Mistaken Identities Along The Way

I was thumbing through a magazine in a barber shop, listening to this gray-haired black man talking about the Olympics. He asked if Shaun White was that standup comic with the red hair that he recalled seeing on MTV.

“Yeah, right… He trains like a SOB by day, and hits the comedy club circuit at night”

It was a funny exchange when I heard it, until I realized what Scott Thompson looks like these days. Easily confused with the Flying Tomato?  I don't know, maybe.

That was a couple of days ago. Last night I experienced a different case of mistaken identity. It was cold and wet as I stood in line outside the bus terminal waiting… A guy emerged from the late afternoon shadows and edged closer to the huddled masses. We were all waiting to board our bus. There was something vaguely sinister about this guy. He was Charles Manson and a little Bob Seger in his appearance, rotting garbage in his aura, and otherwise soulless in his existence, or so I imagined. More Manson in his homelessness, but because this incident took place in Colorado where the Coors ‘Silver Bullet’ is king, maybe I was also subconsciously connecting him with the front man of the Silver Bullet Band.

He was a train wreck and I couldn’t stop staring. I caught a glimpse of a dirty turquoise medallion, a 60’s era bauble of some sort that was visible when his cloak and robe-like ensemble parted briefly. Surely this was an exiled gypsy king, sage of the Boulder gutter, or the forgotten Traveling Wilbury.

I wasn’t and will never be sure.

Still, I stared.

More people joined us in line. He didn’t walk, but kind of shuffled over. For a moment, I turned away. I was somewhat mesmerized by this being, sort of in a Squeaky Fromme or Susan Atkins kind of way. I looked back just in time to catch his contorted face. In the next instant he grabbed his nostril and sent a lugie splattering down on the pavement. I jerked out of the way as he hockered and cleared more phlegm from his aqualung. He assured me in a self amused hoarseness that he wasn’t going to get me. I wasn’t assured nor amused at barely escaping the virulent spray. He continued about his business, his greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.

I boarded the bus as the afternoon faded away and could hear him behind me, muttering about the fare before his mind was confronted with the driver. Again, there was that image of Bob Seger as I heard his worn out voice grow louder and more animated than before. Dirty and downtrodden, yet oddly intriguing.

He spied an acquaintance of his. Damned if this guy wasn’t the spitting image of the Zig Zag man!  The three of us sat in close proximity. They immediately started catching up, while I mindlessly stared ahead.

I listened intently as Charlie told his tale about how the city had worn out his body, was eating at his mind. Said he no longer felt, and then without warning his raspy voice trailed off for an uncomfortably long time. Heads suddenly turned when like a cold hard slap to the face, he began to exclaim that he would be going to California for the summer. Alarmed, most of the passengers quickly looked away.  His outburst was like a sidewalk sermon, and his friend was immediately caught up in the hellish homily which followed. Charlie the evangelist, started rattling off obscure western destinations as if they were stops on the way to purgatory or eternal hell.  Small towns that nobody ever heard of, or at least I never did. He went on for several minutes this way, like an over caffeinated meth addict.

The bus ride quickly became claustrophobic, and I was instantly transported to the rowing scene from Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory:

There's no earthly way of knowing

Which direction we are going

Is it raining, is it snowing

Is a hurricane a–blowing

Not a speck of light is showing

So the danger must be growing

Are the fires of Hell a–glowing

Is the grisly reaper mowing

Yes, the danger must be growing

For the rowers keep on rowing

And they're certainly not showing

Any signs that they are slowing

Then he stopped. He resumed in a far less animated fashion and took on a somber tone. Staring out the window at nothing in particular, he said a trip to the Motor City was on his immediate horizon. I strained to hear him murmuring that his mother asked him to spend a week in Detroit, and he was planning on staying for a couple of months. That brought a slight smile to my face.  He said that his mommy wanted to hear him sing his songs. Then an uncontrollable sniffling arose from this pitiful creature.

Between quiet sobs he said his mother died back in ’62, and that he has been on the road wandering aimlessly ever since. Almost inaudible, he started softly humming a song from 1962.

Ain't it funny how the night moves?