You Can Always Tell When The End Of The Month Is Near...

Man - what a day today was. The last week of every month is always crazy because everyone is broke, crabby, drying out and making do with crumbs. The soup kitchens are busy as hell, no one has tobacco and tempers are hair-trigger. This godforsaken heat hasn't helped matters any and today we hit 98 at lunchtime; the air in the dayroom at CCF was muggy, rancid and dank, sorta like the moods of most folks. Outside was just incredibly worse, with sweat seeming to form on every inch of your body simply because it could. Added to that was an ambient air quality that would make a veteran coal miner cough up smurfs and you begin to understand just how bad its been here this summer. These are the days I like to save some of my petty cash for. I can come into work with a couple of cans of Bugler and some all-day bus passes and it brings "nicotine-fiending" relief and simple pleasure to so many, not to mention creating some much needed goodwill among clients who are otherwise about as surly as a sow grizzly with an impacted molar. So I passed out tobacco, handled a boatload of mini-crises among the regulars hanging in and around the dayroom, then rounded up my only true appointment for the afternoon, a prostitute and crack addict who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. I've known S for about two months now and I know she's had had one tough damned life, let me tell you. I've heard a lot from this woman, but today what she told me hit me in the gut harder than anything I think I've heard from my clients yet. We were discussing her stint in prison back in the late 90s and she said that she'd had to give up her two boys for adoption when she knew she was going to the pen. She said that it was okay because she'd prayed about it and God had told her this was the best thing for the boys. Then she said that her stepdad had raped the boys when they were younger, and at least now that they were with their new family, that shit wouldn't happen to them again. She looked me in the eyes and tears began to form in hers. She spoke, and it was just above a whisper, "you know, he did that shit to me too, Steve. He raped me all the time. But......I didn't think....you know, because they were boys.....he raped my boys, Steve....." and the tears flowed hard as she struggled to compose herself again. I didn't know what to say. I was infuriated, heartbroken, sickened, felt like I'd just been raped too. I never will know what motivates a man to do something like rape, and I don't even want to know what motivates a man to rape young boys - what could he possibly get out of such a sick, twisted and perverted act? I told her the only thing I could; I was sorry anyone would have to endure that kind of horror and she was right - at least that would never happen to those boys now that they were with their new family. She nodded her head and we sort of switched topics in order to escape the pain and sadness this conversation had brought both of us. I'm not sure I'll be able to bring much comfort to her life but lord knows, she sure could use some and I'll do what I can to try, but how does one bring any hope, joy, or promise to a person who's entire life has been one big clusterfuck of problems, trials, hardships, hassles and mistakes, with no real promise of ever getting much better than what it is right now? These are the tough ones to work for. I hung with these folks all the time when I was hard into the Chiva. All those folks who were strung out with me on heroin had similar lives, similar stories, similar predicaments. I was never quite as hardcore as they were, but one thing I can tell you; I can vividly remember sitting there shooting dope with most of them and thinking that if we OD'd, it would almost certainly be a better end result than if we were able to keep on living another day......