I could feel the wave of emotions before it hit me. The water broke from eyes and shattered on the ground as it joined the broken glass of my car windows. Just about everything I owned was in my car, and now, it was all gone. I sifted through the rubble to salvage any last remaining items that had not been taken, but each piece only reminded me of what was missing. Valish stood on the sidewalk, jaw dropped, with no words to muster. His reaction, or lack thereof, somehow validated that this was an appropriate moment to have an emotional breakdown. We saddled up with what was left and stored it back in Valish’s apartment. What remained of my belongings, the leftovers of thieves, sat shivering in the corner. I did not have the maturity to stick around and console them, or myself; there were grifters at large. We took to the streets while a stroke of denial overrode my consciousness, and I scoured the alleyways and the local community for clues. Maybe I could find the thieves. Maybe the cops came, and they ditched their loot in a nearby dumpster. Maybe a good Samaritan tripped one of the lowlifes and retrieved some of my belongings. Upon touching every inch of the landscape with an intrusive eye, I began to notice what I had failed to during my arrival of visiting my old friend Valish: abject misery. Any hope I had for recovering my life was lost within the dejected foundation of a city that sucked the life out of its nothing to lose underclass. The moment was too much to bear. I don’t normally smoke, but it seemed as if this was an opportune moment to pick up smoking, maybe that’ll be the signal that sends for help.
It wasn’t my first time, but I had never been the brand new owner of a pack of cigarettes. The sensation was different, yet somehow familiar. I had always been a second hand smoker, occasionally breathing from the filter to catch a breath of fresh air. Now I had the privilege to pack the cigarettes myself, to ensure the burn would last even longer than what the Big Tobacco exec’s ever intended. In other environments the smoke seemed much more putrid, but with the filth that lined the streets of the San Francisco Mission district, each poisonous puff was a break from the reality of the rotting flesh that boiled and caramelized on the edifice of the silicon skyscrapers. Though I began to take notice, I was still not done grieving over the loss of the material possessions I had accumulated for most of my life. And so it was in a sense, easy to pass it all by.
We entered the mass, off South Van Ness, into a penurious population. One body laid face down, while countless others trampled over it, their faces forward. Its limp legs split to its crotch stained piss shit drain, the head of a stream that flowed down the sidewalk and converged with a slough of others into a river that flooded the streets. These are the trenches that house the dead. The kings and queens play from atop the city grid, while we, the pawns, ford the sewers. In an effort to detour past, Valish unknowingly en passant, and stepped on a sleeping man; neither of them noticed, nor did the squelch sound.
We pushed on, playing homeless body hop scotch, hurdling over outlined bodies without chalk, sidling past drug dealers who don’t deal pot. “Shards? Rocks? Shards? Rocks? You’ve got cash, I have what you need. Shards? Rocks? Shards? Rocks? Change? Change? Spare change? Shards? Rocks? Shards? Rocks?” The streets teemed with junkies, tweakers, pan handlers and Jesus speakers. A stentorian man of God stood, positioned up on the hood of a house on wheels, professing the power of the New Testament, yet the holes in his blazer spoke far louder, and much further, as it was a testament to the defecation and decay that blanketed the square around him. “Jesus died for our sins! Shards? rocks? shards? rocks?” My cigarette still lit, and my vision tunneled, I leaked through the chaos and the culture cud.
We arrived to the sidewalk salvage sale of Mission street, an unofficial flee market run by fleecers, bandits, and the rejects of society. I spied the tables and blankets for any sign of what could be mine. And then what? What could I do? Call the cops, tell them they're selling all your shit. Tell them they stole all of your intrinsically worthless shit. Tell them they’re selling it for pennies and pills. They’ll laugh. They’ll hang up the phone. They won’t call you back. I scanned over each blanket and table set out on the cement down both sides of an entire block. Walkman’s for sale, cassettes for sale, scratched cd’s for sale, earwax jammed head phones for sale. I knew if there was any chance of recovering any of my stolen possessions, this would be it. An hour scouring, and I finally surrendered. I was far from excepting that the memories that were bound to my belongings were as good as gone, but like the city I had ignored, it was time to pass them by.
I brought yet another cigarette up to my lips and lit it, I eddied the newly stained saliva to the edge of my teeth and spit it. Another exhale and another journey for a silicosis soaked cloud to join its brothers in the sky. Unbeknownst to me, the smoke signals I had been sending were finally received. A man cut clear through the crowd, his eyes beckoning for a cowboy killer. My mind had been conditioned to think he’d be like one of the rest to beg for just one cig. As he approached his hand lifted above his head beholding a dollar bill. “Could I buy a cigarette from you?” he asked. It was a moment of relief, to cross a man searching for a fair exchange amongst the sea of beggars. A moment where I did not have to fend off another urchin. One dollar was more than enough for the value of one cigarette, and so I was obliged to provide him the fag and the fire to burn it. The crowd did not let up, the craze continued, and somehow I found a look of serene desperation in the eyes of the newfound member of the smoker’s club. “I don’t normally smoke,” he explained, “but I found out I have a terminal brain illness today. This seemed like an opportune moment to pick up smoking.” I handed him the last of my belongings: a lighter, and half a pack of cigarettes. The serenity in his eyes glazed over with the passing of a puff, his eyes tunneled through the crowd, and he leaked into the chaos.
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