Jennifer Hates The Homeless

Jennifer's first few days of 1997 have not been as splendid as mine. I went to see her at the coffee shop around one this afternoon. She had to be there to open at five in the morning so she didn't get to stay up late with me last night drinking wine. I think she went to bed at nine. Anyway when I walked through the side doors of the coffee shop I could tell she was pissed off. Another one of those homeless crazy people shit all over the shop's bathroom floor, only this time whoever did it decided to smear it all over the walls as well as pooping on the floor. She and another girl had to clean it up. In addition to wearing gloves Jennifer got a plastic garbage bag and cut holes in it for her head and arms. She wore the garbage bag like a parka to keep the shit from getting on her clothes. I thought she must have looked hilarious, but I kept that to myself.

While Jennifer was telling me the story of what happened she became more and more angry about it. She repeated saying things like "fucking homeless". I thought it was amusing, but a woman sitting with her young son in the window area was within earshot of our conversation. I noticed she was becoming uncomfortable as Jennifer spoke. After a few moments she got up abruptly with her son and left for the bookstore next door. She had a real uptight look on her face as she handed two coffee mugs to Jennifer and then brushed past me to scurry into the bookstore.

In the meantime, while the two of us were standing there talking, right outside the coffee shop window there was a dirty looking homeless man who was mumbling stuff to himself. He spat at the sidewalk a number of times and then he started tidying up around the tables and chairs in front of the shop's side entrance. He picked up bits of trash and cigarette butts then he carefully placed them on one of the tables. Jennifer leaned close to my ear and told me she suspected this particular vagrant was the bathroom shit-smearer. Another girl working there also thought this man was the culprit. I told them to call the cops on the guy, but they said they already had. The police told the girls there was nothing they could do unless the homeless man attempted to harm someone or exposed himself in public. I offered to go outside to try and make the homeless guy mad at me so she could call the police and say they had a violent bum at the shop, but she didn't want me to do it. I would have had fun with it, if she had let me.