The Poor Mouth

Taters O’Penury

VEN THOUGH I live a bit like a crackhead—sleeping fully clothed for warmth, showering in a sink, and spending my days roaming “the streets”—I haven’t, I’m pleased to report, been eating like one. True, I am occasionally forced to eat scraps barely fit for a dog. And said scraps are occasionally, truth be told, my dad’s day-old leftovers. (Dude, ever heard of a fatted calf?) Well, you know what they always say: When life hands you lemons, make a rudimentary battery.

The other day I stopped by my parents’ house for a quick full-body shower and was offered this to eat, in all apparent seriousness.

“If you please, sir or madam,” I whimpered, wiping a slurry of coal dust and tears from my eye, “can I have some starch?” I could see that they were enjoying this. They’d always expected me to come slithering back to their door; they just hadn’t expected it to take this long, and were giddy with relief. At length a gnarled, miserable potato-like object was produced. Now, I thought, I’m getting somewhere: A few more ingredients and I’ll see a way to turn the tables on my tormentors, foiling their attempt to teach me the error of my feckless ways. I waited until they had wandered off, sharing a good belly laugh over my imminent starvation, and snatched up the following simple items, plus two or three eggs. It was poor form, I guess, to take what hadn’t been offered to me, but on the streets you do what you gots to to survive, son. Plus, what could this possibly come out to? Seventy-five cents? A dollar?

The last time I’d eaten such a delicious breakfast for free was on February 3, when I waited in line with several hundred homeless people outside the Denny’s in Redwood City, California, for a free Grand Slam. That meal is lost to the sands of time—pulling out so hockable a camera in that company would have been like throwing a chunky kid to a herd of zombies—but this one I’ll cherish forever.

The Troubles

BOUT A MONTH AGO, after $677.17 in car repairs, 2851 miles of driving, and an evening of mind-shattering hip hop in a North Little Rock “Shenanigans,” I found myself in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I knew of this so-called “powder-blue heaven” only from the ravings of a deranged Tar Heel I’d met in college (for some reason you can also see him in this HBO documentary), but my associate Rollo had just started business school at UNC and had a room to let, so I decided to give it a shot. Since I don’t own any furniture, Rollo, a more than gracious landlord, gave me a love seat and helped me drag a gently used particle-board desk from someone’s trash pile. We then set about getting drunk enough to forget our respective Troubles—that I was broke, unemployed, and miserable, and that he had a mandatory “improv workshop” to attend the next morning, as part of his B-school orientation.

We did this with Keystone, just as we’d done the last time we were roommates—our senior year of college. We had come full circle, and the pathos of this situation wasn’t lost on us. Now, classier readers are most likely unaware that Keystone cans are decorated with haiku-like “Unsmooth Moments,” ostensibly meant to be funny but in fact brutally accurate reflections of the average Keystone drinker’s daily travails. When I plucked out a can reading GOT 2 NEW ROOMMATES (THEY GO BY MOM AND DAD), I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “This could have been me,” I thought. “This could all too easily have been me.”

Well, guess what? I wasn’t in Chapel Hill two weeks before a combination of credit card debt and family obligations* put an end to my southern sojourn and pulled me back into my clan’s upstate New York orbit. Now I live several blocks from my parents in a non-residential studio space—the worst of both worlds!—where my “kitchen” comprises a hot plate, a slow cooker, and this mini-fridge, kindly donated by my uncle (note totally sick Rolling Rock decal).

Dishes must be taken care of in the bathroom sink. I have lived in an apartment where the bathroom sink was in the kitchen, but never vice versa. It doesn’t get much more humiliating than this. (Well, it does, but at that point you no longer have Internet access and can’t blog about it.) Luckily, the Hudson Valley is full of edible and sometimes affordably priced cuisine. So, can I make the best of a truly abysmal situation and remain the same sophisticated glutton I’ve always been? Keep checking back to find out!

* None of your goddamn business