Pleased to meet you, Dennis
Monday June 07th 2004
He was outside the laundry mat as I pulled up. Across the street actually, talking with someone in the driver's seat of a car, parked in front ot MoMo's Market. i paid little attention to them, so I can't tell you if they were acquaintances or strangers. A stranger like me. . . at that moment that is. But now, hours later, you might call us acquaintances. . . You might call us friends, knowing what we know about each other. . . But still I'd doubt I'll ever share a beer with him any time soon.
And perhaps it's better that way.
Twenty minutes later my clothes were soaking in a $1.50 top-loader, and my computer was buzzing. I was unable to connect to the wireless network, again, so I had resolved to working offline on my site. By then Dennis was in the laundry mat, sitting at the front window, opposite from the back table that I sat at. He was next to the change machine, and when I had exchanged my two ragged dollar bills for 8 quarters moments earlier, I tried to catch his eye. It's my little effort of trying to make this world a friendlier place, but I usually won't say hello unless I get eye contact, and his eyes never wandered above my knees.
But as I began to dive into a pile of code I heard him approach, first with a muffled grunt, and then a slow shuffle. He stopped at the table I was sitting at, and in an awkward exchange of short sentences, we established this, and he sat down:
- he was sad
- he wanted no money
- he needed someone to talk to
- I didn't want to say no
His name is Dennis, and he's from Roanoke. He's been in Richmond since being "released," and beyond him repeating over and over "I was a bad person, you don't know the kind of person you're looking at," I never found out what landed him in prison for 16 years of his life. But that wasn't why he was talking to me, it was simply the best conversation piece to keep his mind off of what was making him so upset. To keep the tears from falling from his eyes. He had found out 30 minutes earlier that his sister had died, weeks ago. . . but nobody had told him. . . because nobody knew where he was. . .
We took his mind off of his pain by playing the Guessing Game. How long had he been in prison? 16 years. What did he do before that? Stonemason. Why did he continuously wince throughout our conversation? He had been hit in the head with an axe 8 years ago during a prison fight (there was a 2-3 inch scar on the back of his head to prove it). How old was he? 55. How many kids did he have? 8, from 3 different women. Did I know what a Kingpin was, he asked?
. . . By the end of the hour-long conversation we were joking like old-time friends. An ex-con, most likely a murderer (he said he used to be a very violent person, which was about the same time he showed me his knife), and a sheltered, web-geek white boy, making cracks at each other just to get a smile. . . Afterwards, my reactions conflict one another. Should I have sympathy for a killer? He paid for the time deemed necessary. Should I be mad at the system for putting a man back on the street after 16 years of being locked behind bars? Should I be scared for my life that he knows what car I drive, knows the neighborhood I live in, knows the laundry mat I go to? Should I find him and give him a dollar, even though I know he'll just buy another 40 of Icehouse?
The two things I live by in life seem shallowly insignificant now: "Expect Nothing," and "Be Patient." I almost offered them to him too. But what good would that do to a man who was forced to wait, patiently, for 16 years, only to find that while he waited, life moved on? I couldn't offer him any advice. I couldn't offer him sympathy. I could only give him what he asked me for. Someone to talk to, to take his mind off of things for a while. . . so I did. . . and now I'm carrying a bit of the weight he bore on his shoulders. . .