For Enoch: the Heights and Depths of Atlanta

8/20/2012 - Review all the statistics you want. 30,000 feet in the air is not a secure place to be. Safely touching down is always a relief. 542 clicks south of home and full of adrenaline, I completed the marathon of Hartsfield-Jacksons' Gates E through A. Weaving through the crowd, I felt exceptionally cool. Cool may strike you as a lazy adjective, but it absolutely fits. This was my first business trip and I was flying solo. With a trimly packed overnight bag in one hand and a satchel over the other shoulder, I was embarking on an expenses-paid mission. I was a renegade in foreign territory, an explorer making it on my own wits and per diem. The two eight hour islands of work-related time were surrounded by oceans of unstructured adventure. I had gathered intelligence prior to my departure. A notebook full of parks, museums, cafes, and restaurants, each with specific public transportational directions hid within my satchel. So yes, cool.

Riding the METRA into downtown from the airport, I saw what you'd expect: autos in service when the Berlin Wall fell, run-down housing, dirty stores, and a smattering burnt buildings' shells. This is what you'll see en route to the heart of most America's epicenters. A red carpet it is not. Near Atlanta proper, the train became a needle and drove under the city's skin. The passengers and I lolled like buoys to the motions of arriving and departing. I checked, re-checked, and re-re-checked our progress on the posted route map. At the Peachtree Center stop, I exited from my car sobered from the airport high. A dank charcoal tunnel enveloped me. The overhead lighting was either in desperate need of bulb-replacement or the city decided red-eye commuters preferred less illumination. After ascending the dizzying height of an escalator, (Not your standard issue escalator. I later found out it is the tallest in the southeastern US of A.) I was deposited back into the land of the living. The morning sun signaled rebirth and I left the darkness behind me.

After checking in and shedding my baggage, I scoped out a two mile radius from my hotel. From my expedition, I cannot describe Atlanta as bustling. You can stand still smack in the middle of sidewalk during daylight hours and not be bumped. It did not vibrate with frenetic activity like my personal metropolitan paragon, Chicago. Your eyes are less stimulated; your ears are less assaulted. Atlanta presented as a self-confident city, not bent on impressing you with sublime architecture or knocking you over the head with a commercial club. It is a city that says Welcome softly and without any neediness in its voice like tourism-dependent Las Vegas or Orlando. The city was not as sparsely traversed as my St. Louis, where a pedestrian need not look both ways before crossing Broadway. The streets were not raceways nor were they parking lots. They were, like the arteries of its citizens, lightly occluded canals.

Beyond traffic, the scale was grander than back home. At the time of Atlanta’s planning and construction, space was not a luxury. The buildings were weightier. The skyscrapers stretched higher. Their footprints were larger. They were set back off the street, giving them comfortable room to breathe. More sculptures adorned and plazas skirted the edifices but none of these made you feel small by comparison. Intimidation wasn't an organizing principle.

Atlanta from my vantage was not given over to as much disrepair, either. It must collect sufficient revenue to keep potholes filled and hydrants painted. Where these taxes come from, I cannot tell. My lodging is in the middle of a row of conference centers, chain hotels, and franchise restaurants. This is the homogenized nucleus, the citified analogue to suburban shopping centers and strip malls. You're never far from home when Hard Rock Cafe is next to Starbucks is next to the Ramada is next to Hooters.

***

Smart idea: Atlanta employs city guides and trains them to seek out pedestrians with concerned looks, squinting this way and that over upside-down maps. These guides are not so readily identifiable by their uniform, which is a Marine-esque white and navy with red accents, but for their plasticized white safari hats. This does for the city's ambassadors what Waldo's cap does for him. Either the hat is a cheeky reference to urban surroundings being a type of jungle or it was selected for its penultimate uniqueness (without being as culturally insensitive as, say, a fez or as impractical as, say, a top hat). Part of me wonders if Panama Jack got his start in Georgia. 

***

Even in Atlanta, it's still possible to solicit that most conspicuous of rides: the horse drawn carriage. I presumed this anachronistic oddity was limited to St. Louis, a town rife with romantic historicism because the present is so bleak. But no. In Atlanta, too, you and your significant other can—for $50 every 15 minutes—roll downwind of a grizzled old mare and annoy everyone else with whom you share the road. You can gracelessly climb ivory wrought iron steps, settle into a beautiful white carriage with a reflective orange triangle on its tail end, and breathe deeply of the idling exhaust fumes—all with no more definite destination than rekindling passion. Nothing sets the mood like car horns and police sirens.

***

On a busy sidewalk in front of the Westin, I noticed yet another white safari hat. The man beneath the hat was eyeing another man, two paces in front of me. The watched man's frayed clothes and unruly hair were clear indications of poverty. He was the sore thumb in a handful of businessmen-and-women. The arm-crossed guide tracked the poor man who was lighting what looked by the length and narrowness of the stick to be a woman's cigarette. The poor man must have felt eyes on him. People in his position often have uncanny authority figure radar. He stared with all his might right back. He walked a few steps, turned to look back, walked more, turned back, walked more, turned back. Once out of earshot but in the guide's direction, the man said, "What the fuck you lookin' at?"

It was a valid question. The smoker, who must have parted ways with a high percentage of his cash on hand to feed his cig fix and accordingly would have a small rather than medium fry for dinner tonight, was just trying to walk the streets in peace. He was merely traveling through the public space that he could not trade for private space after a long day like the rest of us. And the guide has to go give him one of those looks that says, "I've got my eye on you. Move along. Don't bother these find people." As though his very presence on the sidewalk is a problem because it in point of fact is. Because if these fine people so much as notice him, they're less likely to feel welcome here and are thereby less likely drop down a little tourist scratch, which helps to raise the revenue to keep these streets clean and guides employed. So yes, the what in 'what are you looking at' is astutely rhetorical because you see a what and not a who. You see a drain on commerce and an eye sore. You see a dust bunny you'd wish would have the common decency to sweep itself under the rug.

***

8/21/2012 - As referenced earlier, I am in The Peach State to attend a conference (Not centrally located from a national perspective, but then again, nothing happens in the middle of the country. The coasts take turns. Chicago and Dallas get thrown a bone every other decade.). The conference, as all legit and American conferences do, provides gratis what the hotel industry refers to as a Deluxe Continental Breakfast. Whatever continent is the referent, protein and whole grains are not dietary staples. No matter. I raid the buffet tables like a pothead and horde food like a squirrel.

After stuffing my satchel with Grade B fruit and while smearing a knife’s worth of marmalade onto a too-small plate for my too-big croissant, I overheard the following conversation behind me:

Transcript

Man with thick New York accent: Hey [inaudible], been a while.

Woman with no discernible accent: Yeah, wow, hey, good to see you. [Rustling through Smucker's jelly packets] Didn't think I'd be here to see anybody.

Man: Why's that? [chewing Danish; speaking around the bolus] Debbie bitching out on you?

Woman: What?

(I'm thinking here the "What" is indicative of the woman taking offense.)

Man: You know, Debbie being a bitch?

(I'm thinking here he has progressed from insulting her gender to the woman personally by his moronic definition.)

Woman: Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah, she's been crying about the budget all year. Been a terrible year. They're all petrified about the cuts. The same old doom and gloom. But I'm sure you know all about that.

At which point I thought, "Ah, professionalism..." and moved towards the coffee urns with my then empty travel mug.

***

1) Bottomless, free, and good coffee entails disrupted sleep cycles. 2) Disrupted sleep cycles entails leaning more heavily on a coffee crutch. 3) Repeat steps 1 and 2.

***

How is it that four inch heels make a woman look more professional? I’ve only see heels that towering in movies on the feet of women in starkly different contexts.

***

Either there are more homeless people here or they're more mobile. I see them constantly. From their participation in the crowd's flow, they seem to be commuting. Not commuting with the frenzied swerving of late-model sports cars in the far left lane but with the leisurely patience of the grocery-getters in the far right. Where are you going? Do you have consistent routes? Are there specific trashcans to rifle through, corners on which to panhandle at certain times—a generous morning crowd in one spot and lunch crowd in another, prime shady spots for the westernizing sun? Or is it just for the exercise, for something to do, for the sake of the palliative effects of a regimen? And if they have no particular place to go: does all of the aimless wandering exacerbate preexisting mental illness or catalyze it where the traits lie benignly dormant? If I had nowhere to go all of my life, if all of my sleeping life I was somewhere I wasn't welcome, I'd start mumbling to myself in short order.

Earlier today, I saw a homeless man whose hair was matted into coils approximating dreadlocks. I saw him three times throughout the city within a span of four-ish hours, actually. On our last meeting, we flanked each other for a block. Each of us was half of the total pedestrians on this section of side road. He was in first place; I was in second. His posture was slightly canted toward the bow. He sported a beard for obvious reasons.  His pants were sufficiently frayed to qualify as highwaters. He was quiet. He took no notice of me, but I was taken with him.

What I was fascinated with most was his belongings. He had no backpack or shopping bag. He had no cart. All of his possessions were either on him (i.e., clothes or shoes—not socks) or in his hands. From his left hand dangled what looked to be a bottle koozie in a black and white houndstooth pattern. No bottle was zipped inside from which to take its shape, so it looked like a withered banana. From his other hand dangled the distinctive velveteen purple sack with golden cords that could only shroud a vessel of Crown Royal whiskey. The bag was full given the way it hung, but not with what it originally contained. It looked rather more scrotal. Whatever it hid, the man carried these things around the city. He thought them valuable enough to clasp the things for presumably miles. So many questions: What was in the bag? Had he picked these up today? Could these be bartering goods? What would he do with them at the end of the day? Did he take it all back to a home base or deposit them under an overpass? Did he leave them where ever he slept for the night?

As we continued up the slight incline bordered by parking garages, the man veered off his path (to where?) to pick something up from a crack in the pavement. He picked up a partially smashed, slightly blackened mini bar bottle of vodka. Again a black and white label of what I took to be Voxx vodka. Clear liquid dripped from the end of the plastic, but I assumed this was either rain or other street juice. He showed no interest in what the bottle held, did not try to catch the drops on his tongue.

I could not help but discern a theme. Was he a recovering alcoholic? Did he keep the artifacts at hand to calm himself? Were they a reminder of his guilt and what brought him to these dire straits? Was he enamored with the peculiarly sexy marketing campaigns of adult beverage companies? Was the houndstooth item not a koozie after all and I was simply reading a pattern into the trinkets? 

At the next major intersection, we parted ways. I kept thinking of him, trying to peak into his mind. The man struck me as gentle. He was engaging somehow. He was an itinerant knight, a refugee, a pilgrim. I don't feel this way all of the time, so captivated by a stranger. Oftentimes, I'm much more uneasy near drifters. I'm put off by their smells, noises, and jitters. I usually avert my eyes. I don't want to be challenged by them. I don't want to know they're there because I don't want to begin imagining what it's like to be them, struggling to meet daily needs, living filthy hand to cracked mouth.

***

The nanny state isn’t so bad when she’s on your side. Taking a breather in Woodruff Park, it struck me the city air was missing tobacco notes. Then I spied a sign. Atlanta City Council, by Ordinance 12-O-0966, forbids smoking in public parks. Now that is an audacious law if I ever saw one. I do not envy the officers tasked with enforcing that ban. I envision aggressively flicked lit butts. I can hear the expletives sandwiching epithets like "Nazi."

***

Whenever I'm exposed to great heights (such as my seventeenth floor balcony) I'm not concerned as much with my bodily integrity as for the loss of a personal effect of mine. Horrified, I imagine my ring somehow freeing itself from my finger or being pulled by dark forces and plummeting to the ground, never to be recovered (at least by me). Or having my notepad extricated from my pocket by an unbelievably misanthropic and conniving gust of wind, shred in mid-air, and twinkle like ticker tape down to the sidewalk below. Am I the only one who has these premonitions? 

***

Cityscapes can be so placid at night. Radio towers pulse their spines of red bulbs almost simultaneously. A quilt-work of offices is lit up in each high rise, no shadows moving behind the glass. The stray car below swells its static rush passing through the whiskey light. A solitary figure or shadowy pair glides silently across the sidewalk like a cursor across a computer screen.

***

8/22/12 - It is refreshing to watch adults be enthusiastic about topics so minuscule and idiosyncratic that even I, as an individual professionally involved with those topics, want to yawn at their very utterance. They are unabashed procedural wonks. In the audience, I feel the scourges of our world would be dramatically diminished if adults could be as passionate and constructive in macro, rather than micro, scales.

***

Professional conferences, especially governmental ones, thrive on rules. My favorite rule for our particular gathering is: announce your full name and home office location prior to making a comment or posing a question. This requirement is for the benefit of "scribes" who frantically scribble every utterance in order to compile a transcript of the conference (which, I must add here, would never, ever, under any circumstances be read). This requirement is also an absolute thrill. Every time I speak, I feel as though I'm a VIP at a press junket or UN delegate in General Assembly meeting. The incisiveness of my comments rises; the gravitas of my inquiries fills the room. If you ever want to feel important, state your full name and home town prior to what you say. Don't muck it up with conjunctions or qualifiers. Just say, "[Full name], [City and State], _____." This works. Try it.

***

Q: Why do citizens of a city commonly say there's nothing to do in their city and visitors to that same city say there's too much to do? A: Because of human fickleness. See also, the Law of Diminishing Returns; informal The Grass is Greener on the Other Side; Been There, Done That, Got the T-shirt.

***

At what age does being on a campus make you feel older rather than younger? Seeing students, thick-frame bespectacled or chintzy sunglassed, their unabashedly tight clothes, footwear devoid of tacky insignias—the whole ensemble carefully selected by some to give off the appearance of hip poverty and by the rest out of legitimate resource scarcity. By their practiced distant stares, they prompt me to feel not nearly with it anymore. I imagine trying to interact with them playing out like a nightmare where what you hear when you speak is exactly like what you've always heard when you speak but what you begin to suspect others hear by all of the eyebrow raising or eye rolling it induces has been passed through some device that translates your semi-formal American English into stodgy old Shakespearean English. I fear the process of registering my presence before them and deftly Photoshopping me out of their foreground takes the same amount of time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings. Like that all the cool kids register on other cool kids' mental radars as throbbing neon green squares and I show up as a pasty, Pepto pink that blips once and is filtered out as static. When did I become visual feedback? These are my preoccupations walking through Georgia State. Less than five years removed from college and I must confess: I cannot run with your posse, cannot smoke your clove cigarettes, cannot drink so much Pabst. 

***

Modern life: I am currently sitting at an altitude the residents of this geographic locale would have thought impossible for more generations than those who take it for granted. It's strange how a certain amount of height makes you feel safe because no one on the ground could assault you and how past an undefined point height makes you feel imperiled because the very ground itself could fatally assault you. It occurs to me this is why there are locks on seventeenth floor sliding doors. Not to keep intruders out, but to keep the adventuresome wee ones in.

***

Moderate temperatures and arid atmosphere will do more to improve the favorability of a location than the architecture or even the populace. Fine weather can make even a prison yard hospitable. (Although, this probably only intensifies the emotional whiplash of looking up at the clear sky and discovering the horizon interrupted by razor wire.)

***

As far as Southern Hospitality is concerned, I detect nothing out of the ordinary. People have generally been nice. Coming from the Midwest, though, I'm given to assuming people are generally nice (except for an adjacent neighbor and at least one co-worker per 20 square feet of office space.) The people queuing for the METRA look as world-weary as our own mass transit patrons. Motorists don't take kindly to jaywalkers. Sporting a beard beckons an invitation to line for the extra-intimate TSA patdown. The housekeeping staff is as skittish around and reticent to speak to a guest as they are anywhere. On my more residential jaunts, I haven't been offered a mint julep, seen anyone sporting a white suit or a bolo, and nary a soul has been rocking on a front porch and fanning him-or-herself. I have not been called Sugar or Child even once. But, silly me, I'm not going to find the true character of a region downtown. There's too much transience there. There are too many transplants. 

***

I saw my first living, breathing rat (ever) in the Five Points subway station. It skittered around the hodgepodge grease and nastiness between the tracks. My immediate impulse was to pluck my camera from my hip pocket to take a picture. Does this—the desire to capture completely irrelevant subject matter—make me more or less of a tourist? 

While we're at it: when did the slideshow mentality, which was so often belittled it became a dead-horse joke on sitcoms, go from being nauseating to normative? Why did the same animating motivation become a socially accepted practice? The obsession with self-centered minutae and audience tone-deafness that was behind the Beckers' Family Trip to Florida '89 has grown blob-like to subsume life outside of vacations. With pics, statuses, posts, tweets, retweets, and checking ins, we're perpetual archivists of the quotidian. In the 80s and 90s, the rest of us didn't care about your stupid lunch at a German McDonald's but now we announce to everyone when we stop by Walmart for toilet paper. We live to chronicle for others, but it's no longer a laughing matter. On the contrary, it's serious business. What has changed?

Self-displaying was previously directed at you in the form of a projector within the confines of an 11x14 family room. The audience, the non-selves, were known and trapped. Today, we fire informational salvos off into the digital ether. The non-selves are anonymous and free. Today, we can scroll right past your awesome new pants and not hurt you the same way you'd force us to face-to-face. If we got up and left the room, if we yawned at your tedious blow-by-blow of the largest thimble in the northern hemisphere, you'd frown at us. And we don't want to be the type of people who frown at others. What's more, we don't want to be the ones frowned at when it's us who have the carousel full of barely distinguishable sunset slides. Because we like to flatter ourselves into thinking that we are each origins of importance, that every sight, sound, and taste, is made special by passing through us. (Note: this journal is proof.) Concerning everyone else, though, well...the data is humdrum.

Oh Internet, how well you know us! At one and the same time, you give us the opportunity to shroud our lack of interest in others and the platform upon which to unveil ourselves without the risk of discovering how little other people care. You've done it again.

***

Atlanta's streets are elongated sexual bazaars. The tip of the cap has been traded in for the more forward holler. Mating calls are more frequent and exotic than in my indigenous environs. My favorite pronouncement thus far: "You be looking like a bag of money. [Pause] A big mag of money." I love it so because the literal shape of a sack of bills/coins/gold bars is so far away from sexy it could plausibly be deployed as an insult.

Men pushing strollers with the child's (presumed) mother on their side will risk a head-on collision to gawk. Men in the midst of other men will keep eyes fixed on an attractive woman until their companions alert them to open manholes or, unwarned, they are blindsided by light poles.

All of their puffing of chests and sweet songs go unnoticed, however. I have witness no amorousness requited. The women are more than immune to the calls. It’s as though they’re tuned in to an altogether different station.

***

The standing water here must be exceptionally nutritive. I've never been accosted by more flies during a meal. They will not take No for an answer. They were taught how to swarm at the School of Killer Bees.

***

Approximately 5% of the population is engaged in conversations of one. My best estimates attribute the size of this group to the preponderance of homelessness and popularity of Bluetooths. The percentage appears to be split 50/50 but I have a statistically unacceptable margin of error. Given the size of the devices and my inability to unsuspiciously circle around to the a person's other side to check the second ear for definitive confirmation of devicelessness, my data is less than conclusive.

***

The city may have another ordinance on the books compelling men of Adonisian physiques to prowl shirtless, at least during daylight hours. I do mean prowl. Their gait is aggressive and menacing, but also mesmerizing. Are you upset or is stomping around like that part of your workout regime? Do taut muscles force strides into stomps? Not possessing such a form, I wonder if my gawking is taken the wrong way. I always avert my eyes a second too tardily. My brain stem fears for my safety.

***

I've noticed language is more emphatic. "No" back home becomes "Hell No" here. "What the heck" becomes "What the shit." These utterances are delivered without the drawls I expected. 

Transcript 

Q: "Excuse me, sir, do you know where Courtland street is?" 

A: "I've got no damned idea."

Q's R: [shudders] "Oh, that's all right. I'm sure it's around here somewhere. Thanks anyways."

A's R: [whipes sweat secreting on 82° day from forehead onto jeans]

Needless to say, gentility doesn't exactly rise up and slap you in the face around here. Maybe this more a function of class than region, though.

***

Although the racial distribution is more even here than the suburbs I was reared in, members still overwhelmingly congregate with other members. The biggest difference I can see is that fewer suspicious glances are exchanged and streets are less often crossed in avoidance. Segregation seems to be second nature. "You do your thing. We'll do ours. Let's keep our mouths shut about it," is how I'd translate the nonverbal behavior on display.

Odd how we don't notice and certainly don't have a problem when the same compact is forged between age groups. We'd feel comfortable saying, "How am I, as a 2x year old, supposed to related to a 5x year old?" And yet there's something reprehensible in swapping numbers for races. 

I'd rather see consistent engagement across groups. After all, men and women seem to find enough to jaw about. It turns out everyone has both overlapping and unique interests and concerns through which to relate with everyone else.

***

It's much easier to get your panties in a wad when your bed sheets are circulation-restricting tight. After shimmying into position and tossing/turning my usual amount, I was nearly forced to call the concierge (a real strain from my confinement) for assistance loosening them. I dug deep and tore free around 2 a.m.

***

Yesterday evening, I took shelter in my room. I drug the desk chair onto the balcony and read. To round out the affair, I brewed a cup of decaffeinated coffee courtesy of Hyatt Regency. The coffee was as terrible as prepacked coffee has to be and, sans caffeine, it was especially pointless. But a single serving of regular was out of the question. By that point in the day, I was precariously near the border between milligrams and grams of the stimulant (the crossing of which makes your average adult vibrate uncontrollably). Why bother with a hot beverage at all?  In my defense, I submit there's a When in Rome obligation to all hotel schwag that determines traveling behavior. I shower more frequently, apply copious amounts of shampoo therein, take great liberalities with towels, and blow dry my normally air-dried hair. And so I tore open the one decaff packet, enjoyed the knowledge of its freeness—not  taste, and felt gratified as a miser does when successfully cheap.

Fast forward to day when I snuck back to my room during our afternoon break. I interrupted a maid freshening my sheets. She hunched when she saw me as though she wanted to shrink out of sight. Embarrassed, I told her not to trouble with the towels. I said I would continuing using them as is. She insisted that no she must take them and give me new. This is what she always does. I began explaining about the strategically placed informative placard in the bathroom that described the squandering of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and other horrible environmental impacts from guests' requesting an essentially clean item be cleaned again for no other reason than petty greed and selfishness, and that this was why I had post-shower folded my towels up and placed them back upon the shelf—to save her the time and to do my own tiny part to save the oceans with their vulnerable corals, baby seals, and those weird cucumber things. But two words into my plea, she permanently broke off eye contact. Instead, I read her name tag and said, "Thank you, Rosa." I told her I'd be out of her way shortly. She finished up hastily, obviously thrown off of her routine.

This is all to say that tonight I required an extra packet of decaffeinated coffee because I drank one yesterday and distracted the maid from replacing it today. And so, the phone call downstairs:

Transcript

Woman: "Hello, Mr. Ritter, how may I help you?"

(I know this is a cheap trick, but it made me feel like a million bucks.)

Me: Yes. Um. When you get a chance, I need another packet of decaf coffee."

Woman: [with concern] "Oh, Mr. Ritter, I'm sorry. Was your coffee station not restocked?"

Me: [envisions the woman's finger tracing down a shift log to find the perpetrator and put a red X in a disciplinary box] "Oh, geez. I don't know. It's easy to overlook. It's fine, though. A minor oversight. Who knows? I only need one more for tonight. Whenever you get the chance."

Woman: [with warmth] "Certainly, Mr. Ritter. I'll send someone right up."

Me: [tries to disarm the situation] "It's not an emergency. Just one packet'll do. Whenever you get the chance. No rush or anything"

Within ten minutes, there was a gentle rapping at the door. A different maid awaited me, obsequiously averting eye contact. She looked like she had robbed Juan Valdez. In her right hand, outstretched for my acceptance as a sacrifice is to a shaman, was a cellophane bag full to the brim with green-labeled coffee packets. This was a terrible mother lode. I tried to laugh and tell her the bounty was really too much. She deeply nodded while releasing the bag into my hand. I thanked her and she simultaneously genuflected and retreated to the safety of the hallway.

Later as I sipped my ill gotten gain, I wondered what had I done. I fear for sweet Rosa's future employment.

***

8/23/12 - Cowboy boots remain the novelty item in the South they are in the Middle West. In three days, I've seen two pairs: one underneath pinstriped suit pants and the other propped where the accelerator would normally be on the above referenced carriage floor.

***

It speaks to the ubiquity of advertising necessary to convert a product that effectively serves absolutely no natural function from a want into a need that, although Atlanta is the world headquarters for Coca Cola, it doesn't feel like it. Aside from the World of Coca Cola (a profitable splicing of museum and All-You-Can-Drink buffet) and Coca Cola Place (a completely random, unimpressive more alley-than-street type thing), it's no more Coked out than anywhere else. Even an illuminated Coke sign the size of a school bus doesn't appear out of the ordinary. 

***

I made a new friend today. We walked 1.5 miles together after he told me he liked my shoes. That was his ice breaker. I had been pondering whether to continue my northern trajectory in this evening’s expedition. I was musing at the corner of NE Peachtree and Ivan Allen Jr., Blvd. when a man said:

Transcript

Man's voice: "Hey. What time you got?"

Me: [turns around; sees man sitting on grassy bank; checks watch; internally agonizes over specificity of report.] "Almost 7:15. 7:12."

Man: "Ah. [pause] Cool shoes." 

Me: "Oh, hah. [twists shoe into the sidewalk] Thank you. They're pretty old, hah."

Man: "Le Coq Sportif."

Me: "Very good. Yep."

Man: "LL Cool J worn 'em in the 80s. He made 'em big."

Me: "Oh, really? I didn't know. I bought them on Eastbay. Eastbay.com a few years ago. You could check there if you wanted to get a pair."

Man: "Uh huh. Where you goin?"

Me: "Oh...I, I don't know. Nowhere in particular. Just wandering around, trying to see the city."

Man: [hops up from seat excitedly] "I got nothing to do. You seen the Fox Theater? I'll show you the Fox."

Me: "Is it far? The sun's going down."

Man: "Oh, no no. Just up the way here."

He made a Let's Go hand motion. He was obviously happy for the opportunity to leave his spot. Not wanting to be rude, I fell in line. We crossed the street with the white stick figure's blessing. Just like that I taking a stroll with an exuberant fellow well versed in rap fashion's early period trivia. The past three days I was by myself. Out of the blue and without solicitation, I had a Lewis to my Clark.

Right off the bat, I need to clarify I was consciously assuming what I believed to be a slight risk. I'd already heard warnings about the area north of our hotel from my coworkers. I was reared on similar warnings. But, having grown up and past the boundaries parental anxiety, I know there are parts of town where people say you shouldn't go and there are parts of town where you actually shouldn't go. I know that the former is cordoned off by principles of prejudice and the latter by verifiable crime statistics. I steer my ship by intuition. My comfort zone is a wider swath than my parents' and coworkers', for instance, but I'm not a dope. I know the difference between a sleepy street and shoot out backdrop. I'll do an about face when I get the sense that the space I am entering is devoid of people because the people who know the space won't get caught there themselves. Looking down the street, my gut reported the area I was about to enter wasn't so scary as to keep me at bay.

I also am keenly aware of personal, as opposed to territorial, danger. I was steeped in the warnings of stranger danger from a young age. But I'm not given to seeing all strangers as cause for alarm or strangeness as being a prima facie threat. Call it gullibility, but I'm willing to begin relationships from a position of trust. Call it indiscretion, but I have a hard time imagining a random person wanting to harm me. I've developed a different habit for self-preservation. Being scrawny, I do not size men up in terms of whether or not I can take them. I assess whether I could outrun them and, in the event that I can't, how much damage they could inflict. As for my friend-to-be, he was an averagely built 5'7 or 8 in his 30s, with shortish black hair, a five o'clock shadow, and unremarkable teeth. He wore: long black cargo shorts with gray stitching, a run-of-the-mill white T shirt with some forgettable logo, white and red high top basketball shoes of moderate wear and filth, and socks that looked clean enough. So, signs pointed to a light pummeling in the unlikely event of a fracas.

We crossed a bridge over Interstate 75/85. With him in the lead, ours was a brisk pace. I was one stride behind, clutching my satchel's strap. The other side of the IA Jr. Blvd. divide was bleaker than I anticipated. I was reacquainted with chipped paint, rust, and weeds for the first time since my ride into the city. The manmade horizon line was set much lower here than on my side of Peachtree. The high rise hotels and corporate offices were in our rear view mirrors. Now, buildings generally stopped at three floors. There was a pronounced uptick in vacant properties, barred windows, and boarded doors. Not that the strip was squalid—just much less reassuring.

My mental chorus was reciting 'I am faster than him' while the rest of me was pinging my vibe radar. At this stage of the game, I was attempting to process my current situation through all the psychic interference of surprise. I have a switch in my head that will get flipped from time to time. Off = normal. On = high alert. Whenever the switch is up, my senses go into spazzy hyperdrive. I become more of a locus of perceptual data than the normal, rational body pilot. If I were a biologist, I would add here that this is a standard subjective report of the onset of the Flight Impulse. Instinctively, I was frightened; consciously, I was confused.

Despite all of this novelty, I made an effort to engage my partner. I tried to make eye contact when possible. He found this encouraging. The man was exceedingly inquisitive. Once removed from the highway's cacophony, he asked my name. He asked where I was from, what I was doing here, where I was staying, and how I liked Atlanta. I answered all his questions openly and honestly. Due to the diversion of maximum intracranial resources to sights and sounds, I lacked the capacity to be guarded or deceptive. Plus, it was flattering to be an object of curiosity. At the conference, I was ignored because of my youth (how could anyone so green be worth meeting?). By his prompting, we had a completely average getting-to-know-you conversation. He came across as nice and conversationally able.

A faint breeze whiffed the tang of body odor into my nostrils. The smell could have just as well have been mine with all of the walking I had been doing. But, as I would later find out, the smell was his. My first clue the man was less like me than I unreflectively assumed was that five hundred feet into our walk he espied an object on the sidewalk and paused to retrieve it. I expected he would extract a quarter, which I would stop for under normal circumstances. What he resurfaced with was a cigarette butt with a centimeter of unburnt life before the filter. This item was a game-changer. Either my perceptual waters abruptly settled or the alert switch was superseded by an earlier one regulating attention. His plucking of a piece of trash clarified a great deal. The employed and unemployed alike would stop to retrieve a sum of money, but it takes an especially destitute individual to venture locking lips with God knows who via the remnants of a nearly exhausted cigarette. 

But he was no fool. He knew I, of the Le Coq Sportifs, clean chinos, and plaid oxford, would take notice of such behavior. So, he apologized. He said to me he was sorry as though he was embarrassed right along with me, as though he wished to Hell it wasn't like this but what're you going to do? He's hooked on a thing he can't afford, the spawn of an unholy union between want and need, and he is in such dire straits he's willing to risk introducing himself to whatever microscopic fauna were left behind and ambiently accruing on the business end of a day old Pall Mall. By his apology, he conceded not only how bad it looked but how bad it really was. Nevertheless, I overcame shock for his sake. What was it to me? I responded without skipping a beat that it was okay while I simultaneously put him in the "Not Doing So Hot" basket in my head. He never smoked the item in my presence though—only played with it. He extracted a green disposable lighter from a pocket and started to burn the previously extinguished end of the cigarette. He rolled the butt around in the flame but didn't take a drag. He slid both items into his back pocket after achieving whatever he meant to achieve with the lighter.

Some people may have broken off the relationship here, but it didn't occur to me at the time. We were on this journey together. I was committed to seeing it through. Not to mention the viability of escape—shy of breaking into a sprint—was paltry. How does one tactfully extricate oneself mid-trip? I realized I may have left the TV on in my room? Do an abrupt about-face? Rudeness was out of the question. Regardless of his foibles, he was pleasant. Pleasant people are all the harder to hurt. The inhumanity I perpetrate tends to be unpremeditated and reactionary, neither applied in this case.

The man exchanged brief, mangled salutatory jargon with more than half of the people on the sidewalk. I studiously observed the eye vectors between him and the other pedestrians. One on one was a fair fight, but I couldn't handle tipped scales. I was preoccupied with stepping into a trap. I looked for a wink or some sort of nod, suggestive of "I'll meet you in the alley in five minutes. We'll take care of this one," or "Got you another lamb to the slaughter, do ya there?" None of the glances communicated more than greetings, though. And yet I was constantly reassuring myself that I was in good shape, he was a smoker, and I was many years his junior. I gripped my satchel's strap and thought I could take off at any moment. Just head south. That parking guard a couple blocks back may have been armed.

Shortly after the litter episode he introduced himself as Enoch. He extended his hand and I received it into my own. We exchanged a cordial and masculine shake. His hand felt like any other man's, moderately warm and coarse. Out of the blue, he thanked me for not hurting his feelings. I was stunned by his gratitude. Rather than ask him what he meant, I asked him why would I do such a thing. He said, "Some people don't like us." I didn't respond. We kept the same pace. The moment was fraught with pathos. The sentence was simple but the implications were diverse. Taking on the first person plural object implied that Enoch understood himself as an ambassador for the homeless people of Atlanta. If Enoch was genuinely grateful for the bare fact I didn't insult him, it hinted at a world of sadness. Where, heaped atop the daily quest for the basic requirements of human life, is the emotional strain of being surrounded by people who mistreat you impulsively, who won't so much as look you in the eye and address you unless it’s to intimidate, who won't reaffirm your presence and greet you with a Hi.

I scanned the corridor. No glitzy, polybulbed theater signs twinkled in the foreseeable distance. A dialectic uncoiled within me. "I'm in trouble," and "I'm not in trouble," had been volleying back and forth in my head for the past four blocks. So too was, "What am I doing," and "What is he doing?" I struggled with whether or not to be suspicious, whether or not to suppress this ballooning sense of danger in me. Enoch was in no way menacing. But then, isn't that how menaces successfully menace, by smiling and putting on a show of fraternity? Was he just tugging on my heartstrings? Was this a set up?

Would a villain care to enlighten me? He was my Georgian Virgil. Our tour continued into its eighth and ninth minutes. He suffused all of his descriptions with enough detail, so I believed him. He knew the names of buildings, which hotel was the city's oldest, the top four skyscrapers by height in descending order, and the closing times of a few bars. We walked by Emory Hospital (he said the most babies were born there annually), Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles (he said he's heard it was good but kind of expensive and replied ‘no’ to the question of whether he's eaten there), a homeless shelter on Peachtree and Pine (he explained it would shortly be foreclosed because the shelter's founder allegedly had been embezzling—my word, not his—charitable funds), and the patch of grass that passed for a park where he slept most nights.

Around the twelve minute mark, Enoch revealed today was his 43rd birthday. Of this coincidence, I was incredulous. Odds were terrifically against its veracity. I wished him a happy birthday all the same. He said thanks and added it wasn't his best. The track of conversation ended abruptly.

In an effort to reciprocate his interest, I asked him where he was from. He said New York. I asked him what he thought of Atlanta. He said it was okay, but it was better than where he grew up. After a few steps he explained, “Sometimes when you change this [points to his chest] and this [points to his head], you gotta change this [points to our surroundings].” I said I understood. I wondered if this was a spiel of his, a subliminal suggestion that he wouldn't squander alms on illicit substances. It appeared rehearsed, but so what? The lines possibly could have been delivered to inspire me. He continued his autobiography. Enoch said he traded in his "Knucklehead Card" and his "Knucklehead Head." This sounded to me like a polite way to suggest a rap sheet with his name on it. The prospect of a criminal past didn't make me feel frightened as much as sad. Criminality was another piece in the puzzle as to why Enoch was impoverished. I can only imagine how hard it must be to get a foothold in the economy when you check the Y box next to ‘Have you ever been convicted of a felony?’ Businesses likely have Scantron machines and software to filter those applications right out onto the threshing floor. I doubt he could progress far enough through the hiring process to even begin to contextualize his answer. Who knows if he was the leader of the pack or a follower. Convictions don't come with asterisks. In middle school, I ran with a few brazen characters. Our association was geographic, not philosophical. We lived on adjoining streets. I was with them on a few late night occasions when they caused moderate property damage. I was the caboose of the train departing from the scene of a crime. I've hidden in bushes to avoid the police. I could tell you I wised up and left that crew behind, but I can't. Thirteen year-olds are impervious to wisdom. The boys and I had a falling out after they couldn't help criticizing my pubescent weight gain. If it weren't for a set of love-handles and my thin skin, I would have continued to run with them—not because I shared their zeal for destruction and thrill-seeking, but because I had no one else. This is how viable options shape who you become. The admixture of bravado and cowardice that inspires group tomfoolery (or worse) in my burbs I bet is behind burglary in Enoch's home zip code.

I asked him if he tried applying for unemployment and he said you had to have a job first. He was a day laborer. He'd go down to the corner a ways back most mornings. Some days there were guys looking for workers. Some days, there weren't. I asked him if he looked into seasonal employment. He explained the Mexicans ("not to be prejudicial" he added) had that end pretty much locked up. Social Security Disability was a nonstarter given his mobility and intelligence. I told him he obviously had people skills and not to get discouraged, that I was certain he'd eventually be recognized for them. Even as the words were exiting my mouth, I could hear their hollowness. There's a tinniness to consolation, imploring the one in tears to cheer up to or assuring the bereaved he's in a better place, but what more can you say? I relayed to him the truth as I saw it.

His airing of frustrations segued nicely into more personal matters. I asked Enoch whether he was scared of sleeping exposed to the elements and someone taking advantage of him, violently or otherwise. He said he was more scared about getting on track and finding food to eat. I asked him if he'd tried inquiring after food at churches. He replied church aid was inconsistent. Mostly, they could be counted on for more spiritual than corporeal food. Enoch told me that a van would drive him and some of the other guys to Sunday services. I said I was glad to hear that. I was glad for his membership—albeit loose—in a community. He continued. God was all he had. God was what kept him going. I again agonized over the authenticity of his utterance. It rolled off his tongue like an often uttered statement. It sent a message that he was a godly man, a man with proper priority, and a man to be trusted. Faith was both reasonable and baffling given Enoch's circumstances. If he was adrift without friend or family for years, without shelter and consistent food since before the Clinton administration, would self-preservation be enough motivation? There are individuals who are hardened by mental illness or viciousness that seem oblivious enough to go forward until they can't. But Enoch was too sensitive for that brute resolve.

My empathizing dissipated with the sweat accreting on my brow. I consulted my watch. We had been walking at a quick clip for fifteen minutes. The neighborhood was improving as though getting over a temporary lapse. There were signs of renovation, but they didn't hold my attention. I was wearying. Emotional wear compounded the toll of my physical activity. More of me desired extricating myself from this journey than seeing it through.  "How much further till we're there? I need to be back in time." He told me we were walking to that brown building up there. It was just passed that next traffic light.

We approached Ponce de Leon Avenue. Diagonal from us was what I took to be a mosque. The building was constructed out of alternating layers of wheat and brown colored brick. Puffed above the roof line was a large onion-shaped dome topped with a golden crescent. On either side rested two smaller, round domes. All three were blue and ornately striped or crisscrossed. Proceeding down Peachtree, we found the front equally arabesque. Two minarets framed the main entrance. On one of the minarets was bolted a curly maroon sign, 30 feet tall, glowing FOX in white lights. We had arrived at our destination. We paused and I took a picture. The view was marred by the LCD marquee advertising an upcoming taping of The Price Is Right. We jaywalked because Enoch said I had to see the arcade—my word, not his—up close. I hung back by the building's facade. The lights on the interior section were off. I was leery of entering dark areas with Enoch. An unlikely place to be robbed and/or maimed, I admit, but such is the outlandishness of adrenal ratiocination. He entered first, pondering the walls and molding more intently than me. Reluctantly, I followed. Every surface was ornately leafed, filigreed, or gilded. With a child's exuberance, he pointed to a framed seating chart. "See, this is how big it is inside." I asked if he'd ever seen a show here and he said, "Shit no." "Well anyway this is great. Thanks for bringing me here."

And so we started the long journey back to our meeting place, side-by-side. He kept addressing roughly every other person along the way with a "Hey now, what happenin', how's it now?" When I asked him whether he had many friends in the area, he said no, he keeps mostly to himself.

Enoch was inconsistent in obeying traffic rules. Sometimes we waited for the right of way; sometimes we didn't. Sometimes we crossed at marked intersections; sometimes we didn't. Once, he threw his hand out to stop me. "Woah. Hold up." I thought he was saving me from impending harm. "Cops'll give you a ticket," he continued. Then he nodded his head toward the police cruiser waiting for the green light. "It's shit, but they will." I couldn't decide whether he was saving my skin, his, or both. I wondered whether he was concerned for my safety or whether he was only trying to affect the presentation of concern so that I would be ingratiated towards him. 

As we passed Emory Hospital again, Enoch asked if I knew the record for most births in a year. I did not. "Two million or something." Sensing his amazement at the number, I effected being impressed. He explained the hospital was trying to buy the nearby shelter since it was so close. When I asked him what he thought of Emory for so doing, he said he had nothing against them. 

Nearing the nicer section of town, Enoch asked where we, my coworkers and I, were going for drinks. By this point, I had the presence of mind to be noncommittal. He recommended Max Lager's because they brewed their own beer on site. It was an odd endorsement since he said nothing of the quality of the beer brewed there. But then again, what more could he say? After I insisted on the lack of concrete plans beyond the time of 7:45 sharp in front of the hotel, he asked which hotel I was staying. I repeated what I said almost a half an hour ago, "The Hyatt," and added as an aside, "one of them." Why did he want to know my exact hotel? Was it just curiosity or for conversation's sake? I could not alight on the angle of desire, the utility of the information. Did he want to be a gentleman and drop me off by the front door? Was he wanting to pick up where we left off later tonight? 

I had been praying Enoch would not go further south than Ivan Allen Jr. Blvd. I hoped to deposit him back at the corner on which we'd met. It was an elegant point of departure. But he did not so much as look at the corner. He continued along with me, directly to my right. This felt like an invasion, like he was on my turf now. I had trouble envisioning an ending to this episode. Was I going to have to walk into the wrong hotel and shake him? Run out an emergency exit? Sit at a table of strangers on a restaurant patio and say quickly under my breath "Be cool, be cool," and put my hand out in a subtle It's Okay motion, and pretend to be part of their party?

An amicable split was not in the cards. I stopped at a corner far enough away from my hotel to keep it covert. I stopped and turned to face him. He started before I could break us up. Coincidentally, I heard for the second time in a day "I don't want your money." Unlike the first time, which was followed by an irrational, heartbreaking plea to help a disoriented woman find a restroom first and her shelter second, Enoch's assertion was followed by a different kind of monetary request. He asked that I buy him a pack of cigarettes, which he could make a profit on by selling each stick for like 50 cents or so. I was immediately skeptical and explained I was under the impression we were just taking a walk together. He said it would help him out a lot because he could take that money, buy more packs, and "keep it goin'," a statement he embellished with a rolling motion of his hands. After some hasty moral calculating, I asked him if he had a preferred brand. "Salem menthols." I asked where we could find some and he knew just the place. He pointed me down the street and off the main thoroughfare. I hesitated with anxiety about being harmed. I timidly followed him to the store while trying to spin my head around like an owl.

We entered. Enoch initiated the transaction with the clerk while I assessed the wares. The word skeezy came to mind. What was promised as costing no more than $4 ended up being $6.50, at which I balked. I expressed my unwillingness and exited with Enoch on my heels. I returned to the corner of my aborted split. At an impasse, we looked at each other in relative quiet. He wasn't going to leave without something and I wasn't going to give him what he wanted.

I caved first. I was exhausted from our trip, from my protracted vigilance, from sympathy and self-critique. I reached for my wallet. I extracted the singles and proffered them. He accepted. I told him that was a start. I told him to keep trying to find work, that he was very personable and shouldn't let himself get discouraged. I thanked him for showing me around. His mouth was slanted in that Christmas morning way of mixed disappointment. He said, "Okay then" and back pedaled a few steps. He turned and departed, walking back toward where he came from. I scurried up the path, crossed the street, and was swept by the revolving doors into chrome-plated asylum.

On the path through the lobby, on the glass-elevatored ascent, on the trek to my room, and finally on the expertly-made bed, I obsessed about Enoch. I tried determining what exactly had just transpired. Under one view, he was a con artist from start to finish. Asking for the time of day is the oldest trick in the book. It could be that he was a terrible panhandler and giving a shot to a different business model. On another, he was a lonely man, vocationally aimless, eager to be accompanied and hesitant to ask for help. Enoch wanted a companion, if only for a couple miles. He was glad to have me near, to share his accumulated knowledge with someone else, to be heard. My view of him is disparate. My part admitted of no greater clarity. How awful was I? Was I a cheapskate? No, or at least not only. The price discrepancy was a mere pretense. I never felt right about supporting him in that manner. The plan was cannibalistic. I didn't approve of him taking advantage of other disadvantaged people in order to advance himself.

Was the entire relationship basically a tug of war? In hindsight, we had the sort of exchanges someone like him (a man looking for a favor/charity) has to make (how today was his birthday, how he's been depressed lately, how he's hungry) and someone like me (a man of variable paranoia about being led down an alley and shivved) has to casually insert into the conversation (how I am young and too poor to afford tickets to go to the Fox Theater, how I'm supposed to be back by 7:45p, how they're expecting me any minute and I really can't go any further). But, who doesn't regularly try manipulating his interlocutor? I was at a professional conference all week. 60% of the conversations were subtly coercive. The words uttered between sessions consisted of smoke-blowing and own-horn-tooting.

I was relieved to make it back intact and whole, save for a few dollars. I told myself it was a steal of a deal when compared to a carriage ride. His cig request felt like a betrayal, though. Like a girl backing away from a kiss, I wanted to say, "I thought we were just friends." But that couldn't be all there was to it. A half an hour is an awful long time to invest into a $6.50 sales pitch.  

I called my wife and rambled. I was a mess. I variously fumed, lamented, complained, and commiserated. I felt guilty lying in a well-appointed room for which I didn't even have to pay. I pictured him meandering in the last rays of daylight. I hadn't even given him enough for a meal. I should have taken him out to dinner or something. His possible futures unfurled, the "then what's," and the depressing truth that I could not spare him from the streets or hunger for more than a few hours. We were both at the mercy of systems, his deprivational and mine bureaucratic. In my own—and don't get me wrong, hugely less painful—way, I was a victim, too. Of wanting to help and being unable, of wanting to help and being unwilling, of being scared because of a taught predisposition rather than the facts at hand, of second guessing myself about what those facts really were. I felt ashamed for how I'd be viewed by others, for how they'd say I was lucky I wasn't robbed. After hanging up, sleep evaded me. I wrote the above story down by bedside lamp light.

Obviously, I am unable to fully and accurately describe the situation. The experience was entirely too internally tumultuous for me to navigate, the knot too tight for my fumbling fingers. That is what we call an authorial failure. Looking back has only made the event muddier. It is the central artwork that critics assess from different angles. It is the seminal tome admitting of varied interpretations. 

***

8/24/12 - I rose early, showered, and marshaled my strewn property in preparation for check out. I took solace from the economy of my luggage. Crisply folded shirts sliding into their own slot can remind you of the possibility of order's governance over chaos. 

For the sake of fresh coffee, I considered posing as a member of the Pork Producers of America who now conferring. I decided I didn't fit the part. Supine in the desk chair with legs outstretched and feet on bed, I ate a drifter's breakfast of leftovers and staling sweet breads slyly lifted and paper-napkin-wrapped.

The only noises within my room were mastication and intermittent napkin rustling. The silence was acutely isolating in the way quiet spaces are when surrounded by noisy living. I imagine this is the somberness of single apartment living, where the sounds you hear emanate from other rooms—the muffled conversations, laughing, screaming, and clopping around. When life's soundtrack is recording everywhere but your own studio, it's discomfiting. Rather than linger, I gulped down the last of my complimentary bottled water and took my leave.

***

In need of still more healing, I sought refuge in the Atlanta Botanical Garden. I arrived ten minutes shy of opening, so I bantered with the volunteers who were watering planters with hoses of almost infinite length. The box office attendant handed me his first admission for the day. For an hour, I was able to pretend that the grounds were my domain. The plants and I were left alone. I desperately tried to absorb all sense data (minus taste, which may have unexpected consequences). Various species of magnolias and hydrangeas played prominent roles. Crape myrtles were in bloom. Their sweet scent was transcendental. I stopped and took a drag of their flowers at each opportunity. After a dozen trees, I was nearly euphoric.

Natural beauty is glorious in its frivolity. Certainly there is need for color to attract but this intensity? Certainly there is need for breadth of leaf and limb but so wide? And moreover, for whom? These plants grow apart from hands that could plant them. These flowers blossom removed from the eyes that could judge them.

It is revitalizing to be amid flora—the innocent, oblivious, delicate, and resilient. The Fuqua Orchid Center sent me over the edge. I asked a botanist if working near the orchids made her believe more of less in God. "That's a hard question. [pause] Less, I guess." I nearly collapsed into the undergrowth. I left it at that for the sake of politeness, but I wanted to implore: Why? How? until she succumbed like I did to the evidence of these miracles.

***

Flying above clouds in broad daylight is awesome, as in a sight truly full of awe for human eyes. I'd think the undulating mounds of fibrous white were dreamt if it weren't for the smudges on the window. It's always sunny above the clouds, the kind of intense white that you reflexively squint at even with the aid of sunglasses. The kind of brightness that leaves the after images inversely contrasted, unnatural navys and violets, the byproducts of fried retinal rods. I watch these dance on the back of my eyelids.

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