8:29 a.m. - Saturday, Aug. 14, 2004
Dave.
"Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. "
-Proverbs 31: 6,7
Hello, folks.
Sorry for the delay. It's been one of those good weeks where you're too busy living life to sit down and write about it. But first, as promised, Dave:
Dave has a foul mouth in every sense of the term. He cusses incessently, to the point that I think he couldn't stop if he tried. For the remainder of the story, when Dave speaks, you may add your own "F"'s approximately every 2 to 3 words. You'll notice that I've made a space of 7 *'s and #'s, as usually the four-letter-word ends in "i-n-g." You may also add a periodic "God damn.... Sorry, Lord." every once in a while.
Dave's mouth is foul in another, more obvious sense. He's got about three teeth that I can see. As homeless guys go, he's not real dirty, but neither is he very clean. His spider bites or sores on his hands remain there for lack of proper personal care.
He drinks pretty consistently, but again, he's not gone out of his mind. He hangs out at Chavez park, and when we bring the bread truck, he's usually there and we shake hands and talk a bit.
A couple of weeks ago at the bread truck, Dave told my friend Jimmy that he wanted to get to Santa Cruz. He knew some people there and was pretty confident he could get work within his field there. At the very least, Santa Cruz is a much better place to be homeless than Modesto. So Jimmy offered him a ride, and Dave accepted with much excitement.
The next Wednesday, Jimmy and I were at Chavez park at 8 am to pick him up. Dave and his lady friend Lyn (a former nurse with a ph.d., but that's another story) were there with their stuff, ready for the 2 hour trek to the beach community of Santa Cruz.
Dave did not stop *#@$^*# talking the whole #@#$%*^ time.
Oh, the tales we could tell of the tales he told! Dave is #@$%*^ amazing. A few favourite sentences from Dave:
"What are you @#$#@#%^ pokin' me for? This is the way I #$%^*%* talk! Their not #@$%^*$ saints. I'm gonna be my #@%*^%$ self!"
"I hate this *^%$#@# *#$# mother#$%*^#!"
"aaahhh*$#@##$%#"
And thusly, we arrived in the town of Santa Cruz. After a bit of searching, we found a motel just two blocks from the boardwalk. Fortunately, Lyn talked to the guy. He had just become a Christian less than a week before, and let them have a room for just $49 (most other places were between $80 and $150).
Now the whole trip up, Dave has been saying to us, "When we get there, we are going to get a burrito and have a Bud! I don't care. Don't tell me you guys don't have beer once in a while! We are going to have a Bud!" (expletives deleted)
We walk up to a taqueria and order some burrito's. Before Jimmy and I realize what he's done, Dave has ordered each of us a bottle of beer, and they are on the table, opened, before us.
Now, please understand something. We would never go to the parks with bottles of Bud, offering to drink with the drunks. We're not wanting to encourage alcoholism. It's terrible and destructive. But understand this situation.
Think of yourself as a missionary in a foreign land. The cheif of the tribe offers you a token of his friendship and trust. It looks gross, but you realize that if you reject this gift, you may as well be rejecting his friendship. What do you do? This is the kind of situation we were in. I know this may seem terrible to some of you, but really, Jesus did not get accused of being a drunk by abstaining from wine. If you want to argue the point further, I'd be happy to. Suffice to say that within my own convictions, I felt that to drink the offered cup was the only right thing to do. Maybe I was wrong, but I did it.
But that's not the end of the story. We join hands and say a prayer together, thanking God for our meal and for our friendship. Then, as we are consuming our meal, Dave takes a straw from Lyn and takes out his lighter. Lyn crosses herself, only partly in jest, wondering what the heck Dave is going to do.
"Relax! I'm not doin' nuthin' illegal!"
He melts the end of the straw, bends it over and lets it dry, making a little hook out of the end of the straw. He places the straw in his beer, places his mouth over the straw, and sucks it back. The straw falls back into his mouth and back into the bottle again.
"You see that? Here."
Dave takes the straw out, wipes it off with his fingers, and before you can say, "Dear God, what is he doing?" the straw is in my beer.
"You try it!"
My mind quickly flashes back. The straw. The fingers. The tri-toothed mouth. The symbol of love and friendship that he is offering in this seemingly obscene gesture.
I place my lips over the bottle and the straw and suck one back.
"Cool, huh?! It's like a spout! Shoots it right down yer throat!"
"Yeah, cool."
I look to Jimmy, thinking that if I had to do this, he's gonna do it, too. Jimmy, however, downed his beer almost instantly the second he saw the straw slide into Dave's mouth.
"I'd do it, but I'm finished!" says Jimmy.
And I look at Jimmy with eyes that say, "Why you little..."
We finish our burritos and walk back up to the motel. We were able to provide them with some phone numbers of local churches, thanks to some guys we ran into from a Campus Crusade team. We exchanged hugs and handshakes, and soon Jimmy and I were on the road to Modesto.
"Aaron, I have more respect for you than ever before! That was amazing," says Jimmy.
"Thanks," I say, "I may as well have kissed him on the lips!"
And maybe, in some sense, that's what I did. I'm not trying to make myself sound like Mother Theresa, but when Jesus comes to you with three teeth and a foul mouth, you don't say no to him. You kiss him.
" Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."
-Proverbs 31: 6-9
