The Rubbertramp

Perry and Farren sat on cardboard on a street corner in the middle of a vast and vague city, one which they didn’t understand. It’s labyrinthian build, streets leading to other streets leading to other roads and sidewalks. Interstates and subways. All of it connected, and to Perry, overwhelming to consider.

But not to Farren. The concept of an organized universe beckoned her. She preferred comfort over the cardboard she found herself huddled up to her husband on. She grew up in a world of tax breaks, clever manipulations of the system, structures built on structures, beckoning to the next generation to soar even higher and closer to the sun, like a puckered asshole waiting to be penetrated. Big houses and big boats and big RVs and gaping sphincters.

They chose this seat on the sidewalk, not through failure, but as a direct response to the world they found themselves in. She appreciated the romance he provided their lifestyle with.

He celebrated the people they met on their travels. The ones who owned only a car, and needed nothing more. The ones who owned even less and loved it. They met a one-armed man while train hopping who explained how to hold your breath in the tunnels so as not to be suffocated by the toxic fumes of the locomotive. Perry wanted to become his apostle.

“Jesus was an anarchist” he would tell her, “I don’t know why everyone seems to have forgotten. Build a house for god? My ass. This sidewalk is a house” 

She would think back to her mother, crouched by candle light and the Christmas tree, as she communed with the son of god, not knowing she also prayed for the world Farren’s husband touted, supporting it like the keystone of a bridge over white rapids. Farren hadn’t prayed since she was a little girl.

They had a hat turned upside down and a sign that said “Why lie? The money is for weed.” She had a ukulele she barely knew how to play, but would strum anyway for the spare change. He had a sketchbook, which he used to draw strange passers by, and then sell the drawings on the street. Every so often, someone would recognize themselves in the image, and he would haggle and bicker with them, and they would buy the drawing, either because they liked the image of themselves, and wanted to show it off, or because they hated it, and wanted it taken off the street corner. Never anywhere in between.

A friend, a fellow homeless man, Tyler, wanders up from time to time to admire the drawings. He had Tourettes, alcoholism, or something else that made him ill fit for work, and would unabashedly shout his thoughts of the drawings as he browsed them. Sometimes he would say “Beautiful lady beautiful lady,” with a peaceful  gravelly tone. Other times he would yell vulgar obscenities at the drawings. Perry was always patient and kind, he always gave Tyler one “for the road,” which Tyler would accept graciously. Once he rounded the corner, Tyler would start pedaling the gift himself. 

Farren would listen as Perry rambled about his favorite philosophers, especially Diogenes, who he called the only pure anarchist.

“The man lived in a barrel among the dogs. By choice!” Perry would say, “he threw his feces at people he didn’t like. He would wander the streets by day with a lamp claiming to be looking for an honest man. Once, he was captured by pirates and sold into slavery. When the slavers asked him what he did, he said that he knew no trade but governing man, and should be sold to a man looking for a master. He was a punk!”

Whenever his time came, Perry wanted his body dumped over the city walls, for the wild animals to eat, just like Diogenes. He would feed the stray dogs, destroy the belongings he didn’t need. He lived efficiently and compassionately and she loved that about him. When she watched him feed the strays, she would imagine him a great father to their child, someday. She would gaze at his dreaded hair, his tattered clothes, the myriad of tattoos and stick and pokes gathered on his arms, each their own peaceful rebellion. She would imagine a small clean baby in those arms, happy and free from the world she was raised in. They were crust punks, and they were in love.

Later, she would learn the dogs they fed were not strays, but loyal companions whose owners would let wander the neighborhood during the day. Each night the dogs returned to homes fit with comfortable beds and kibble, with nary a second thought of the happy couple.

The dogs didn’t understand why they stopped loving them, but would still lay beside them while they begged on the street. Eventually, winter would come, and the punks would get hungry. She would talk about leaving the city for somewhere warmer, but the art wasn’t selling like it did in the summer, and they couldn’t get enough money together for tickets. Maybe enough for a couple joints and some food, but even that money started to dwindle. One day, they broke into the dog’s home, just for some food. They took the luxuries from the fridge while the dog just watched. On his way out the door, Perry took the dog’s food too. They looked at each other. In Perry’s eyes was the pain of betrayal, in the dogs eyes were only loyalty and the excitement for an expectant meal which Perry would choose to deny.

Farren refused to eat the kibble, so Perry would eat it all himself, proudly and spitefully.

In a public library, at the keyboard of an outdated computer, she would discover that Diogenes was not an anarchist but rather a cynic, and in that moment she fell out of love with Perry, his ramblings shifted immediately in her mind from prophetic to simply uninformed, misguided. By then, she was already pregnant.