Imagine if Goofy had joined Hawkwind for a while but was now sleeping rough; long haired, rheumy eyed and cheerfully frazzled; a casualty of taking too many drugs for too many decades; moving on from one seaside town to the next; taking it all in his stride with quark, strangeness and charm.
He wandered in off the street in his checker blue pants and asked me if I would make him a cup of tea.
“Sure,” I said.
He followed me into the kitchen and told me how smoking marijuana had made him smarter instead of slower; that it hadn’t destroyed his brain cells at all, it had generated even more.
“I’m much better at my computer games on weed,” he said.
He told me how he had been kept as a slave up north and how the man responsible had recently been arrested. He picked up the broom beside the door and demonstrated how the man would get his slaves up in the morning by beating them with a broom handle much like ours.
On the other side of the kitchen’s open serving hatch Janice was preparing the room next door for a baby group. I gave Goofy his cup of tea and steered him back into the foyer.
“We’ve got a few groups about to come in,” I told him. “It might get a bit busy in here, mothers and their prams…”
He grinned and nodded.
I led him out onto the patio.
“They accused me of being a paedophile once,” he remarked guilelessly, spilling his tea a little bit.
“You’re not though, are you?” I asked, warily. I figured that if he was happy to bring it up, he would also be happy to admit it if he was.
“No!” He laughed. “Don’t be silly.” And he did that thing he does when he’s taken aback; that great gosh gulp, so endearing.
I went to fetch him a mince pie someone had left me the previous evening; the previous evening after a different homeless man had come in asking for food. Sorry, I told him, we weren’t that kind of place. Just a piece of bread? he growled. I looked in the office drawer; not even a biscuit. Sorry, I told him, we don’t have a thing. He leered and told me he hoped I died painfully of cancer, and then changed his mind and wished me a heart attack while I was eating my Christmas dinner instead.
I gave Goofy the mince pie he didn’t ask for.
“Aw, thank you,” he gushed, “I love mince pies. I’m starving.”
I picked up the lime green sleeping bag he had dropped outside the entrance and moved it onto one of the benches. He sat down beside it and I left him to his tea and mince pie.
Five minutes later an old man walked into the centre cursing about something to me through the office window.
“Pardon?” I asked.
“That man,” he said, appalled, motioning over his shoulder, “lying on the bench,” he could barely contain his disgust, “he has his shoes off.”
Goofy was indeed lying on the bench, his feet up on one end, shoes off, dirty red and black striped socks drooping off the ends of his toes; a mug of tea in one hand and a roll-up in the other.
“He’s homeless,” I told the old man. He shook his head and tutted as he headed for the lift. He was on his way to a support group for people with stomas. I guess when you’re living with a stoma you can become hardened to a lot of other people’s problems. ‘Try emptying your own shit out of a bag every day,’ you might tell them. ‘Don’t lecture me about decency.’
The next time I looked outside Goofy had gone, but he had left his sleeping bag on the bench, and his shoes beside it. Standing in the doorway looking out, I wondered where he had got to. Then I heard the sound of children’s music, turned around and he was right behind me, lying on a row of chairs in the foyer, stockinged feet up, playing a game on a tablet.
“What are you playing?” I asked him.
“Toy Blast. Look,” he said, beaming as he showed me the screen, “I’m on level 2639.”
“Bloody hell. I can’t believe it even has that many levels.”
“I told you,” he said, tapping the side of his head, “it makes me smarter.”
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