remembrance of dark days

The arrest report from Tallahassee, FL is on my personal "things-to-look-at-daily" list. I know a lot of thieves, hookers, drunks, addicts and schizophrenics from my time on the street; on average there is somebody I know arrested for one thing or another at least once a month.

Yesterday they published the photo of someone who was close, very close, to me during my last drunken months wandering up and down Pensacola Street. The charges against her are not too serious, at least for someone who lives the kind of life I did back then. Hell, some people even welcomed jail time in the winter; central heating, indoors and out of the weather, regular meals (even if the food sucks, there is something to be said for 3 meals a day).

I never had the "pleasure" of suckling off the county's teat in the Leon County Jail. Which is for the best, since background checks are often run as a condition of employment; mine is squeaky clean. Haven't been arrested for anything in 14 years, and have never been convicted of a felony.

Julia (not her real name) is probably schizophrenic but was not on medication when I knew her. She did receive some kind of disability payments but had a payee to handle her bills, because she was also a raging alcoholic. My kind of girl, right? At least at that time she was. She didn't use drugs, but loved to drink beer. Unfortunately, her erratic behavior meant that she had been banned from the premises of most of the nearby convenience stores. She would send me on beer runs since she couldn't go into certain stores anymore.

It worked for both of us. I got beer, she got beer, we both got companionship.

Her apartment was a disaster area. Animal waste all over the bedroom and bathroom. Furniture piled halfway to the ceiling in the living room. Cockroaches. Barely enough room to walk around.

But I gladly went over to her place nearly every day. It was something to do, you know? Something other than wandering the streets and getting drunk while reading a book behind the car wash.

Today, I have a real life. A much more complicated life, but life isn't supposed to be simple all of the time. Today I have a good life. And I hope Julia is going to be OK; I hope she still has at least a crappy, dirty little apartment to return to when she gets out of jail.