This post seems ancient history now as I began it almost a month ago but it is a story worth sharing I think.... cjsIt was a bit sad to see him go, but we had to do it.
If I remember correctly, when I had first met Fransisco at our Wednsday Street Cafe, we had hit it off pretty well. That had been about a month earlier and since then I had been looking for opportunities to offer him a spot in the short term stay bed at Simon House in Harlesden. We had agreed to meet at a soup run to work out the plan but he did not show up. I did not see him for a week or two and then one monday evening he appeared at my house for our monthly quiz night. I was running out the door and again we were unable to decide when he could move in to the short term bed.
The next week passed without sign of Fransisco, but the following Wednsday I decided to go to Street Cafe in hopes of seeing him there. As I waited for him to show, another worker in the Community asked me if I had seen Fransisco yet because she had come all the way from Simon House to meet him and escort him back. I had not yet seen him, but we then waited together. As we were getting ready to leave for the day, Fransisco arrived and we decided that I would accompany him back to the House and help him get settled in.
On the way back he must have thanked me 100, no 300, times for letting him stay in the house. I dismissed his behavior as nervousness, thankfulness, and just wierdness, but it started to become more erratic once we arrived at our destination. In response to my request that we complete some introductory paperwork he insisted that he really needed to go out for 20 minutes to get a burger and when he returned we could do as much paperwork as I wanted. I ensured him that dinner would be ready before long but there was to be no compromise and, despite my wariness, I didn't see a valid reason why I shouldn't let him leave the house.
When he returned almost an hour and a half later from his 20 minute trip, he was drenched and his rating on the erratic behavior-o-meter had jumped. I asked if it was raining outside to which he responsed that it was sweat and then related a tale of having his burger stolen while he was in the bathroom and how he could have, "KILLED SOMEONE". Throughout this monolouge he is unable to sit down and just paces around the room fuming as we all look on.
Mr. Contingency that I am, my head is telling me at this point, "hmm, have you ever killed someone Fransisco?" while placing a nearby cardboard cutting knife subtly in my pocket. Obviously this fella is using something, which is bad enough, but now I am wondering what sort of violent history he might have as well.
The next two or three hours consisted of the dinner eating, paperwork doing and laundry washing marathon, throughout which he continued his erratic behavior which, at various points, crossed into an almost violent sarcasm which he would unnervingly laugh off. My plan at this point was to keep a close watch, get him to sleep off whatever he was on, and deal with his behavior when he had come down. This would not be the case.
After putting his laundry in the washer, he decided that he was going to take a shower and go to bed. As he entered the bathroom like a trash can Santa Claus with his sack of goodies that he had emptied from his backpack, I thought about suggesting that he leave the bag behind. It was in the light of his already aggressive behavior, though, that I decided that it would be best to not escalate the situation more than necessary.
10 or 15 minutes pass and we are discussing what action to take as house workers when sounds of human flesh being slapped, and what I can only describe as animal-type noises, begin to come to the forefront. Fransisco is slapping himself silly and making very odd, loud noises in our bathroom.
Minutes pass and he continues this behavior. One of the house workers decides to take the initiative to confront him about his behavior and frame it as concern for his safety....which I guess it genuinly was. After repeated requests for him to come to the door, Fransisco finally opens the door and the dialouge begins. (Note about previously mentioned worker: he is very reserved, doesn't say much, and has an uncanny way of staring right through you)
After question and answer time in the bathroom doorway, Fransisco begins to get agitated and, intermingled with various explitives, asks the house worker why he is looking at him like that and states that he feels like the worker is in control of the situation. I have been observing this whole interaction and am actually thinking that I am going to have to physically try to remove this large gentleman from this worker's throat.
The tension passes and Fransisco returns to his bathroom escapades. We reconvene as a worker group and decide that his behavior is probably more than we can handle. By this point he has become completely unresponsive.
I will abridge here a bit, but eventually we ended up calling in the cops and the ambulance team and they eventually ended up kicking in the door and Fransisco eventually ended up admitting that he was smoking heroin and popping morphine pills to try to kill himself.
There was nothing that the police could do because he had no desire to go to the hospital and they couldn't forcibly make him leave the house because he technically had the rights of a tenant. They did however coax him out of the house and left him on our front door step.
So, what happened next is the cool part.....
Me and a couple guys go outside to talk with him. I explain that I am sorry that things turned out this way but he had agreed to not consume drugs in the house and he did so we had to enforce the rules. I guess what I really wanted him to understand was that even though it had been a bad night, it didn't mean that I, or any of us, cared about him any less.
Well, I guess we had connected pretty well, because he asked the other guys to leave so we could talk alone. Although he was still pretty doped up, we talked of family, life, drugs, suicide and God. I have promised myself that although I cannot separate my faith from my actions, I will not make my love contingent on someone's desire to hear about my beliefs At this point in the evening though, we had already had a conversation on the way over to the house about Christianity and he had breached the subject so I gave myself permission to talk. And talk we did.
So that night he ended up dumping the rest of his morphine pills down the storm drain and we ended up praying together on the steps.
I have not seen Fransisco since then but I am sure that he is around and am sure that we will run into each other at some point. I am looking forward to seeing him again.
Walking in the Welsh hills
Sheep
