Wholefoods

I'm walking from Oakland to Berkeley, along Telegraph Avenue, when I stop at a pedestrian crossing behind a man who is trying to wheel himself across the road in a wheelchair.
I stand behind him for a few moments and watch as he slides his hands back and forth across the top of the wheels of his chair, whilst at the same time pulling at the road with the soles of his shoes, trying to move himself forward.
Realising he is not going anywhere, I walk around and stand in front of him and ask him if he needs help.
'Hey,' I say to the man who has patchy ginger hair and ginger stubble and is wearing a matted blue fleece, filthy and ripped jeans and has the dirtiest fingernails, 'do you need some help?'
The man looks up at me and I can see from the way he looks at me that he is either drunk or perhaps has some kind of neurological issue.
He is thin and his cheeks look as if they are made of bruised porcelain that his been pushed at hard by an impatient thumb.
'Help me,' the man says in a voice that is weak but carries upon it a putrid and unpleasant odour, 'help me,'
'Yeh,' I say, 'no problem, okay. Pull your feet up and I'll push you off the road,'
I go back behind him and tell him to watch his feet and that I am going to start pushing.
'I'm going to push you now, so watch your feet,' I tell him and I start pushing him toward the other side of the road.
When we get there I lean down to him and say, 'okay? Alright now?'
The man, who I can now smell has been drinking, waves his hands about in the air drunkenly and then curls his finger in a way that indicates he wants me to hear him.
I move my face down closer so I can hear him above the traffic.
'Can you take me to a restaurant?' he asks me.
'Um,' I say, and start looking around for a restaurant, 'I can take you to get something to eat,'
'Yes, yes,' he says, 'I need help,'
I start looking up and down the street while the man continues to ask me for help.
Then, a young woman pushing a stroller with what look like toddler twins in it, comes toward me.
'Excuse me,' I say to the woman, 'I've come across this fellow in the wheelchair and I wonder if you know if there's anywhere to take him. Like a shelter or anywhere he can get help. He's asking for help,'
'Hmmmm,' says the woman, 'Um, I don't know. I think there's a shelter on Shattuk Avenue...but I don't think they just take people over night,'
'Oh,' I say, '....okay then,'
'Yeh,' says the woman, 'You know I've seen this guy around, he's around here a lot. You know, he's kind of drunk a lot,'
'Oh,' I say, 'okay, well he seems to be hungry and ill as well as drunk, so...thanks anyway,'
Then the woman leaves and an old black man comes up and stands beside the man in the wheelchair.
'Do you know him?' I say to the old man, 'do you know what I should do with him?'
The man who is extremely intoxicated and can hardly stand upright, begins talking to the man, calling him brother and telling him he will look after him.
Then, after a few moments, they high-5 each other and the man walks off.
'Help me,' says the man in the wheelchair again, 'please help me,'
I walk around to the front of the wheelchair again and ask him what help he needs.
He tells me he wants 4 dollars.
'I am taking you to Wholefoods,' I tell him, 'I'll get you a sandwich and a drink,'
'I like egg salad,' he tells me, and I walk back behind his chair and start to push him.
'Okay,' I say, 'I'll get you an egg salad sandwich from Wholefoods,'
Telegraph avenue is on a slight incline so by the time I get to Wholefoods I am sweating in my arm pits and on my forehead.
'Stop,' says the man, 'give me 4 dollars,'
'No,' I say to him, 'I am going to buy you an egg sandwich,'
'No, I want 5 dollars,' he tells me and I tell him no.
'I am getting you a sandwich,' I tell him, because I don't want him to buy alcohol.
'Okay then,' he says, as I begin to push him to the doorway of Wholefoods, 'a sandwich,'
Then, just as we get on to the path that crosses the Wholefoods carpark, the man asks me to stop.
'Wait,' he says, 'push me in here,'
I push him in behind what looks like a closed flower stand and the man, still sitting in his wheelchair, starts to take out his penis.
I turn away and watch the people coming across the Wholefoods carpark in the dusk.
They're all dressed nicely and are carrying sacks of organic food and getting into nice cars and I can feel that I am beginning to get annoyed.
When I hear the man say 'ready', I pull him out from behind the flower stand and push him to the doorway of Wholefoods.
'Okay, wait here' I say, 'I'll get you an egg salad sandwich...and a drink?'
'Yes,' she says, 'lovely,'
In the Wholefoods I am standing in front of the salad bar, choosing a sandwich, and I am listening to people talking on mobiles, talking about the salad, talking about quinoa and tabbouleh and everyone looks tidy and the shop sparkles like a Christmas evening and everyone looks clean while I feel myself getting angry.
After I find the egg salad sandwich I go over to the drink section and and look for some kind of drink for the man.
There is a girl there from Wholefoods, and she is pretty and young and blond and she is stocking the shelf with organic fruit juice and I say excuse me and I tell her about the man.
'Oh, yeh,' she says, 'I know that guy. He's usually drunk,'
'Um, okay,' I say, frowning at her, 'regardless of him being drunk, he's going to be hungry, too, so does Wholefoods have some kind of program where they could give leftover food to homeless people, like him. Like, you know, at the end of the day, like now, do you have anything that you could give him to take away, like some bread or something, things that haven't sold? Something you could package up and let him take away with him for later?'
'Um,' says the girl, 'hang on a second and I'll go and ask,'
I choose the drink and then go and stand behind the girl while she talks to the guy behind the pizza counter who is looking at her with his mouth hanging open.
Then I watch as he goes to speak to someone who is adding topping to pizza, and then as he comes back and looks down at the pizza and then as he shakes his head and then as the girl turns and walks back to me.
'Um, I guess,' she says, shaking her head, 'that it would have to be a no. I guess,'
'Okay,' I say, 'thanks,'
But it really isn't okay and by the time I get to the counter to pay, I am hateful.

At the front of the Wholefoods I stand in front of the man in the wheelchair and present him with his drink and his sandwich.
'Here we are,' I say, and put the drink and sandwich in his lap.
And then the man looks up at me and says thank you.
And then he holds up both of his hands, the same hands he has previously used to take his penis out and piss behind the flower stand.
But I lean down and let him take my hand in his hands, anyway, and he shakes it and says thank you to me.
And then I stand back up again and, very loudly, I tell the man in the wheelchair to take care of himself.
'Because, you know,' I say, even louder and more hateful still, so that the security guard and the people coming in and out of the Wholefoods can hear, 'I get the feeling that no one else in this country will.'


Go to my shop-
spikyheart.com
Or my website-
tonilebusque.com

A Girl Called Destiny

I am in the car, driving Downtown, with Stephanie, Pete, and a girl called Destiny, and in the boot of the car are salads and tuna sandwiches and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bottles of water that we are going to give out to the homeless people of San Diego.
'Okay, we are Team Awesome,' says Stephanie who has long brown hair and a big smile, and whose car, an Audi, we are in, 'and here are the rules for Team Awesome. We stay together, we don't engage in conversation, we don't wake people who are sleeping,'
Then Stephanie starts the car and tell us more rules, while at the same time, driving, laughing and shouting about pedestrians.
'Oops,' she says, 'I don't want to be an arsehole who runs over pedestrians, that would be so totally not cool,'
Then she yells at someone to get out of the way.
'Out of the way, areshole,' she says, and laughs and turns the corner.
Then she asks us what our names are, and we all call out our names again.
Pete says Pete, Destiny says Destiny, I say my name and the Stephanie says hers again.
Then Stephanie asks us all what we do.
Pete says he's an arborist and Stephanie says cool.
I tell Pete and Destiny and Stephanie what I do and everyone says 'cool', but we don't get around to what Destiny or Stephanie do because we haven't gone very far before Stephanie sees some homeless people and is parking the car and yelling 'WOOH', first stop, let's roll, let's rock out some SALADS,'
Then Stephanie tells us we have to hurry because we are parked in a disabled parking space and she is not disabled.
'Clearly,' says Stephanie, running on the spot while putting bottled water into a hessian shopping bag, 'I am NOT disabled, so we gotta, like totally roll on this one,'
For the next 10 minutes we walk from homeless person to homeless person offering the salad in polystyrene containers, the tuna sandwiches, the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the bottles of water.
'You want some dog food?' says a woman a who has no teeth, and no dog that I can see, 'Someone gave me so much dog food,'
Stephanie smiles and laughs and says 'WOOP, no thanks, you hang on to it, we've got dog food' and walks on.
Then we go back to the car and, while we are driving around looking for more homeless people, Stephanie talks about how she's becoming Jewish because she's marrying a Jewish guy.
'I call it How to Become a Jew School,' she says, of the classes she is taking to convert to Judaism.
Then she tells us how expensive it is to become a Jew, $2.500 a year for temple fees, another $500 for ground fees, $250 for classes but that he fiance's father, who lives in Beverly Hills and is 'minted', is chipping in.
'You should see the temple,' Stephanie tells me and Phil and Destiny, 'it is BEAUTIFUL,'
Then, just as Stephanie is explaining the similarities between Buddhism and Judaism, and telling us that Jew school is on Thursdays so she won't be able to do the homeless food drop for 6 months while she becomes a Jew, sees some homeless people gathered at the side of a windowless convenience store, and parks the car.
I look out of the car window and see, on the footpath at the side of the convenience store, a very fat black woman in a white dress, sitting in a wheelchair.
In her white dress she is glowing under the light that drops on her from the one light on the street.
On the ground, in the shadow around her, people are lying on dirty piles of blankets.
On the corner there are more people standing around a rubbish bin.
'Wooh, let's rock those salads,' says Stephanie and me and Phil and Stephanie and Destiny get out of the car and cross the street and ask the people standing around the rubbish bin if they would like a salad.
Some say yes and we give them the salads.
Then I ask the woman in the wheelchair if she would like a salad.
'It's the only thing we have left now,' I tell her and she smiles, says yes, she would like a salad, and then says 'bless you,'
And then I offer a salad to a woman lying on the ground next to the woman in the wheelchair.
The woman on the ground says yes, she would like a salad, but she doesn't move to sit up so I put the salad on the ground next to her and she says 'bless you,' also.
It is night now, and except for the light falling from that one street lamp, it is all dark around us.
So we walk around, handing out the salads until all the salads are gone and then when we have no more salads we cross the street, get back into Stephanie's car, and me and Phil and Stephanie and Destiny go home.



spikyheart.com
tonilebusque.com

Andrea at the 99 cent shop

This afternoon, as I left the 99 cent shop where I'd gone to buy bags of cheap peppers for roasting, I gave a dollar donation to a man who was standing in front of the shop dressed in something that looked like a white navy uniform.

He was holding a donation tin and as I left the shop he said to me- ''Where your bicycle?'

'Over there,' I told him, realising I still had my cycle helmet on.

I had seen other men dressed exactly as this man at the entrances of other supermarkets, holding out tins, so after I unlocked my bicycle I walked back to the man and said- 'What are you collecting for?'

'Homeless,' said the man.

'And drug addicts,' I said to him because from close up I could read on his tin that he was collecting for a charity that helped homeless people and drug addicts.

'Yes. Homeless...it's....it's a...big problem in....all of USA,' he told me in very broken English.

'Yes, I agree,' I said, 'I think it's disgusting that people are homeless in this country, in this very rich country,'

Then, looking at his can I saw, among others, the words 'brotherhood' and 'Jesus' and I said to him, 'Oh, it's a religious charity,'

'Yes,' he said, 'we give to food, and homeless and so, it good for...'

Then he started pointing to his head and chest and smiling.

'Good for the...heart and mind?' I asked him.

He told me yes, it was good for the heart and mind.

'Okay,' I said, putting a dollar in his tin, 'I believe you,'

Then the man said 'God bless' and smiled at me.

I had started to walk off so my back was to him but I heard when he called out- 'Your name?'

So I turned and walked back toward him, told him my name and held out my hand to him.

'Andrea,' he said holding out his hand to me.

*******
Look at my shop and get a print. It'll make your life so much better.

Boyfriend gone, dog dead.

Yesterday, while I was cycling back from Office depot, empty handed and in a slightly bad mood because I'd forgotten to take the memory stick that stored the drawing I needed printed, I stopped at the pharmacy looking for some black clothes dye.
Sitting on the footpath in front of the pharmacy was a thin blond woman wearing a red vest top, a blue skirt and a pair of slip on shoes.
Next to her on the footpath was a small black hand bag decorated with silver studs, and she was holding up a small cardboard sign that said-
BOY FRIEND GONE.
DOG DEAD.

After I couldn't find the clothes dye I decided to get the woman with the dead dog a sandwich.
There was no vegetarian option so I got her a sliced turkey and cheese sandwich and a bottle of orange juice.
At the checkout I got into a slight panic that the woman might be offended that I wasn't giving her money.
And there was really no reason I wasn't giving her money.
I just thought that if I was in her place I would have liked someone to give me a sandwich rather than some coins.
I was still wearing my helmet and sun glasses and sun visor when I walked up the woman and kneeled down slightly.
'I was just getting myself some breakfast and I thought you might like some, too.' I lied, and I gave her the bag.
'Oh, bless you, bless you,' the woman said.
'I hope you're not a vegetarian,' I said, 'they only had meat,'
The woman started to laugh and said no.
I noticed that she had no teeth in the front of her mouth and I hoped she was going to be able to eat the sandwich.
I said goodbye to her and she said 'Have a blessed day,' and I said thank you, you too.

I walked back to my bicycle and as I unlocked it a woman in Prada sunglasses, some kind of skintight moleskin jeans and something that looked like a cashmere tee shirt, waited while her pug shat on the footpath.
Then I watched her get into very large SUV, light a cigarette and drive away.

And I looked back at the thin woman with the gone boyfriend and the dead dog and she was taking the top off her orange juice.