When you can't get any lower.

I got off work at 8:00 p.m. last night; it had been a very long day.  I took my usual route to get to the street where I could grab a taxi to get home.  Tired and anxious, I waited for the cab on a corner where I knew on most nights I could get one quickly.  Tonight, as fate would have it, a cab was nowhere in sight.

It is nothing for me to see a few homeless men and women as I leave the office.  They hobble down the streets leaving their 7 day grime stench in the air.  A part of me feels badly for them but as a city girl I have learned that a lot of them aren’t really homeless.  They spend their days begging for money on the streets of Chicago and then go home to spend their earnings on booze and drugs.  With time you learn to tell the truly homeless from these fake entrepreneurs.

Back on my corner and patiently waiting for the cab, a truly homeless large black man, which I have seen before, approached me.  I noticed that he was looking particularly rough this evening; it had been very hot in Chicago the last few days.  He politely smiled at me, I smiled back and then he casually unzipped his pants and proceeded to relieve himself from a distance of about 10 feet away.  To explain clearly… he was performing a one act show and I was the only one in his audience, I wasn't scared, just annoyed.  I turned my head and looked straight at him and simply said "Really?"* As a response to my words, ‘Pete the Pisser’ laughed, finished his business and then went on his way hobbling down the street with his 20 mangled shopping bags in tow, mumbling and continuing to chuckle the entire way. 

Seriously, this is not the first time that something similar to this has happened to me.  I have had complete strangers pee in front of me, a couple have whipped it out on the train just to see a reaction and the worst is to have them rub themselves against you on a train.  Friends told me many years ago that there are sick guys out there that do this sort of thing to their rocks off later as they think about your reaction or their action.  I never thought about this sort of thing living in the country.  At least in the country a man will step behind the truck, go to a bush or at least turn his back to you and try to have a little discretion. 

The funny thing about this particular man was that he seemed eerily just happy to just BE and the scene that had just played out in front of me seemed nothing unusual for him.  In the city the streets are a like a big commode and when a homeless guys needs to take a leak, to him it was plain and simple; he had to go, so he went. 

I am still watching the cheerful homeless man walk away as a taxi pulls up.  After our casual hellos I point out ‘Pete the Pisser’ to my newly hired chauffeur and I proceed to tell him what just happened.  It was at that point that this Pakistani cab driver became my guru of the day and spat out words of wisdom that I will never forget… “I feel so badly for him Miss, you know you can’t get any lower for him, to do like this, in front of a lady.  How sad must his life be for him?”

That is what it is like in the city.  When you least expect it a complete stranger says or does something that puts everything into perspective.  There really is a reason for everything and I actually live for these kinds of moments.   I am grateful for all of them I have experienced as they help with my growth and understanding.  I am even grateful to Pete the Pisser.

I got out of the cab feeling good, tipped the cabbie an extra buck for the words of wisdom and went home to start a blog because seriously… you can't make this stuff up. 

*As a side note this is very good for me as usually I would burst out some profanities which is something that I have picked up while living in the city that I am not particularly proud of, but it can help a girl out appropriate times.