It’s early morning in the heart of Oakland’s Skid Row, and Steve F. is coming toward us, me and Artie G., from across the street from the rescue mission, bouncing from leg to leg, waving at us with one hand and in the other hand, balancing an open styrofoam box with his free breakfast. As always, Steve is grinning his maniac drug grin and weaving as he walks.
“Oh boy…” Artie G,. mutters. He leans back on the empty storefront and takes out a cigarette.
I wait and watch, bracing for the craziness, apprehensive but also intrigued. Steve is a wild and wiry guy with a scraggly gray beard and always wears an expensive goose down jacket someone donated to the rescue mission. He always talks by shouting with the enthusiasm of someone who is the first to discover air.
“How you guys doing!” he shouts from halfway across the street.
Up and down the street, there’s a line of sleeping bags with sleeping bodies stretched out like unwanted deliveries deposited in the storefronts along Washington Street, unconscious, anonymous witnesses to a morning that was full of silence.
Steve doesn’t care. “Look what I got!” he shouts as loud as ever.
He picks up a pancake from the plate with a white plastic fork, waves the pancake around like a fish he just caught and bites into it. His toothless gums are working, syrup wets his lips and he drops the pancake back into the plate.
Artie G. drops his half-smoked cigarette to the sidewalk and crushes it out. He knows the routine. Steve is supposed to go to the recovery meeting at the rescue mission every morning, but he usually sits restlessly for five minutes or so, then goes to get his free breakfast.
I haven’t had a chance to talk to Artie, but it looks like he wants to leave. It’s through Artie that I know Steve. Artie got to know him during his bouts of homelessness over the last dozen years, but at some point, Artie gave up living in his car or hiding in the marshes by the bay and got into recovery. Steve preferred to stay out.
“He says he likes the freedom,” Artie told me once. “But to tell you the truth, I think he just likes drugs. He can retreat to the luxury condominium complex of his mind whenever he wants.”
Steve has come up to curb bobbing up and down, bursting to tell us something he can’t put into words. Artie takes a drag on the cigarette, then asks quietly: “Steve, how can you keep doing this? Doesn’t any of the recovery talk mess up your high?”
“You know what messes up my high?” shouts Steve, stepping back and flailing his arms in his oversize down jacket and grinning at Artie. “You!”
“There I am, lying on my back in the grass along the lake, my arms spread out wide, thinking about my girlfriend, and I think of something you’ve said and that messes up my high!”
Artie smiles, shakes his head and says to himself: “Well, you know what messes up my recovery? Donald Trump!”
Steve goes quiet and notices the pancake in the white box, shrugs and mutters:
“I don’t look for moral guidance from the President of the United States.”
Artie and I look at each other, then back at Steve, but he had already forgotten what he had said and was licking up the syrup from the bottom of the container with his tongue. It was so delicious.
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