I live in the wealthiest county in the United States.  If you look at current events you can believe that there are people in this world that are much worse off than you are.  But here in the wealthiest county?  Sure, I can intellectually understand that we have food pantries here that serve hundreds of people, but that’s nothing compared to South Sudan where the GDP per capita in 2018 is $246.  But it’s an eye-opener when you actually meet one of those people sitting along the side of the road.

When is the last time you passed a hitchhiker along the road?  It’s been a long time for me.  I don’t see them very often anymore.  I went out to do some errands and as I pulled out onto Route 50, there was a hitchhiker leaning on the end of the guardrail.  He looked like someone that might have an interesting story to tell, but I kept driving.  After running my errands I headed home and as I was preparing to make the turn off 50 I noticed, the hitchhiker was still there!  I decided to stop and chat with him.

He got up and headed towards me as soon as he saw me stop.  He introduced himself as 30 year old Michael Lewis Stevenson.  He said he was the descendent of “that famous author…you know who, right?”  He told me that he was on his way to Tacoma to live with his sister as his dog of three weeks (Dee-Dee) licked my calves.  His sister needed someone to help her pay the rent.  I have to admit the guy looked like he would appreciate some help, but I was at a loss at what I could do that wouldn’t enable whatever it was that didn’t need to be enabled.

I took a deep breath and told him that I was retired and had some extra time so I could drive him the 40 miles to the intersection of Route 50 and I-81.  He thanked me; that was 40 miles he wouldn’t have to walk.  He said he walks about 20 miles a day.  According to Google it’s a 2,704 mile, 892 hour walk to Tacoma.

We loaded his gear into the back of the truck.  Even though he assured me he was a very clean person (he had just done his wash yesterday) I insisted that he sit on a towel instead of on my upholstery.  He was cool with that.  Maybe that was waste of time.  He told me that he had been staying with this great guy who loved to feed him and had lots of weed, but he couldn’t stay because the place was so filthy.  The guy had three cats that were flea and tick infested.  Besides that “you know that cats release neurotoxins through their fur and feces that make you more attracted to them.”  I told him that I was not aware of that.  He told me that it makes rats less afraid of cats and cause them to be easier prey.  Basically cats are evil controlling animals and he would never touch one.  This was the first indication that this drive wasn’t going to a mundane one.

In case you don’t know, or forgot, cats don’t release neurotoxins.  Instead it’s toxoplasma gondii, an “obligate intracellular parasitic one-celled eukaryote,” in their feces that causes toxoplasmosis.  This is why pregnant women aren’t supposed to touch kitty litter.  It has recently been associated with the loss of brain grey matter, schizophrenia, personality changes, among other things.

Then there’s that fur.  In fact stroking a cat causes both humans and cats to produce oxytocin, a peptide hormone and neuropeptide.  It’s known as the love hormone because of the effect it has on prosocial behaviors, facilitating trust and attachment.  It also modulates fear and anxiety.  Staring into your dog’s eyes has the same affect.  Maybe if you were schizophrenic you could interpret this as a control mechanism.

As we headed out I thought I’d ask a clever leading question: “Where do you live?”  I received an answer I expected.  “I really don’t live anywhere.”  “So you homeless then?” I asked.  “No I’m in transit,” he said.  He told me that he was coming from his mom’s in Knoxville, Tennessee where his kids were.  His mom has custody of the kids.  Whenever he’s around though, they don’t respect her so she buys him a bus ticket and tells him to leave. 

Yes, he’d been married.  It had ended in with something close to a nuclear implosion.  He came home one day to find his wife nursing their son with a needle full of heroin in her hand  She told him she was so good she could stick a vein the first time even while breastfeeding.  That was it!  He said that because of this their son is now a “retard,” and she knew better!  That’s why his mom has custody of the children.  His wife did attempt to get alimony and child support from him.  According to him she cut off some of his hair for a paternity test, which to everyone’s surprise showed he wasn’t the father of his children.  He smiled as he told me that was because he is a chimera.  He didn’t find out he was chimeric until later when he was in prison where they took multiple DNA samples.

He said the court found neither him nor his ex-wife fit as parents, so his mom got custody.  He said he was forthright in his testimony and admitted that he was part of the problem.  He said it was his fault that his wife was using heroin.  I suggested that unless he forcefully injected heroin into her, it was really her choice not his.  He disagreed.  He told me that she turned to the drug after he had a psychotic episode where he thought she was a witch and preparing to kill him.  So he tied her up and dumped her in the desert.  Things went downhill from there.  Because of this, according to him, his wife asked relatives of hers who are members of Hells Angels to kill him.  According to him they tried; eight bikers took him out to the desert and “beat the hell” out of him…but he fought them off.  He waved a hand across his face and said that this is why his face is full of platinum.

Wait!  A psychotic episode?  “Yes,” he admitted, he’s schizophrenic.  Clearly he’s not covered by any medical insurance, so I had to ask him how he manages it.  He lifted a 32 oz. bottle of Powerade that he’s been holding this whole time.  Powerade?  No, of course not, it’s Four Loko.  He transfers it to the Powerade bottle so he doesn’t draw attention.  I was a bit skeptical about the efficacy of alcohol, but I’m also ignorant.  When I got home I learned that many schizophrenics use alcohol to control the unusual sounds, sights, smells and other tricks their minds play on them throughout the day; however alcohol “…tends to make hallucinations more pronounced and makes behavior a little harder to control.”

He told me that he’s also diabetic.  In fact when he has a hard time quieting those voices and images in his brain he commonly eats a couple bags of gummi bears to induce a diabetic coma allowing him to get some rest.  Interestingly it turns out that schizophrenics have two to three times the probability of being diabetic than the “average person”—whatever an average person is.

I asked him if he uses drugs.  He told me no, but he used to with his ex-wife.   Then he changed his mind and said, “maybe weed every once in a while; nothing hard.”

While I was still digesting all this, he asked me if I would mind if he charged his phone using one of my USB ports.  “Of course, go ahead.”  I asked him how he keeps a smartphone.  Is it a prepaid?  No, his mom pays the monthly fees, but when it gets stolen he has to pay for the replacement.  The phone is an essential part of his life for the GPS and maps that he uses to figure out where he is and where he has to go as well as keeping contacts for places to stay.  Since charging the phone is a bit of a logistical problem, it’s turned off except when he needs to use it.

As we passed through Middleburg (wow, all the women here are beautiful!) he gave me a disjointed narrative of his wanderings over the last year or so.  He started when he was in Monterrey, Mexico as a street performer.  He told me that he swung fireballs around on the ends of chains, but more impressive was the guy who blew fireballs out of his mouth.  They used to get pumped before performances by smoking a few tokes laced with crack.  “Man, that made us great performers!”

How did he get across the border?  He didn’t have a passport or passport card, only a South Carolina police ID.  He told me he just walked across the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge into Laredo, Texas.  He didn’t need any ID.  He turned to me and asked me to look at him.  “No one would confuse me for anything but pure American.”

From Mexico he moved onto Tampa where he was imprisoned for assault.  He spit on someone that had insulted him.  He thought that a felony charge for spitting on someone was a bit harsh; after all they do it all the time in Mexico.  He said that he used to get into a couple of fights a week when he was clean cut, but now that he has dreadlocks and an updated sartorial appearance he averages only two fights a month.  He also told me that he can take care of himself because he works out.  He usually does a 100 push-ups, a 100 squats, a 100 sit-ups, and runs three miles in 15 minutes when he’s staying in a house.  When he’s on the street he walks 20 miles a day only sleeping under streetlights and security cameras.

From Tampa he moved onto the 2018 The Rainbow Family of Living Light gathering in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest where he says he became the posterchild for the Rainbow Family, much to the envy of the “family earlies.”  I wasn’t familiar with the Rainbow Family so he told me that it was a group that met annually to practice for disasters.  They build a town in the middle of nowhere and celebrate living with nature.  He told me this was primarily motivated by believe in the Hopi Indian prophesy that at the end times the dead souls of the first people would come back and enter the bodies of the living of all colors and teach the world how to love and revere mother earth.

He told me that one night while there, he and a girl took two tabs of acid.  Much to his amusement she thought she was a spider and ran into the woods carrying her pet ferret and $1,000 of weed butting her into tree trunks.  He told me that when they shined a light on her she froze, just like a spider.  When they took the lights off her, she ran off again into the woods running into trees.

He sighed.  He wasn’t looking forward to the trip across the country.  He said the cops on the east coast are pretty chill, but once he gets over the Appalachians he is going to be arbitrarily harassed and arrested by the police.  They’ll throw him in jail without a breathalyzer or blood test!  He admits that for some reason he always flunks the test for THC.  I eye his Powerade bottle.  And then…when they release him from jail they don’t return his money, they issue a “non-extraditable warrant” against him, and tell him he has three days to get out of the county or he’s going to prison.

I look at him and I tell him that if I were a cop and I saw a person in tattered clothing, with dreadlocks, no teeth, and carrying a backpack I’d probably stop and check him out.  His looks and demeanor invite police attention.  He agreed but thought that was unfair.  He did tell me that he didn’t lose his teeth to drugs; it was his grandmother’s fault.  She took doxycycline before they knew it rotted out the teeth of all descendants in the following two generations.  He said his teeth were rotten by the time he was 12.  He proudly told me that he had all 28 teeth pulled at the same time without Novocain.

Luckily I survived the experience to drop him off in Winchester.  But wait, he said, “could you drop me off at a gas station?  Ah yes, his Powerade was a bit low.  So I made a U-turn and dropped him off at the Exxon station.  After we unloaded all his gear he said while looking at my USMC license plates, “Thanks for your service protecting my right to live the way I want.”