Since quitting work I have made it a priority to visit Cody regularly each day. The guy can't watch the TV set, and his room mate is a blind Alzheimers victim, so he needs a person there to make him laugh or exercise that sharp tongue of his. That or at least bring him a couple of stand-up comedy CD's (I got him Lewis Black and Mitch Hedburg, personal favorites of him). I figure that enough people are telling him how he's is a wreck with a death wish, so I try to keep it light. I call him the luckiest unlucky sonofabitch alive, and that I find it quite offensive that the only time I can get some time with the bastard is when he breaks his damn back. Luckily I have such a friend that takes a roast like that, chews it up, and spits it right back at me. Even when he's crippled and bed-ridden.
The rails have left an impression on the guy, though. His skin is ornamented with several different shades of ink, listing nameless phone numbers and thinks to remember. Losing composition books so often, the guy has made his torso into his own directory. Hemp jewelry snakes up every limb. His facial hair is ragged enough to suggest homelessness but kept enough to tell that he's aiming for a goatee and wants nothing else. I thought he got his fingernails painted black until further inspection, when I discovered dirt firmly entrenched inside his cuticles.
But for the most part, the guy is unscarred. No bandages. You would think he was perfectly fine if he didn't groan every time he adjusted himself, swearing for some more morphine.
I met his new cadre of comrades one day, when the Alzheimers neighbor was instructing me to pick up some eyeglasses he "saw" on the floor. I was grabbing at the same spot for the fifth time when they came in. Black jackets, hair dyed unnatural colors, feathers safety-pinned to tired hats, patches swearing allegiance to obscure (and rightfully so) music. They sat down next to him, eyeing me suspiciously as they mumbled their introductions, focusing their attention on telling Cody about the new train trips they were going to take and drugs they were going to use, once he was all better (of course). No mention of how these were the things that got Cody into this mess previously. In fact, in their weird logic it appeared as if it was the TRAIN'S fault for moving so fast.
Huh.
The romance I associate with the life of the homeless vagabond has been thoroughly erased during the past week, and since the girlfriend has most of my Beatnik books I have no way of replenishing it. I'll have to make sure that I don't become too old, hardassed, and conservative nonetheless.
