Posted by: Bitten

A few days ago I was waiting at a stop light in San Pedro when I saw the filthiest bum I’ve ever seen in my life. He was covered with so much dirt and dried snot that I couldn’t tell what race he was. His one giant dreadlock looked like a tangle of soap scum coated hair you’d Drano out of a shower pipe from a locker room. There was a ring of dirt an inch thick from his hairline to his chin. Draped in at least a dozen blankets / towels / sleeping bags he sat cross legged on the sidewalk underneath a cardboard hovel baking in the heat. He looked like he lived in Fraggle Rock. I didn’t get a good look what else he was wearing because I was too distracted by the fact that he was barefoot and BITING HIS TOENAILS.

The best part about catching him was the fact that we made eye contact for probably 45 seconds before my light turned green. The entire time we stared at each other he didn’t stop what he was doing. It was almost like he enjoyed the audience, like he’d been waiting for years for someone to finally pause to enjoy the show. Once I got on the freeway I thought about all of the dog shit, loogies, broken glass, syringes, insects, cigarette butts, old gum, vomit, dead animal residue, motor oil, gutter water, and pigeon crap that had accumulated on his feet throughout the years and I started dry heaving. That night I cooked eggs and toast and started to think about the bum gnawing his long toenail off and swallowing all of the grime underneath it and covering his foot in rotten toothed homeless saliva and I couldn’t eat my dinner. Since then I’ve been able to choke down a few crackers an apple and some tuna fish.

Here are some other awesome things I’ve seen homeless people do:

A few weeks after I moved to New York I saw a wino taking a shit in a bush on my way to work. It was 8 AM and joggers were running past him pretending not to notice. He had his pants around his ankles and he was humming a tune and taking swigs from a Steel Reserve tall boy.

On a Saturday afternoon I watched an obese schizophrenic woman perched on a bus bench on Virgil & Santa Monica pull her spandex shorts down and masturbate herself into a frenzy in front of a street full of horrified drivers and pedestrians.

I haven’t seen him in years but I used to run into this transient in Downtown L.A. that looked like a member of GWAR. Everything he wore consisted of stuffed he’d picked up dumpster diving. For instance, his jacket had been transformed into a heavy metal shield with use of black spray paint, cardboard, and chicken wire. I never actually saw his face because his tangled black hair covered it and fell down to his waist. He was gigantic black platform boots so he stood about 7 feet tall. I tried following him once because I wondered where he slept, but he started walking down one of the scariest streets I’ve ever seen on skid row so I had to turn around. Once I saw him headbanging to mariachi music in front of one of those weird ranchero stereo system / strobe light / botanicas on Broadway.

I wish there was a way I could study bums in their natural habitats and get paid a zillion dollars to do it.