Transcending Shoelessness

TRANSCENDING SHOELESSNESS

Life isn’t always rosy. The traumas of childhood lend themselves to concealment. Painful memories that lie hidden emerge suddenly, disorienting me, and then retreat like guerilla fighters.

I have a haunting memory of the circus. In it I am small, small enough that I have to be held. The memory is like a feverish dream. In a spotlighted arena away from the larger thrills of the center ring are two clowns engaged in a typical slapstick. One clown has a container full of hats. He reaches into it and puts a hat on the other clown’s head and looks at the crowd with a smile of satisfaction. The second clown, expressing irritation, grabs the hat and rips it into pieces.

The first clown, his face a mockery of dismay, puts a second hat on his fellow performer’s head. The second clown again quickly grabs the hat and rips it into pieces. This goes on again and again, accelerating until the clowns’ actions are a blur of exasperated facial expressions and a flurry of ripped up paper hats. They must have destroyed a hundred hats, and I was overwhelmed with a terrible sense of futility. Was it possible that as a small child I could have known the complexity of futility? In my early twenties, the feeling, along with the dream, returned over and over again.

Through my teens my creative efforts were thwarted by teams of well-meaning adversaries: parents and educators, people chained to norms, to specific, regulated, clearly defined principles of action. My motives were misunderstood and the echoes of my frustrations became complaints painful to the ears of those who protected the status quo. I often turned inward and reduced my observations to fantasies or confessed them to be exaggerations to avoid confrontation. But I wanted to tell everyone that all that is seen is not seen clearly, that shadow and substance have merged, that illusions walk about as men.

As a young adult, I was full of imaginative idealism and I threw off convention with ease. I threw off my shoes as a primary form of my discontent. I threw away the prospects of wealth that had flowed through the generations of my family by simply refusing inheritance. I ripped up my money at a bar and when a compassionate bartender taped together a large bill and returned it to me, I burned it. I threw my furniture into the street from a third story window. I threw away my glasses and exchanged them for colorful prisms. As an asthmatic youth I never did well in sports, but as an emerging adult my energies found consolidation in renegade events that mystified and challenged my elders.

I remember being awakened by a policeman in the small hours of the morning. He had discovered me in a niche I had thought secure, a comfortable old chair in the lobby of a run-down hotel, out of the cooling autumn weather. He seemed taken by my relaxed manner and articulate speech and asked with genuine concern if there was a place I might go, a relative’s or friend’s house where I might find shelter. I mentioned my mother who lived nearby in another neighborhood of the city and reached into my pocket to see if I had enough change for bus fare. We walked outside and I showed him the change and indicated a bus stop on the corner. The city’s early morning commuters were already queuing up for the shuttle downtown into the wide mouth of the monster of productivity that swallowed them each day.

The policeman said, “Go on,” and gestured toward the corner. A bus had just pulled up and I would have to run to catch it. I took a couple of steps in that direction and then the cop shouted, “Wait a minute!” I stopped and looked back to see him changed from an icon of society’s motherhood into an angry cop. He tipped his hat back on his Irish head, put both hands on his hips and in his finest expression of discontent asked, “Now where’s your shoes?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but cocked his thumb towards his waiting cruiser and commanded, “Get in the car.”

The ride to the station was uneventful. The policeman was preoccupied with his radio and showed no interest in communicating with me. At the precinct station he opened the door and acted impatient, disdainful. I avoided his glaring eyes and preceded him inside.

I was charged with vagrancy and booked in the usual manner. I was passed through an assembly-line of indifferent clerks, photographed and fingerprinted, and finally led downstairs to the dungeon of the lockup. There I was thrown (a necessary element in the process of incarceration) into a cell that measured about twelve feet by twelve feet and was inhabited by no less than thirty people. I was in the infamous drunk tank.

I scanned the cell, looking for somewhere to settle. Little space was available. The two iron bunks were occupied by four large, snoring men. Others sat around the perimeter of the cell, some with their backs propped against the cold metal, their heads twisted uncomfortably against the metal bars. Some had their heads down between their knees; most slumbered, waiting. A couple of old-timers were engaged in raucous conversation and hailed me as I stumbled in. I chose to ignore them.

The toilet was stark, protruding from one wall with no lid. Over it was a large man on his knees, vomiting. His periodic spasms of retching were interspersed with gasps for breath and moans of discomfort. There was space around him. The other men had moved as far away as they could, giving him a couple of feet of clearance on all sides. I stumbled over a sleeping man’s foot and wished that I had shoes. The floor was dirty with urine and spittle.

I squatted down next to the vomiting man, put a hand gently on his back, and asked him if he was all right. Though obviously not all right, he answered with a silent acknowledgment of appreciation from bloodshot eyes before lurching again to the toilet bowl.

I looked around. What hope was there for these men, mostly derelicts, existing on the fringe of society, locked into an endless rehearsal with the police, like the clowns with their hats?

The wait was short but agonizing. I hunkered down flat on my feet, avoiding sitting on the dirty floor. I was discomforted and nauseated and irritated by the cacophony of suffering. Finally a guard opened the door and told us all to stand. After those who responded had left the cell, the others who remained, either sleeping or too weak to rise, were left to swoon until the following morning’s call.

We were marched into a large courtroom where a small regiment of ragged individuals from other cells had already assembled. We formed a line around the perimeter of the courtroom, and were told to keep standing and stay off the benches. Most men leaned against the walls. A few, unable to stand for long, sat on the benches, and the bailiffs came and escorted them back to the cells.

At the head of the courtroom, a robed judge took his seat without the usual formalities, and the men who lined the walls were called in front of him one by one. He asked them their names as an attendant checked them from a list, and he engaged them in small conversations to find out how sober they were. Occasionally he would ask the men to stand straight and not hold on to the railing of the box they stood in, and when they could not, or if their speech was too slurred or their answers too muddy, they were sent back to the cells to await the next day’s proceedings.

The rest of us were freed and directed toward a side door where a man stood giving out passes. I took one and went into the street. The air was cool and fresh; a breeze was coming in off the lake. The openness of the sky, the pavement against my bare feet, the unrestrained freedom to go where I pleased were exhilarating. I looked at the pass. It was a meal ticket from the nearby Salvation Army and was stamped with the time 9:45. I was offered a free meal if I showed up within fifteen minutes of the time stamped. I’d have to hurry if I wanted to eat.

Instead, I went in the other direction, walking to the Yellow Unicorn, a small bar on Chicago’s near north side where I often hung out and occasionally worked. When they needed me, I was the afternoon bartender, opening the bar at three, getting everything ready for the evening trade, and turning it over to the manager, who usually started the evening shift at eight. They paid me two dollars an hour, cash, at the end of each shift, and I usually made a couple of dollars in tips. I shaded my eyes with my hand and saw Joe inside cleaning. He usually started at dawn.

Joe let me in and we talked over a drink. Joe loved to talk and loved to drink and his work was a perfect place for him to do both. He played bartender and washed glasses while I sat on one of the stools.

“I just got out of the tank,” I told him. “What a gruesome place.”

Joe stopped cleaning and came closer, looking concerned. He was an old black man, with thin curly white hair and a face wrinkled by seventy-some years of hard life in a tough city. “You all right?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Joe. I wasn’t even drunk. They found me sleeping in the hotel lobby at One East Oak and were going to let me go and then the cop got all bent out of shape because I was barefoot.”

“They arrested you for being barefoot?” He was amazed.

“Charged me with vagrancy. The usual crap.”

Joe shook his head and poured us another shot.

“I was only in there for a couple of hours, but it was hard. The guys in there are in such rough shape. How do they get that far down?”

Joe came around and sat on a stool next to me. He put a comforting arm around my shoulder and told me, “Don’t you go and worry yourself over those other people, son. They’re gonna just be whoever they are and you’re gonna be who you are.”

“Why should I bother? I’ll probably end up like those guys in the tank. It doesn’t matter what you do. It’s all just a matter of fate and fortune.”

“Now why do you think that? You’re a good man.”

“But life seems so completely futile. You climb the ladder to the top, find yourself all alone up there, and if you don’t fall, you jump.”

Joe didn’t say anything for a minute. He just looked at the floor. “You got a place you’re staying?” he asked.

“Here and there,” I answered. “Sometimes at my mother’s. Wherever I am when I fall asleep, I guess.”

“You workin’ here now?”

“No. I blew it off when I went to Detroit with Dean.” Dean was one of the entertainers, and I had gone with him because he was playing a club with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rub shoulders with two great old blues men. “We were gone for a week and when I didn’t show up for work, they replaced me.”

“Why don’t you get yourself a room at the hotel,” Joe suggested. He reached into his pocket and brought out a small wad of bills. “You can pay me back when you’re working.”

I put up a hand in protest. Joe was a poor man and I couldn’t take his money. “I can stay with Ray,” I told him.

Joe went back to his cleaning, and I stretched out on my stomach on the low stage, chin in hands, and stared out the front window at the feet of the late morning pedestrian traffic. Occasionally I would see a pair of rugged or unusual shoes and glance up to see who wore them. There were lots of different shoes. Everyone had shoes. I was the only one barefoot. I wasn’t sure why. I had philosophical rebuttals ready for anyone who asked or criticized me, but I didn’t believe them. They were just clever answers.

And, of course, I knew the reason for shoes. The guardians of convention had taught me that the city streets were rough and that you needed to protect your feet, but I learned that the longer you went barefoot, the tougher your feet became. And without shoes, you were more observant of where you put your feet, taking precautions and generally being more alert. I didn’t think the ground was holy or that being shoeless made me closer to Mother Earth. I just walked around that way. Bare feet were part of my uniform, like my beard and unkempt hair.

When a pair of moccasins with a guitar walked by, I looked up and saw my friend, Ray Phoenix. He was one of the wandering troubadours whom the bar hired for fifteen dollars a night and free drinks to try to hold the crowds there. Ray was a good entertainer. He played a classical guitar and a twelve-string and played them well. His tunes were mostly upbeat and cheerful, but intermixed with the mournful songs of protest and sad and tragic ballads that made up much of the folk music.

“Thanks for the drinks,” I yelled to Joe, who was mopping out the bathroom. I ran out the door, almost tripping over the broom that propped it open. I caught up with Ray. He told me he had been up all night jamming with friends and was going back to his room.

“Mind if I tag along?” I asked. “I’ve been in the tank all night. Didn’t get any sleep either.”

At Ray’s we had a cup of herbal tea and crashed. Ray had rented a small one-bedroom efficiency near the bars. I slept on the couch.

I woke up at five o’clock in the afternoon. Ray was handing money to a deliveryman who had wheeled a small tank inside the door.

“Have fun,” the man said and he left the apartment tucking the bills into his pocket.

“What’s that, oxygen?” I asked Ray.

“No, it’s nitrous oxide,” he said.

“What do you do with it?”

“It’s laughing gas. I ordered it from a dental supply store.”

The night turned interesting. We giggled like schoolgirls for an hour and then Ray produced a peanut butter jar half full with thick, oily goo.

“Organic peyote,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “I got it from some Indians in New Mexico. The hardest part is keeping it down.” Ray’s life made mine seem dull and ordinary.

We rolled up globs of the stuff in cigarette papers and swallowed it quickly. The taste was awful. As the paper dissolved and the peyote began to affect our stomachs, we headed for the bathroom.

“Keep it down as long as you can,” Ray instructed. “It’s gonna come up, but the longer you keep it down, the more effect it has.”

I kept it down for about fifteen minutes, but when Ray let go, it was too much. I followed suit and we both vomited into the toilet, happily, side by side, on our knees, a picture of devoted camaraderie.

The peyote was slow coming on and Ray had timed it perfectly. He packed up his guitars and called a cab. We walked downstairs, piled in, and rode the five blocks to the Yellow Unicorn. After carrying his instruments to the stage, Ray went over and milled around with the small crowd that had gathered to hear him play. I was starting to feel uneasy because of the drug and headed for the balcony to find a seat.

The peyote wasn’t fun, it was challenging. It raised my awareness of the things around me to an intense level. Colors and sounds could no longer be ignored as just part of the things my life was woven into. They became important and had reasons that I needed to discover. The air was full of molecules. The light was strangely dependent on it, connected by some mysterious pulsating relationship. People didn’t just pass by, they were there just then for a reason and it needed a response. We were somehow all connected and hopefulness and hopelessness was wound up in how we interacted with each other.

The rest of the evening was a blur of colors and sounds and heightened sensitivity. I moved to a table at the very back of the balcony where no one would notice me marveling at things they couldn’t see. People came and went, had a few drinks, listened to Ray sing the ballads of the unfortunate, and when he sang the song about the buffaloes, about how they had all been hunted down and killed, when he cried, “Where have all the buffalo gone?” I couldn’t hold back my tears. Even if you lived in the wilderness and blended with the earth, even if your hide was like the barren, leafless trees and you could endure the hardship of winter and eat the tasteless parched grass of summer, even if you minded your own buffalo business, someone would hunt you down and find some way to exploit you, some way to diminish you, belittle you, or just plain get rid of you, kill you off when they were tired of you as part of their little “survival of the fittest” game.

When I woke up I was face down on the table and Ray was rubbing my shoulder gently and asking me if I wanted to come back to his place. I told him to just leave me there, have the bartender lock me in, that Joe would let me out in the morning--and they did just that. I pushed my chair away from the table and climbed under it, and slept on the floor until Joe woke me with his blues singing.

I had a wordless drink with him and he let me out and I went into the early morning cold and sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, my bare feet tucked in close for warmth. An old man shuffling by stopped in front of me. He wore loose corduroys with worn-out knees and a flannel lined jacket with one arm flapping. I could see his arm was missing. He asked me if I would tie his shoes. I reached out and tied the wet laces into neat bows and looked up at his face. He was looking down at me with affection.

“Thanks,” he said. We were locked there, him standing, me sitting on the cold sidewalk, staring into each other’s eyes. The moments passed like the time-lapse photography of a sky full of clouds with the sun breaking through at intervals, everything coming magically out of some point on the horizon and swirling swiftly overhead and then disappearing into some unknown place in the back of my mind.

He broke the trance and turned and walked away down the dirty sidewalk and there, on the forlorn streets of early morning Chicago, an old man had shown me, in one minute, what the guardians of convention failed to communicate in twenty-three years of rigid discipline, training in dignity, morals and etiquette, sportsmanship, and all the rules and laws put together. We are all dependent on one another. We need each other. Oh, how desperately we need each other.

I stood up and started in the direction the man had taken. I was grateful and wanted to thank him for what he had done for me, but he had turned a corner or gone into a doorway and wasn’t on the street anymore. A light snow began to fall. It was cold on my bare feet. I pulled myself turtlelike inside my sweater and let the arms flap, wondering if someone might mistake me for an armless man.

I walked aimlessly for a while, numb to the cold, lost in thoughts about the one-armed man and the past few days. I wanted to go to my mother’s, but when I caught my reflection in a store window, I saw how ragged I looked. I couldn’t go back to Mom’s that way; it would distress her too much. I rummaged in my pockets and found the meal ticket from the Salvation Army and noted the address. I needed a place to clean up. Maybe they’d have an extra pair of shoes.