Hitchhiker

I picked up a hitchhiker the other night. I was driving north. He was headed to San Francisco. It told him I could take him as far as San Luis Obispo. He said that was excelent. He was a white male, claimed to be 32 years old, and that seemed about right. He had the sides of his head buzzed and the top a little longer. He was walking down the side of the highway in the dark.

Hitchhikers, it has been my experience, almost always start the conversation. They are used to putting themselves out there, in the public, and not caring what others say or do. Sean started off by saying that one of the worst things in the world was how people dont accept others. I said something about rejecting what we don’t understand and he said it didn’t matter whether people understood it or not. They still reject it. They reject other people. I agreed that it was terrible. Sean had almost gotten picked up by some other vehicle but they drove away just as he walked up next to them. Bastards. Sean lives in a van. He doesn’t want to live where there are any paved roads. He got a ticket for driving with tinted windows in orange county. He couldn’t make it down there for his court date so they suspended his license. He then got pulled over for not having his registration sticker affixed to his vehicle, and they arrested him… or maybe they impounded his car… anyway.

He’s heading up to San Francisco to party with some guys. Sean’s been partying since he was nine, and now he’s thirty two. He doesn’t want to party. He just wants to kick back on a bench, maybe watch the people in the park. Get some sleep. He’s a little worried though, ’cause his indian friend that follows him put a spell on him so nobody could drug his mind. I mean, the indian doesn’t follow right behind him… sometimes he’s a ways away. But he’s always around. Why is he worried about someone drugging his mind? He thinks it’s NASA. They want to nail him for telling people. Telling people what? Well, when he was in jail, they came and drugged him and took him to mars where he had to fly a spaceship and fight against aliens. Now he had this dream where there was a martian who got really small and climbed in his nose. He used to be able to hear his martian, but he can’t anymore. Something changed. Sean doesn’t think the martian is dead. Because, I mean, that guy lived in his nose for a long time, and if he can live like that, he’s pretty self reliant and he can take care of himself.

I agreed wholehartedly. I now had a cellphone in my left hand, just in case.

Sean’s done a lot of acid. He was on acid for about a year continuously when he was younger. He’s put that all behind him now. His friend lives with this girl who doesn’t ever wash the dishes. Weird. Sean is glad his mom and him washed the dishes together when he was a kid… it’s just a matter of basic maintenance and it’s fun just scrubbing and splashing in the water and stuff.

Sean’s been celibate for two years. I told him I had him beat. He chuckled. He said that the problem is that people have sex for reasons of pure ego. That it’s like a car. You choose a car that you see yourself driving. The car is an extension of your ego. It’s a projection of what you think of yourself. It’s a choice you made about how you want to be seen. Sex (for some people) is the same thing. It’s not about seeing someone else and feeling them and knowing them, it’s about doing what you want because you want to. It’s about being a certain type of person.

If Sean committed a felony, that would be perfect for him. He’d get thrown in jail and they’d feed him and he wouldn’t have to worry about money or anything.

And he’d get assraped all the time, I suggested.

That doesn’t bother Sean. Last time he was in jail, he got raped by more than 250 inmates. After a little bit, your brain just goes somewhere else, and it’s not happening to you. His counselor helped him through it. He’s okay… it’s not a part of his life or anything… it doesn’t affect who he is. When he was in there, he talked with prisoners about new jails… jails without bars… These are places where they don’t put you in there for infractions, they only jail you if you hurt other people or take their things. And there are a lot of inmates who get out of jail, then fund the creation of another jail just so they can go back to jail and live there. ‘Cause it’s tough to hurt someone in jail from the outside… it would take a lot of dynamite to get into some of those places.

And then I dropped him off in downtown San Luis Obispo. He gave me his address up north of San Francisco in case I ever wanted to write him or anything.