Although I am fairly certain that my words will not do justice to this man, I have been urged to post his description all the same. Last week, on my commute home, I found my hand fairly itching for my camera when I spotted the guy. Lurching haggardly down the aisle in my direction, he positioned himself roughly four feet away to wait for the doors to open at the next stop, so I got a good long look at him.
He must have been in his mid-50s – a tall black man with sort of a flattened version of Eddie Murphy’s hair from the “Buckwheat Sings!” sketch, clutching a Dominick’s bag in his left hand. He was wearing an enormously baggy green short sleeved Chicago t-shirt, denim shorts, black nylon knee socks pulled all the way up, and white-on-white adidas trainers. Too clean to be homeless, too grizzled to be sane, he was exactly the kind of character that, once I’ve spotted them, I normally find myself idly creating a biography for. But all I really wanted to know was what’s in the bag, bub?