The Etownian >> Features
Homeless diabetic artist wanders country for love
Thursday March 25 2010
It’s a Tuesday afternoon in March. In downtown Etown it is 65 degrees, and the sky is pale and cloudless. The air smells like the M&M Mars chocolate factory in town. Today is the first truly warm day of the year.As Assistant Opinion Editor Sam Phillips and I walk down the street, people are staring at us. Well, people are staring at Sam, anyway. She recently dyed her hair candy-red, and underneath a red jacket she’s wearing an almost indecently low-cut shirt. She is glowing sex.
Ahead of us, on top of a hill outside a laundromat, is the fabled cart we’ve been hunting for. It is what appears to be a rusted bike, duct-taped to a stroller, duct-taped to what may have been a shopping cart in happier times. Over this skeleton lies a skin of plastic grocery bags and paintings. All of the display pictures are done on white cardboard with Magic Marker. They either depict busty, half-naked yellow women with blue hair and champagne bottles or religious scenes. One is a picture of Jesus getting crucified under a box that says, “KING OF THE JEWS!!!” written in childlike handwriting with just that many exclamation points. The whole thing sways in the breeze — like it’s just on the verge of falling apart. The back is dominated by a sign encrusted with red blinking lights that says:
HOMELESS “‘ARTIST”’
WITH DIABETIES
PLEASE GIVE A DONATION
GOD BLESS!!!
“Why does he have that many quotes around ‘artist?,” I ask.
“What’s diabeties?” Sam wonders.
And there he is, sitting next to his caravan. His dark face is shielded by an old Philadelphia Eagles hat. He’s wearing an equally old Eagles jacket, blue jeans that have nearly faded to white and new-ish tan boots. As we approach, he is greasing the chain of a bike that has been poorly spray-painted gold. There is a torn sock around his neck that holds a portable CD player. He has enormous, broken headphones around his ears. You can hear the music from 10 feet away. He is completely unaware of the outside world.
I take the lead, but he sees Sam first. He takes his headphones off while quietly muttering, “God dayum” through the enormous V-shaped gap in his front teeth.
I pull out a five dollar bill. I’m trying to play off of the “please give a donation” bit on his sign. I hand it to him, saying, “Hey man, it ain’t much, but it’s all I got to spare.”
His honest-to-God reply is, “Aw man, f--- dat s---. God bless ya.” He’s hard to understand; he speaks in garbled jive tongues.
I have absolutely no idea how to respond. Luckily, I don’t need to. He turns back to Sam. “Now, I got something for y’all folks, too,” he says. He rifles through the plastic bags in his cart and pulls out a bouquet of red roses. He hands them to Sam. “Dese are for you, girlie.” Before she can react, he turns to me and pulls out a huge wad of index cards. He hands me one. He smells like sugary tobacco smoke.
“Dis is my business card,” he says. On it, written in red, blue and green Magic Marker is the following, underlined by little red hearts:
ROBERT, THE, ARTIST
AND OIL PAINTER
CELL: XXX-XXX-XXXX
I NEED A GIRL FREIND
“You need a girlfriend?” I ask.
“Hell yeah, man, dat’s why I’m wanderin’ around, sellin’ my s---. I need a gurlfriend!”
“Is that why you gave me these flowers?” Sam asks. “So I can pass them out to girls and tell them to come meet you?”
“Aw, hell naw, honey.” He gives a breathy bellow of a laugh. “Dey fo’ you, honey. Dey match yo’ hair.” He gives another laugh and high-fives me for no discernible reason.
“So, where are you from, man?” I ask.
“Southern California. But f--- dat s---; I left.”
“So I see. Why’d you leave?”
“F---in’ … I dunno. I couldn’t get no gurlfriend in SoCal. So I paid this guy wit’ a flatbed truck two-hundred bucks to take me east. I been all over da’ place ever since.”
“What about your family?” Sam asks.
“Aw man, all family ever does is try to keep ya’ together and hold ya’ down’n s---. But I got outta there, man.”
“Are you religious?” Sam interjects.
“Yea, but f--- dat s---. It don’t help me get a gurlfriend.”
After an hour of asking such questions and snapping some pictures, we get a pretty good idea of his story. Since he left ‘SoCal’ he’s been wandering around the countryside for 12 years. According to the Lancaster New Era, he went to New York and then Philadelphia, but now avoids cities because somebody stole his ice sculpting tools during one night spent in a homeless shelter.
“What keeps you going through all this?” Sam asks.
“Sorrow, man. All dat pain from wandering around for all this time and still not gettin’ no gurlfriend. I use all dat to drive dis thing around the country. I’m leaving this town today, man.”
“You’re leaving Elizabethtown?!” Sam and I almost say this in unison.
“Yea man, f--- Etown. I hate this place. You can’t get no gurlfriend here. I’mma try my luck in Middletown. I’mma be outta this place by tonight.”
Our conversation is interrupted by a plump woman with poorly dyed strawberry-blonde hair and yellow sunglasses. She rushes up to Robert and gives him a hug. Her smile reveals that a few of her front teeth are rotting and yellow.
“Charrllless!” she shrieks.
“Ay, baby gurl,” says Robert, hugging her back. “Dayum gurl, you lookin’ fine today.”
“Thank you,” says the intruder.
“Wait honey, I got you something,” Robert says, while pulling back a few plastic bags on his cart. Sam and I see at least 15 bouquets of roses underneath the covering. Robert pulls one of these out. “I got ya’ something,’ sweetie.” He hands them to her.
The woman goes berserk, raining praises down on Robert. They embrace, kiss on the cheeks, kiss on the mouth, and start talking so fast that I can’t get any of it down. It is adorable and somewhat nauseating. Sam and I give them space and inspect the paintings on the cart.
“Look here,” Sam whispers, pointing to the paintings. “They’re all signed ‘Robert E. Whitacre.’”
“So that’s his full name,” I say.
“But why’d she call him Charles?”
“Maybe he’s got one name for his art and another for his ladies?”
Sam suppresses a laugh. I look at Robert swapping saliva with this random woman with awful teeth. I smile. Maybe these 12 years of searching will finally lead to something for him.
Suddenly, she gives a hurried goodbye and walks down the road. Robert turns back to us.
“Wow, man,” I say. “The whole roses thing works!”
Robert laughs. “Yeah man, well you know what they say. Ya’ give a mouse a cookie, aight?”
“And she’ll ask for a glass of milk,” I say. Robert roars out a laugh while clapping. Sam laughs, too. It’s the first time she’s heard children’s literature applied to sex.
“Well, why’re you leaving Etown, man?” I motion in the direction that his woman left. “Looks like you got some prospects here!”
“Nah man, dat b---- got a husband,” says Robert, while he returns to packing up his caravan.
And, in this moment, my heart breaks for Robert.
“That f---ing whore!” I say.
“Nah man, she aight. B----es are like that all ova’. What really gets me all pissed is when guys come round and giv’ me donations and s--- and bring their dayum fine girlfriends wit’em — making me feel all worthless and jealous and s---. What’s the good of a b---- who’s already taken?”
Sam and I share a nervous glance. Despite the fact that we’re not dating, we know he’s talking about us. I search for a way to wrap things up while he packs.
“Is Robert E. Whitacre your real name?” I ask.
“Naw man, dat’s just the bulls--- name I put on my art. My real name is Charles Armstrong, but I don’t wanna put dat on my artwork. I gotta wait till my art makes me a load a cash — gotta wait till I’m richer dan Gawd before I’ll put my name on somethin.”
“Sweet!” I say, looking at the ground. Charles throws a pack on top of his cart. “Well, best of luck to you.”
“You too, kid. Hand mah numba out. Find me a gurlfriend.”
“We will,” Sam says. With nothing else to say, we leave.
An hour later, Charles Armstrong attaches two duct tape straps to his bike and begins pulling the whole monstrous rig toward Middletown.
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