Dec. 23: The perfect storm

 For some reason, I had to go to the newspaper at five o'clock in the morning. I unlocked the door, flicked the lights on, and found a middle-aged bald guy sleeping on the couch in the break room. I turned the lights off, got myself a cup of coffee, and went back to my work station.

A couple hours later, I heard the man get up, pour himself a cup of coffee, and make a phone call. The call lasted about five minutes. It was very heated and in French. I sensed he was using a lot of profanity but my French wasn't as good as I thought it was.

Eventually, he trundled out in the office area where he found me working. He glared at me for a second and then he yelled something in French. I am only moderately fluent in conversational French and I don't do well when words are screamed rather than spoken, so I have no idea what the guy was trying to say to me, though I sensed he was criticizing me for something. Maybe he was telling me not to come into the office so early or to refrain from making so much noise, though he also could have been telling me not to wear white after Labour Day or to help him change his Depends. My first instinct was to yell right back at him but I reeled that in. I had no idea who the guy was. He could have owned the newspaper, for example, or maybe he was just some homicidal employee who had decided to take a nap on the couch in the break room.

The man went outside for a cigarette. While he was smoking, a few of my fellow co-workers arrived for the day. The man engaged them in conversation. Mostly he yelled and complained a lot and my co-workers more or less murmured agreement. I began to sense that the smoking dude was one of those chronically negative people that others merely tolerate.

-

Lenny came in. Lenny wasn't my boss but he sort of was. Lenny knew how newspapers worked but his byline never appeared in the newspaper. He told me that he was there to do some consulting work on an informal basis. It was the turn of the century and the newspaper was trying to bolster its online presence. That's where Lenny came in.

Lenny was in his 60s and looked a lot like Santa Claus, which made him an odd choice to help the paper get more 'hep. But he knew his stuff. I showed him a webpage I had designed to promote a book I was writing and Lenny gave me one of my most favourite pieces of constructive criticism, which was this: "That web page would be cutting edge if the year was 1975."

-

I asked Lenny about the guy on the couch and Lenny told me not to worry about him. I told Lenny that the guy on the couch had yelled at me about something and Lenny told me that the guy on the couch was always yelling at people about things.

"Don't take it personally," Lenny said. "He's a total degenerate. Smokes too much, drinks too much, gambles too much, chases skirts too much. His wife had enough so she kicked him out. He has no place to go so the newspaper said he could sleep on the couch for a bit while he sorts things out."

"Think he ever will?"

"I doubt it."

It turned out that the guy on the couch was a bit of a jack of all trades at the paper. He did some carpentry work, did some deliveries, helped distribute the paper when it came in, etc...

At that point, the guy stormed into the newsroom, tracking snow everywhere. He went to the back room and started screaming at someone about something.

"He wants more money for shovelling the snow off the sidewalk," Lenny whispered to me.

 -

I never saw the man on the couch again. I wasn't at that newspaper for much longer so there weren't a whole lot of opportunities for our paths to cross. 

There's another couch sleeper in my past. When I was in my early 20s, I was visiting my friend and his girlfriend at their house in northeast Calgary. It was getting late and I was tired and I enquired if they might let me sleep on their couch that evening. They said they weren't against the idea in principle but they had to turn me down because the couch was already spoken for.

Apparently, the two had come to an informal agreement with a drifter who provided them an undisclosed sum to use their couch for sleeping and for the privilege of having a permanent address. More often than not, the Drifter would stumble in around two a.m., sleep for six or seven hours on their stinky burgundy couch, and then head out again. Sometimes, but not too often, he would have a shower. He never ate there and he rarely interacted with his hosts. He never brought company over. He seemed to think of my friend's couch the same way Dracula thought of his coffin, which was as a bare necessity.

"What does he do?" I asked.

"I don't know," the girlfriend said. "He won't talk about himself."

"Probably a drug dealer," my friend said.

"Does he drive?" I asked.

"He's had a few cars since he's been here," she said.

"Maybe he's a car thief," my friend said.

"How much does he pay you?" I asked.

"A hundred dollars a month," the girlfriend said, and then added: "It buys us our cigarettes."

-

All of this backstory is to say that sometime in the latter part of 1999, I lay in my bed and I thought about those two couch sleepers. I felt bad for both of them but I had more pity for the newspaper couch sleeper, who was the only one I had actually met. That was because his new lot in life had largely been shaped by his boorish attitude and that he hadn't clued in that changing his outlook, and the way he treated other people, might help him improve things. The fact that he hadn't figured this out at such an advanced age was even more depressing.

I still felt bad about the other couch sleeper, whom I had never met, and whose life story was unknown to me. As such, I could only rely on conjecture. I pictured him to be a relatively short guy with a mop of curly black and white hair. I thought he would be ugly, wear thick glasses, and a big silly looking moustache that he thought looked cool. I thought he'd have perennial bad breath and would eat nothing but fast food, though he had a high metabolism that kept him thin. He would rarely talk during his down time. I figured he had a Joe job somewhere, maybe running a cash register at a gas station or stocking shelves in a warehouse, though he could have also been involved in some kind of petty crime. He would drive around in cheap used cars and spend all of his money partying at various nightclubs or strip bars. He had no plans for the future. He lived entirely for the moment.

-

Here is how Webster's describes a perfect storm: a critical or disastrous situation created by a powerful concurrence of factors

Obviously, there had to be a perfect storm in both of these guy's lives to lead them to their couch-sleeping living conditions. I knew a little bit about the newspaper guy's situation, though his perfect storm was caused entirely by decisions that he had made. Smoking cigarettes was obviously very important to him (this was Quebec, after all) and maybe they were so important that he skimped on groceries. Then he added alcohol to the mix and that became more important than paying the mortgage. Then he realized that he was seriously depleting the savings account so he decided to take what little money they had left and take it to the casino, which ate it all via the slot machines. Maybe he had a little left over for a side trip to the red light district in Montreal, if there is such a thing. And maybe, when he was confronted over his past transgressions, he had decided to fly into a white rage rather than show remorse. All of this was a perfect storm for wifey kicking him out.

I can't help but wonder how many failed marriages are the results of perfect storms like that.

-

Lenny, the Santa Claus of the online newspaper era, is dead now. I think the first couch sleeper must be as well. Given his lifestyle, a heart attack or cancer has surely claimed him by now. The fate of the other couch sleeper is hidden from me. As before, I must rely on conjecture.

Well note-a-day wants me to be optimistic so I will believe that he found a purpose in life. I'll believe that he met a lady while standing in line at Berk's Fried Chicken and she convinced him to get a shave and a haircut and to try some contact lenses. I'll believe that she motivated him to go back to school and that now he is working as a real estate agent. The pair got married and they don't have kids of their own, but he became a stepdad to the nine-year-old girl she'd had from a previous relationship. They also have a black Labrador named Max and they live in a split level in Midnapore, a community in south Calgary. 

I'll believe that the guy has stopped drinking and stopped breaking the law, though he does enjoy a cigarette now and then. In fact, he will enjoy one tonight as he stands on their snow-covered porch (she won't let him smoke inside) and looks at all the Christmas lights that adorn his neighbourhood. From inside the house, he will hear yet another Hallmark Christmas movie that his wife and daughter are watching. He'll chuckle a little, take a drag from his cigarette, and think about how grateful he is for that long ago day when he decided to grab some lunch at Berk's Fried Chicken and how that simple encounter changed his life.

Perhaps he's not sophisticated enough to understand that the term "a perfect storm" is a metaphor, but he'd be able to grasp the concept. He'd dropped out of high school in order to run with a gang and that directly led to the drifter life he lived for most of his twenties. Maybe, before his cigarette is over, he'll think about how all storms end. They wreck chaos for a while but then the sun comes out again and maybe, sometimes, you're lucky enough to find someone who will help you pick up the pieces.