Chapter 1
6:35 AM
My 25th birthday began like every other day; only a homeless man spat on me. See, I was waiting for my train at the West Oakland BART Station, surrounded by the usual thirty or so coffee-killing strangers I see every day. Everyone was in a daze besides a jittery old man, who fueled by either drugs or mental illness, was wrestling a sweatshirt out of a trashcan. His head emerged from a filthy Giants hoodie, and the bushy hair on both sides of an otherwise bald head reminded me of a scalped chia pet.
“Got a dollar?” His tattered voice asked around a few times, going unacknowledged before he got to me. I gave a graceless pocket pat before responding,
“Sorry I don’t carry cash.”
“What?!” I was taken aback by the fury in his retort.
“I’m sorry. I don’t carry cash.” He didn’t budge as I glared at the flickering lights of the approaching train. Unsatisfied with my answer, he appraised me with a furrowed brow and spat,
“Man, you old penguin looking motherfucker!” A snot-filled loogie launched out his mouth and smacked me in the chest. While glaring down with a look of pure disgust, he called me a “fucking loser” before stomping away with candid aggravation. In slow motion, I watched the spit ooze down my fog colored button-down. To say I was speechless would imply thoughts were crossing my mind.
The commuters started to stare just as the 6:40 train ground to a high-pitched halt. It’s ironic. Under normal circumstances, I dreaded the train’s arrival and the miserable destination of my job, like a modern-day passage with Charon, you know the ferryman of Hades. But that moment, it was more like a fucking ambulance liberating me from damnation. Life’s all about perspective.
In hindsight, the spit didn’t faze me. I had become immune to many things, and maybe to life in general. Seriously. I once witnessed a man masturbate outside of Montgomery Station, wearing nothing but an open bathrobe. To make matters worse, he was singing a U2 song. It’s troubling how vivid I remember that. No, it wasn’t the hobo’s slimy DNA that bugged me. What really rattled my cage was the fact that a man who, seconds ago, was pulling a jacket out of a trashcan, had just called me a loser.
The platform emptied before my dumbstruck eyes. My phone chimed. My numbness became aggravation as I wrestled it out, but my mind calmed when I saw my sister’s text—
