Gorgeous weather on Sunday! Crowds are returning to the streets, so lots of our fellow photographers were out there. The great weather also turned out the street performers and the transit prowlers. Where the people go, the showmen, the hucksters and the troubled follow.
On a stretch of the Red Line, just north of where the underground moves above ground, a young woman or girl, maybe in her late teens, all of 5-feet tall and no more than 80 pounds soaking wet, began her pitch by explaining that she'd found a shelter near a Blue Line stop that charges $18.00 a night: "I have five-dollars-and-eighty-seven cents, so far. Can anyone help me with the rest?" She wanted us to know that she counts pennies.
The thing is, she was so soft-spoken that I don't think more than a half dozen passengers heard what she was saying.
She also had an air of North Shore breeding about her, but her eyelids were three-quarters shut, and she was quite obviously spaced out of her mind. A sleep walker. A heroin addict, for sure. Maybe she has a place to stay or maybe not, but I didn't think she was looking for anything other than money for her next dose.
Before she exited at the next station, she apologized for disturbing everyone. It actually came off as a sincere apology. Well, sincere in the sense that she really meant that she's sorry she has to do this. I can only imagine the terrible things that have been done to her and the things she's done, willingly, if that word can be applied to an addict in pursuit of her next fix.
As she exited the train at Fullerton, a very hip-hop-looking young man entered, proclaiming Jesus with an ear-splitting rant about quittin' gangs and givin' up women, drugs, alcohol, stealin' and killin'. He exhorted all of us to do the same. Sometimes it's difficult to distinguish between a merely zealous street preacher and frank psychosis, but this looked like a full-on manic episode.
So the preacher man is aggressively pacing the aisle, stopping randomly to look straight into the faces of unlucky chosen passengers, while continuing his overbearing tirade for Christ. Just being in the same car with him was so unpleasant that we exited at the next stop, Belmont, and moved one car forward. A mistake. He was moving forward, from car to car, so we moved again, to the next car ahead. I know. We weren't thinking. We were just trying to get away from him.
In the next car, we met the tiny heroin addict again, making her quiet appeal, spoken pretty much word-for-word as we'd heard it before, including the apology at the end. Realizing that the preacher was up next, we moved one car back through the rear exit door. You're not supposed to change cars that way, but I judged it an emergency situation. Well that's what I'd say if anyone asked.
From the car just behind, I looked through a forward window and could see the preacher, pacing and ranting in a saggy-pants fury, with his gold chains and his gigantic jewel-encrusted watch. And another group of passengers would pretend to read or play with their phones or stare blankly into space, as if they hadn't noticed him.
--- Paolo DeRosa, Chicago, IL
No comments:
Post a Comment