Types of Broken Men                 

2,728 wds               

Devante (last name unknown) breaks his windows and tears up his room; bed, bedding, clothing and other personal affects, all but his electronics; laptop, tv and radio-CD player. Off medication or switching from one to another Devante punches holes in the walls, knocks out the windows (unless the weather is cold) disrupts and threatens others in the house. 

I say, “Kinda resembles our president writ small, eh?”

Arnold, boss and owner of the house, only laughs; he knows how it goes and there is nothing he can do about it, except not to worry about it.

Devante will not be living there long, i think. Arnold will kick him out soon. 

The windows in Devante’s room are plexiglass now so when he punches them the plastic pane pops out of the sash, unbroken. When his social worker comes Devante leaves his room, i remove the window stops, pull out the sashes (He long ago cut the sash cords and we haven’t replaced them; he can prop up the is windows with a stick or a bottle, etc.), pin and caulk the plexiglass back into sash and remount. For now, the job is done. Repairing the plaster walls takes more time. For the holes i square up the break, cut sheetrock to fit, back up the sheetrock with filler material, insert the rock, tape and plaster, sand and paint later. I have re-hung the door after he tore it off the hinges.

I like my job, i love fixing things; it would be logical to fix Devante first, but that’s not my line of work.

The boss and owner of the facility, Arnold, is talking more and more, building up the determination to get rid of Devante. I mean evicting him, sending him to another house. I don’t know what else to do with him. Some people say Devante can be fixed, or saved. They might try to fix people like him; if they have the time and money i hope they do it, i wish them luck. 

Sometimes we do talk about planting the more troublesome men in the basement; chopping a hole in the concrete floor, digging a big enough hole (and Devante is a rather large fellow), getting the guy down there in the ground, covering him and laying down mesh reinforcement wire, then mixing Sacrere and smoothing it out. Rats would eventually burrow down to the dead man under this concrete seal but that would take years. It’s a joke; we have never come anywhere close to doing more than joking about it. 

 Moving out Devante would be unfortunate for me as it would cut my work hours. Each week i owe approximately four to eight hours of employment to him, equal to the work all the other men provide by damaging the building. 

I am not afraid of Devante. Very likely he doesn’t get mad at me because i’m as big and white and i think, at root, Devante is a frightened child. It is good to think of him and all the men in this facility (14 total) as abused children grown old. Where else could their dysfunction come from?  While their behavior is savage and senseless, yet they are innocent. A wise man (i forget who) said, “It is easier to grow strong children than to fix broken men.”  I wanted to put this on a banner and hang it on the front of the building. Arnold said, “Oh Lord help us.” 

They say the true guilty party is their illness. Great, let’s go put an illness in jail.  

Unlike on my first days working for Arnold, i don’t get mad, i am not disturbed. Devante rarely makes solid eye contact; he is sullen, brooding and never thanks me for the grain bars, ramen noodles or yogurt i hand out to him. Most of the other men living there don’t thank me either. 

As part of the contract we provide regular meals and snack and beverage items on request. If they don’t ask or show up for meals, what can i do, hunt them down to feed them?  

Devante spends his time walking around the neighborhood or looking at sports on his lap top or tv. He tears up his room at night when i am not there. The other residents say they hear him shouting and cursing and the breakage but he keeps it all in his room.

The strangest resident we have is Marco who lives in a first floor room in the back of the house with access to the back yard. There Marco is away from everyone else. As he has easy access to the yard and from there, over a low wall, the street, Arnold worried about security. Marco has been, to our surprise and complete satisfaction, responsible for keeping the back door locked at all times, and he has never forgotten or lost his key. 

Like his girlfriend or sister (i haven’t asked about her) Marco is near to perfectly round, the roundest person i’ve ever seen; head, face, torso, all as if lined by a compass. 

Marco the Round as i think of him, and his equally circular sister or sweetheart spend at least three days a week together enjoying pastry, candy and jugs of sweet carbonated beverages. In my regular work routine i might pass Marco’s door and if i pause to listen i often hear them sharing verses from Scripture. Or at any time of day from that end of the house a shout of exaltation might shake the air. 

Marco wears a thin mustache and a small brush, a ‘soul patch’ beneath his lower lip. Most to of the time his eyes appear confused, his face pale, expression disoriented. He is excessively polite. We don’t know why, and it is not my job to do anything about it, but although his room has a private half bath ~ toilet and sink, he keeps his urine in jars. 

I avoid Marco. Every couple of months Arnold hires a woman from the neighborhood to clean out Macro’s room. I suppose in two months Marco runs out of jars and has to use something else. 

Macro’s family is sent the bill and you bet Arnold pays that woman very well.

So thank you Devante for not urinating or defecating in jars in your room or elsewhere. Many others who have come and gone have done the same. Some are sick, others have no private bath and don’t want to come out of their rooms and walk down the hall to one of the two bathrooms, thereby exposing themselves along the way. They fill containers in their rooms and then do not have the strength or inclination to carry them to the bathroom. So you see, we are dealing men who are frightened or unwell and have thereby generated strange habits.  

In general, i can truly help them only by being there to listen, to hand out snacks and fix the damage they do to the building. Many are addicted. Addiction, i am told begins as a form of self-medication to combat depression. I don’t know. On the few days a week i am there i do the carpentry and help out feeding them, that’s all. It’s not my job to understand, counsel or console. I fix things, not people.

Jillian, my wife, understands why i work at the house. She calls it a sacrifice, “for God and personhood.” Lately she has been cynical about politics since our commander-in-chief is not a woman, but i know she respects my interest in doing a job most other men would find totally weird. Arnold does pay well and is flexible schedule-wise, so it is almost a normal job. I’m also getting older so i have to take opportunities of all sorts. Jill also understands that Arnold is my friend and needs me. 

Contact with these men, i like to remind Jill my love, rebounds to her advantage; she can play the booze card. If i want another beer she says “Do you want to turn out like one of Arnold’s boys?” 

This house full of broken men reminds me of one important fact; i am not one of them. A lot of people are worse off than i am. I often think about them. 

I don’t know how long this job will last; Arnold is often moody, melancholy and unexpectedly irritated so i think he could burn out. Or is burned out now. I need to prepare for the day the job goes down, but i have no idea how exactly. Nothing is ever exact or predictable

The best part of it all is getting home out off my clothes (they smell strong from the place because most of the guys rarely bathe and smoke cigarettes or something else) into the shower and wash it all away. Only then do i truly feel at home. If not for the work there i would have no contact with such people. 

   Or so i thought. 

Here is my point: recently i discovered the very thin line between normal and not so normal. I’m telling you now it’s unpleasant and not about money so if you’re a reader who reads for sexual stimulation turn the page. 

It is a strange world normal or not and i am mostly content with it. But you have to keep your guard up. I have only minor complaints about my wife and i have learned to anticipate her problems. She centers on her moods. In short, she reacts before she thinks and has always done it, knows she does it (we’ve talked about it) and continues to do it, my poor sweetheart! Something will upset her and ruin the evening. 

“That’s just the way i am.” I have learned in thirty years to turn her gently, shift and persuade, no pushing and i can boast of a high rate of success. 

This time however, of the incident i will describe, i found myself hemmed in by confusion and fear and unable to tell her what happened. 

We love to dance. We met on the dance floor. She constantly pushes me to dance more and so we go out once or twice a week. At first i thought she dances because i’m now old hat and she likes putting her arms around other, new men. I worried about her faithfulness; then realized while she was putting her arms around men i could put my arms around women. This and the aerobic exercise makes for deep sleep. 

Poplar Grove, in the rolling hills west of town is Jill’s favorite place. It used to be farm country, now its suburban with average home prices at half a million. Let me tell you before going to Poplar Grove, Devante would not be allowed to dwell there. For a liberal like me going to that place takes major mental adjustment. Poplar Grove is quality stuff; irregularity prohibited.  

Mulligan’s is the pub where we dance and it’s usually roaring even on Wednesday dance night. The proprietor says hello and shakes my hand and flashes a row of perfect porcelain or whatever they make perfect smiles out of now. 

Along the bar, in the booths or at the tables sit or stand the well dressed, positive, confident under control citizens of the upper crust. Most of them are overweight and after this night i mean real crust. 

I know we are not all the same. Some of the set dancers in our group are as conservative as the patrons who crowd Mulligan’s bar and tables. Our little group has dancing in common and that saves us; we don’t talk politics on the dance floor.  

I am less sympathetic since the night i had the encounter in Mulligan’s with the bathroom lunatic. That was the big change. 

That night, as usual, we drove out to Poplar Grove to dance. The place has three large rooms; dining, the bar area and the larger room in back, the dance floor. 

That night we danced a few sets (an Irish style quadrille like a square dance) before i had to go to the bathroom. 

As i was sitting on the toilet in the stall someone came in. I heard him step up to the urinal just beyond the metal partition of the stall. 

Then he spoke to me. You know this is questionable; men do not talk to each other in a public restroom unless necessary. It’s like being in an elevator.

He said, “At last a pot low enough so i don’t have to stand on me box.”

His statement sounded like stage Irish. 

That wasn’t funny and i was immediately uncomfortable. 

“You bet,” was all i could think to say.

He gave out a laugh crowded and rippled with phlegm. I heard him spit.

I had not started my business there when i heard him giggle and thought how strange and then he said, “I’m listening for a good loud fart from you!”

Tension. Silence.

His laugh burst out and he said, “This thing is just not big enough. Here comes a gift from our so-called president!” and the splashing of his urine came under the stall. He was pissing on the wall and the floor at my feet. 

I should have screamed. I lifted my feet, pulled my pants up off my ankles. My first impulse was to fix the problem so i pulled out toilet paper and threw it in the direction of the flood.  I hope you can understand i was in a very vulnerable position. The urine flood stopped and the man laughed again. Before i had very much paper on the floor i heard the door close and i was alone on the throne. I pulled off more toilet paper and twisted to one side and stood up, pulled up my pants, buckled up fast and rushed out of the room.  

I hurried into the dining room which the ‘Gents’ opened onto. No one made eye contact as i scanned the faces; there was no red faced drunk laughing and urinating among them. In fact there were kids and grandparents ~ a pleasant family scene. In the bar area the faces and voices were louder but the same; overfed white people some slumped over a drink, others inflated and talking loud. It’s funny how drink does that; inflates or deflates.  

I now wish i had been cool enough to take note of his shoes; his footwear would have given him away, i wish i had leapt up and nailed the bastard, but wishes lead to more wishes and at the time my pants were around my ankles and my shoes getting wet. It’s hard to think straight when your parts are exposed and you’re being pissed on. 

The faces in Mulligan’s looked guilty of mere gluttony. And then a horrible thought reached me; he was on the dance floor and there the nice people, including my wife were not expecting a urinating lunatic drunk. 

I ran onto the dance floor. They all looked at me, startled. Was he there? All the faces there were known to me. Immediately Jill came up to me. “What happened?” she said.

I was busy looking around and thinking, wondering. If he came this way he exited by the back door. 

“Did some guy run out the back door just now?”

“No, what happened?”

The awful possibility was that one of the dancers there, one of the men i had known for years was lunatic enough to commit a urination assault. He would have to disguise his voice and maybe he did.

“Nothing,” i said. “Nothing. Did i miss a dance?”

“No, we’re still taking a break. Did you see a ghost or something?” 

“No. I didn’t want to miss anything.”

“You didn’t miss anything.”

Well my wife certainly missed something and i couldn’t tell her about it. 

I should have shouted, i should have raised hell; instead i just felt helpless. I wanted to tell Jill what, but i didn’t think she would believe me. I never told her what happened that night, thinking it would just ruin the dance for her. I never felt good or sat on the throne in Mulligan’s again; tension, always tension there and i can’t tell my wife about it, i mean, i haven’t told her yet.  

End of “Types of Broken Men”                                      

It is easier to raise strong children than to repair broken Men.  Frederick Douglas