into disconnected bits of information. At some point in these conversations I hear somebody trying to describe themselves and their actions in some logical way during a time when they were disconnected.

I begin to think that the reason he's crazy is that he hasn't got the sense to corral the demon, and say, "I was crazy during that time and I fear it'd make me crazy to remember it, so what say we have a beer and talk about some real or imaginary sporting event, if that's neutral enough. Beautiful light today and just a satisfying chill to the breeze, eh? I do find myself short, can you stand for a pint? Damned embarrassing but there you are. A man finds himself in different places at different times, but he always recognizes another good and honest man."

There was one homeless guy who used to beg in front of the gym down by the Golden Gate Park entrance at 9th Avenue. The gym manager was named Bill. When I was first working out there a young Irish guy named Dan O'Brien told me, confidentially, that the big black man bench pressing his weight preferred to be called by his African name, which is Zawandi. I wasn't that dumb, but I did appreciate the Irishness of humor the point of which is a racial murder. The guy's name is Bill, and he asked this panhandler why he always sat in front of the gym. "Why don't you go someplace else?"

The guy became indignant. "This is where I work," he said. "I come here every day the same as you do."

Bill is a comedian, but he didn't know what to say to that.

I am recalling all these people, these children, who are on the streets, because one of their own was buried today. Unless they couldn't let a political asset go, and will have him and Trigger do a whistle stop campaign for George W. across the great praerie. Poor Reagan finally knew, in the way these others know, the awful disconnected state when memory is a dark hole attached to nothing in particular. Sometimes crazy is behind you, and sometimes, it's ahead of you. Your karma can run over your dogma and he'll never be right again.

Reagan spilled all the mental patients out onto the streets. Some of them would be there anyway. Some would not. Most likely they would be like the mental patients have always been. Some people have to check in once in awhile.

Of course if the money is there, family and friends look after them, or hire help. But without it they're more likely to be living on the streets, or in the park, and heading out walking toward Paris because of the headline in a newspaper that happened to blow across the street and open, right in front of them, when they were praying for some kind of sign from above. "Go Crazy in Paris!" (An ad for a no limit credit card.)

"That's the call I've been waiting for," the ghost mutters, and shuffles off toward the Bay Bridge. "Someplace to go and something to do when I get there."

Between brothers, there is a secret kiss of acknowledgment, be one Prince and the other Pauper. Sailor plays his accordion and mugs the camera. Another day, another dollar.


Posted: Fri - June 11, 2004 at 03:19 PM