I spot Mike when I drive up Durant Ave on Wednesday evening. I’m not doing anything that night, so I figured I’d spend some time and catch up with him.
Mike’s squatting on a stack of empty milk crates. We slap palms, and he has this long look on his face. “Andrew, she screwed me real bad” […]
After a whole summer of not seeing Mike, I bumped into him last Friday at the Asian Ghetto.
Mike’s been receiving his disability payments and so has been off the streets for a good three months or so, but got kicked out of the program last month for missing a doctor’s appointment. So he’s been out […]
“Belinda’s drinking again,” Mike tells me as I pass him by in the Ghetto, “day in and day out.” She’s been drinking a pack of beer a day. “She’s gonna kill herself. She’s not drunk, but when she drink she gets feisty, you know?” Mike’s expression is mournful.
Mike’s been staying at Belinda’s place, but he […]
Mike’s been doing well lately. He’s got a place to stay at in Oakland, and does odd jobs around the area to keep himself going. He doesn’t even take me up on my offers to get him a meal anymore. “Go on ‘head Drew, I’m all right.” I feel kind of bad, though, because I […]
“I called you, Drew, but you didn’t pick up.”
I confess, I tend to ignore Mike’s phone calls. He’ll invariably call me in class or sometimes the call will get dropped instantly when it comes in. I use these as excuses to hang up on him. But it’s mostly because I know what a phone call means […]
Mike’s been having a bad week. You can read it in the grim lines set in his jaw and his listless stare.
Thursday, he’s riding his bike at night when his chest pains hit. He blacks out and next thing he knows he’s in an ambulance. He asks for his bicycle, and they tell him the police […]
“It’s a trip,” Mike tells me as we lean against Gypsys’ restaurant, “watching that guy do his thing.”
James, an African-American man dressed in jeans and a nylon jacket, is shaking the cup in front of the Asian Ghetto. He’s singing something akin to a gospel spiritual. I say help a friend, I say helllp a friend […]
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 […]
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