For various reasons, I came home from work today with an extra salami sandwhich. My boss, who ordered it for me, told me I should have it dinner. I wasn't that hungry. So when I parked my car in the garage across the street from me, I decided to give it to a homeless person. Walking out of the garage, I see some whacked out lady sitting across the alleway from me with an even more whacked out dude lying next to her. I give her the sandwhich.

Yay me.

But then, as I give her the sandwhich, she starts trying to talk to me. To tell me she's not like this and in fact, better than this. Now here's the thing, as much as I want to give her the sandwhich, I also don't want to talk to her. I, in fact, just want to give her the food and walk on my merry way. I do not want to engage the homeless person in conversation. She is engaging me in conversation. The thing is too that I'm not exactly scared of the homeless person or freaked out (well, maybe a little) it's just that I want to get home and not spend my precious time hanging out in a grungy alley way talking to two drugged out bums. And it is also obvious that the person I gave the sandwhich too is coming down off of something. I might be willing, actually, to talk to someone if they were up for interesting and fun conversation, but she is full blown coming down off probably crack or heroin. Her partner is half-asleep and lying down. I do not think this is going to be the kind of conversation that one reads in a New Yorker short story. I want to go home.

I mean, what am I going to say? Talk to her about the Giants? See what she thought of last week's "Deadwood?" To be polite in this situation, one is supposed to ask how one is doing. I know how she's doing, she's on drugs and sleeping on the streets. I do not want to know more. What am I supposed to say if she tells me how she's doing "oh, that's great." Or "oh, that sucks, I'm sorry," which I guess would be more okay to say except for the fact she's the one who put herself into that position in a way and while I'm sorry she's in that situation, my sympathy isn't all that.

But then she proceeds to tell me exactly how she's doing. She grew up in Baton Rouge. She's 39 and used to be a nurse. And she's got five children. Ages 22-13.

Now I really want to get out of there. I do not want to know anymore. I do not like hearing heartbreaking stories about some poor family of children whose mother is excited to be handed a half-day old salami sandwhich from a kind-hearted but a little freaked out high-tech worker in an alley off 16th & Mission.

Oh, and one more thing. How does one exactly get out of a conversation with a drugged out homeless person? "Oh, I gotta go meet a friend? You know, one whose not nodding off next to you?" Or "Geez, I gotta meet my friend and get some nice expensive dinner that you'll never afford because even if you got the money, you'd spend it on smack?"

But I figure a way out and slowly, not without a few curtain call comebacks, make my way out of the alleyway.

Oh, one more thing.,, as I was leaving she asked me for money.