Chumpions

Several weeks ago Dean and I went to a local coffeehouse (the very same in which Dean encountered Walter Barker) to knock out some reading.  We managed to weasel two relatively comfortable recliners next to a long couch—I say weaseled because the place, as always, was tightly crowded with college students and local hipsters.  Our corner of the place, however, was nearly deserted, thanks to an anomalous presence situated at one end of the couch.

The man was clearly on the rougher side of fifty, with sallow skin and a head of gray hair like the coat of a Scottish terrier.  His hands rested on the calculus textbook in his lap, his downy arms framing a prodigious gut.  He was completely unconscious.  His head was tilted back and his mouth was slightly ajar, sparkling with saliva at the corners.  He wore a light gray shirt that looked like it had been left to fester for a few weeks on the floor of a West Virginian outhouse.  Fresh sweat stains ran down the front and around the pits.  The front side contained a veritable bestiary.  Reptiles and amphibians posed in various action scenes, all having to do with exercise:  frogs and geckos bench-pressing, squatting, doing the iron-cross on Olympic rings; a salamander doing ballet stretches in a mirror; etc.  They were all of the sort of ostentatious coloring that makes you wonder how they could manage to survive in the wild.  It was quite a shirt.  Also, with every breath our Sleeping Beauty took, the shirt rode up a little higher on his gut, eventually revealing a gaping navel birthing a forest of black hairs.

Waves of repulsion seemed to pour off the guy.  Every few minutes a new bunch of girls would round the corner, expecting an open couch, then stop dead, grimace, and leave.  A barista came by every now and then and would look at the guy, look at me, look at the guy again, and then smile and shake his head.

Now, I have a rather strange habit of observing people and, consequently, have developed a strong intuition concerning the whys behind most behavior.  However, this character poses some true mysteries.

Why, exactly, does an unshaven, over-the-hill troglodyte with a face like a Shar Pei need to study calculus?  Why did he choose a venue where he sticks out more than a democrat in West Texas Hill Country?  Why is he wearing the sort of protective eyewear you use in shop-class?  Why/How is he sleeping in such a boisterous environment?  Most importantly, where the hell did he find that shirt?

Why?  There are no whys here.  Someone like Camus would see this guy as one more proof of the overarching absurdity of existence.

All I know is that come closing time the barista squatted next to the guy, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “We’re closing!”  Sleeping Beauty opened his grossly gibbous eyes and blinked at us.  Then he stood, tried to adjust his ridiculous shirt (which refused to obey), and marched his awkward corpulence out the door, off to find some new couch to besmirch.