Talkin' To Strangers...

Okay, so here's an interesting wrap-up to the work week...

The night goes smoothly. Not only does nothing blow up on me, but I actually discover an online cache of SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN episodes, and I get to watch one.

Then I think about a new approach to Chapter One, and I actually get a bit of that written.

All very cool.

When I get home I stop by the mail boxes. (I have this secret belief that any day now I'm going to win a contest or something and fine a big-ass check waiting for me in there. And even if that happens, I might have some Netflix waiting for me.)

As I'm checking the mail, this dude wanders out of the darkness of 6:35 am and up to me and asks if I have a cell phone he can borrow to call a friend to pick him up.

I look over at the guy, and he's young-ish, not wearing shoes, shivering in a tank-top, and had dried blood smeared across his left cheek.

Now, if I know you, I'm a pretty outgoing guy. I'm very open and friendly to people I know.

But if you don't know me, and you approach me, I tend to be cautious.

And I'm told that I can come off as surly, even though that's not my intention. Like my blank expression, when I'm thinking about a story or just letting my mind wander, has caused more than one friend to ask me "Are you okay? Is anything wrong?"

So hopefully I don't come off as too much of an ass, but I have reason to believe that maybe sometimes I do.

But the guy only asked to borrow my phone, and he seems pretty vulnerable and helpless at the moment (although, that's something that always gets my guard up... I've had too many people try to sell me stuff, lol) and I can't figure out any way that loaning this guy my phone for a moment gets a knife in my ribs or anything.

So I hand him my phone.

He dials, like, 5 numbers -- very slowly, I notice -- pausing for a long time in between.

As he's dialing, I'm noticing several smaller cuts and nicks, and small blood stains that don't seem to have a wound beneath them, like they're from somewhere else. (Mind you, he's not covered in blood, Horror-movie style. But there's more than you're used to seeing on someone who walks up to you our of the early morning darkness.)

With all the slow dialing and pausing, Suspicious Guy gets the distinct feeling this guys wants more than just to use my phone. But Suspicious Guy can't figure out what just yet.

Trusting Guy inside me realizes that this guy might not remember any of his friends' phone numbers, because we live in the age of cell phones, where all our important numbers are stored in our phone.

In between dials, Bloody Dude is filling me in on parts of his back-story:

He was hanging with friends last night, and some of these friends jumped him. In the fight, his cell slipped out of his (stylishly baggy) pants. He even voices what I was thinking about not remembering his numbers because they're all on speed dial.

After (what feels like) a really long time of him sluggishly dialing, then sluggishly trying to remember, then sluggishly dialing, and so on, I ask if he remembers his own number.

I'm not being condescending here, I swear. I know a few people who are really smart, but don't know their own phone number. (Why should they? They never call themselves.)

He does, and I suggest we try to find the part of the parking lot where his phone might have slipped out and call it.

As we're walking back to a section of the apartment complex parking lot, I notice that this guy smells like alcohol. I guess that he got took (that's a Kelly Montgomery phrase, "got took", and for some reason I dig it) because he was too wasted to effectively fight back. In my head I concocted a scenario where the guy maybe passed out for a few hours, then woke up not too long before I came along to check my mail. I could totally imagine that happening to me.

It's my Writer's imagination, always trying to fill in the gaps and understand. (Not alawys a useful trait, mind you, lol.)

We get to a section of the parking lot, and he doesn't remember it. So we try another section, then I hand him the phone and he calls.

No luck. In fact, I think I hear that mechanical female voice that tells you if you have any voice messages, and then he pulls the phone away to press a button and listens some more.

Then he remembers that his phone might have slipped out in someone's car or in someone's apartment.

He closes the cell, and starts to apologize for wasting my time (but not yet handing the phone back to me), and Suspicious Guy is really getting the sense that this guy wants something he's not asking for. It's like he doesn't want to be alone again.

But Trusting Guy has the obvious answer...

I ask him if he lives far from here, he doesn't, so I tell him I can drive him home.

It's not freezing in Austin, but if you've spent a lot of time outside overnight in a tank-top and your socks, it can get cold. Every now and then throughout our interaction I notice Bloody Guy shivering. I'm wearing a Jolly Rogers T-shirt and one of my floral over-shirts, but not my jacket, so I can't offer him that.

So after he accepts my offer to drive him home, I'm kind of relieved to be able to turn on the heat for him in the car.

On the ride to his apartment, I listen as he sort of carefully rambles. I even add to the conversation where I can, opening up just a hair. I can use a smoke and I offer him one, and he accepts.

It's not a long drive, but I feel ever half-second of it. The guy seems like a nice enough guy, if almost tragically naive on one or two levels.

But... No more naive than I was in my early 20's or late teens. (I am, after all, the guy who -- at 20 or 21 -- left his wife and child in Texas thinking that I could get a job acting in Hollywood in 3 or 4 weeks.)

As we drive he fills in more of the gaps:

He went out with friends and friends of friends. He was pretty wasted. His ride left, but he decided to stay and get a ride with a friend. He seemed to be getting along quite well with a girl. This sort of impromptu party kept moving, stopping to get more liquor from time to time, and before he knew it his friend (the one he had planned to get a ride home from) was gone. Before the night was over, the girl is flirting with this other guy. Then this other guy starts wailing on Bloody Guy. The fight subsides -- or so Bloody Guy thinks -- but then This Other Guy starts back up again. And poor Bloody Guy is too drunk to be able to really react to the sudden introduction of violence into what had previously been a really cool Saturday night.

Just as I'm finishing my cigarette and before he's finished his, we're in front of his apartment.

He's very appreciative and I assure him he owes me nothing, I just suggest he get some sleep.

And then I'm here, blogging about the experience.

One thing that's really cool about being a writer is that I can tell 2 completely different stories from my single experience: The first would be where I'm in Bloody Guy's shoes, and the second is where I'm in my own shoes, only Bloody Guy turns out to be malevolent.

And all I did was let a stranger borrow my phone and then give him a ride home.

Poor guy, he got a (hopefully) valuable Life Lesson out of the night, and that's all.

Now, I'm not saying I'm gonna go capitalize on this guy's pain. But it's an interesting realization for me to discover that despite my extreme lack of financial wealth, I do have riches elsewhere. (Not even counting the value of knowing to be careful about whom I get drunk around, because that was a lesson I earned, lol.)

And another odd/interesting aspect about this encounter: Doing a nice thing for someone who's in a bad situation isn't hard. I mean, if he were looking for money out of me, he'd have been S.O.L.. But ultimately, all he needed was transportation home. And that was no problem for me -- I was off work and just about to begin my weekend; what may have seemed like a big-ish favor to him was really no trouble for me at all.

Blah.

I don't have anything profound for you here, just sharing the experience because it was rather out-of-the-ordinary, and usually all I have to share with you is what dvds I watched in the past few days, lol.

Btw: THE HOST rules!!! My friend Lothar loaned it to me and I watched it last night ("yesterday morning"... before I went to bed) and it WAS SO COOL!!! :D

Also, Lothar loaned me the latest Frank Burly novel, which I hope to start on this weekend. But I've got the first chapter of my own novel to rewrite, and hopefully a second chapter to write. So I don't know how much reading I'll get done this weekend.