People Suck

I can only assume that there are others who share my desire to live within the lyrics of a Tom Waits song. Though I can’t imagine it’s a universal sentiment. I certainly understand that there are some who’d question this desire, remembering the company of drunks and failures that make up the characters who populate Waits’ music. I, however, can’t help myself. Fortunately, life here in Budapest has helped me understand why I feel this way, which is funny because Tom Waits is such an American institution.

He is, in my mind, our version of Jacques Brel, telling the stories of people who are too close to the gritty-yet-vulnerable underbelly of life, and telling those stories with a straightforward nature that goes beyond earnestness.

Back to the city.

It is while I walk the streets of Budapest and ride the public transit system in this city that I am driven to the conclusion: people are despicable, foul, and dirty creatures. We are. There’s little use denying it. Our greatest institutions do nothing but point out our own failings. Science consistently proves that humans do little but sully our own environment, while religion serves as a constant reminder of our inability to attain the higher purpose for which we were placed on this Earth.

I was getting lunch at a Chinese buffet yesterday. One of the customers was complaining about his food. He maybe got a bit too emotional, but he wasn’t out of line. The cashier argued with him for several minutes. It was uncomfortable; I was standing there waiting to be served. The argument ended eventually, but it ended badly, the customer leaving in a huff. And that’s when the cashier called him a “dirty fag” in Hungarian. The customer was clearly gay, but the dirty part was the cashier’s own invention. She said it loud enough for the customer to hear, but she directed the comment at me and the person standing behind me. She said it with that conspiratorial tone, like, “You and me, we know what those kind of people do.”

I boarded the 4/6 tram the other night. It must be one of the most popular trams in Europe. It runs every two or three minutes and is nearly always packed. I was coming home from an evening lesson. When I got on board I noted the strong smell of paint-thinner, or something similar. It was a minute before I found the source. He was maybe eighteen years old, and had emptied a tube of glue into a grocery-store vegetable baggie. He would take three deep breaths of the fumes, take a moment to recover, and then go back to the baggie. His eyes were completely clouded over. He couldn’t sit up to allow other passengers to pass by.

When Dora and I lived on Vörösmarty utca, I enjoyed walking the dog along Andrasy út, Budapest’s grandest avenue. Tree-lined boulevards and palaces adorn the length of the street. I’ve seen quite a few sights there. I will always remember the image of an extremely obese and extremely drunk woman teetering at the lip of the curb of Andrasy út in the middle of the afternoon. She was shoving a gyro into her mouth. Yogurt sauce was smeared across her cheeks. After an especially sloppy bite, she pealed away some of the aluminum foil and flicked it off of her sticky fingers, flicked it in the opposite direction of the garbage can that stood beside her. She then pealed the napkin away from her gyro and dropped the napkin at her feet. Szóda tried to snatch it up.

Despite the barrage of reminders of how low the lowest-common denominator has fallen, I find myself drawn to the dregs, in a strange kind of way. I don’t hold any desire to become bigoted, wasted, or slothful. But to hear Tom Waits tell it, there is a sort of romance that only accompanies those who have regular brushes with desperation. As the gods envied the precious nature of mortal life, I envy the desperate man’s understanding of fulfilling a real need. I don’t want to come off as a wannabe. I know how much insulation there is between me and the people drinking out on my corner. But I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that those are people who are drinking out on the corner.

People may be despicable, foul, and dirty creatures, but only because we so desperately need things like acceptance, escape, and gyros.

I’m not sure I’d want to live a life without such things.