Beautiful Women and a Broken Guitar

After I gave a Winston to Rodney in front of the Loon Cafe, I crossed 5th street and saw a somewhat grimy, bearded, sixty-some-year-old, relaxing in his army-green jacket on the sidewalk in front of The Refuge.

He had a brightly colored guitar resting on his pretzeled legs. A tan corduroy newsboy hat lay flaccidly on the cement collecting the occasional penny or quarter, assuming donors didn’t miss the collection plate.

And it was merely a collection plate, since he had another hat—a black, felt beret—which he actually used as headgear. I knew this because it was on his head.

I stopped and sat down next to him as I asked, “Mind if I join you?”

He answered with some version of “Be my guest” or “of course”—something like that, not really sure—then he pulled his cigarettes and lighter closer to himself as if he needed to make room for me.

Before I’d settled in, he’d reached out his hand to me and asked me my name. Then he said his was Douglas.

I felt very welcomed.

Douglas then exhibited the inherent social aspect of smoking by lighting up one of his Lewistons as if my arrival triggered the instinct. He was clearly not a chain smoker, but there’s something about company that makes it the perfect time to have a cigarette.

It didn’t take long to realize that he and I were virtually invisible, two nobodies whose eye level was at everyone else’s knees. Douglas didn’t seem to mind. With dozens of people passing within 3 feet of us each minute, he asked, “Are we discreet?”

I knew exactly what he meant, so I knew that when he said we he meant the Royal We, the nosistic we, not him and me. Which was fine, because if he’d offered me a nip of the vodka he pulled from his coat, I would’ve declined.

(Not, mind you, because I was afraid of catching anything or because I don’t like vodka, but because I refuse to drink liquor out of plastic. A man has got to have standards.)

He told me that earlier he’d been on Nicollet Avenue and made twenty bucks. That’s how he bought his Lewistons and liquor. Then he told me he spent the rest—$10 or so—at the Skyway, the rattiest strip club downtown (as far as I know, which isn’t very far in this regard).

“Beautiful girls, beautiful girls,” he intoned reverently. “I love beautiful girls.” He went on, “In about a month or two, I’m gonna clean my place up and go into the portrait business. I’m gonna draw girls: their lips, their eyes, noses, foreheads, their hair, their collarbones.”

I was listening, but I was irrelevant to his reverie. I just happened to be there. And while I listened, I couldn’t help but notice that he was a dirty old man who had no greater goal than seeing young women naked. But—and you’ll just have to take my word for this—he didn’t seem like…

Well, he didn’t seem like a dirty old man who has no greater goal than seeing young women naked.

Sure, he thanked a lady for the dollar she gave him by complimenting her legs. Sure, most of us would find that distasteful. But, really. There’s a big difference between what is true about someone and who they really are.

I asked about his guitar to sorta change the subject, and he said he’d only recently started playing when he found this old thing in the alley. The top was striped carelessly with blue, white, yellow, and red and there was an old price sticker affixed just over the fret board indicating that at some point a thrift store had tried to sell it for $5.99.

The four strings that remained on this guitar sat a full inch above the neck at the 12th fret, due in no small part, I’m sure, to the fact that the joint between the neck and the body was held in place with several layers of masking tape. I asked him about that.

He said, yeah, the neck had broken off a couple times and he’d screwed it back on. Now it seemed to be doing fine, though, with another screw and this tape.