Shoe Horned

I rolled out from under my newspapers and cardboard tent thinking maybe today I could paint the changes into my life that I’d been dreaming of for the past fifteen years. I saw it all in my mind, but that’s about as far as it went. Under a little ray of sunlight that shone down into the alley I called home, ugly blotches and swirls or ink ran out onto the paper. I was trying to capture the change I wanted in my life, but I couldn’t get the picture to slide from my head down through my scabby arm and out of the pen onto the paper. It just wouldn’t come. Knowing my life as well as my art was at a stand still at least for today, I put my pens away and stepped out of the alley and into the street to make my living.

Street art is mostly survival art. Out here I’ve got the pictures I draw and my empty pencil cup for handouts and sometimes a sale, but not much else. The setup’s the same every day. I come out from the alley, put my back against the wall of Johnson’s Grocery Store facing the busy sidewalk, lay out my newest pictures and all the ones that haven’t sold yet, put out my pencil cup and wait.

People out here on the street running from their business appointments and hair salons are mostly dreamers. All my pictures of the celebrity faces showing them the lives they wish they could live are like a stop sign in the middle of their busy day. They pause in their steps, look at the pencil drawn sports stars, rock stars, movie stars, and political leaders and for a second they’re out of they’re complicated little lives for a while; then they see me.

There’s a fly that sits on the wall behind me all day just staring with those freaky eyes that see eight-thousand versions of me, but that don’t make me feel down on myself like the human eyes that stare but can’t see anything. Even the blind man’s dog that I swear can smell my soul doesn’t judge like the blind man’s eyes do. I know what I am, but I don’t always want to be reminded. It’s the eyes turned down looking through me like I’m not even here that dig the deepest. I live in the dirt, but that don’t mean I am the dirt even though I can feel it deep inside my pores.

The city always seems to get to those places you don’t want it to. I like to wear my hood so I can block out everything and everyone. With my hood up all I see are shoes. They’re the first things to approach. I hear them clopping towards me before I see them, but then a voice makes itself known and the questions start up.

“Oh hello, what beautiful pictures. Did you draw all these?”

“Thanks. Yeah I did.”

I guess they always think maybe I stole all these pictures instead of drawing them myself. The only thing I ever stole were the images of celebrities from the magazines, and okay, maybe the magazines themselves sometimes, but I mostly scrounge to get my material these days. The art is mine, directly from my head.

“How much for this one?”

“Two dollars.”

It comes out flat, cold sounding. Even two dollars seems cheap to me, but I need the money. It comes down to survival again. At this point in the deal it’s usually thanks, “no thanks”, or they try to bargain.

“Oh, I’m not sure I have two dollars. Will you take one dollar for that picture of the Pope?”

“Nope, not even for the Pope,” I say.

She leaves, but that’s okay. Her shoes told me she had the two dollars and that there was plenty more where that came from. High class attitude, but low class heart. No problem though, I don’t like my art going to people like her anyway. In my head, in the spot where the pictures come from just behind my eyes I start drawing her as she really appears. I strip away all the pretentious bullshit and dump her on the sidewalk as the little insect person she truly is. I draw her face narrow, skeletal with a shiny black shell surrounding her heart keeping all the light out. I draw her barren.

No shoes for a while, but I hear Mr. Nyueng call out. I always hear his voice before I see his shoes.

“Good morning, Billy.”

He owns the store. I feel like he really likes my pictures even though I don’t know if he understands what they mean, but that’s okay, most people don’t understand them either.

“Hey Mr. Nueng, how you doing? Going to change the sign today?”

“No, but I have an apple and a sandwich for you.”

I tease him about the sign that hangs over the entrance to his store every day, “Johnson’s Grocery”. He doesn’t look like a Mr. Johnson too me. He leaves the apple and the sandwich and goes back to sweeping. His shoes are always dusty. He likes tough walking shoes built to last. The workingman’s dust blows strongly over his shoes. The store and his family hold him down, but he always looks happy, so maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I like to watch him sweep. Every move is clean, like a smart painter making each brush stroke count. I always wonder if maybe he paints. I’ve got a picture of him in my head too that I plan on getting out on paper one of these days. He’ll be a regular Vietnamese Santa Claus when I get through with him. Mr. Nueng has a round happy face, deep gold colored with little wrinkles that break out around his eyes and mouth every time he smiles. There’s sadness in him also though, deep in his eyes around the dark iris I can see memories shifting there, things he doesn’t want to catch up with him. His left ring finger is stubbed off at the second joint and a line of white scar tissue runs along his hand and up into his sleeve. He always wears long sleeved shirts even on the hottest days of the summer. In my head I paint away all his scar tissue, all the ugliness he’s seen, the pain that keeps rumbling around inside him.

Shoes drift pass, but none stop. My arm is itching, but I’m not ready to give in yet. I want to collect as much money as I can. I try hold out until after lunchtime. A lot people are out on the street then and I don’t want to miss them. I got a little baggy in my pocket. I pull it out and lick the residue to take the edge off. I go deeper into my head, almost like dreaming, but my eyes are open.

I hear an ambulance screaming off in the distance and it shakes me back awake leaving a memory. It’s in a hurry. I’m glad I’m not in those shoes. I been there before and don’t need to go back. I’ve got a long scar in the middle of my chest to remind me of those days. Back then I had money a little money, a little studio, and some people really interested in what I was doing as an artist. I was just out of college and hungry. All I did was paint. In my little studio I’d attack the canvas from morning till night and it was starting to pay off. I had a few shows, some buyers, and then I relaxed and started enjoying the fruits of my labor a little too much.

Lunchtime hits and I take a bite into Mr. Neung’s sandwich. Mayonnaise and some sort of meat of nearly the same texture ride between two pieces of stale bread, but taste comes second to a full stomach these days. I appreciate Mr. Neung’s kindness. He’s got enough little stomachs running around his household to feed. I’m damn lucky he has the time to worry about my sorry ass.

I watch for shoes to stop. A few slow down, but don’t quite stall. I have to narrow my spot on the sidewalk a little during lunchtime. Otherwise the impatient and arrogant shoes walk right over my pictures. That’s all they see, and I don’t give out anything else. I can’t show them the extra emotions I add in the eyes. When they look at the magazines and see the smiling faces all lit up for the camera they can’t see the lies like I can. I can see the dope and booze and busted relationships sparkling through the bullshit. I put it in the eyes because the fake smiles can’t hide it there.

This time I see wheels stop, little yellow plastic ones attached to a skateboard. I’m cautious. This means a kid and kids can be tricky. Sometimes curiosity stops them and they just stare. Sometimes they think they want to be artists too someday and it’s all questions. But sometimes they come to clown you, or worse yet, roll you. I’ve seen enough of that shit to know kids are a caution.

I tip my head up and let my hood slide back a little so I can see everything this punk’s doing. I’m a little surprised to see a girl with blond ponytails and faded jeans looking at my stuff. She looks like she’s on the edge of being all grown up, maybe fourteen or fifteen, but her eyes look younger. She glides over a picture of Bob Marley and picks up a fierce looking Jim Morrison.

“Do you have any Kurt Cobain?”

“The guy from Nirvana?”

“Yeah, blond hair, the singer, you know, the one that died.”

“Sorry little lady I don’t have any of him, but if you’ve got a picture I can draw something up real quick for you?”

She hands me a notebook out of her backpack with a glossy teen magazine picture taped to it. I take in his thin face and sure enough, dirty blond hair. He’s got a scowl on his face, trying to look tough, but I look in his eyes and only see his fear, like a scared little kid who got himself into something he doesn’t know how to get out of.

“Come back in an hour and I’ll have it ready for you.”

“Do you need to keep the notebook?”

“Naw, I got it up here,” I say, pointing to my head.

“Can I have these ones too?” she asks.

I hand her Morrison and Marley and she hands me four dollars. Her purple Keds push the plastic wheels and wooden board down the street. I hear them scratch away from me as she heads towards the McDonalds on the corner.

I draw the blond hair, striped shirt, guitar strung from his hip, and scared little kid’s eyes, wondering if he really wanted to be a hero. I don’t see the star power aura around him, more like a lot of anger and confusion. I draw him like the picture, but with more shadows around the eyes, sort of like a warning. The girl didn’t have to tell me this cat was dead, I could see it in his face.

Sometimes I think about drawing a picture of myself. Putting it down on the sidewalk just to see if anyone recognizes my face, but I don’t really know how I look anymore. I suppose I could draw a pre-drug days picture, but then I’d have the same innocence that girl has in her eyes, and I know for sure no one would recognize me.

A cab goes by and blasts its horn, distracting me from my daydream. The reality of the city will always find a way into my head. Sometimes sitting out here all the day the sidewalk starts to talk to me and asking me questions like,

“Why don’t you fix up your shoes and walk on out of here? You’re an artist, aren’t you?”

Then I ask it why it’s talking in my voice if it knows so much. That shuts it up. I know my shoes can’t take me anywhere. They’re almost worn through, just like me. Even if I took a hundred steps in the right direction they’d still fall apart. The dirty old sidewalk knows my shoes just like I do.

Forty minutes later I hear the scraping of the plastic wheels and see the purple Keds do a showy skid to stop right in front of me. I put a little more detail in the eyes before I give the picture to her. She looks at the picture for a long time studying it, looking for something she can’t quite see. I want to tell her to look at the eyes, look at the shadows and the thin cheeks, but I don’t. No reason to let her in on the ugliness just yet.

The picture makes her happy and she gives me the two dollars for it, plus a greasy cheeseburger. I give her a Nelson Mandela I’ve been working on, to get a little positive energy going for her. Maybe she’ll find a new hero.

“Who’s this?” she asks.

“Nelson Mandela. Read about him if you get the chance.”

She waves a goodbye that I don’t see, but feel, and I hear the scraping wheels move off up the street again. I can tell by the slowdown on the sidewalk that the lunch mob has gone back into hiding for the afternoon. I choke down the cheeseburger to settle my stomach. My arm’s burning now. I can feel the juice oozing out of the little sore on the inside of my forearm. I know the girl’s six bucks isn’t going to do it for me, not with this ache. I check what I got. Not much I can do with only six dollars, the clothes on my back, and one mean monkey chewing on my heart and head. I’ve still got the apple Mr. Nueng gave me in my pocket though; I’ll chew on that a little later I guess, right now I need a loan.

I hear a shuffling sound coming up on the side of me and start to sweat a little. Then I hear a cough. The old rattling cough a wino that’s been on the streets a long time makes. Crazy Terry has brought his bag.

“Billy, Billy, that you under the hood? I got the medicine this time, gonna take the cure this week. Doc says it’s gonna be alright.”

I pull my hood back to let him know it’s me. I don’t want to scare him off. He spooks easy. Crazy Terry is kind of like a mascot to all the social workers in the city. They say he’s got lung cancer that’s spread up his spine and into his brain. He wasn’t supposed to live this long. Some fool down at the free clinic got it in Terry’s head that there was a miracle cure if he just put his faith in Jesus. Terry’s been talking about “the cure” ever since. That fool of a social worker should have let him die when he was ready. Now he shuffles around these streets still burning with a little life and a whole lot a pain.

“Sit down Terry, I’ll draw you today.”

“That’ll be good, Billy. Then I can give the angels something when I go in for my cure. It can’t be free. Even God’s gotta charge something, right?”

“Yeah Terry, even God charges something, but maybe you already paid your dues my man.”

I draw him quickly, but kindly. I make him into Moses so he can lead his people out of this desert. I leave out the big scar running down his right cheek. And I fix the flattened nose that’s been broken so many times he can hardly breathe out of it now. I take away the nasty smelling bottle of wine that takes away his pain and keeps him here on this earth. I leave the shoes busted, as they are. His shoes have been walked in and I can’t take those away from him. It’d be like taking his soul.

After I finish the drawing he thanks me and shuffles away in his slow motion death walk. After that I feel like I need to leave this sidewalk more than ever. I can feel Terry’s death creeping up on me, begging me to draw it, to give it a face, my face. All the same, I need to move before the shakes set in and I start doing the junky tap dance. A few blocks over there’s a newsstand and a few restaurants that always seem to be busy. The rest of it is a burnt out wasteland of vacant stores and boarded up windows, but the restaurants and novelty shops hanging tough in the neighborhood make the ghetto and the burbs come together.

Picking up and moving your operation in the streets is dangerous. A lot a bad things can happen when you switch streets in the middle of the day. Tough shoes with a real strong instinct for territory notice these things. These are the shoes that scare me. The ones you don’t see until it’s too late. The dirty, bum sneakers that see you carrying your pictures and tin cup up the street to a new spot and think maybe you’ve got something they don’t. Those shoes don’t ask questions about the price of the pictures or if you have any Pope John Paul or Kurt Cobain. Those shoes just kick, or sometimes carry a knife to shank you with. Other times they catch just as the sun starts to go down. Then they grab up all your stuff and run, faster than I could ever hope to run. By the time you’re up on your feet all there is to see are the heels of junky sneakers tearing off into the crowd.

I walk the two blocks to my new spot cautiously, checking for mean eyes that might be marking my little exodus. I sit down feeling a little calmer, but it’s hard to find space on the sidewalk for all my pictures. Busted bottles and leftover needles fight for space on this sidewalk. I don’t like it here during the day because all the non-working bums and junkies hang out with their dirty cardboard signs begging for handouts. At least I try.

But I like the view. Across the street from the newsstand there’s a little art gallery and gift shop. Nothing special, just a mom and pop deal with some paintings and flowers and shit, but it gets me thinking. Thinking about how I could someday maybe get myself out of this mess if I could ever get it straight. And in my head in that little spot where the images surge in I start painting.

I don’t paint the canvas in my mind white or black, but instead an iridescent blue, a healing color; I paint away the euphoria and energy that hooked me to the white powder and I paint away the youthful arrogance and feelings of invincibility that made me think I could handle the brown powder; I paint away the day my agent came to my studio and said,

“Billy, you’re a burned out junkie. You’ve pissed your money away on drugs and lost your lease. Pack up your things and get out.”

I paint away that memory that still stings so deep into my heart, one of the few days during those times that I was straight enough to hear, but not to listen what was being said to me; I paint away the hatred I felt for myself as I slowly pawned off my life to get the powder, always more powder, paintings that could have sold for thousands traded for a twenty dollar baggie, all my brushes, oils, water colors, pencils, canvases, gone till I had nothing left but a dirty number two pencil, some sheets of white paper, and my cardboard tent in the alley.

In this picture I paint myself clean, free from all the things that piled up on me over the years and the things I piled on myself; I paint myself fifteen years ago, bright, black, young and handsome, ready for the world; I paint right up to the first time that shiny white line lie like powdered steel upon the soft surface of the mirror and that equally soft feminine voice whispered into my young ear, “Just try it.” I paint my lips moving in rejection of this offer that would eventually suck at my vitals until even that small little space just behind my eyes had turned to a black knot of wasted potential. I paint this new life, my other choice and I see the shining young man take that other path.

But even as I slide my brush against my imagination the duct taped rubber soles and broken shoelaces come into view and I know the only gallery I’m headed for today is one that lets me shoot instead of paint. As soon as the sun goes down I’ll put away my pencils and hide away my dreams of being anything but a junkie street artist, find myself a little corner somewhere and spike up.