When the panic sets in there is nowhere to turn.
There is a man who hangs out in a local city park almost daily. He mostly sits in the cab of his nice little late-model pickup, which is usually planted in one of a few shaded spots. He’s there when we arrive and remains unmoved as we climb into our car and pull out as the sun begins its dip, two and a half playground-hours later.
I wonder all manner of things when I see him:
My first thought was of a creepy child molester, prompting me to keep my kids at a distance. But judgments of fear, hatred, all come so easy. What if he’s just lonely — a retired ex-pilot or something, kicked out of the house each day and bored out of his skull. Or an old man whose cancer is eating at him, and he’s reliving past nostalgia at this very park, as I often do, assigning yearnings of days past to the spaces in and around the ballfields and playground. Or, maybe he’s a sweet old guy suffering some other agony he thought one day would go away, but it never did, and so he just got used to a routine of pain.
From my spot at the playground, I’ve watched him step from his truck, pause, then climb back in. I imagine him soaking in the park’s grassy perfumes and the shade of eucalyptus trees, blocking the blistering sun. He drives a hundred feet to the restroom, leaves his truck running, and steps out slowly for a piss. He returns with that tired, old-guy gait, rolls back to his shaded spot, and idles there, engine humming, AC soothing him.
Sometimes he gives the engine a rest, shuts it down, and opens the passenger door to stretch his left leg. I’d see a cooler on the passenger seat and hoped it contained something pleasurable. I’ve never seen him glued to a screen, but sometimes talk radio drifts from his truck. More often, there’s silence. He sits alone, white hair, generous belly, and the same blue shorts with a striped shirt, head pressed back as if at church, staring straight ahead in the confined safety of his cab.
Even dog days when it’s too hot to take our children to their favorite park, we’d drive by that playground and I’d spy his pickup in the parking lot.
A few times, I nodded at him and said “hello,” but each time he turned away, lips moving in self-consciousness and maybe despair, usually while I had my grin-magnet toddler daughters in tow. Yet there is an undercurrent of something off, an uneasiness, like there is no way a grandchild somewhere clamors for his attention.
I’ve observed him now going on two years; in spring, winter, summer, and fall. I have seen him so often he is almost as identifiable as a friend, his presence reliable. If he suddenly vanished from the park, a curious element would be lost.
It is all sad to me and I know nothing of this man.
Some years ago, I was living in a dirty ’50s-built brick house, such as it was, situated behind a bar and a trash-strewn arroyo off Northern Avenue. It was essentially a Gentlemen Afterdark band house, one of several with only an evaporative cooler to combat brutal summers in Phoenix. Feral cats would slink into the cooling ducts of that house to escape the heat. They’d crap inside so when the swamp cooler was on the entire place smelled of cat shit.
(One thing I learned about friendship and songwriting in that house: When you starve and suffer together, with no relief or payoff in sight, the songs don’t get bigger — only the depression does. We formed that band as teens, driven by our flaws, yet any understandings of such hadn’t yet surfaced. We were us against the world. The experience, along with our festering addictions, doesn’t deepen your love; it breeds hate — at least in the moment.)
Mike was an older friend of the band and the live-in caretaker, so to speak, of our leased house. He sublet the other three bedrooms to us, and we rehearsed in the living room. A kind, insightful guy with a hazy, painful backstory, his height and forward lean gave weight to his jokes and comments.
Years before cell phones, his mother would mail him cassettes to save on long-distance bills, sharing her slow, lonely incantations about daily life, dinner plans and reminders for Mike to brush his teeth and shower. He’d sit in his room, drinking alone, listening to her voice while the whole house heard it through his door.
Mike had his fascinations, especially professional European cycling, which he followed closely and kept me updated on. He rode his bike everywhere, sober or drunk, earning the nickname “Tour” after the Tour de France. Before that, he ran a repair and rental business, where he lived in the back, renting out lights and sound supplies for parties, but it went belly up. At that point, he drank hard, endless bottles of malt liquor 40s.
He constantly encouraged us like some fraught little-league coach, sided with us against terrible club owners, helped as a roadie, and tolerated, even enjoyed, our ruckus in the house.
Mike would partake in the rousing quarters games we’d throw with a few band members and partners, and our buddy Doug Hopkins (RIP), before he formed Gin Blossoms. Hopkins would show up early in the day to play guitar and make fun of us, but we’d wind up playing quarters way into the night. The roaring cigarette-smoke-and-song games brought gut-bust joy to an otherwise grim existence. The game winner was the one who didn’t pass out, really. Hopkins was the first person I’d met who’d get sick from drinking, puke, and return to continue the competition, always with a peculiar, animal detachment in his eyes. A fierce competitor, he had it bad.
And last year, Mike was discovered bedridden for more than a week, in deep pain and incoherent. He died days later, his liver defeated, and it broke my heart. We had stayed in contact. He was a lovely person. We absolutely knew this. He was one of those you’d always want to keep safe.
How tricky it must be to live in a world where you’re forever stepping out from corners of loneliness, forcing a move from a truck, a bottle. Things throb with life, but life never tallies up how you’d picture.
