Kermit the Hermit

This blog should be about Los Angeles Libraries. I've been to almost every single one. I'm now sitting in the Hollywood regional branch where at 9 am on weekdays they serve bologna sandwiches and coffee, 75 percent of the patrons of this library are homeless it's unbelieveable. There is a a stench lingering in the air and almost everyone is carrying a sleeping bag or has a pushcart crammed full with blankets, plaid and camouflaged bundles of clothes tied in a twisted knot. Shaggy haired vagrants and veterans sit at tables conversing resting their bearded chins on interlaced fingers, their bags unpacked beside them as they glance around shifty-eyed and suspicious. Some of these guys even use these computers to masturbate; it's disgusting, surfing porn sites like carrion clinging to rotting meat; the odor of malt liquor wafting from their mouths like cheap incense as they surreptitiously beat off thinking nobody sees them.

Last night I was walking around Hollywood with no particular aim in mind just wanted to make it through the night. I stopped at the corner of Hollywood and Highland and was approached by a scrawny looking dude in his mid to late thirties who asked me what I was up to. I could tell right away he was homeless and he looked like a Punk-rocker and I also needed something to do so I let him entertain me for a while. He had short bleached hair and was wearing some kind of beige spandex cord around his noggin, to complete the outfit he wore a red and black pleated kilt and plaid Vans one of which had the Sex Pistols written on it the other just said "pretty vacant''. He was carrying a yellow shopping bag from Amoeba records with a vinyl record inside. I asked him what record he had bought and he showed it to me. It was an L7 record from 1994 called Hungry for Stink. Now I'm a big fan of grunge so I figured maybe I could hang out with this guy, maybe he knew how to play an instrument maybe something would happen, maybe he could join Scatterbrainchild, naive I guess, delusional I guess, the guy was a nut. He started telling me about a symphony he had been working on since 1994 and I asked him what knd of symphony and he said it was a maelstrom of the universe and that he had to have it finished and that he was running out of time, next I wanted to know why he had bought a record if he had no turntable on which to play it. He said maybe he would give it to a girl he liked, "I gotta find Megan" he kept saying, "she wants me to find her, she gave me the straight sign she'll give us a free yoghurt sample at pinkberry, this symphony is my gift to the world it's in my head I published it in a poem at the Unitarian church it's about all the women I fucked and now they all wanna kill me, one day I'm just gonna twist one of their heads off. He was starting to creep me out a little, but I was also feeling sorry for him and I couldn't seem to shake him. Then he started complaining about his hunger and we busted a left onto Las Palmas away from the light to get away from the people. He stopped and spread his legs and just started pissing, urine splattering up onto the curb and onto his ankle and dirty kilt. I smiled and mumbled something about how easy panti-less crossdressers and scotsmen must have it. We walked up the street and he fished into a box and scooped out two packets of chicken-flavored Ramen noodles. Next began the quest for hot water. After several rejections and moans from him about his worsening hunger we finally scored at Mel's 24 hour diner on Highland. Along the way he also found four half-browned miniature banananas and a bag of stir fried vegetables dated November 2nd. With nothing else to do I figured I'd keep him company while he ate, so we walked over to Famima! and sat out side on their cold and dirty stainless steel tables while he mixed the brittle cellulose noodles and LA tap water and then sprinkled on the MSG and then finally tossed in bits of vegetables that were best before two and a half weeks ago. A brave man indeed, and a lunatic as well, oh yeah his name was Kermit.