People Keep on Pushing!

In true rock-n-roll fashion, after the Scarlet Oaks show we had to soak up the alcohol somehow. Lafayette Coney, of course. From Northern Lights in midtown I made some mad zigzag downtown—I can’t quite remember the whys and wherefores of my random backstreet crossing—I think it was due to the fact that we hadn’t quite come to terms with the ineluctable Coney Dog imperative prior to heading toward the highway. Or maybe it was some unconscious plumage waving by myself, as the wife saw fit to be impressed with my knowledge of weird dead ends and criss crossings, etc. on the dark backways of Det-rot’s nether downtown. (No GPS in her car or my truck). We passed by DTE Energy’s gala plaza, fueled by our energy dollars, in not-a-soul AM emptiness, and the brand spanking Detroit nouveau sailboat style bus station before encountering the downtown straggle-revelers in wind-down mode at the edge of Washington Square.

Getting out of the car, my wife fished out four quarters and thrust them in my hand. “Go give them to that woman!” she said. What woman? “She’s right down there—in the wheelchair. Poor lady.”

The lady in fact, fat, black with a pronounced gray stubble goatee, immobile on the corner of Michigan and Griswold, did not appear to be actively soliciting donations. But she promptly put me to work.

“Push my feet!” she instructed after I had put the quarters in her hand once and picked them up off the sidewalk and put them in again, since her hands inside of the white poke-holed socks seemed to have limited mobility and lack the dexterity to close and stick the coins in a pocket of her big shawl.

“Push your feet?”

“Yeah! I need go back in my chair. I’m falling out! Push me back—against the wall.” Her eyes rolled back to the big brick column behind her. I suddenly comprehended the physics of her request. I looked at her black-socked feet jutting out of her giant mess of folded layered clothing.

“Push my feet!” she demanded, seeming to know that it wasn’t the average request to a quarter-level contributor to her universe, but nonetheless rolling with her luck, knowing a No was the worst she could get.

I knelt down and grabbed the bottom of her feet as gently as possibly when a Venus-of-Willendorf sorta lady makes such an unorthodox request.

“Push!” she throatily demanded. It occurred to me that she was wearing a winter cap on this almost steamy August night.

I pushed and could sense her butt scooting back a bit on the wheelchair.
“Keep pushing!” Her eyes rolled back a bit and I could’ve in a stretch been reminded of odd rambles I used to take by farmyard fences in the bucolic haunts out West of my youth. But I also knew how it sucked to feel your ass steadily slipping out of your chair. Her imperious request made perfect sense. I kept pushing the best I could in a delicate forceful sort of way, deciding I didn’t really give a shit what any passerbyes thought. We were just another weird Detroit thing. Her butt slipped back a bit further into the wheelchair saddle. I stopped for a second.

“Ok, thanks,” she said. “Goodbye.” And repeated it.

I went back and got my wife and crossed the street to the Coney Island.

Statement of Purpose, Dither, Test

It’s funny—why is it that whenever I think of creating an online identity—to blog, Myspace, twitter, etc.—I always think that I don’t want anyone I know to know about it? But instead to create an identity only amongst those who don’t know me? Simple fear of being laughed at? Respect for my wife’s privacy, which, were I to become honest in any sense, would quickly get trampled?

Well, this is just an old-fashioned blog. So '03. Ha ha!