J acts out

"Yo, Susan!" I saw a man heading toward me across Hui Kelu. "You're awfully dark today," I said to J (as it was he). J usually radiates pinkness beneath his short ginger hair, is often shirtless, but today he was wearing a black shirt and navy shorts. "How are you?" I ask.

 

"Same as you," he said, scrunching his face. "I grew up outside DC, so I'm taking this all personally," I said. "Those streets I walked down, people getting beaten to the ground and taken away. The homeless." 

 

"Oh my god, the homeless," he said. "How can you not care about another person?" The bulldozers destroying their few belongings. His ex is homeless, lives on a beach in a tent now. Venmos him for $40 a shot, "for leaving her." Had to call the cops on her the other night. Hasn't seen their daughter in three years. "She was abused by family," he says. "The rest of them are ok, but she's a total f-king mess." It's been six years of this.

 

I say, "pedophilia." "OMG, they always project," he says, "but at first I didn't believe it, until I saw the names of all those Republicans. Mike Johnson and his son, all those guys." I tell him that subject is personal to me, too.

 

J holds out his cell phone at about waist height and starts pretending to text his daughter about the sexual act he's engaged in, which I will not repeat here. "Can you believe?!!" He keeps fake texting for a while, righteously angry at what he's imitating.

 

Homan and Stephen Miller: "their heads look like f-king penises!" I suggested that Miller resembles Goebbels. J is very up on things, but he didn't know about Goebbels." He holds up his phone and in a quasi-German accent says, "Gooobels." Up pops JG on the screen, lots and lots of photographs of him. "See, he's Stephen Miller with hair." "All his hair! F-king Nazi! They would have loved each other!" J is now vaping from a dark red device, blowing smoke between us.

 

J turned to go, holding out his fist for a bump. "You're bleeding, J," I tell him. "I'm always bleeding," he says, and strides across the street.