Finding Momentum

Mike is a man grow­ing famil­iar with death. It passes him on the street, he sees it in the faces of passer­bys. Nightly he greets its spec­tre on Durant Avenue. Tonight, as every night, he�s shak­ing the cup in front of the Asian Ghetto food court.

He usu­ally does most of the talk­ing. �Drew, they tick­eted me last night for sit­ting on these milk crates. Offi­cer came right up and says, �You know you can�t be sit­ting there.� I say, �Oh yeah, why?� and he shows me the side of the crate.� Mike lifts a nearby crate and holds it against the light of the street lamp to make out the mes­sage, SITTING ON CRATES IS A PUNISHABLE OFFENSE. Mike chuck­les, sets the crate down and shoots me a grin, �Ain�t that a trip, ain�t that a trip?�

He is a tall African-American man, in nylon warmups and a shirt a few sizes too big. His salt-and-pepper beard is thick and coarse, and every few min­utes he brings his hands out of his pock­ets to rub his palms against his bald head.

Mike always does the talk­ing. �So I was on Durant the other night and I meet this guy I met on the streets, his name is Jack.� Rock­ing back and forth, he con­tin­ues. �Jack shows me this check he got�eighty-four hun­dred dol­lars, eighty-four hun­dred dol­lars he got it off of dis­abil­ity. Took it to Oak­land and blew four thou­sand on a motel and a woman.� He gives me a dis­be­liev­ing look. �Ain�t that a trip?�

He is silent for a sec­ond as a glazed look passes over his eyes. He strikes his chest a few times. �It hits me like a rock some­times,� he tells me slowly. His heart is giv­ing out on him. �Now my hands are doing it again.� His hands are start­ing to ache, a result of a his­tory of heart prob­lems and tremors that resur­face in the lull between the times when he takes his heart pills.

Mike is shuf­fling back and forth, on and off the curb as he con­tin­ues his mono­logue, danc­ing, jump­ing on and off the curb, back­ing dan­ger­ously close to Durant�s night­time traf­fic. �God bless me,� he tells me, �God bless me.�

He furtively pulls out a cig­a­rette, lights it and takes a deep, hard drag. �I haven�t had one all day. Just had to.� The butt of the cig­a­rette shines bright against the dark­ness of the night. He coughs a few times and holds his chest. �Here it comes again, here it comes.� Throw­ing his cig­a­rette on the ground, he gives it a few good stomps until it is ashes on concrete.

�I�m aight, I�m aight� he tells me.
�Are you sure?�
�Yeah.�
�Mike, is it bad?�

He moves to his leather bag, full of scrawled phone num­bers on paper scraps and his heart pills. He is fum­bling with the zip­per of the side pocket; he�s try­ing to feel around the teeth for the pull han­dle but his shak­ing hands give him a hard time. Finally suc­ceed­ing, he grabs the bot­tle of nitro­glyc­er­ine and pours out the pills into the palm of his hands. I am sur­prised; the nitro pills are much smaller than I had imag­ined, about the size of a Tic-Tac.

Mike puts a pill on his tongue and gives me a face. �The nitro pills give me a headache. Last time I was at the hos­pi­tal they pumped it straight into my chest.� He ges­tic­u­lates wildly. �Went straight to my head. Like a headache in your sleep. I ripped the nodes off my chest the next morn­ing but the EKG went off. They came right back in and put them right back on.�

A few min­utes pass, and he finally stands up to his full height. �The headache�s gone. Thank God that nitro works.� A man with wavy brown hair passes us and calls out to Mike�he obvi­ously knows him. �Hey man, I�ll give you fifty cents for two cigs.� Mike pulls out his pack and pulls out two, then three, then he holds out the entire pack to the man. �Here, you go ahead and have the whole thing.� The man holds up his hands, �I can�t, I�ve only got fifty cents. And I was only gonna smoke two before I went to sleep.� Mike insists, hold­ing out the pack of Kools but the man only takes two and drops some change into Mike�s cup. Mike laughs. �What a trip. And I was only doing myself a favor.�

A few min­utes pass, and he finally stands up to his full height. �Andrew, I had a hard life. I can�t count my bless­ings on one hand.� He is sway­ing now, one foot on the curb then hop­ping off, tee­ter­ing far too close to the edge of traf­fic. Mike knows his time is com­ing. �God bless me.� He shakes his head, �God bless me.�

A note: Mike has been a famil­iar face in Berke­ley for the past half year or so, and I decided I would start doc­u­ment­ing my encoun­ters and expe­ri­ences with him. Why? I’m not quite sure myself. But I’ll keep writ­ing, and we’ll see.

Cur­rently Lis­ten­ing Con­tin­uum By John Mayer see related