"TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE CAKE!"

I’m a Res Tech at a homeless shelter in Afred Maine. It’s rewarding work. But often, just like any job, it can be tedious. I spend too much time at the front desk answering the phone, filling out paper work, checking the appointment book, eating my boogers and drinking massive bottles of Diet Pepsi.

The phone rings. I answer with the most chipper and cordial voice you have ever heard.  People call inquiring about getting admitted, and I have to remind them that this is not a normal shelter and that they have to sober and remain sober, that they are not allowed to leave the facility for the first thirty days, or have cell phones. This is usually when they hang up. I can never tell if the person is an addict or just really attached to their cell phone. Either way, it’s discouraging.

On the other side of the room is Sirgeo’s chair. There’s a sign above it with his name written in glitter and hearts drawn with red marker. Sirgeo drank so hard his mind became mushy and slow. He’s in his fifties, but mentally he’s three. He speaks some English and some Spanish. We have some Techs that know Spanish and they say what he says is mostly nonsense. The guy’s out of it.  He spends most of his day mumbling, and making loud whiny sounds.

I like to play this game with him. I call it “The Noise game.” It’s simple.  I make a noise. He imitates it. Then he makes a noise and I imitate that. I think he likes it. I can’t tell for sure. He always has this annoyed look on his face.  

One day I got him making a sound like a police siren. It made him laugh. I liked that. I was rarely able to get him to laugh.  We made noises back and forth until a councilor came out of her office and asked us to be quiet. I apologized. Sirgeo mumbled something dirty in Spanish.

I decided to get him out of the building for a while. We went for a drive in the gulf cart that I do perimeter checks. It felt good to be out of that building. Summer was ending and things were cooling down. I loved the way the breeze felt. It told me things. It told me I didn’t have to be sweating all the time, and that my crotch did not have to feel like deadly swamp any longer. Fall is coming, it said.  You are going to drink unhealthy amounts of hot cider and feel so sentimental that I can barely function. It told me those things and I put saluted the September air with a goofy smile on my face.

The breeze told Sergio something different. He was just cold.

“FRIO! FRIO!” he whined.

“It’s not that cold,” I said. “Chill out.”

The shelter was built on an old Shaker village. Near the exit is a path that leads to the graveyard. An entire town was buried there. I wanted to check it out. Sirgeo didn’t like that. He looked scared. “You don’t like it in there, do you buddy?”

“No…”

“Should we leave?”

He made a loud crying noise, which I took that as a yes. I drove him back to the main building and got him in his special chair. It was dinner time. I brought him his soup and a piece of chocolate cake. He ignored the soup and ate the cake. He ate quickly. Once he was done, he started to make crying noises again. He wasn’t actually crying. It was a fake crying, but you could tell he was actually upset regardless.

“What are you crying about, you just got to eat  chocolate cake?”

He mumbled something in Spanish and looked at me like I was the biggest prick he had ever known.

“You maybe have too much chocolate cake. Do you have a tummy ache?”

 He nodded his head looking like a little boy. “Too much chocolate cake!” he mumble-screamed.

I yelled with him. “Too much chocolate cake!”

“Too much chocolate cake!”

A councilor came out of her office and looked at us. I apologized again.

Later that night, while doing safety check in the golf cart, I went back to shaker graveyard. The path was only a couple blocks long, but it felt like miles. I grew up watching too many horror movies and I get paranoid. I made it half way down then I turn the golf cart around. When I put the thing in reverse, it started making this loud beeping sound. This heightened my paranoia. The beeping was going to wake all the shaker ghosts and they were going to get me.  

“Fuck it!” I yelled. I put it into drive and I stepped on the gas pedal, hard, and zipped away.

By the time I got back to the main building, I was feeling giggly from all the excitement.

Moses was awake.

I told him about the ghosts. He made a crying noise. At first I thought he was scared about the Shaker spirits rising from the grave, then I realized he had pissed his pants.

Pissy pants: the ultimate ghost deterrent. Ghosts hate pissy pants. The guy was a genius.

“How bout we go to your room and get you changed?” I said.

“Ok.”

I got him too his room. I took his pants off and then gave him a warm rag to rinse himself off with. “Remember to wash your dingus,” I said, pointing to his cock-and-balls area.

He washed his dick and laughed.

I wish I still could have that much fun while watching my dick.