Tales from the Step: Part Eleventy Seven

It’s New Years Eve around 530/545 in the evening, night has arrived fireworks can be seen and heard already in sporadic explosions. Twinofmine is on the couch I am on the computer she hears something from outside and goes to investigate.

It turns out that someone has slipped/fallen on some ice on the sidewalk, perhaps due in part to the fact that he is completely and utterly inebriated. He has a companion though and he was ‘helped’ to his feet and a piece of pizza is passed back and forth. Although to call it a piece is somewhat generous, perhaps drool laden is now a specialty?

Yes it was even grosser to SEE that as you can imagine.

Anyway, nothing unusual there, a guy is loaded and he trips/falls/skips/tumbles/twirls/ cartwheels down to the ground and someone else helps him up, gross pizza sharing notwithstanding.

A few minutes later twinofmine looks out the window again no sign of anything unusual, pizza eating beer soaked denizens of downtown St. John’s must have moved along…yes one might indeed think that.

I decide to run to the store, fire on the proper footwear (it’s slippery out there you know) and tromp down the stairs and out the door, look to my right. DrunkGuy is rightthere on the business step, he’s ossified, nearly pickled in his alcoholic haze and he seems to have chosen his accessory for the night, it’s red, it’s liquid and it’s dripping from his head with alarming consistency.

I ask if he needs assistance he responds or I assume that was a response; he’s slurring his speech drunkenly (and possibly concussively! She said soberly). I run across to the store and return within 2 – 5 minutes I ask again if he needs me to call anyone. He shakes his head, still dripping. As I watch him fumble open the six pack of beer he has between his legs I decide that drunken bloody guys are not that responsible for their own welfare and that in fact someone should be called on his behalf. This realization is underlined as he takes a big swallow of his beer and goes to place the bottle on the step instead he drops it shattering and the look of bafflement is sad to observe. I go upstairs and twinofmine calls it in. An ambulance arrives as she is on the phone so obviously someone else called as well.

The crew takes about 10 mins to remove him from the step and as per usual any flashing lights in this neighbourhood draw a crowd, most move on within short order, what’s all that interesting about a bleeding from the head drunk guy after all. There are 4 local feral hoodies about though; kind of unusual I thought they were genetically predisposed to flee from all flashing lights. The true motive for them sticking around is shown soon though, as the attendants link DrunkGuy into the ambulance one of the Hoodies ghosts in and makes off with the remainder of the beer, it was smooth, it was quick and they are gone in seconds.

DrunkGuy was unfortunately not unfamiliar to me, I know him from the summer when he passed out on the steps two houses down, I know him from other slips and face plant falls on the sidewalk just outside. This is a guy with a problem, probably more than one problem if the truth be known. If the jackals of the neighbourhood feel safe preying on you then that says a lot. Insensible drunk or not, you had NO ONE looking out for you. + you have no beer.