It's funny when you're reading William Burroughs on a low wall, laid down in the sunlight and a man materializes beside you with dark skin and white hair and silver sunglasses on that fade to rouge, with a silver shirt and a bag of peanuts, and he says, "You better stop reading there or you might get you some smarts."
"Well, shoot. I sure hope not."
"You've got the butter brown skin, my man. You can do anything. You can be anything, you mulatto, you Egyptian, you cancer, you capricorn."
"I'm an aquarius actually," I say.
"No matter. You're what the gods have wanted for three thousand years, you are. You're everything." He says it with a hand on my chest, and I feel him over my heart. He's sixty today he tells me. "How many girls you fuckin' a week?"
"Ha! Not nearly enough."
"I hope it's around ten, man, because you're good for it. I can tell, trust me." He's not even looking at me, and I have to laugh. I'm definitely not fucking ten girls a week. Not even close. Honestly, I can't think of one person I know that's bedding ten a week.
There's some mystic aura about this man though, and when we part ways (I need to get back to work), I feel a fulfilling sensation within me. It's strange I think, and altogether wonderful how an eclectic phantom vagabond (I'm not even 100% sure he was real) can bring such warmth and light to a lost anxious depressant like myself. It's one of life's great secrets, I suppose. Be nice to strangers. You never know who they might be.
To my wildest thought, he was some groovy blind bluesy jazz angel, sent from on high with a mission of soulful sunshine. To the stalwart and close-minded, he was probably just another crazy bum that passed by like the breeze. Now I'll never forget him.
