The Pig, the '89 Buick Electra I sold to my homeless veterans shelter roommate Anthony, is back. It's mine again.
Anthony is gone. I have come out of the other side of one of my cyclic bouts of depression, but my roommate hasn't.
I am aware of the grammatical structure of this last sentence. Yes, I DID mean to say that my roommate didn't survive MY depression. Malaise is communicable.
About a week ago, I was describing some of the discomfiture's of my latest bout with Gray World to my roommate Anthony and he jumped up and said, "That's it! That's what I've got! What you're describing is exactly what I've been dealing with all this time but I didn't know what it was. I'm depressed!"
Oops. Metaphorically speaking, I coughed in my roommate's face and gave him my depression. Crap. He was such a good roommate, too.
Anthony went back to playing his beloved Civilization video game on his Playstation after his declaration of co-depression, but I could tell that I had started some wheels turning in his head.
Anthony has been playing Civilization for 5 years now, trying to master the top level, the level where after you build your superior civilization, you become the first of competing civilizations to colonize another planet. The game is his pablum, his refuge from the real world.
Thirty some odd hours of Civilization later, Anthony announced:
"I'm having a fire sale, James. Everything must go."
"Why?"
"I've decided to get treatment for my depression and if I'm going to do that, I want to be near my family in Seattle while I'm doing it."
"You're leaving? Just like that?"
"Yep. I've just got one more thing to do, then I'm gone," Anthony said with the seriousness of an undertaker.
"What thing?"
"Launch my spaceship. Colonize the planet," Anthony said a little sheepishly, "You know: win this damned game so I can be free of it. I can't be free until I beat this thing."
Fire sale. Anthony had bought the Buick from me in November for $600. He sold it back to me in February for $300. The Pig is back in my life. Anthony also sold me all the rest of his worldly possessions, his TV, his Playstation, his radio, his refrigerator, his DVD and CD collections, even his toiletries, all for another $100. Then he hunkered down and REALLY started playing serious Civilization.
"As long as you're bugging out," I suggested to Anthony while he was engaged in his life or death struggle with Civilization, "Why don't you bug out to somewhere interesting?"
"Like what, James?" "Well, it's Mardi Gras season . . ."
That conversation was on Tuesday. Anthony colonized another planet Wednesday morning. Five years of strategizing had finally paid off. Anthony won. He was no longer interested in ever playing Civilization again.
"My work here is done," he said as he packed a knapsack, the only thing he would take with him to New Orleans on The Depression Greyhound. He turned in his room keys at noon and I drove him to the Greyhound station in downtown L.A.
Anthony is a broad-shouldered brother who likes to travel light and travel often. He came to Los Angeles eight months ago on The Depression Greyhound with nothing but a backpack full of socks and underwear and left for New Orleans this Wednesday the same way.
I watched the big galoot with his black French beret and his "one for the road" saunter walking in to the Greyhound station and I could almost hear his favorite singer, Jill Scott, singing his exit song.
On the drive back to the veteran's shelter from the Greyhound station, I got a cell phone call from my buddy Gordon The Literate Anarchist.
"Guess who's back," Gordon boomed in his usual boisterous voice.
It was Mikey, my old Veterans In Progress program roommate who had disappeared himself back to Albequerque in November . . . bugged out to New Mexico on The Depression Greyhound with nothing but a duffel bag and a half dozen tattoes slowing him down.
Mikey's back, just that afternoon, but he flunked the intake drug test so they wouldn't let him resume his interrupted Veterans In Progress program until he completes a 90-day rehab lock down somewhere else.
He had nowhere to stay until the rehab people picked him up the next day, so Mikey slept in The Pig Wednesday night . . . and the wheel keeps on turning: veterans in, veterans out.
I wonder how many more times I've got to sell my Buick, The Pig, before it sticks.
Anthony is gone. I have come out of the other side of one of my cyclic bouts of depression, but my roommate hasn't.
I am aware of the grammatical structure of this last sentence. Yes, I DID mean to say that my roommate didn't survive MY depression. Malaise is communicable.
About a week ago, I was describing some of the discomfiture's of my latest bout with Gray World to my roommate Anthony and he jumped up and said, "That's it! That's what I've got! What you're describing is exactly what I've been dealing with all this time but I didn't know what it was. I'm depressed!"
Oops. Metaphorically speaking, I coughed in my roommate's face and gave him my depression. Crap. He was such a good roommate, too.
Anthony went back to playing his beloved Civilization video game on his Playstation after his declaration of co-depression, but I could tell that I had started some wheels turning in his head.
Anthony has been playing Civilization for 5 years now, trying to master the top level, the level where after you build your superior civilization, you become the first of competing civilizations to colonize another planet. The game is his pablum, his refuge from the real world.
Thirty some odd hours of Civilization later, Anthony announced:
"I'm having a fire sale, James. Everything must go."
"Why?"
"I've decided to get treatment for my depression and if I'm going to do that, I want to be near my family in Seattle while I'm doing it."
"You're leaving? Just like that?"
"Yep. I've just got one more thing to do, then I'm gone," Anthony said with the seriousness of an undertaker.
"What thing?"
"Launch my spaceship. Colonize the planet," Anthony said a little sheepishly, "You know: win this damned game so I can be free of it. I can't be free until I beat this thing."
Fire sale. Anthony had bought the Buick from me in November for $600. He sold it back to me in February for $300. The Pig is back in my life. Anthony also sold me all the rest of his worldly possessions, his TV, his Playstation, his radio, his refrigerator, his DVD and CD collections, even his toiletries, all for another $100. Then he hunkered down and REALLY started playing serious Civilization.
"As long as you're bugging out," I suggested to Anthony while he was engaged in his life or death struggle with Civilization, "Why don't you bug out to somewhere interesting?"
"Like what, James?" "Well, it's Mardi Gras season . . ."
That conversation was on Tuesday. Anthony colonized another planet Wednesday morning. Five years of strategizing had finally paid off. Anthony won. He was no longer interested in ever playing Civilization again.
"My work here is done," he said as he packed a knapsack, the only thing he would take with him to New Orleans on The Depression Greyhound. He turned in his room keys at noon and I drove him to the Greyhound station in downtown L.A.
Anthony is a broad-shouldered brother who likes to travel light and travel often. He came to Los Angeles eight months ago on The Depression Greyhound with nothing but a backpack full of socks and underwear and left for New Orleans this Wednesday the same way.
I watched the big galoot with his black French beret and his "one for the road" saunter walking in to the Greyhound station and I could almost hear his favorite singer, Jill Scott, singing his exit song.
On the drive back to the veteran's shelter from the Greyhound station, I got a cell phone call from my buddy Gordon The Literate Anarchist.
"Guess who's back," Gordon boomed in his usual boisterous voice.
It was Mikey, my old Veterans In Progress program roommate who had disappeared himself back to Albequerque in November . . . bugged out to New Mexico on The Depression Greyhound with nothing but a duffel bag and a half dozen tattoes slowing him down.
Mikey's back, just that afternoon, but he flunked the intake drug test so they wouldn't let him resume his interrupted Veterans In Progress program until he completes a 90-day rehab lock down somewhere else.
He had nowhere to stay until the rehab people picked him up the next day, so Mikey slept in The Pig Wednesday night . . . and the wheel keeps on turning: veterans in, veterans out.
I wonder how many more times I've got to sell my Buick, The Pig, before it sticks.
Tags: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Vets, L.A. Vets, veterans shelter, homeless veterans, homeless, The Pig, cyclic bouts of depression, backpack men, tramps, hobo, vagabonds, vagrants, malaise, Civilization, video game, fire sale, video game addiction, bugging out, New Orleans, Mardi Gras, The Depression Greyhound, French beret, Jill Scott, Greyhound station, Veterans In Progress program, jarvis, marquisdejolie
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