Monday, September 12, 2011

Of Course I Adore You (A Bad Day)

My day started with a constipated homeless man. As I crossed the road to the bus stop on my way to work I saw two men in dirty tracksuits talking next to a wheelie bin. Then, one of the men pulled down his track suit bottoms and his underwear and squatted down on the pavement. Immediately, the school girls around me erupted in a chorus of "Oh my days!" (potentially the mating call for South East London) and squealed with repulsed delight at the morning's festivities.

I couldn't tear my eyes away from his backside, his hands clutching at the cheeks as the 8am sun displayed his flabby derriere for all the world/The Old Kent Road to see. His skin was marked and scarred and dirty and of a sickly tone. He hovered inches above the pavement.

His friend casually waved the passers by on, I momentarily shared his frustration with the interest of the passers until I realised I was staring with a more intense fixation than anyone else. I could not stop watching. His friend was telling people to keep walking, telling them to stop looking. He just hung there - suspended above the paving slabs with his body forcing downwards with all his might.

The school girls were in their element; "Who would take a shit right there on the pavement?! What is he doing?! Why don't he go down an alley way?! I can see his ass! I need new eye balls! Oh my days!".

I wanted to cry. It's not escaped me that this is two days in a row I've failed miserably at producing anything remotely funny; perhaps I should be in a different line of work - if you're beginning to wonder if this is the "difficult third series" era of my blogging, then you may be right... (but hopefully not, I despair at seriousness - it might just be a nervous breakdown). This bothered me. This bothered me an awful lot.

Who would take a shit right there on the pavement? Someone who has absolutely no where else to go.

More to the point, how has a body become so physically disorientated that the desire to shit is overwhelming enough to resort to that, and yet there is nothing coming out?

My own hypocrisy with regards to homeless people has become somewhat of a civil war within myself. I judge them for smoking, for the state of their pets, for not having pets, for the coffee cup used for money collection, for the place they've settled themselves in - whether it's too windy or non-profitable... I walk past and apply measured logic and sheltered evaluation to a situation which is far beyond the comprehension of my mind. As with most of the world's issues, it's too big for one person to tackle... but by doing what you can, the overthinker can overthink themselves into a black hole of inadequacy which completely eradicates the initial good that was done.

What I saw this morning was wrong for a society which is what ours is. The fact that it could stop so, so unblinkingly easily is a horrible indication that we are a species evolved for our own survival and not a race designed for better things. It bothered me a lot.

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