The suicidal out-of-towner.

Oh dear. I didn't save a copy of this evening's posts, so I can't sit here and obsess over them before writing the next.

Yet somehow, life goes on.

Foxes was dead in the one-customer-at-a-time way. Michael the stoner intellectual was there and we actually got into some interesting discussion once he stopped trying to impress me with his big, obscure words after I outdid his antics in that line. It's like machismo posturing or cockfighting. He who uses the biggest words establishes dominance, regardless whether *anything* is actually said. This guy who's two years away from PhD is ready to quit school because the street woman he calls his "girlfreind" is in jail and he's convinced that he can change her.

Foxes was dead in the something-is-bound-to-happen sort of way. I didn't really even have to deny entry to anyone. I scanned maybe three or four IDs all night long, spending the first two hours of my shift thinking "this is the longest night ever" and wondering what would happen.

And then he came back.

For the first time in ten years.

He came back in to Foxes. Why? Well, because, where else could he go? It was where he met his lover of these last ten years. There's "no place like this" in the small town that he came from (and still we bitch about it, we who live here). He says he just caught his lover in bed last week with someone else. And now he just wants to know if he can talk because somehow the doorman seems trustworthy (or a sucker) and he doesn't have the money to buy a beer but he is pretty clearly suffering.

The doorman sits and listens, for the most part. Makes coffee and sits with him. So the guy says he wants to sign his car off to someone and get a ride to the mountains where he can take his medications and "go to sleep forever". He wants help. Not an organization's help but an individual's. But help to achieve what he wants to do, specifically, which at this moment is commit suicide. It *has to* be *tonight*. Delivered with an absolutely straight face from a man not ten years my elder who, while perhaps a bit scruffy around the edges at the moment, is still handsome enough and together enough not just to get whoever he may care to choose in such a place as Foxes but maybe to start fresh with just a little help. Willing to kill himself over another queer. Go figure that one out.

I point out the service organizations' flyers and hotline numbers I've made a point to get into that bar in the first place. He doesn't want to ask for help from an organization even though he's volunteered with 'em and understands well enough how they work. "It's not for me", he says, with all the absolute assurance I might casually say a cowboy hat is "not for me". I get to take breathers from time to time to get ice for the bar and check the parking lot. Albert does a good job of making sure that I'm OK by using such pretexts.

I go into the parking lot and leave a message for Ferdinand even though it's one AM. I call Esperanza and brief the amazing staffer of my rather pressing situation while the bar clock ticks closer to 2 am. She gives me a suicide hotline number which I write on the busted-out side of a drawer I pick up from the lot since I don't have any paper. (I later enter it into my cellphone and put the name as "Suicide" -- my cellphone contact list and bill has got to be a *lot* of fun to look at.) He walks out as I'm wrapping up with her and feels betrayed that I've told anyone what's going on. I tell him who I called and what I said -- no names, no nothing that could identify him -- and tell him that I called because I frankly don't feel confident to handle his situation on my own and need support in this myself. Meanwhile of course I'm remembering how Carlos died less than a month ago and part of me is thinking what a perfect setup for me to wind up the same way.

This guy is *not* getting my address.

He hasn't slept since five AM and spent the last night in his car and nearly froze. He hasn't bathed in six days and is starting, in his words, to smell himself. He's eating peanuts from a bag he's carrying around and is flat broke. I tell him basically well sir I can't help you drive out to the mountains 'cause see I've got the interlock on my car and I don't want to go to jail for driving someone else's car without it much less for being accessory to a suicide or whatever else they might cook up to get me back in jail but tell you what, you want something to eat? You really want to kill yourself on a completely empty stomach? That's nuts. How about shelter? You don't want to rest and wash up and maybe figure out logistics tomorrow? Where's your car, what's its status? Completely out of gas, that's easy enough to fix. What are your needs, right now? He's a little fuzzy on that. He's hungry and angry and lonely and tired all at once and all I can do is try to focus him on something other than how much he's hurting. Also to take his mind of things a bit by getting him engaged however weakly in talking at the bar with Albert and myself just like all's perfectly hunky-dory, another happy (if slow) night at Foxes.

We're getting ready to close. The few regulars who are in the bar have seen me talking all night with this guy away from the group at the door and now see me opening up my car to let him in to wait for me while I count beer. I don't want to know what they imagine I was doing. (I can guess well enough from the locker-room looks they all gave me.) I've got fifty bucks in my pocket after getting tipped out by Albert. Midnight came by to close the bar tonight. I tell him very matter of factly if I'm not in tomorrow, check the papers. I tell him (just so *someone* knows what's going on who knows me) that I seem to have adopted a suicidal man and am taking him to a motel but am *not* going into the room with him. Midnight and I close up the bar and go our separate ways.

I get in the car and he can't help but stare and laugh at me humming into my damn stoopid interlock. Gawd, what an embarassment, but hell, at least he's *laughing* about *something*. It's at about this point he tells me he's six years sober through AA and stopped attending meetings about three years before. (A big part of the problem with his lover seems to be that he stopped drinking but his lover didn't.) We both blurt out the serenity thingamajig in unison and he does the third step thing I haven't drilled into my head quite yet but am working on and found myself thinking key phrases of all while dealing with him inside the bar a little earlier and absolutely *knew* this wasn't something I could handle on my own. Aside from not introducing ourselves to eachother by first names as alcoholics and saying hi back at eachother it was like a little meeting hurtling down Central in the middle of the night.

We go to the 7-11 on Central in Nob Hill. Get him a pack of cigarettes, a one-gallon container for gas, and almost a gallon of gas for his car which is parked at a Catholic church downtown with the change from ten bucks. After this first little escapade into the convenience store with him following me around the store like a puppy insisting I don't buy the can for gas 'cause he'll "take care of that tomorrow" (exactly how, he hasn't told me yet, and I don't think he really knows, himself) I just give him what remains of my cash and say this'll be easier for both of us if you do this just like I wasn't even here. From that point he's the only person dealing with counter people and what have you. I park out of sight and wait in the car just in case things don't work out.

It's like the banderillero's move in tauromachie, and just about as dangerous. Engage and disengage. Like *that*.

We go out towards the motels we saw that all said 29.95 and up. The first place baits and switches him, saying it's forty bucks plus ten deposit. Fuck that, we're outta there.

Then we remember we forgot that he was hungry and we stop at an Allsups out past Foxes. He gets a burrito and some other snacky stuff to take back to the motel room when we get one, making sure to hold onto enough cash for the motel plus tax.

Then towards the Travelodge across from the gold tower. We do a u-turn at the Tewa Lodge. Old tourist motor court. Why? Because the sign says 19.99 and up and it's right close to San Mateo where he says he needs to be so he can go to the Knights of Columbus tomorrow (a gay organization dealing specifically with people transitioning out of abusive relationships he won't touch; a homophobic Roman Catholic organization, though, he will) which he said he'd spoken with earlier in the day and been told they'd help him out granted the story he told them about his father did check out. Sounds about right to me, so what the hell. I think he's just a little crazy to do it that way but there you have it. Like I'm not crazy to be giving rides from Foxes. I think he was surprised that anyone was willing to take a chance on him.

Now I've just got to make sure he doesn't get completely dependent on me. I could see it in his eyes already when we parted. I'm not interested in paying for another night's lodging and absolutely don't want a relationship or hell even to be someone's revenge fuck. (See, I have this funny little condition ever since I tested false positive about a year ago: I value my life.) At the same time now he knows all he needs to do to get me to do what he wants is start talking suicide. Well sir -- he may still do it but if he does he'll do it fed, rested, and cleaned.

I gave him my number but told him clearly -- you'll have to leave a message and I'll have to call you back 'cause when you do what I do for a living your number gets out everywhere and you get a lot of weirdass calls from unknown numbers that you just don't want to deal with, period. (Someday I'll write about the obscene and/or threatening crank calls we get at Foxes every night.) I also tell him that I work two jobs and there is no guaranteeing when I'll be where and that I may or may not be able to give him a ride down to his car or what have you whenever he figures he's ready to go.

Yeah. Finally, some standards. If I give rides to freshly homeless guys *these* days, it's on *my* schedule, baby. Progress is being made!

And honestly I do expect to talk to him tomorrow and may invite him to a meeting depending what feedback I get from my sponsor when he wakes up and gets my freakish message from the middle of the night. Good god, I'm being such a pest. But what the hell, at least it's all with good intentions and a clear and sober mind.

Why can't I just have normal problems? "Oh yeah, my long-term boyfreind of three weeks left me, and someone yelled at me at work, and it's cold, and damned if I don't want a drink and see if you can stop me." Hehe. Maybe that's *not* the way it actually works. But after seeing this guy and doing what I could with what I had to help him, I think that I can start to understand how the whole sponsorship idea works, generally speaking. Here's someone *way* more desperate than me who's sort of latched right onto me and I have to maintain a certain distance and sobriety. Yeesh. What an order.

OK. What next? For me? Right now. What are my needs? I smell a bit myself at this point. Need a bath. Should take some Bu Nao Wan then soak a bit. Listening to Michael Murray playing Bach on the great organs of Europe on my hard drive as I type. Felix peeks out from behind the TextEdit window in which I write. I'm being watched. This is a good thing, at the moment. I am going to take my bath now.