Two Strangers in the Park

“Can you….can you spare some time?”

I had barely glanced at the huddled figure on the bench under the gnarled oak tree. It was late afternoon in early October, the sun would soon start to set and the park would be deserted. I hesitated and was about to walk away mumbling some excuse, but he asked again:

“Please, I just need to talk”. He raised his head and I saw the vacant look in his eyes. Again my first impulse was to walk on but he tried again:

“Please…” almost like a child and something in those dead green eyes compelled me to move towards him and sit down by his side. I vaguely remember the sound of a lawn mower in the distance and the smell of freshly cut green grass hung in the air.

I could see him better now. He was probably in his early thirties, with a two-day stubble darkening his face. His chestnut hair grew down to his shoulders, his clothes rather frayed and somewhat soiled. I waited. Did he even know I was there? It felt like a dream. I crossed by legs and that seemed to be his cue. He started to speak in a low halting voice:

“Fame….success….greed….loneliness….shattered dreams….broken promises….” This last said so softly I barely heard what he said. His eyes were still vacant but it seemed as if a further shutter had come down. I wondered what I was doing there. I felt nervous - not sure I wanted to hear what he had to say; if he would ever say it.

But he continued “I moved here, to the big city, from a small rural community. I was the small town art prodigy”.

The faintest hint of a smile touched his lips for a fleeting moment and then he continued “I went to art school and graduated and then…….then was when my demons started to pursue me. I had to paint; I needed to exhibit. I painted day and night as an unquenchable fire burned within me. Days would pass before I would remember to eat or to sleep. I lived for art. But my muse was a hard mistress. Success seemed far away. My friends had drifted to other places - I had shunned them for too long. I was lonely and desperate …..so I took the easy road to destruction.”

He stopped again for a pause so long I thought his tale was told. I could still hear the lawn mower in the distance and a bee buzzed above my head before it droned on its way. Then a strange look came into his eyes and his voice rose in cadence.

“Have you ever loved anything more than yourself? More than your very life?” he asked and I recognized the look in his eyes as obsession. I fell in love with drugs…..you name it; I've done it. At first it was easy. My use was occasional. I felt untouchable. Where was the dreaded addiction everyone talked about? How can I explain the agony and the ecstasy?”

There was a fever now in his eyes and excitement in his voice.

“I tried them all and seemed immune, unlike the other locked in their desperate cycle, until one day I could not rise from my bed as the sickness engulfed me - and now I was just like the rest. A junkie obsessed with one thing and one thing only - how to get my next fix.”

He stopped again and I felt I should go. The sun was low in the west now. The day would soon be gone. I made a move to get up. I was crazy sitting in a lonely park with a self-confessed drug user. But it seemed as if he read my thoughts because he continued his story.

“There is much I could tell you about his part of my life, about the obsession, the pain, the squalor, the insatiable appetite for self-destruction. Each day I would hate myself a bit more and each day I would see what I could sell to get my fix. I had lost all contact with my family, with my fellow artists, with the real world and became a part of the underworld, blending in with the rest of the unseen and unloved. I tried to paint but not many people wanted to buy scenes of death and destruction - for that was all I could paint anymore. Then the fateful day came when I had nothing left to sell but had enough stuff in my pocket to shoot myself to oblivion …… and I was thinking of doing it under this very tree.”