On Monday morning, at 12:50, December 23, 2013, in front of Larry Flint’s House of Smut, on Baltimore’s ‘Block’, I arrived on Baltimore Street to connect to an out-of-town bus. Little did I know, in this misty morning twilight, that I was about to encounter an actual time-traveler. I, as a sci-fi writer, was both awed and honored. Permit me to regal you with a Harm City Christmas carol.

Few people were about at this hour. One gang banger walked by with his drunken ho on his arm. She looked at me, and looked up at the bus stop sign, then said, “What bus you waiting for baby?”

“The Twenty-three”, I said.

She waived me off, grinned, and said, “Oh, it I’ll be right here—you good baby.”

Off she lean-walked with her Stringer Bell knockoff.

The usual bums were out of sight, as it was pretty wet out, between downpours. A few young people wandered about. There were no drunken Russian dudes trolling for black hookers. Then a very tall black man in his mid forties, wearing a knit cap, a windbreaker and jeans, approached me with a measured questioning look, “You okay brother—you good?”

This guy was not a drug-dealer. He was not being quiet, not waiting until he was close, as if he were a dope-slinger or a narc. I began to feel a bit of nostalgia for the early 1990s when panhandling was still an art, when creative down-and-outers tried to make a craft of being economically dead, literally clawing their way up from the gutter by making themselves useful to anyone who could spare some change.

Apparently this guy had not gotten the 1998 predatory panhandling memo, and was acting like he had just stepped out of a time capsule. Rather than me describe how upstanding panhandlers used to attempt to earn some of your change, let this man tell it.

He stopped before me, hands in his pockets, and looked up at the murky skyline, that I have always associated with wretched urban squalor, as if he were looking into a bright blue candy-cane sky.

“I love this night. I’m loving life brother. It is so good to be free, even if I don’t have a place to pee.”

I looked up at him, my Darwinian resolve already softened by his manner, and he continued, “I could take the train back to D.C. you know. You know they have that now. I just got out of prison—fifteen years brother, fifteen lonely, waiting years. This is paradise. Two bags of heroin—fifteen years! Dumbest day of my life.”

“So you’re from D.C.”

“Yeah”, he said, with a wistful look in his faraway eyes, “I used to cut the grass on the White House lawn. Can you believe that? Never again—that is dead and gone. Haven’t found no work up in hear yet, but I’m looking. In the meantime, I’m looking out for people, in case they need anything.”

“What was that like, working on the White House grounds?”

“Good, real good man, especially when Reagan was in there. The man would stop and waive, even say hello to you, and ask you how you were doing—like you were somebody even though you were just cutting the lawn. He was real nice like that. He bought people in my neighborhood some houses and moved them in. His wife was a bitch. But you know what? She looked out for her man. She protected his ass better than the secret service. If there had been an attack or some shit, she would a lined us up in front of him, would have thrown her own self in front of him. We missed him.

“Now Bush—the old one, not the dude who couldn’t pronounce shit—he was okay, walk in and out, comin’ en goin’.”

“Clinton now, he was cool. Didn’t see so much of him; you know, got that big girl under his desk and all!”

We laughed together and I couldn’t let that go, “Did he ever come after you with that cigar?”

Longman laughed hard at that and put his arm around me, “You know I’m too tall to kneel under a desk now—wait, stand still.”

Longman ducked down behind me like I was a hunting blind. A small Pakistani man of about college age was walking past to my left, trying to light up a cigarette. Out Longman pounced, like a character from a cartoon, leaping about ten feet and slapping both hands down on the little man’s shoulders. The Pakistani fellow put his hands to his heart and bugged his eyes out as he threw himself back against the pawn shop window, screaming, “Fuck! Fuck man—fuck you Longman!!”

Longman was now hugging him with one arm and dragging him to me like he was a prize poodle, “You see my foreign man here brother! I look out for him. I got this my man.”

He then took the man’s shaking hand and produced a lighter, lighting the man’s cigarette. They then hugged, and the small man addressed me, “I run seven-eleven all night. Longman looks out for me—help me good udder night.”

Longman proudly flexed one arm as he hugged his friend with the other, and said, “At forty-eight, I can still roll. Joint keeps a dude fit”, as he pointed to a missing front tooth.

The convenience store clerk smiled and proudly pointed to Longman with his thumb, “Twenty-four I am, new country, late shift, good friend.”

He then handed me his smart phone and asked me something I could not understand. Longman translated, “He wants you to take a picture of us—send it back to the sheik I suppose.”

I managed, after three attempts, to snap a picture of the two men separated by two feet in height and a world of tradition. I wanted to ask them about the ‘help’ Longman had rendered but my bus was coming up. Longman put his hands on my shoulders, “Could you spare anything bro, any change? I’m saving up for breakfast.”

“I’m sorry man. I got just enough to get me to work and back. If I see you again, I’ll help you out.”

He shook my hand, said he understood, and stepped out in the street to make sure the bus stopped for me. Before I stepped on board he patted me on the back and wished me a merry Christmas, even as his friend said, “I got you—let us go eat.”

There was once a time when many panhandlers regarded it as their duty to try and do something for you, if only to entertain you with some conversation. Back then, even the useless ones would explain their addiction, itemize their woes, of at least had the decency to lie to you about their plight.

I’m thinking Longman has a niche waiting for him, until he can land a real job. He literally has no competition, as the panhandlers of today either whine, grouse angrily, threaten, pressure, or just stand zombie-like with a sign hanging from their neck.

I hope his friend is working at the Baltimore Street 7-11 tonight.

Have a warm Christmas.