Zel-kun’s Words

Last night Zai and I went to a local Mexican restaraunt for dinner.  I live in the Mexican part of town, so there’s an abundance, but this one is right next to our apartment and has delicious food.

We sit down and order our food.  We begin eating our complementary chips and soup when an old homeless man walks in.

I guess I didn’t KNOW he was homeless.  I just sort of assumed.  He had that crazy-eyed look and his hair was disheveled in a way that could only have been done on a park bench.

He ambled up to our table, and despite our best efforts to ignore him, he asked for some money to buy some tacos in a speech that resembled the English language.  He also took the time to tell us he was a diabetic.

Zai, being the good-hearted person she is, fished in her purse and handed him a couple dollars.  He thanked us and made his way to the back of the restaraunt where the servers were.

I tried to focus on my chips but my ears caught the beginnings of an argument between the homeless man and the waitress.  The problem being that the waitress doesn’t speak English, and neither did the homeless man.  From what I could gather from my sparse knowledge in Spanish, is that two dollars really wasn’t enough to buy anything.

Being the sympathetic yutz I am, I make the mistake of asking Zai to give him a five so he could actually buy a meal.  The homeless man walked over to thank us… then helped himself to a seat.

He took the basket of complimentary chips and began talking, and talking…. and talking.  I wish I was raised to be more rude, that I was not so ingrained with tact and manners, that I couldn’t tell a homeless man who sat scant inches from me with an overpowering stench to leave me to my food in peace.

But we sat, eating as quickly as possible so we can get up and get out of there.  He continued to ramble on about social security, ‘the black man who stole his check,’ and the Russian guy in the park who gave him bad baked chicken, which is why his speech is to messed up.

Personally, I would say it was his black, crooked, rotting teeth that slurred his speech.

He eventually introduced himself as Ziggy.  Whether or not this was true, I don’t know.  We focused on our food until he said the most terrifying thing…

“I’m a lonely man… and I’m bisexual.”

I can honestly say I’ve never came close to the level of awkward I felt at that moment.  Finally we finish about half our plates and Ziggy scavenges the leftovers.  He asks us to buy him a couple of tacos and we agree, anything that gets us out of there faster.

As it turns out, with the seven dollars we gave Ziggy, and the food we bought him, we had EXACTLY enough on us to pay the bill.  We promised the waitress we’d leave double tip next time.  She believed us, we’re there all the time.

We walked out of there, made sure Ziggy wasn’t following us, and ran into our apartment.

All discomfort and strangeness aside, we bought a hungry man some food.  That’s what it’s all about, really.  Although next time, I’d rather just give my money to a shelter and avoid the whole ordeal.

Zel-kun out.