Headbanger

Once weekly, sometimes twice, I have breakfast at a cheap restaurant. Always it’s alone, always the same restaurant, and I’m poor so always I second guess the expense.

It’s splendid, though, starting a day with french toast, coffee with endless refills, and a few chapters of whatever book I’m reading. Long as Social Security keeps sending monthly checks, I’ll keep coming to the diner when I can.

Walking to breakfast a few days ago, a homeless man was sitting on the sidewalk in front of a laundromat, between me and the restaurant’s door. This is America, homeless people are everywhere, so his existence didn’t even register with me, at first. Might never have noticed him, if he hadn’t banged his head, hard, against the brick wall behind him.

Twenty steps from the restaurant’s door, the thud was loud and clear, and then he leaned a few inches forward, like cocking a pistol, and smashed the back of his head into the wall again. We had the same rhythm — for every four steps I took toward the restaurant, he bashed his head again against the wall. And these were firm thuds. Homeless guy was not half-assing it.

He was about my age, 60- or 70-something, a white man with gray, disheveled hair, tattered clothes, several days’ stubble, and a passion for repeatedly bashing his head against the wall.

As a rule sometimes broken, I give five bucks to any homeless person who asks, and some who don’t. I’m no saint — sometimes I forget, and sometimes I don’t forget but just don’t hand over the cash, cuz I’m a cheap bastard. My good Samaritan shtick is skipped for street people who seem dangerous, and cracking your skull against a laundromat’s wall, cracking it again and again, qualifies as dangerous, so there’d be no donation for that guy.

Thud. I walked past without eye contact, and into the restaurant. Thud again.

All the counter seats were taken, so I seated myself at one of the rickety booths. A waitress appeared, and asked if I wanted coffee. “Silly question,” I said with a smile, and she poured.

The restaurant doesn’t have air conditioning, so in summertime the door is propped open, and my seat was near enough to the front that as I took a sip of coffee, another thud came through. It was faint, but there was no not knowing what it was. Silver was tinkling and people were talking, the sounds of any restaurant, but again came the thud of the homeless man’s head hitting the wall.

This was moderately annoying. Here I was, trying to enjoy a civilized cup of coffee, but being interrupted by a mentally deranged homeless man’s self-hatred and headbanging. The nerve of some people.

That’s the thought that ran through my head, and then I was angry at myself for thinking it. The headbanger probably wasn’t intending to ruin my coffee. More likely he was banging his head because something’s wrong inside it.

With that, I decided to give him five damned dollars. Thud. He was certainly earning it, and it seemed likely he’d take the cash and hurry along to buy whiskey or whatever, and stop banging his head. Or at least, stop banging his head so near that I could hear it.

No fives were in my wallet, so I pulled out five ones. Took the wallet with me but left my backpack in the booth, and walked out the door. The man on the sidewalk banged his head hard against the wall again before I got to him.

“How you doing?” I said, a question which answered itself with another head-thud, and then he pulled his head forward, winding-up for the next full-force backward bang. If he sat there and banged his head for an hour, he would do genuine damage to himself.

Almost rudely, I pushed the five ones at his face, and there’s no mental illness that doesn’t remember and respect money, so of course he took my cash, which made it his. He didn’t say anything, but he stopped banging his head, and with effort and grunts he rose to his feet, and stuffed the bills in the pocket of his oily stained shirt.

He looked at me as he rubbed the back of his head, and when his hand came back, blood was on his fingers.

Then he walked away but not far, into the bodega that’s part of the same strip mall. Presumably he spent his five bucks there, on whatever makes life not worth cracking his skull.

Me, I went back in the diner, and finished that cup of coffee and several more, plus french toast and scrambled eggs. Read a few chapters of the book I’d brought, but also thought about the headbanger homeless guy.

If you can help someone, you should, right? I hope I helped that blood-headed man, and not hearing any more thuds at breakfast helped me, too. It was worth five bucks.

(itsdougholland.com)