"I Could Have Been A Supreme Court Justice!"

Stuttering Sam was a drunk. He died a long time ago but it was only last week he pulled the trigger. (He lost his dog) You can only have your guts ripped out and your heart broken so many times. The title was Sam's claim to fame - or maybe infamy is a better word. Everyone has some sort of story on the street. "Coulda, woulda, shoulda" is by far the phrase most often heard. After a while, you just get numb to it.

I don't know why but the thought of my fellow homeless creatures having any sort of real talent is as unbearable as being laid nude on a bed of hot coals. You just gotta make it stop! It means the whole universe is out of whack, that justice and destiny have no meaning. And having no talent of mine own, it also secretly makes me feel just that much more useless and alone.

But when you're spit upon and patronized by the wider world it's a common defense mechanism to create a superego, to show them who you really are. And you can't help but wonder who that person would have been under different circumstances. But the flip side of the superego, of course, is the mocking disbelief in this American Idol world where everyone's a star waiting to be found. In the end, it empties you out, a hollow standing shell of your imagined self surrounded by seething wolves of doubt.

If I had to guess, Sam may very well have made a great lawyer. Supreme Court? Who knows. (Though it's no badge of honor nowadays considering the clowns who populate it) But if you do have an unfaced talent its potential can run away in your mind, making the highest dreams seem so very real and possible. It bedevils you day and night and Sam was no exception. Emotionally, he was shut off, never allowing anyone (but the dog) in the door. It was just him and the haunting question of, "Who am I?"

He was eventually banned from the shelter for his periodic eruptions. Frankly, I loved them! So what if he turned over a few tables? God, what a catharsis his rampages were. Externalizing his anger so he was not the one at fault is a popular sin in these dying times. (Hi, Tea Party!) It's when the dream seemed most real to him he would explode. Usually some legal event would trigger it, frustration over a court case he should've handled and whose unjust outcome he now shared the blame.

When you don't face your own responsibilities you end up taking on the responsibilities of the world - and that's fatal.

Still, the only time Sam didn't stutter was when he was talking law. Yet if you brought up the idea of his going to school or even entering the legal realm in any manner he bristled at the thought, sharply rebuking the proponent as "ignorant as molasses" (whatever that meant). Something inside was broken and he didn't want that revealed. For a time, he'd mutely visit the SMU campus, as if by osmosis he could gleam some benefit from it or maybe just walk in the footsteps of a stillborn dream. But over time that too wilted into a painful experience.

I realize there are those who live for the story. I've mentioned before the fantastic tales I've heard laced with such detail and passion it's impossible for them to be fiction - yet they are. I guess it's all part of human expression, of wanting to feel important even after having let oneself down. That need just doesn't go away and morphs into all sorts of strange shapes in the abandonment of the street. In the street there's no place to hide your Original Sin.

A more honest Scalia

How many talents have bled into the gutter? Sam certainly had a despicable side to him. You'd just want to choke him in furious frustration over gifts refused. He never opened the door to his escape. I'm sure at some point he dare not face his dream lest he find it a mere illusion and then what could he live for? Some people just can't operate under the lights. Sam showed much more poorly than he truly was on his intelligence test. He feared if he did well he'd finally be forced out into the open.

Sam also corrosively remarked it would make God happy if he died. Over the years that was the thought that most consumed him even more than his legal dream. He latched onto it as a twisted morality. It was his duty not to believe in himself, to martyr his feelings on the cross of some mythical greater good, making honesty the sin. In these ways he hoped to escape his doom.

Not that most of us were not guilty participants as well. I'd find myself rooting for Sam not to open up, to stay in the same hell I'm in. Don't leave! Others were just as bad, giving horrible advice and feeding the negativity. Creeping nihilism advances like an iceberg and is just as hard to reverse. If someone came along with honest words, speaking from the heart and sharing his light, we were duly shamed into silence. Those are moments you don't forget.

Another common moniker for him was "Goddam Sam". "Here comes Goddam Sam!" someone would snort in contempt. I thought it rather harsh at the time and never repeated it myself but it always forced me into repressing something I didn't want to admit, still not sure what. So I thought it rather ironic that when I heard the news of Sam's death my first reaction was to say, "Goddam, Sam!"