Robert Sparks Homeless Journal pt 3: The Menagerie.

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As long as I stay in this shelter and on this street, I will never run out of subjects to post about. Instead of a single post about some of the more standout personalities around here. I figured a multiple tour de force is in order.

Today’s report from Chateu dé Misery is about three people who have made being here both mind-numbing and exhausting. I now present to you the unpredictably scary, the annoyingly obnoxious, and the scum of external plumbing.

Please allow me to introduce to you the latest arrival in the cold weather program. A rather attractive woman named Michelle. A woman who’s not making too many friends due to her excessive cold-weather line cutting or trying in vain to get in through the program line only to end up being sent to the back of the cold-weather line. She can usually be heard singing some melancholy lyrics a cappella. Lyrics that even the dark queen of pathetic, Lana Del Ray, would reject. But to be honest, I’d rather listen to Michelle than to another woman, whom I’ll call Barbie human barbituate. If there is no song to guide you, you can still locate her through her unsettling laughter.

There’s already a couple of guys who are trying to make points by offering this lady cigarettes or Clippers – filtered cigars that are the same size as a cig and come in packs of twenty which can be had for two-bucks out the door at the Rodeo Smoke Shop. I’ve floated her a smoke or two if I was lucky enough to have extras on hand when asked, but I know better than to try and “get to know” her in hope of exchanging fluids. I have no doubt that any horizontal relationship with her would result in one’s pet being sauteed alive in a frying pan or finding one’s penis pinned to the refrigerator with a butcher knife.

This leads me to the royal fake of the highest order, Kathy. An obnoxious jackal of a twit who’s only redeeming quality is that she’s somehow managed to go as long as she has without an orchestra of footwear performing Rise of the Valkyrie on her skull and ribs. She’s one of those people who are always “on” and alternates between being a flirt with any and all around – as of now I’m her so-called “moonlight coyote.” Or she’s being so sickening sweet that just catching a glimpse of her shadow will put you in a dentist’s chair.

Her voice is a combination of a frayed windshield wiper mixed with a malfunctioning coin-operated bed in some thirty-dollar a night no-tell motel in Barstow. A train wreck among train wrecks who makes you long for the calm sanity of Squeaky Fromme. Let’s just say if I were stupid enough to return her innuendos and triple X comments in a less than graphic PG-13 way, I’d be hit with harassment so fast that the speed of light would be laid up with whiplash.

I am going to close this out by focusing the brunt of my phone’s keyboard on the king of wham-bam trash, Don. Don is a whore and a slut who fancies himself the homeless Casanova whose conquests are only impressive to him and eye-rollingly disgusting to the rest of us. At current count he’s on his seventh notch on his tent pole and already eying number 8. His main squeeze of choice is an alcoholic motorhead. Their on again off again Sid and Nancy routine has becom the stuff of sick bag legend around here. After any one of their by the clock breakups, she’ll disappear for a week at a time in which he’ll be be seen sitting with and romancing the latest hard-up arrival who will unfortunately buy into his game bullshit.

We’re talking a real wretch of walking excrement that makes me feel ill for being male. I’m on record with Heidi with my prediction that at some point he’s going to screw over the wrong woman and he’s going to find himself with a knife in his chest. I for one not only believe this. I welcome the news of it. While preying on, taking advantage, and then discarding any woman is abhorrent and inexcusable. To do so to the women around here – lost, emotionally and physically abused and mentally challenged, is not only sick, but downright deserving of a real life reenactment of the bathtub scene from “I Spit On Your Grave.”

It’s definitely a kaleidoscope of personalities around here. Some quiet, a lot of good, and some downright visceral. As I said in the beginning. The ingredients that make up the stew of Massachusetts Avenue is a recipe that is always being altered with new spices and ingredients to create a new dish each and every day.

Coming soon, someone admirable – a portrait of Darrell Duke!