Life on 5th Street, #1

Living on 5th street was a time of stress for me, a dark period, but eventually became a time of liberation. It was a strange time. I had finally exhuasted my college career, had two degrees, and the fresh new assignment of becoming an adult and getting a job, something I had dreaded for a long time, as if it were death.

College, for all the fun, partying, girls and countless good times, was a life of stasis, an intellectual and social paralysis. Even though it was in many respects a "life of the mind" and intellectual stimulation, in retrospect, it was easy, a safety net that allowed me to prolong the inevitable move into adulthood. The cocoon-womb of college life, an extension of childhood. Moving to 5th street helped break the umblical chord that had been tightening around my neck for years.

So, I got an apartment downtown San Jose, on 5th Street, not even a block from where I was to teach, and where I had spent the last 7 years educating myself in English literature. Childhood and young adulthood were now both officially over.

Life downtown was always a daunting experience; it always made you confront life in the face, no hiding from anything. If you hid, life found you. Two times I helped disabled men in wheelchairs after they had fallen. One was a Chinese man who had been side-swiped by a car making a fast right turn. I was afraid to deal with it, having long had a fear of having to help at the scene of a traffic accident and have to see blood and body parts. But when this happened I was close and saw the whole thing and without thinking just ran out there to where he lay crying on the ground in the middle of the street. Another man helped me pick him up. We both picked up the fallen man's rubbery, stiff body and place it into his chair and then wheel him back to the sidewalk. I was still in school then. I got a court document in the mail asking me to describe what I saw and felt good writing how the driver was some idiot young guy driving too fast for the street corner.

The other time I helped a fallen man in a wheel chair was when I had graduated and was teaching. I had been seeing this American Indian man in a wheelchair who was always drunk and who stunk like the worst BO you could imagine, babbling for change as you passed by him. I saw him all over the place an avoided him, because the closer you got to him he would yell in a garbled, slowed down rant asking for money. Usually he held a beer in a brown bag, or some wine. Sometimes he grabbed out to clutch your arm if he could get it.

This time I was walking home from my office, and it was late in the day, and not many people were around. And there he was, this time out of his chair, pants down, genitals exposed, writhing on the ground, yelling something. His legs were paralyzed and he was blasted drunk, so he could not get up. His skin was blackened dirty. I was going to avoid him but could not walk away from this. I went to help him and just like last time, another man was there and assisted me. We held our noses and picked him up and put him back, tried without touching him too much, helped him get his pants back on. We got him situated best we could, and both of us pulled a few bucks from our pockets, and laid them down in his lap. We didn't look at each other. The Indian man's yelling had subsided to a sort of quiet moan. We both walked away in separate directions. I went back to my place on 5th street.