The Eternal Question

Have you ever been so drunk that you gave your phone number to a homeless person?

Up until one Sunday morning in the not so distant past, I could've confidently answered that question with a resounding, "No." However, in light of certain events, I must forever respond in the affirmative.

If I may set the scene, it's just after closing time somewhere in the neighborhood of 2am. I had just left a bar in Santa Monica and purchased a case of beer from 7-11 mere minutes before they stopped selling it.

Outside I ran into a homeless guy. Normally, I wave off homeless people with the same idea of collective responsibility everyone has thinking that someone else will help them. Tossing a dollar in an old McDonald's coffee cup doesn't give me peace of mind, in fact it makes me feel more guilty about my own inability to manage money, so I avoid it at all costs. However, this particular homeless guy was different.

He didn't ask for money. All he wanted was for me to look at some of his drawings. Now as a supporter of the fine arts I was torn, but decided that since it was the middle of the night and I was hammered, it was no time for philanthropy or art appreciation. I bid the gentlemen good evening and continued on my way with my case of beer firmly in hand.

As it so happened not only was this homeless guy an artist, he was persistent as well. It became very clear after several blocks that he was willing to accompany me to my final destination. Now like most people, I've fantasized about killing a drifter, but having never actually gone through with it, I concluded the better part of valor was to humor him for a moment. To my surprise, this homeless guy was actually quite the artist.

Sure he didn't have the steady hand for a perfect circle, but I bet Giotto would be equally as inhibited with a diet of malt liquor and newsprint. Maybe it was the fact that I was drunk or maybe he was an incredible artist or maybe I feared for my life, but I took out twenty bucks and purchased one of his originals. The homeless man was so overwhelmed with my generosity that he wanted to give me a larger print of one of his finest pieces. The only catch was that he didn't have it with him.

It's never more clear that you may have a drinking problem than when you're holding a case of beer next to a homeless guy in a Kinko's at 2:30am., for that's where his masterpiece lay.

It turns out that Kinko's doesn't have a lot of faith in homeless people's ability to pay for things, so they hadn't copied or printed whatever he was trying to give me. I wished the guy luck and headed for the door. He started talking about other art he had and how much he really wanted to get me an enlarged version of his masterpiece when it was printed. Whether I was starting to sober up or simply the ridiculousness of the situation had finally set in, I was finished with the encounter. I decided the only way to get out was to give him a phone number. Instead of giving him a fake, I actually wrote down my real cell phone number.

You might ask how anyone could be that stupid. Here is the answer: $99 worth of Jager bombs. I didn't drink them all myself because drinks were purchased by the round, but I assure you there was a hundred bucks worth of poison coursing through my body.

So somewhere on a park bench or maybe a steam grate, or maybe curled up under some newspaper just beneath the pier is a man, no, an artist, with a dream, $20 and my phone number.