The psychotic dwarf and other tales of displacement

I met the psychotic dwarf maybe two weeks after I landed in the Santa Monica area. This is not a simile; he was an actual dwarf and he was actually psychotic. That was at the mental health urgent care center, where I landed because never mind. The dwarf was there because his roommate had stolen his anti-psychotics, the first feedback from which was that the dwarf broke his hand on his roommate's head. When I met him he was drifting in and out of lucidity, talking about some sort of fiber optic catastrophe one minute and narrating the stolen pills saga the next.

Since then I have met many other crazy people. Not long ago at the homeless services center, a crazy person named Reuben asked me if I would be next to sit in the security guard's chair; when I told him no, I didn't want that sort of power, he poured his water bottle out at my feet and said "There's the power." And then he said "I'm a little mixed up today." Then the security guard said "Reuben, what the fuck is this?"

Reuben was also handing out cigarettes to people who hadn't even asked for one, and around here that's among the craziest things one could imagine. Reuben was having a bad day.

I have also met many fallen millionaires. The amount of money and property lost by these people has, I think, some relationship with those mysterious financial entities know as credit default swaps, which are a form of gambling that, I was told recently by someone who was not crazy or homeless, could theoretically lead to losses among banking and brokerage houses totalling some 10 times the size of the entire US economy.

"They're not regulated at all," this fellow told me. "Sometimes they're not even written down."

Reuben would have liked to put the water back in his bottle, but physics is ruthless.

At one of the free food places a few days ago, a guy—I have to mention that ages are tough to measure out here, because after a while most people begin to look a lot older than they really are—was pacing back and forth telling jokes and complaining about getting blown off by Leno and Conan O'Brien, the latter of whom he'd considered kidnapping but didn't "because it's New York." Before I began associating with California homeless people I would have said he was an old guy, maybe even of Henny Youngman's little brother vintage, but he's probably 35. For the most part homeless people in Hawaii, where I previously practiced the profession, age much better.

Anyway, he was nuts. And the jokes sucked to boot, although in fairness, I have to say his timing was pretty good.

Obama is pretty popular among my crowd. Clinton's image has been tarnished. Nate thinks she's sending out emails claiming Obama is a Muslim. In a similar vein, some other guy thinks that Ronald Reagan discovered the secret of Germany's late-WWII-era V-2s, but in his version the missiles were propeller-driven until Reagan came up with the idea of putting rocket engines on them some 40 years after the fact, a detail that remains unresolved mostly because I thought it pointless to raise the question.

James says that he's met many homeless people who adore Reagan even though they're otherwise reliably liberal and even leftist. This, in reaction to Reagan's support of the decision to abandon the long-standing policy of involuntary indefinite commitments of crazy people, although, like the V-2s, I had the impression that the emancipation of people who can't function in society predated Reagan by some years. But whatever. The loyalty is impressive.

My time here is done.