Down On
Eddy Street.
It's sunny down there, down on Eddy Street,
Tenderloin. Saddest place I've ever been. Hotel's good, with my view
and my privilege and my escape plan, and my temporary status as a
tourist.
They shout at each other, down on Eddy Street.
There's drama, always fucking drama. I watch the sadness and drama
unfold beneath that giant mural of the guy and his microscope,
looking microscopically at his own heart, ripped it seems by his own
hands, from his own chest. He's really checking this heart thing out,
and I wonder what he makes of it all.
I see two people, down
on Eddy street. Fucked. Fucking fucked. Their lives are fucked. They
are fucked. Right now they are chemically fucked and the hedonist
that I am thinks good on you, you've found a way of being fucked on
the streets of Tenderloin, San Francisco. Good on you. It's not the
Summer Of Love, but good on you.
I watch, fascinated, from my
privileged place, as he does this basically, fundamentally beautiful
thing: he takes his filthy rag from his filthy bag, and she screams
what the fuck are you doing? He says kind words and goes about his
task. But what is he fucking doing? One corner of his filthy rag goes
up on ledge, stabilised by a heavy can. A luggage bag stabilises the
next corner on the same ledge. On the ground, stumble and stagger, a
sun couch folded forms the third corner, and I see it now.
He
tucks the fourth corner through the pop-up handle of the luggage case
(lost or theirs – who knows?), and there is shelter of sorts
against the sun.
And it strikes me that I am actually seeing
beauty. This broken man is doing the decent thing, that thing we all
aspire to: he is providing shelter for someone he loves, down on Eddy
Street.
They pull their things inside the shade he has made.
Sanctuary, in a harsh part of town in this wealthy city. They
scramble inside, and others stumble by, some glancing inside, most
stumbling carelessly by, focused on the own pointlessness of their
own pointless day.
The guy's legs pop out from the beneath the
shelter he has so carefully constructed on this shitty pavement down
on Eddy Street. Why go perpendicular, I think from my Ivory Tower,
when you can stretch out horizontally?
Then a cop, a young
guy with a take-away coffee, he stops and peers properly inside.
There are words, a shake of his head. No way, his body language says,
no fucking way. You can't do this, you have to move on.
Eventually
the guy who built the shelter, he kind of stumbles from his shelter,
down on Eddy Street, and he pulls up his trousers and buckles up his
belt. Cop leans on the street sign as he waits for these losers to
pack up their stuff. The girl finally emerges, shade cloth is pulled
down, things thrown into bags as thoughts are shouted, and they get
on with their day. Not here, not today.
Not down on Eddy
Street.
