An idyll on middle age in the student slums
by CA Smith
The 300-pound man who lives below me awakes. The timber frame of the apartment shakes. His every move registers on the Richter scale. Soon...yes, there it is, the thump, thump, thump of his stereo. The man needs a soundtrack to eat his morning hash (that too seeps upstairs).
The Fat Man and I, we're both middle-aged white men living in the Fort. The Fort is a student ghetto for early 20-somethings who are on their way to better things. But there're also some guys like me and the Fat Man, going nowhere, doing their forties in the Fort.
We're mostly from out of town. No self-respecting native does the Fort for long. We're childless and womanless—no prospects there. We're not penniless or homeless—we get by. We each have a story to tell.
Action Jackson lives across the hall. He works at the Y-12 plant, tending our nation's stockpile of nucleons.
"Why does he live here in the Fort, 30 miles away?" I ask the landlord.
"He cruises the strip. He wants to be where the action is."
Greasy food, greasy sidewalks, and a pudgy bald guy on patrol for poontang—that's some action.
One day, I spot Action Jackson in the library. He's leaning over the counter in cut-off dungarees, pitching the check-out girl: "Nucleons contaminate everything around here! Y-12 is KILLING us all!"
The girl looks at him blank-faced. No action tonight, Jackson.
As a group, we walk a lot. We stalk the Fort, downtown too. The more cerebral, the more we walk.
Windbreaker Man has two Ph.D.s and is resting up for a third. Blue slacks, blue windbreaker, blue tennis shoes—you've seen him walking his beat in the 90-degree heat. He's the most intrepid of our group and ventures down Chapman and sometimes even Broadway, looking, looking for what? Exercise, food, action, inspiration, relief? Who knows, but one thing is certain: He always walks alone.
One day, I run into him on the street. "Did you run into me or did I run into you?" he asks.
Jobs are evil necessities, but we manage, some of us with more style than others.
Root works with computers. He's a systems guy. He sets up networks, loads operating systems, makes sure the printers are on line. Just don't ask Root for root privileges.
"I don't like giving those out. You know, security." Yeah, babe, you don't want to compromise security—his job security that is.
LAN networks are his forte. When the boss gives him the evil eye or there's talk of lay-offs, the LAN crashes. "Where's Root?" everybody starts asking. "Find Root!"
Security is Root's mainstay, but gambling is his passion. After giving the company his all for 30 minutes, he spends the rest of the day in his cubicle working on algorithms to beat the dogs.
"As soon as I get it right, I'm outta the Fort and going to Vegas!" he tells me.
He's a lifer if I've ever seen one.
"The thing about the Fort, it's so easy to live there," observes the Mystic. A refugee from the West Coast, he's cut hair on the strip for over 20 years. "I've tried leaving a couple of times, but I always come back."
He drinks Diet Coke all day and serves a steady clientele. Meditation keeps the knife from his throat and he answers the phone: "Barber shop...hey guy."
His chair is the farthest from the door. His customers know where to find him.
I ask: "You know Action Jackson?"
"Who?"
Every May, the U-Hauls line the curbs of the Fort, loading up. They're headed for Atlanta, Charlotte, California...anywhere but here. The young know the score: it's up and away or down and out.
They're right, of course. Who hasn't passed by the Bel Air and felt the despair? Who hasn't seen the new apartments going up and felt it double?
Don't get me wrong: I don't give a shit. Men like me, we'd welcome the Apocalypse. It's the waiting that's hard, but as for the Fort, don't count it out: there's always room for one more.
August 15, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 33
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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