It’s not an Astrovan, Sir.

I wear a lot of hats in my life, we all do-but several of the hats I wear (delivery guy, street skateboarder, traveling musician) mean I probably have more contact with homeless folks than most people.  I’ve been homeless and it sucks. Even half-ass punk rock crash-on-friends-floors-or-at-worst-sleep-in-the-band-van homelessness totally sucks after a while, and being for real sleep-on-the-ground homeless is terrifying.  So, you know-be nice, right?  Pretty simple.  So, I always try to be nice to the homeless folks.  That said, nice or not-the last place I wanna ever find myself is getting beaten up by one of them. Which was precisely the situation Schatzie and I somehow found ourselves in one night on the streets of Denver...

Hanging out on the streets of Denver holds a special place in my heart.  I’m really into Kerouac and he started the majority of his road trips in Denver, picking up Sal and rampaging around on the same streets I’ve found myself rampaging around on on several occasions.  So, me and Schatzie are hanging out on the streets of Denver outside the club the Fastplants are playing that night, ruminating about hanging out on the streets of Denver and doing the type of things one does while ruminating and hanging out on the streets of Denver when this homeless guy approached.  He was sauntering slowly past the club giving everyone outside a nice, long, glare as he passed them.  And he was drooling.  He reached me and Schatz, who were leaned up against the band van and approached us purposefully, immediately getting waaay too close.  And, seriously drooling.  A lot.  

He then gave me the smelliest stink eye I’ve ever been on the receiving end of, and leaned in even a little closer and said, “That’s a nice Astrovan.” in the most accusatory fashion you can imagine.  Our band van is a clearly marked Ford Econoline and looks nothing like an Astrovan.  

“Thanks, but it’s an Econoline.” I said.

“WHAT?!?!” He yelled.

I looked over at Schatzie and he looked frozen.  Schatzie’s a great dude and one of my favorite people ever to travel with, but because of his charming, accommodating nature he’s not the type of guy whose likely gonna end up in a street brawl with a random homeless guy.  Nor am I, but suddenly-here we were.

“It’s an Econoline. Look.” I said pointing at the nameplate on the side.

“No, No, NO!” He howled, saliva spraying, “That’s an ASTROVAN!! My sister has one!!” 

Me and Schatzie looked at each other and did that shrug-with-your-eyes thing.  He moved in closer.  We backed up further.

Have I mentioned that this guy was drooling like crazy?  Because by now it was POURING out of his mouth.  I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.  It was like he had a faucet running through the back of his head that someone had left turned on.  

Ill be honest.  By now, I was super scared I was gonna have to fight this guy.  Like, he wasn’t leaving me much choice.  He kept stepping in closer, stammering and sputtering, fucken homeless guy spit flying everywhere.  And I’m a total germophobe.  Like, I use my own mic not because I give two shits about the sound of that mic but because I’m horrified by the notion of all the spit left behind on other mics before me.  So, this homeless guy is getting super aggressive and weird and me and Schatzie are kinda backpedaling around the van (which Marc was sleeping inside of at the time) and I’m thinking fuck, dude, I do NOT want EITHER this dude’s saliva NOR his blood anywhere near me but he won’t back off and it’s getting serious.   I started to do that mental thing when you know you’re gonna have to fight and it’s probably not gonna be go well but you start to think yourself into it.  Because, this particular homeless guy, in addition to being SUPER gross, was no withering daisy.  He was a good sized, stockily built dude who had a jaw that looked like it knew how to take a punch.  Shit.  Ok.  Well, here we go...

Right then, one of the homeless guy’s’ buddies appeared.  He heard the commotion from down the street and came to defuse the situation.  He distracted his buddy by offering him a dollar, which the guy refused.  Both things about that seemed odd to me, but me and Schatzie saw our opportunity and beelined into the club.   After a minute we peeked outside to make sure the guy hadn’t started to mess with the van or our slumbering Marc, but by then-literally less than two minutes-there were a bunch of cops and firemen surrounding a person in the middle of the street a little further down the block.  I couldn’t see who it was because of the cars, but when I saw all the cops put on rubber gloves, I had a good idea.  

So, long story short-I still hate dodgeball.