Persona

My friend was talking about how some people live. He had pictures, it was unspeakable, the filth. I said, "no one was living there when those people were living there," when I'd meant to say that "nobody could possibly be living in such squalor." Certainly they'd moved out and then he'd taken the pictures. No, it's true, he said, people live like this, the pictures were taken just yesterday. I just had to see the pictures again, to see if what I'd seen was real. The images were more shocking than they'd seemed when I first saw them. I asked him to hold his cell phone up to my face so I could see for myself if the images were real; you never know, people can do all sorts of tricks with their cameras.

We were having lunch at a Thai restaurant on Irving Street. He's a good friend, smart, funny, a businessman. I'd just told him a story about seeing a boyhood friend in Los Angeles that I hadn't seen in 50 years. How weird it was, weird and kind of magical at the same time. That my friend was gay and had AIDS and pretty much just sat in his recliner chair drinking Pepsi, reading bios of Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams and posting on Facebook. When I opened his refrigerator I was shocked at how filthy it was. "It was unbelievable, I said, "a mess." But the Pepsi cans were lined up as neat as bowling pins.

We finished lunch and sat at the table awhile, talking about business, golf, the Catholic Church, our wives and our children. We know each other pretty well by now, well enough that our conversations can go just about anywhere. He said he'd seen people rip out toilets, plumbing fixtures, doors before they left a place; junkies needing money for a fix. I said that when people get in this state they're not people anymore. But if they're not people, what are they?