The other day I sat with a man, his name is Ricardo. Or was. I hope is. He was less than a mile from my home, which is filled with the things I buy with paintings—whole bean coffee, volcanic face masks, limonada, audiophile-approved speakers. I can’t stop thinking how close he was, I keep looking out my kitchen window in the direction of Ricardo.
I found him flat on the sidewalk on Echo Park Blvd, a block away from the boutique grocery store where you can do your single-meal shopping to perfection.
Delicious stuff, like a roadside farm-stand-meets…idk-Paris or something.
Cheese for days.
People stepped over Ricardo, he was drenched in his own piss next to his wheelchair, mumbling and laughing. I thought he was dead at first, before he started laughing. I step over 100 homeless people in deathlike sleeps on sidewalks every week, which is illegal now—not stepping over them, that’s legal, but sleeping on the sidewalk is illegal now, but I try to stop…if there’s nothing to DO, and even if there is, for a moment of contact.
I managed to get his attention and asked if he needed help, maybe help UP. He said he did and started laughing at the ridiculousness. Like we were friends. He was so friendly and gentle, though he had every reason not to be, and that’s not why I helped him.
And he was out of his mind.
Not just drunk, but mad too.
Kind and mad.
I asked if there was anywhere I could push him. Through his soiled open shirt I saw he had a plastic shopping bag covering something big sticking out of his torso, which I assumed was a colostomy bag even though what I saw poking out here and there when the bag shifted was…n’t that. He continuously resituated the bag, and I refused to see.
Which meant I continually everted my eyes,
Arching my neck like I was peering over the shoulder of a tall man at a concert.
Still we spoke to each other, smiling widely. But the autistic agitation was already slipping in as my sensory issues kicked in, no matter how I refused to acknowledge what was under the bag. I already felt a wall go up between us.
Still.
He asked for help getting to a convenient store for food, and I said, “Of course.” I gripped his chair and began to push to the convenience store by Effie while he chatted away, impossible to understand, but happy. He had a companion, he directed me like we were going together, two strangers spending time because that’s what strangers do.
But while I pushed he kept falling out of the chair, once even slicing his wrist so badly blood actually pumped out of the wound.
The store was closed. There was nothing near us. We’d rolled blocks away from anything. I wasn’t happy, and Ricardo was irritated. He began pointing “Let’s go! Come on let’s go!” He was pointing back to the gas station the way we’d come. All I saw was the bumpy treacherous sidewalk. I hesitated but he convinced me to keep pushing him. He couldn’t understand what my problem was “it’s right there! You take me over there.” He was right, I couldn’t leave him where we were.
People walking dogs, a mother with a pretty toddler in a straw brimmed hat and leggings, they regarded me pushing Ricardo and they beamed at me as if to say “thank you for reminding us of the goodness of humanity”… “not all heroes wear capes”… “faith restored.” But. I was watching them walk towards the residential area, away from the stores, so I knew they’d stepped over him when they’d walked to town, before I got there. I bet they didn’t even pause to see if Ricardo’s ribs expanded.
Then he tipped over again.
Yelled “Oww!! Ow-ohh.”
The bag slipped.
I saw something.
The sidewalk was simply too bumpy; he was too vulnerable to tipping. It was impossible. Because there was a reason the tipping was so horrifying. I found my arms shaking up and down like I was shaking cocktails—getting the upset beelike energy in my veins out while he climbed back in the chair. He was smiling to let me know it was ok, he was ok. He was still asking for a push for a sandwich pointing feebly in no real direction.
I finally lowered my eyes to his torso and I finally realized why I trying so hard not to see what was there. I didn’t know what I was keeping from myself and, whatever it was, I wanted to know.
He has a mound on his torso like a miniature traffic cone, or half a pro football, the top of it was a hole the size of a baseball. Coming out of it like a cyst, a birth… I can’t tell you what I saw because I keep panicking. It’s too much to say what it was. My body can’t tell you. I will get there, I’ll write it when I can. Gimme a minute.
I begged him to let me call 911. He said no but I knew I had to. He said “no no come on we’ll go there!”: the gas station. He wanted food still. “It’s ok! It’s ok! It’s no problem, just for a sandwich.” He was trying to convince me there was nothing wrong, nothing a bite to eat couldn’t fix. I was pacing, half a block and back to and fro, legs rigid, teeth clenched, my palm lightly pounding my forehead. Panic. I realize I was hoping someone, any one of these people would stop and ask me if I needed help.
I tried again and again to convince him to go to the hospital. I told him I was so worried, I told him I’d go with him, I’ d wait with him, do everything and anything he needed there, pay, but still no. I tried telling him He HAD to go, and he got frustrated and felt betrayed. He started to push his chair away with his big walking stick. Slow so I didn’t have to stay beside him at all. I had to make him trust me again, but I needed backup too to help me get help.
I have had experiences calling for help, and I know I’m not taken seriously, the people I ask for help have looked at me with contempt 100% of the few times I’ve called.
When people don’t know your gender they don’t trust you. They think you’re a liar.
So I knew that if it was just me and Ricardo standing on the side of the street, calling 911 for an ambulance would be pointless at best, especially since he didn’t want to go. But I assumed that if I could get them to see his torso, they’d make him go.
I called my friend Paige who lives next to me and is one of the most genuinely kind and soothing people who works closely with the homeless population.
I was frantic I think, but she asked the questions and is so good at her job that within 30 seconds she understood exactly what the situation was. She was there in minutes and was so good, so great at explaining to Ricardo what our concern was, what we wanted, hoped, and then at explaining eventually to the dispatcher, and to the medics, and then eventually to me when nothing happened.
We stayed with Ricardo for hours, during which time the fire truck came and left, having asked Ricardo his name, the date, and where we were—questions which Ricardo answered. They left Ricardo to find a place to sleep with his organs erupting from his torso like a cyst. Apparently a person is sane enough to deny help if they are smiling madly, covered in urine, and shooting their organs out in a hard mass the shape and size of a lower arm, as long as they can tell you their name. Sane enough to give consent even when the medics see IT pointing up at them like the arm of Adam on the chapel ceiling, reaching a foot or more out of his torso-cone, covered with a white “thank you” plastic shopping bag which stuck to its moistness, the translucent milky white thin membrane which encased the organs like a sausage. I am guessing it’s the lining between the muscles and what lies within.
Ricardo was mad at us at first when the fire truck left, but when it pulled away Paige and I gave him a half hour while we stood on the corner reporting Ricardo to some fucking website. Not that the website is fucking, I know it’s filled with people dedicated to helping and who experience this powerlessness every day. And the medics, they were kind. Consent is absolute. And it’s got to be. When we walked back to Ricardo under the tree in front of the red church, he smiled warmly and was so happy to see us, this sense of deep comfort coming over him. He wasn’t holding a grudge. It was water under the bridge. He was looking forward to sleep.
We were powerless. All of us. Through this Ricardo was sweetly just asking us to bring him a quilt so he could curl up. The last time I saw him I was covering his sleepy smiling body with Paige’s pink blanket, and tucking my rolled camo emergency blanket under his sleepy head, tucking him in, in a stairwell. Which is the most hellish part of it all. Looking right into the bowels of hell.
This human being—everyone saw him! I saw people seeing him! I saw people smiling at me while I pushed him like I was such a nice good person!! For what? For beholding him and seeing a human as worthy of humanity as the people I’ve loved most in my life? And for not leaving him in a puddle of his urine with his organs shooting out?? Well, I did. Everyone can feel better about themselves for leaving him; you’re not worse than anyone for it. I was powerless and he wanted to be left to sleep and I wasn’t able to get him to get help. So I left him too. I bought him a salad and a water, and myself hand sanitizer. Cause I touched him and his things, his hands, and it was icky. The sweet man was gross. And that’s the extent of my usefulness—a salad and a blanket. Telling him “Sweet dreams, Ricardo, sleep tight,” and that’s that. Because there is literally nothing to do for him.
So, I don’t understand what I’m supposed to paint now—why paint? Because I’ve found a way to thrive in a system that does this to its own? I don’t mean American citizens. I mean capitalist subjects. So I can sell paintings to other people who thrive in this system—give them something to enjoy, maybe make them think, but probably not. Maybe they’ll flip them for ten times what they bought it for! Maybe I’ll prove a good investment. All I know is that my adrenaline keeps pumping. I woke up the following morning with a shooting pain in my side, sometimes whisper-faint above my hip, but sometimes sharp, like a hunting knife, making me drop and clutch my side, and it’s never left since, and images of what I saw … I’m invaded. I can’t stop the image, the horrible hole like the mouth of a cyst, the size of a baseball, the organs in the membrane, it’s everywhere I look, and my breath takes over pumping in and out until I have to grip a wall to not faint. In the park. At the grocery store. Watching the news in my kitchen. Right now. Days later. He WAS a person and now he’s a traumatic monstrous sight, a man who smiles kindly and curses whomever he smiles at with unbearable obsessive visuals. That’s who he IS now. That’s the system working. Ricardo wasn’t always like this, beyond help. I don’t want to thrive in the system that did this to him on one hand, but showers me with money because of paintings. The brutality is TOO brutal! Ricardo, Lytton, Seaside, the gulf, boiling highways in Oregon, mass extinction. It’s all rolled up—ash trees conjoined at the top, grown into each other, into one massive tree, except it’s the opposite of a tree.