When I arrived at the Sebastopol town square today, running late, as per the norm, I found my lovely friend, Ailah, conversing with a dirty hippie in a three-squared pirate hat (yes, think
Pirates of the Caribbean). My first thought was to break out some of my sweet kung fu moves and protect her virtue but as I approached I realized that he wasn't a threat. As I sat down he, very kindly, introduced himself as Ian.
He was an attractive young lad, despite his bedraggled appearance which consisted of above noted pirate hat, jeans, several shirts, jackets and a pair of old man glasses (seen in picture above), as well as a thorough coating of dirt, grime and general filth (who knows what exactly he had picked up).
He proceeded to show us his "awesome, psychadelic gem" which turned out to be a purple marble and some other exotic rocks that had been given to him on his Jack Kerouac-esque travels, including "train-hopping", across the U.S. of A.
As our encounter continued a civil-servant-worker-man was making his way around the town square with a stencil and spray paint putting down the message "NO SMOKING" in front of all the benches (a fruitless effort I might add because
everybody smokes
everything in the town square (there was actually someone smoking in the center of the square
as he was putting the paint down)). Our chum Ian began to elaborate on his time in Seb-Town; the conversation went thusly:
"So me, Bethany (we think Bethany wasn't so much a vagabond as a shepherd , carting the travelers from point A to point B) and [guy in hard-hat's name] were chowing down on some sweet salad I got from the compost pile behind Whole Foods here," gestures to the bench where the two of us, me and Ailah, are current sitting, himself seated on the dirty, dirty ground, "It was about 10pm and a cop came over and, like, gave us all tickets..." he concludes ruefully.
Throughout the entire "story" Ian had been sort of rubbing his chest and shoulders, itching if you will. I didn't exactly think too much of it at the time until he pulled a rodent from said stained shirt. Murray was his name.
I let out a little exclamation of "Oh wow!" Not like a smiley "Oh wow!" of joy and wonder like Cassie from Skins but an "Oh wow!" of surprise and mild horror and disdain. I recover with this stellar line "... So... What does he eat?" He replies with "Oh, I feed him whatever I eat (some sweet salad, we can only assume), but he's been getting kinda picky lately. Like I think he's been hoarding bread in his cage..." My friend Ailah goes on to ask him if Murray got along with The Cat (there was also another homeless couple lurking on the other side of the square with a fat ginger pussycat). "Yeah, he's met that cat but that cat's a jerk and its owners are buttholes. I mean it [the cat] doesn't do any tricks or anything..."
The conversation continued for a little while longer until he was summoned by Bethany and his hard-hatted friend and his dad.
