Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Human Need

....I ran into a guy with a bum arm who asked me if I'd help him do small engine repair, making up for the shot gun blast that removed a chunk of bone that connected his elbow and shoulder. What a shit-hole of a beyond dilapidated trailer, where he lived with a wife and two kids next door to his own moms immaculate home. The place stank like urine and would be condemned if anyone ever set foot in there from the health department. His wife was decent looking and made it obvious that she was desperate to be rescued. I was trying to get home to Grand Rapids. She had a friend who was visiting from Flint that would offer me a ride, at least that far. She was an enormous woman, a single mother without an income other than state assistance......
I would soon learn that her friends had sent her away for a few days in order for them to pool together to delouse her house. My benefactor was shocked and overwhelmed with joy when she realized what they had done for her. Now all they had to do was sterilize her and her vehicle. We made a trip to Bay City, where I planned on dropping myself off with my relatives but we ended up going to pick up her room-mate and her own daughter whom was about 13. We made the decision to go back to Flint to go on a fishing trip as a group. This is when I learned that the daughter was crushing on me, as she came out of the house in high heels, giddy with the euphoria of flowing hormones and drunk on my pheromones. She tripped and fell in her unfamiliar cloak of womanhood. It was at this point when I put it all together. As I think back on her tripping over her borrowed heels, I still feel embarrassed for her and wonder where she is in life today. I can only hope she has found good things and someone to properly care and share with her. I don't think we caught any fish that evening but we had a few bites and just enjoyed the moments- people being together and thankful to have survived the day and all it's agonizing demands. My fright between the girl trying to gain my affections, and the mother hoping I'd stay has left little more than a blur from the time I left Gladwin, Michigan until the time I had her drop me back off there. It was my escape attempt- "There's people there I can work for," I think I told her. My sorrow for their circumstances and for the realities of many like them in the world made me wish I could be in everyone's life in need but the only way I can have a hope to do that is maybe in music- a song they can all share, an uplifting message, my bottled-up love for the worlds heartbroken to use to quench a thirst for an unavoidable human need.