They reach out and grab you as you walk down the streets. Their faces strained, their eyes squinting, their lips dry, their mouths stretched like a rubber band pulled horizontally to its limit. Their clothes--stained, ripped, soiled--sag from their bodies; their skin--beaten, bruised, dirtied--sags from their bones. You feel the force of their strength as they squeeze your forearm. You taste the stench of urine. They start making guttural sounds in strange intonations. You shake them off, but they follow you; as they walk, each limb makes movements independent of the rest. Their gait is like that of a person in Carnaval carrying a huge papier-mâché head on their shoulders.
We are walking to a friend’s house a couple of blocks away, and we cross through the central park. We run into an old drunk there, and as we walk Peliguey starts toying with him. Peliguey asks the drunk for some change and then for some cigarettes, turning the usual exchange with street drunks on its head. The drunk recognizes Peliguey and starts rambling incoherently about sports.
“I taught this guy how to bat! I even taught him how to play soccer, even though I have never played soccer!” He says, laughing loudly at his own cleverness.
Once we get to the corner of the park, the drunk starts getting clingy, as drunks will tend to do, desperate as they are for anything tangible, and Peliguey pushes him aside and we keep walking.
“Do you know that guy?”
“Yeah, he used to be my baseball couch.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I used to be pretty good at baseball.”
And that was all that was said about the old drunk at the park.
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