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James sat on a stoop with his plaid, beaten-up, laundry bag and tried to make sense of where he was. He checked the bag and saw all of the clothes neatly folded and smelling of detergent, so he assumed that he was on his way home, but could no longer fathom where it was located. He wanted so badly to ask someone where he lived, but in New York it was doubtful that any passerby had ever seen him before or would likely see him again. He had pride every once in awhile, depending on when you caught him, but today you could see the desperation in his eyes as he struggled for a flicker of memory.

I met James in 1998 at a shithole bar in the East Village. One of those notorious shitholes where all the CBGB fuckers used to go after seeing their favorite, terrible, punk bands. He was old as dirt then and a bit crusty, and if you caught him in the right light, the kind that came in the windows during happy hour, you'd almost mistake him for an extension of the stool on which he sat. It wasn't far from the truth in those days. He'd sit and drink until last call without showing even the slightest hint of inebriation and the bartenders never charged him. He'd tell stories to all the equally crusty gutter punks about his life and the shit he'd seen, and if you listened carefully you'd think the man was full of shit, but something would tell you that he wasn't. He was losing it back then, you see, and whenever he'd tell you a story about V-Day or running guns in the 70's for anti-Vietnam extremists, or hiding out from the law on a hippie commune outside Denver, you'd hear him and know that to him he was telling you a story from last week. It all happened; he just hadn't a clue how long ago it happened to him.

Near as I can tell he was a Navy man in WWII. That's the earliest in his life I'd heard. He swam up to enemy boats in the South Pacific and strapped explosives to the hull, watched his friend get obliterated by gunship fire on the swim back. Lost his taste for violence, and became a small-time gun-runner for anti-war movements at the start of Vietnam. Don't ask me about the irony there. Gave it all up and moved out to the mountains with some fucking flower children sometime in '76. He moved up here in the '80s sometime and has been here ever since while his mind slowly dribbled away.

He's spent his later life telling stories to idiot kids that were too useless to know that they mattered. Now he's sitting on a stoop trying like hell to remember where he lives, what year it is, and if those are even his clothes.

Soon he'll be gone. His entire life lost in the breeze, and it'll happen before he goes cold. It hurts me something fierce. I haven't done shit compared to him.

Who will I meet when I ask him if he needs help? The soldier? The criminal? Or just another geezer with little-to-no sense who used to be somebody? He's alone on the street and I'm the only one who knows anything about his life, and that includes him.

I take his picture. It's all I can do, really. One day my kids will ask who the old man is in the frame. I'll tell them his name was James, and that he was a far better man than any are likely to ever meet in their lifetime.