MY INFAMOUS NAKED HOMELESS MAN CHRISTMAS STORY

[Wetzelbill]

MY INFAMOUS NAKED HOMELESS MAN CHRISTMAS STORY
a bill wetzel joint
I will go to great lengths to tell a great story.

Case in point.

There was a naked homeless man reclined on my futon and all I thought about was what a good story this was going to be. I kept thinking about my friend Sara. If this couldn’t make her laugh, than nothing would. Meanwhile, I had some serious issues to deal with. Chiefly, was the naked homeless guy who looks like Carl from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” camped out in front of me.

Hold on a second.

Stop.

Rewind.

I better do some background.

It’s Fall 2003 in Tucson, Arizona. My youngest brother Tim is living with me. He likes to make friends, talk to people, that sort of thing. One of his friends in our apartment complex is Carl from Aqua Teen…. I mean an older guy named Cliff. Cliff is brutish. Abrasive. Loud. A big Jewish guy from Jackson Heights, in Brooklyn, New York. His dream is to be a plumber. At fifty, I would think he may have decided to explore the turd wrangling option several decades earlier, but since I’m still hoping to become the starting Point Guard for the Seattle Supersonics, I have no room to judge. I don’t really know Cliff. Not enough to realize he’s a bit….well,…. fucked up. So I’m sitting in my apartment one night, Tim is sleeping in the back room and I hear on knock on the door. It’s Carl.. I mean Cliff. Cliff wants to know if he can come in and watch some baseball. It’s the playoffs, I’m bored, he doesn’t have a tv, so I let him in.

Not my smartest move, but everything is still working out.

The game ends after a while and Cliff asks if he can watch a film. Again, I say “Sure,” and he picks out A Perfect World, starring Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood. About halfway through the dvd, Tim wakes up and as it’s getting a little late, tells Cliff he should leave and he can come over some other time. Well, I thought this was odd since Cliff was not hurting anyone or anything. It certainly was not because I was tired or bothered by his presence, however Tim objected, so Cliff left and that was that. Tim then tells me not to let him in, that he’ll come over and never want to leave, and he’s actually a pretty gross and rude person etc. No big deal to me, I’m not friends with the guy, so I don’t think much about it.

Well, for the next few months, every time I would see Cliff hanging out around the building he would try to come over and finish the movie. I would always say no. Once he knocked on the door at about midnight and asked to come in and watch the World Series. Well, the game had only been over a few hours, by that time and it was late. That Cliff could not comprehend such a simple rule of etiquette, struck me as odd. So, it was at this time when I began to think Cliff may have had a screw loose.

This notion was proven shortly thereafter.

One night Cliff was drunk, and apparently off his medication, and he scattered garbage all over in front of the apartment complex. Cliff had a custom. He looked through the garbage for pop cans, so he could crush and turn them in for money. This night he was acting completely nuts, and was trying to fight my next door neighbor, who was elderly, frail and just recovering from a stroke. Tim had to go down and physically restrain Cliff. His behavior and the whole situation was pretty bizarre.

Around this time, I had to go back to Montana to attend my grandfather’s funeral. I came back alone, this time, as my brother decided to stay home for a few months and visit. A few weeks after I got back, I ran into Cliff right as I was returning from getting the mail. I turned a corner and nearly ran into him. He didn’t even say hello, he just pulled a quart of ice cream out of a Fry’s Grocery Bag and said: “Want some ice cream….can I come over and finish the movie?” I swear, I didn’t have the heart to turn the poor bastard down again for the millionth time, so I let him come over.

This was the day before my birthday.

At the time, I was extremely busy.

My friend, Sara was coming over the next day. She was taking me to a movie for my birthday and my house was in need of some cleaning. That’s the thing. Guys are slobs. Most of the time we barely pick up a thing. However a woman changes all of that. No way can you let a woman walk in where you live and have it look like a pigsty. It’s male code. I’m sure it has to be written in stone somewhere. So, I’m telling Cliff he can watch the movie, but I’m going to be in and out, doing some laundry and cleaning up. I don’t think he particularly cared, after months of dreaming of finishing the film, my impression was he was glad that I even let him in the door.

However…..

As I’m sweeping up, an hour or so later, he asks me why I’m cleaning up. I tell him tomorrow is my birthday and I’m expecting a friend over and I haven’t seen her in a while. Cliff gets this puzzled look and after a few moments he says: “Oh you have a girl coming over tomorrow?” So I say, “Yes, she’s a friend from one of my classes. We’re going to do something for my birthday.” Again, Cliff is perplexed, as if the idea of a woman coming over to man’s apartment on her own accord is a foreign concept to him. He then asks” Is she good looking?” Ok, now I’m perplexed, however, I suppose it’s no big deal, he’s just curious and she is definitely a gorgeous woman, so I say: “Well, yeah, actually she’s really good looking.” So Cliff gets this big knowing smile, and says: “How much does she cost?” Ok, I nearly lose it. I swear, for some reason I about cracked up that he would think that. I suppose in Cliff’s world, the only way a guy can get any is by paying for it; maybe he is just confused at the whole idea in the first place. So I explain, “Oh no, Cliff, it’s not like that, she’s not a prostitute, she’s my friend, we aren’t a couple or anything.” I might as well have been talking to a brick wall, because Cliff says “Well, when you’re done with her, why don’t you send her over to my place too. “ Ok… that’s pretty sick, but pretty funny that he’d even think that, in the first place. I start to laugh, and am like “Oh no, no way, it’s not like that.” However, he still couldn’t grasp what I was getting at so I let it go, and eventually he left and went back to his apartment.

So the next day, I can barely contain myself. I have to tell Sara what he said. Now, I don’t know how she’s going to react, but she does think I’m about the funniest guy on earth - in all due respect, I’m at least in the top ten- so I decide to risk telling her. Well, when I got to the part about Cliff asking if I would send her over to his place when I was done, she about died laughing. Well, we about died laughing. Just the thought this guy would assume something like that was hilarious to us. Anyway, afterwards, I would randomly tease her about Cliff, saying I could hook them up etc. It was always good for a laugh, and we had some fun joking around about it. I figured that would be about as far as this Cliff stuff would go. Then one night a few weeks later…

I get a knock on the door.

Ok, this is supposed to be the coldest night of the year. Granted, December in the desert isn’t exactly cold to a Montanan like myself, but it isn’t something you would want to be sleeping outside in. Well, as luck -bad fucking luck - would have it, I open the door to see a desperate looking Cliff standing with a sleeping bag and a friggin’ knapsack. It’s about 10 PM, cold and not too pleasant outside. Cars are rushing by. Exhaust fumes. I can only imagine what it would be like to be homeless. Before I say a word, Cliff immediately goes into a story about how he got kicked out of his apartment - it happens if you don’t pay rent for four months- and he had no place to stay and so on and so on and so on. Ok, I’m a pretty compassionate guy. Maybe to a fault. I in no way can turned down my fellow human being in a time of need. Even one as abhorrent as Cliff. So while he’s pleading his case, I say, “Come on in, I’m not going to let you sleep out at the bus stop in the cold or anything.” Here I am. The good Samaritan. I can just hear the “Aww… Bill, you’re so sweet” comments right now. Let me tell you this.

Sweetness is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Cliff is desperate, as I said. And, he cannot shut up about his damn story. He keeps telling me how the hell he got kicked out. I didn’t really care. I just wasn’t going to let him freeze to death in a sleeping bag right outside my door. And, to top it off, I was busy. Sara and I were going to another movie the next day and she was supposed to call me any second now. My dad was going to call any second now and my friend Mike was about to call any second now as well. I’m thinking about going over and getting a light bulb to replace one which just burned out, while Cliff is telling me about how he has a job interview as a plumber’s assistant all lined up tomorrow, but he doesn’t have a place to stay, and he can’t call to find out when he has to go in to the interview and so on. I would call this a shitty predicament. Literally.

I decide to go to the store.

I leave Cliff home so he can answer the phone.

Not good.

I quickly go to the store, grab some light bulbs, a cheap phone card for Cliff, and a few extra bucks so the poor fucker would have enough to get a few meals or something. I quickly jog home, and as I’m walking in the door, I see a horrific sight. No, he’s not naked. Yet. What I see is Cliff on the phone, talking to someone. Oh no, this is not good. If it’s my dad it’ll freak him out. Of all the luck, it ends up being Sara. Already, I know this is more fodder for me to tease her about. “So, did you and Cliff hit it off on the phone?” “Did you set up a date?” The jokes practically write themselves. As soon as I get on the line, I am brimming with the ecstasy that tomorrow I’m going to have a good story to tell her. “So Bill, are you all right…” she laughs. “Oh yeah, wow, tomorrow do I ever have a story to tell you.” The whole time I’m on the phone, which wasn’t long, Cliff was having a conversation with me. Or trying to anyway.

It turns out this guy never shuts up.

Later on, Mike calls. He’s a Customs investigator, a Blackfeet Indian from the same reservation I am from. I’m trying to have a conversation with him and Cliff is yammering on about how he got kicked out of his apartment, a story I have heard thirty times in the last hour. It’s about 11 pm, already I’m regretting letting him in the door. The philosopher Immanuel Kant believes that an action isn’t moral if somebody does it because of some kind of desire. Or emotion. For example, if you give a bum a quarter, simply because it makes you feel good, well that isn’t a truly moral action. If you give money to charity so you can impress people with your philanthropy then that isn’t a truly moral action. It may be, Kant eludes, that there has never been a truly moral action ever committed. I can tell you this though. I may have let Cliff in the door, originally, because of some humanist, touchy-feely, I-love-my-fellow-man bullshit, but I lost that warm, cuddly feeling inside, truly fuckin’ quick. Moral actions or not, I was beginning to think any elation I may get from being compassionate were not going to be worth it. Not at all.

So, then my dad calls.

Cliff is in the background, talking about how he might move to Montana with me. Ok, let me tell you this. Somewhere between Cliff getting booted out and him going and getting a turd wrangling job the next day, Cliff decided he and I were going to be roommates. I must have missed this because, A, half the time I was on the phone when he was trying to talk to me, and, B, I quit paying attention to what he was saying about 3 minutes after I let him in my apartment. I’m on the phone with my dad, and Cliff keeps yelling in the background about how he and I were going to rent a U-Haul and he’d drive me back home and we could move in with my parents. I’m thinking: “Oh lord, save me.” I think he got the idea when I turned him down a bit earlier when I was actually listening. He was practically acting like he was moving in with me already. He kept asking what time I got off and when I would be back so he could meet me back home. He even enticed me with….food stamps. Yes, Cliff wanted to buy some groceries with his “Stamps, “ meet me at home, cook dinner and spend the night again. In retrospect, I am not sure what he was thinking. Would he go out every day, wrangle turds and come home to me, his loving wife alternative? Would we be like a family or something? I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. Seriously. I don’t want to know. When it was evident I wasn’t going to let him move in, he then tried to persuade me to move in with him in another apartment complex. That was a big “No fucking way!, “ however he then got it in his head we would then move to Montana with my parents. He would not give up!

Finally, my phone calls were done.

I told Cliff I was going to bed, good night, I’m waking you up at 6 AM so you can get the hell out of here, no you can’t live with me etc. So about 11:30, I crash out, and Cliff is in his sleeping bag on my futon about to fall asleep as well. I’m thinking the worst is over, all I have to do is sleep for a few hours, get up and boot him out. Simple, right? Wrong!
I am a lifelong insomniac. I can barely sleep, ever. I’m pretty weird about sleep. I toss and turn, toss and turn. Over and over and over. But, this night was different. I was out almost immediately. I doze off quickly, yet, it doesn’t last. I am asleep about an hour when I hear a terrible racket in the bathroom and also in the front room. I guess Cliff is maybe taking a shower or something I’m not sure. I try to ignore it, but he gets louder and louder and louder. I recall how he told me he was even kicked out of a few of the local homeless shelters. I couldn’t believe it, but now, I’m understanding. The guy is annoying as hell. Infuriatingly so. But, the night is almost over, I have a good story to tell my buddy, Sara, tomorrow and sleep should overcome me again soon. Finally, everything is quiet. Cliff must have finished whatever he was up to, and I could get some rest.

Too late.

I couldn’t sleep.

I lay around for a while, and just can’t sleep. It’s about 1:30, and I get up to use the bathroom. I made the mistake of not putting on my glasses. Not good. I am practically blind. Much like Milhouse from The Simpsons, I am basically worthless without them. So, I go into the bathroom, and as I am peeing, I look up in front of me and see a wet shirt draping off the towel hanger. Then I glance to my right and see a pair of wet, wrung socks socking in a murky, dishwater-ish pool of water in my sink. It’s all so gross I have to laugh to myself. I’m shaking my head, thanking the lord it wasn’t his underwear when I turn to my left and see Cliff’s underwear hanging off of my shower curtain rod, inches away from my head! Oh sick… :: gag:: This stuff only could happen to me! See, I have always known I may be the most unlucky person in the word. I try not to go outside during a storm, because I know if lightning is going to hit somebody it would probably search me out. This one time, when I was very young, I was with my cousins in Great Falls, throwing bread crumbs at a park to geese and swan. Well, this big damn goose all of a sudden jumped on my head and pecked the holy hell out of me! It was traumatic. Funny, nowadays, but traumatic back then. That’s the kind of luck I have. Now, I can say with some confidence that I would rather be struck by lightning or attacked by another goose than to come into contact with Cliff’s underwear. No matter how brief that contact may be.

The underwear was not the worst part.

We are now at the beginning of this story.

I walk into the front room and see Cliff seated on my futon smoking a cigarette. Shirtless. Or so I think. Remember, I do not have my glasses on. With the confident stride of Mr. Magoo, I stroll into the my kitchen, grab my Folger’s change can and pull out some quarters. “Cliff,” Mr. Magoo sa… I mean I say, “ here are some quarters so you can go dry your clothes in the morning.” Cliff takes a puff of his cigarette and nods. “You should have enough change to get them all dr…..” right then I notice Cliff is completely naked. Now, do any of you remember the Seinfeld episode, when Jerry is dating the woman who always walks around naked, then he tries to do the same, but with terrible results? Ok, there is such a thing as “good” naked and such a thing as “bad” naked. Cliff definitely falls into the category of “bad” naked. Even without my glasses, I may have been scarred for life, just in those few instances I’ve seen the guy naked. What’s more, he just sat around nonchalantly, not even trying to cover himself. Any rationale human being would have covered themselves up, or TRIED to. Not Cliff. Now, as a result, any sexual fantasy I may ever have will be forever ruined, because that image of Cliff may just happen to pop in there.

So…..

I calmly walked into my room, locked the door, and tried to pretend I didn’t just see something worse than the apocalypse. Again, I knew Sara - by this time anybody else, for that matter- would enjoy this story. My misfortune is good entertainment. Always has been. Always will be I’m sure. So the next morning, right at 5:30 AM, I wake up to roll Cliff out. I charge into the front room like a linebacker, ready to kick his ass out. Except, he’s gone! You might think this is good for me, but his stuff is still there. No fucking way am I letting this guy come back and stay just because he has to come in and get his stuff. I am incensed that he’d do this.

But…

Shortly thereafter, Cliff comes bounding up the steps. It turns out, he was just drying the last of his clothes. Already I’m trying to get him out. I say: “Cliff, you better get rolling, you have stuff to do and so do I, see you later…(don’t let the door hit you in the ass…)” But he wasn’t ready to leave. “So what time do you want to meet me back here?” …. I try to say something… “ I’ll go buy some food with my food stamps and we’ll have dinner…” Again with the food stamps. “No Cliff, you can’t come back, you can’t stay here, I might not even be around, it was just one time because it was cold and late… “ So finally, he was getting it. Now, I start making coffee, and figure I would bust out some of my gourmet flavored stuff. Crème Brulee. I’m a connoisseur. Figured that I’d bring a little class to Cliff’s day, you know? I recall how my brother told me Cliff had been homeless before. That he used to eat out of garbage cans. Well, my final insult was about to occur. When I asked Cliff if he wanted any of the flavored coffee I just made, you would have thought I asked him to drink a cup of rat piss. “Oh, God no! Yuk!” Gee thanks! The guy who thought I had to buy a prostitute, now thinks my coffee isn’t even palatable. Good times.

I really decide he has to go then. Insulting my coffee is like insulting somebody’s religion. I am an addict. I love the stuff. Finally Cliff went over the line! Coffee is the sweet nectar of life. However, Cliff still won’t leave. I’m thinking he can leave, and I can finally get a few hours of sleep before I go and do some things. I mention he better get going, that I need to get up in a few hours and be somewhere at about 9 or so. Cliff mentions how he could still sleep for a few hours, and that I can just wake him up then. That wasn’t going to happen. I decided the only way I could get this guy out is if I left and did my stuff at the school really early. So I boot him out and leave. He still wants to know what time I get back.

I ignore him.

It’s almost Christmas.

What I am thinking about doing could get me a lump of coal in my stocking.

Or the electric chair.

So I spend a few hours doing some work, come back home and sleep. Later on that afternoon, I finally get to tell Sara my story. Yes, I got many laughs with it. In fact, over the last few years, I have gotten quite a few laughs telling it. Was it worth it? Maybe, maybe not. In retrospect, it doesn’t seem all that bad. I can even laugh about it quite a bit. At the time, it sucked though. I like helping people, but sometimes enough is enough. Still, at least, I have a good story to tell, and I finally, decided to write it. Who knows, maybe I’ll have another similar one to tell again someday.

Which brings me to last week.

I am on my computer, typing out some stuff, reading a few newspapers, when I hear somebody yelling outside. A loud, abrasive yell. “Bill!” “Tim!” A Jewish, Brooklyn accent. I use my old-school, Indian hiding tactics and slink over to my bedroom window. Slowly, carefully I sneak a glance. There is Cliff. I haven’t seen him in a few years. He’s standing outside in broad daylight, screaming the names of my brother and me. Why he doesn’t come up and knock on the door I don’t know. People are staring at him. Slightly afraid. I walk in the front room. Go up to the door. Grab the doorknob. Then I turn the latch and make sure it’s locked.

Sara moved a few years ago.

And, I already have plenty of stories to tell.