by Pepper Pace
Troy opened his mouth. "I...I don’t think that I could stand to be trapped. I don’t think I can stand being around too much stuff. I'm okay when I'm crashing in a building, or doorway, or on a cot in a shelter because I can just walk away and leave it all behind. And when it's raining or cold I can stay with friends--I've even used money for a motel for me and a few friends." Troy leaned forward slightly. "Many of my friends on the street aren't broke. They recycle or panhandle or like me, they get social security checks. A lot of street people aren't exactly homeless because they don't know how to get the necessary help. They're on the street because they don't want the help."
"That's how it is with you? You want the streets?"
"Well...I have three grand in the bank. I'm not out there because I have no other choices." And he didn’t even mention the money that he had in Trust. If she knew, she’d call him crazy for sure.
Three grand in the bank?! "God, you are crazy," She said. She had tried to think differently, she really had.
Troy didn't seem angry. "Well...people might say the same about you. You went crazy on me in that alley. Actually, the second time you were there I heard you talking to yourself—I even heard you yelling to yourself. I'm crazy?" He absently waved away her comments. "Maybe. But you are, too."
Juicy made a face and stood up. Troy popped up in front of her. He took hold of her good hand, the one without the cast.
"Don't, Juicy. We can talk without getting mad at each other. I like you...and I just want you to understand me." When she didn't answer he slowly released her hand and took a step away from her. "I guess it doesn't matter." Troy rubbed his hair, ruffling the damp ringlets. Then he shrugged. "There are two worlds. I live in the invisible one and you live in the real one." He raised both palms up in defeat. "Those two worlds don't mix."
Juicy thought before speaking. "I agree with you that there are two worlds, maybe even more. I don't know exactly where I fit in. I'm not really a part of either. Maybe I'm crazy. I guess I am. But I'm trying. I'm trying hard not to judge you. You saved my life-"
"Now you want to save mine?"
She nodded slowly.
Troy secured the fold in his towel then pulled her into his arm. "I don't need to be saved, Juicy, because I'm okay with me."
She closed her eyes and relaxed against Troy's warm body. He squeezed her firmly and carefully nuzzled the side of her head with his chin.
"I can take care of myself..." He paused. "...and if you need me to, I can take care of you, too."
"What does that mean?" She lifted her head quickly to look at him.
He stared at her for a long time before answering. "What do you want it to mean, Juicy?"
"I don't want it to mean anything, Troy." She backed away from him. "I just want to make sure you don't need anything. That's all." She grabbed some change and headed out the door to put his clothes into the dryer.
She thought to herself as she headed down the stairs. Take care of me? The idea wouldn’t easily leave her mind.
When she returned, Troy was sitting at the dining room table waiting for her. "Juicy what happened to you that day that made you so mad? You were almost crying. Why?" She let out a sigh and joined him in the kitchen, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite him.
"I was trying to get a business loan. I had done my research. I had a business plan, but...I didn't qualify for a loan."
"Why didn't you qualify?"
"No job. No security." Juicy felt a spark of anger but it quickly dwindled away. "I was tossed out of the bank for arguing with the loan officer." She sucked air through her teeth. "I have a real bad temper. But I'm trying to control that now." She lightly rubbed her temples.
"How are you feeling; you know, your head?"
"I still have this headachy feeling but not exactly full blown. My back aches. I guess I'm okay, though."
"Well Juicy, don't assume that you're okay just because the hospital released you." Her eyes flashed nervously at him. Quickly he added. "I just mean that you should go visit a doctor soon to have them examine you. I know the hospital didn't do a very good job. They only focused on your head so if your back hurts then it needs to be looked at." He turned his head and looked at the floor. "I-I-I would also c-c-call the police to see if they c-c-caught th-th-the guys that a-ta-ta-TACKed you." Troy panted with the effort to speak those last few words.
"Troy," Juicy frowned. "Why do you get tics and start stuttering when you talk about the police?"
He met her eyes. "I ha-ha-ha..." He sighed. "HAD some bad experiences with the police."
"They hurt you?"
Troy had gotten that distant look in his eyes again. She had come to associate it with him remembering something unpleasant. What she didn’t understand is that it was the absence seizure, and that he wasn’t remembering anything, least of all the worst beaten that he’d ever received in his life, because he was technically unconscious.
CHAPTER 5
It was, without a doubt, the worst beaten that Troy had ever received--and it was at the hands of the police. That night the police had busted in the crackhouse, gathered everyone that hadn’t scattered away like roaches, he had been too slow. And if not for Kelly, he could very well have died as a result.
***
Troy wasn’t even eighteen years old when he’d walked away from his home, his family, and the only security that he had known. He had come from a comfortable, middle class environment. His life, until his departure, was filled with multi player online role playing games; mostly War of Warcraft. A self confessed computer geek, Troy had very few real life friends. School was just a place that he went because he had to go. He wasn’t a good student, but that had less to do with his learning potential and more to do with being diagnosed as bipolar.
His parent’s were much older by the time that he was born. They had already raised a son and daughter to adulthood. So when Troy came along he was not only a surprise, but had issues that they had no idea how to face.
At times he wondered if things would have been better if he would have been an only child. Then their expectations might not have been so high. Maybe then they could have faced his problems with more openness to his desires instead of relying on the doctors to tell them everything that they would come to accept about his condition.
Dad would say, ‘Troy the doctor says that this medicine will not affect your ability to concentrate in school.’ And when his lack of concentration in school became a nuisance he would tell Dad who would just respond with, ‘Well they said it wouldn’t, son. The doctor’s should know.’
‘Well they are fucking wrong!’ He’d want to yell in annoyance. But of course he never did. And his mother was no better, perhaps even worse. She didn’t even pretend to understand what the doctor’s were talking about. She would just agree with whatever Dad said. If Dad said that the sky is the ocean then she would probably say, ‘Wow when did that happen?’
Troy had no choice but to get away. But where does a seventeen year old computer geek run away to? He would not go to his sister Lorie’s house because Lorie had two small babies and a husband that looked at him as if he had a contagious disease. Bob, his brother, was always buddy buddy with him. They didn’t have a tight relationship since he was twenty-two years older, but he did put forth an effort.
So that’s where Troy headed. Bob was single and maybe he’d let him crash there and help him to get a job. Of course his brother would probably not allow him to blow off his entire senior year. So Troy was okay with the idea of completing his senior year at his brother’s place. Bob was so much younger than Dad, maybe he could understand what he had tried so hard to tell his parents. The drugs were changing him; making him into an un-person.
They had started him on Ritalin when he was a kid. Then he had stopped running around the house and bounding up and down in class. His parents were older and thought that giving him medicine to calm him would allow them the opportunity to take a break from a boy like him; who one minute was r
unning in circles and then the next was staring blankly into space. Years later when the blank stares, tics and stuttering had become a cause for comment from their friends and from his teachers, they sent him to doctors who diagnosed him as bipolar.
It was the beginning of the mood stabilizers and anti-depressants. He didn’t think that he was manic depressive or depressed at all. He thought his moods were fairly stabled. He had seizures and tremors. He wasn’t sure how that equated to being bipolar.
His parents spent a great deal of money sending him to psychologists that would say that his thoughts were disconnected and not cohesive. He would argue that it had a lot to do with the fact that he was on a heavy course of lithium, prozac as well as anti-convulsive medications! Troy didn’t blame the medicine; some people probably needed to take all of that stuff, but not him! He felt like everyone just wanted him to shut up and to go with the program.
Only thing is that he never would.
Troy showed up at Bob’s doorstep two days after running away. Bob immediately grabbed him in a bear hug and then he hurried to the phone to call their parent’s despite Troy’s protests.
‘Yeah, he’s right here, standing in my living room.’
Troy had been very pissed. He had asked Bob not to call them until he’d had a chance to talk to him about how he was feeling and to get shit off his chest. Bob had just acted as if he hadn’t said a word.
He thrust the phone at Troy. ‘Dad wants to talk to you.’ He had written his parents a long and tedious letter detailing the reasons for his departure. Now it was almost like everything had been for nothing.
‘Troy! Why did you runaway?!’
Oh my god…it was for nothing!
‘We’re on our way, you stay right there! Did you take your medicine?’
Oh my god…
Bob paced back and forth lecturing him about how irresponsible he was being, and how Mom and Dad weren’t young and antics like this was bad for them and if he could stop having so many problems…
He said nothing.
When his parent’s arrived Bob gave him a pat on the shoulder as if they had shared a long brotherly moment and he got quietly into his parent’s station wagon and was driven back home. Medicine was dispensed, an appointment to the therapist made and then his parents returned to their routine.
When Troy disappeared the next night, he didn’t bother with a note, phone calls; nothing. He would not contact anyone in his family until his eighteenth birthday some eight months later; and then only for the purpose of having his social security checks forwarded to him.
From that moment on, he would live on the streets with very little. In the beginning it was very frightening. But he learned fast. No one could say that Troy was not a fast learner.
He learned that there were flyers of him posted all over, stating that without his medicine he became confused—a blatant lie, since it was the medication that left him confused. Therefore he could no longer continue being a runaway on the mean streets of Hartford Connecticut, where people drove past him and said, ‘Hey Troy, your Mom and Dad are looking for you.’ So he took a bus somewhere else.
He was a very innocent and naïve kid when he landed in Columbus Ohio. It was the Midwest, so he figured there probably would be no gangs. And Ohio was far away, but not so far that if he wanted to go back home to pick up his Sega Genesis, he would have no problem doing so. He had two hundred seventeen dollars and a backpack on him when he stepped off the bus. He went next door to the nearby grill and spent seven dollars of that on dinner. He walked around for a while, but since it was already dark he returned to the bus terminal and slept in one of the hard plastic chairs. The second day was a repeat of the first, but when he tried to return to the terminal, security recognized him and made him leave.
He was fine with that. He was anxious to begin his adventure. Then he discovered that Columbus Ohio was not a place that one would describe as adventurous. After living in Connecticut he saw Ohio as very boring and devoid of life. There were shops, and cars and houses, but where were the people that milled around at all hours like they had back where he was from?
That night he slept on the side of a darkened building in the dead grass because he was too afraid to remove the boards from the windows and doors unless he got into trouble for trespassing. He searched for work the next day but, no phone number meant no call back and well…that’s that. That night he slept on a park bench, terrified that someone would rob him, or the cops would tell him to move on, but that didn’t happen.
He walked until he saw a man under a bridge. He had a shopping cart evidently filled with his belongings. There were also empty crates high up along the embankment. He supposed that it had been put there by the man as furniture. Maybe he set his beer on it after a long day of panhandling, or pretended it was a TV. He had no idea what the crates were for but he was pretty sure that the guy would be pissed if they went missing. Troy approached him but the man chased him away. Still, it gave him an idea so he started searching for places like that.
For the next few days he lived on a diet of ninety-nine cent burgers and a bottled water that he kept filled from fountains and gas station restrooms. At night, he balled himself into a small corner of some empty building, doorway, or once even a field. Eventually he found an abandoned train station. The station itself was boarded up, but there were several overpasses with crisscrossed paths which would have led the trains to different destinations throughout the country, but now unused, it just left places beneath them that were semi-private and hidden. During the day the place was vacant but at night it began to fill rapidly with bodies of the homeless. They looked at him with wary suspicion and for the most part kept their distance.
One young man did approach him. He had long brown hair, and eyes that darted everywhere at once. Troy thought that maybe he should buy a knife before his money ran out. But the man turned out to be pretty cool. His name was Blue and Blue showed him the ropes. He was a hustler, though and everything was about making money or stealing money. Once he established that Troy was unwilling to suck dick for money, Blue accepted the fact that Troy would just have to be another ally on the streets and not someone he could make an easy buck from.
Allies were almost as good as money.
For the next several months he hung with Blue and his friends. Sometimes they slept at the train tracks, which Blue nixed from happening too often; too easy to be robbed and raped. Troy had been surprised by that. Homeless people got raped? Blue had clarified that homeless BOYS got raped.
Sometimes they crashed along with other people in vacant apartments as if they were squatters. Sometimes there were impromptu parties going on with a DJ and rappers and the atmosphere was like static! They called those RAVES. He had lots of fun, not used to parties since he’d never been invited to any while at home. Of course, it wasn’t always good for him to be where there was so much movement and action as it triggered seizures or migraines.
There were times when they slept in buildings that doubled as crack houses and once some crazy man had robbed everyone by syringe point, stating that the needle was infected with HIV. Of course, he had long ago run out of money.
Once, while he was sleeping in a crack house, a woman had reached over and ran her hands up his leg and over his groin. He peeked at her to see if she might be having some dream, but no, the woman was looking right at him. She was older, not something one would consider pretty, and she was kind of dirty. But hell, he was still a virgin. He decided to roll over and have sex with her the way he’d seen other people do, quietly while everyone else slept, but Blue woke up.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Well…I-uhm-’
‘You’re not going to fuck her are you?’
‘Mind your own business!’ The woman said.
‘Well she touched my dick,’ was his response.
‘Dude, she’s got the virus. Hand job only.’
Troy had flashed her a horrified look. The woman spit at them and
then hurried away, but not before Blue kicked her.
‘Bitch! You stank, anyways!’ He screamed before wiping off the spit and rolling back over. Troy just stared after the lady that was now scampering out of the building.