Yesterday, a guy died under our window and I felt nothing.
We live in a residential hotel in downtown San Francisco. A lot goes on around here and it’s easy to get de-sensitized to people. It’s easy to not care.
I try not to let that happen to me, but it does. A part of it is self-preservation.
Try not to judge me too harshly about my feelings toward this guy until you’ve heard a little about him. He and his girlfriend are homeless and have been hanging out in this area for about a year. She’s late thirties, he was maybe forty-five at the most. Their fights were epic.
She’d scream at him and he’d yell back at her in a gravelly voice until the blows came. Then they’d pummel each other. Sometimes it’d turn into a wrestling match in the parking lot below, with one or the other burying their opponent’s face into the asphalt. Police and medics are on a first-name basis with them.
These are the type of people I call “homeless-by-choice.” I know some have a problem with that term, but I don’t care; they don’t live here and see this stuff first-hand. Granted, probably no-one starts off with the intent of being homeless, but drugs and/or alcohol just get the best of them and they give up at some point. They no longer try to get any help and they generally feel that the world is against them. They just don’t care anymore.
This guy’s name was Jimmy, which I only know because she constantly shouted it during their fights. “Fuck you Jimmy, you bastard! I hate you! Burn in hell you sonofabitch!” He used his fists and hands more than his voice and he was hard to understand so I never got her name. I’ll just call her Sally.
It became apparent at some point that Sally was pregnant. I remember the day I heard her tell someone, and then as the months went by she started to show more. This didn’t change anything. They still lived on the street, mostly under our window, and they still fought.
When she was in her final month he’d kick her and hit her. Did I call 911? Initially, yes. But when they’d be back on the street and and it would continue, you just reach that awful point of not caring anymore. You can only do so much.
I have to commend Sally for bringing this baby to term and letting social services have him. She disappeared for a few days, right around the time she was due. Then she showed up again, very unpregnant and saying things like “they better take care of my son.”
Recently she went off on another yelling rant at Jimmy, this time saying, “I can’t believe you won’t let me go visit my own son! He’s your son too, don’t you want to go see him? They’ll let us but you won’t even try, you bastard!”
Sometimes these rants were accompanied by the sound of breaking glass as she’d fling a bottle at him. This is only after every drop had been wrung out of it first.
Yesterday we were watching some TV show when her yells brought me to the window, which they hadn’t for a long time. You learn to tune it out – white noise – but this was different. She was sobbing heart-wrenching, deep sobs without being able to catch her breath. “Don’t you do this to me Jimmy, you bastard, don’t leave me alone out here goddammit!”
It occurred to me I’d heard sirens a few minutes earlier but we hear those all the time too – more white noise – so I hadn’t realized they’d stopped in the parking lot down below.
I pulled back the curtain to see Jimmy laying on his back, staring vacantly up to the sky. He was a crimson, purplish-blue. I’d seen it before; he was gone. Probably an overdose or heart-attack. A group of firemen and medics stood around him as a gurney was brought over from an ambulance, then they lowered it and rolled him onto it. She asked where they were taking him.
“San Francisco General, ma’am.”
They rolled what was left of him off to the ambulance, which then took its time leaving. No code-3, another indication that it was over for Jimmy. She stood and stared at it as it pulled into traffic, then collapsed to her knees and sobbed.
I closed the curtain and said to Dorian, “Jimmy’s dead. No more fights!”
“Huh, that’s too bad.” She meant the part about him being dead, of course. We won’t miss the fights at all.
Then we resumed our TV show.
I thought about it, and the only conclusion I can come to over my lack of caring is that Jimmy died long ago. It’s nothing new. Yesterday, his body gave out. That’s all. His soul was dead already.
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