In any event, by that point then, things had come to this in '85. I was living in a dead car belonging to this fella I met while bumming booze change and he said I could sleep there. Met him out on Peachtree Street, late one night, wondering, or not really caring, where I would fall out till dawn, and walking past the boarded-up store fronts.
The crowd of vacant properties waiting for the developers to raze them and construct their upscale projects — (Halliburton, Fluor, Bechtel, they didn't invent that destroy and rebuild ploy; that strategy is old) — across from JJ from LA's sign-painting operation, a hit-and-miss affair in a burnt-out store front with no door. Very accessible. I knew if nowhere else presented itself, JJ wouldn't mind my crashing there. Across the street was the gay bar, Lido, I believe it was called, little changed or sanitized from its earlier hippie/redneck days — it was old old, one of many new gay bars spreading as the colony grew, Peachtree a new Castro.
I would go in on afternoons and avail myself of the happy hour free feed and the conversation. It was a good open space, in contrast to what was going down in the rest of the city, not to mention the country. Unfortunately, the same contagion of dismissal toward low-lifes, "homeless," (because I was getting used to hearing myself so-called. "Homeless" — a journalist's invention from the early '80s. Now, scrofula, I could deal with, would refer to myself as such and laugh. But some hack journalist's concoction, contrived for the consumption of their readers, that was at the time difficult for me to accept.)
Well, that same antagonistic contagion infected this region too, eventually. It was an unkind, unwarranted fear cultivated by politicians and the media. "Don't trust, don't be kind, we don't know these people and therefore they are to be feared" was the message. And then as now, it sold newspapers. People on the street and people who were otherwise kind, didn't stand a chance as the anti-homeless sentiment took ascendence and the Rainbow got cropped.
I remember discovering that this kid I'd known in school days back in No'fuk had come out and was in fact managing one of the new gay bars, but when I went by to see him, I wasn't allowed in. An iron curtain of sorts had descended. A real pity. It's only got more paranoid, like everything else. Take care Jeffrey, you had a righteous heart.
The fella I'd met on the street while bumming was waiting for warm weather to rebuild the car, an old Valiant, I believe, in terrible shape but more or less whole — protection against the cold somewhat — it was the dead of winter and I would drink a half-pint of 100-proof vodka, plant it in the back seat, covering myself with this old Army blanket reeking of gasoline, and rise at dawn, drink my Maxwell instant with cold water out of the aptartment building's outside faucet and proceed to GSU Law School to read briefs in the law reviews, Michigan, Harvard, and the National Law Journal for cases having to do with individual freedom, especially rights of the accused and whatever serious suggested reading Maddox recommended.
Meese was attorney general, John Roberts was in the Justice Deptartment, Solicitor General's office. There was plenty to read about as the Reaganites presented their agenda to the Supreme Court or at the appellate level. There were many accused to read about, and their treatment or truncation of rights.
It was warm in the law library. I could sleep when I needed. I washed in the men's room to the disapproval of the "real" law students. The law students were all decked out in suits, preparing for the corporate world. Most didn't seem to want to be reminded of the civil rights preoccupation of law students and law schools 10 or so years before. Not a one of them said anything to me. What kind of curiosity is that? Scrutiny seeking legitimization? They had none! But money and where it was to be had; that they were learning daily in the law school. I had great respect for their sense of…focus.
Hanging in the law school still had some freebies, even for the outlandish. For instance, I saw a John Houston flick with Albert Finney of the Malcolm Lowry book, "Under the Volcano." You know the one, about the death-struck drunken consul in Mexico who threw his promise of the good life away for Mescal. Died by the side of the road after the white horse galloped past. It was screened for free in the law school.
Another time, I wandered into this crowded room I'd been informed was where Amiri Baraka was speaking. It wasn't. It was some sort of freshman law thing, a property course, probably. The students all looked stiff and new. I laughed at least as loud as the perfesser who was a good law man. I sat in the front row and asked where Baraka was. He had a sense of what humor is. I was a semi-walking stoned advertisment for the unrepentant Bohemian, and when younger he may well have been a bit of the boho himself, and we both laughed like hell. Like Hell. But he of course was a tenured professor and I couldn't even find where Baraka was speaking.
The students by contrast were mum, didn't want to think about the homeless epidemic right outside their door. There was no profit in the boho to their thinking.