Creepy, but sad

Monday morning was quite possibly the most uncomfortable wait I've ever had for a bus. An old man in his 70s or so came over from Lexington Clinic East with another man, who was much younger. The older man fell on his way to the bus stop--he was very unsteady on his feet. I went over to help, maybe carry something like the giant guitar he had strapped to him, but they were fine. It took two of us to convince him to sit down. Apparently his name is Patches and the younger man is his keeper. He needs a keeper. He's sick of cancer and doesn't move around so well, he told me. He kept calling me, 'little baby' (later, on the bus, he called guys 'little brother' and women 'little baby'). Well, anyway, he told me about how he'd been homeless for 40 years, but they'd placed him with somewhere to stay now. He'd had a wife, and when she died, he'd nearly gone crazy.

Well, I don't think there was much nearly to it. He was obviously out of his mind. I don't know if he was senile or not. He was very repetitive, and had a pathological desire to talk to the nearest person, although he didn't talk to his keeper that much. Apparently he took his guitar everywhere, and even slept with it. I tried to smile and nod a lot, and didn't mind too much that he was rambling on, since frankly it was a little pathetic and sad that he'd come to that. I got the impression that it wasn't dementia so much as maybe lots of years drinking and being a little crazy.

Well, the creepy part comes in because he kept telling me how much he loved women, and how I was pretty, and how if I came home with him, he would 'be a man to me'. That went on for awhile (I'd gotten to the bus stop early, so there was 30 minutes or so of this). Then he leaned over and tried to kiss me on the cheek, and I blocked him and said no, I wasn't comfortable with that. He tried again, and his keeper was like, 'Patches, she said no!' and he pretty much stopped. But he was very unhappy, you could tell. Once I got on the bus, I made sure to go back fairly far, thinking he would sit in the elderly/disabled area, which turned out to be correct. Then he latched on to some guy and kept talking to him, but at least he didn't come on to him. A woman got on the bus and he started talking to her, and she told him he'd sung a song for her the other day. She seemed to be flattered by what he was telling her. I don't think she realised it was the same thing he told every woman.

He was mostly harmless, but you see, the problem with crazy or demented people is you never know when they're going to fly off the handle. They may be fine so long as you go along with things, but if you don't cooperate they might just snap. Now, the fact of the matter is, I could easily have gotten away from or stopped him from anything he might have done--the trick would to do so without hurting him, he was so fragile, but it still made me very uncomfortable. I'm glad he wasn't there this morning, too.

PS Apparently I attract crazy homeless guys. When I was 16 an old man came up to me in the middle of the street, told me I was pretty, and proposed marriage to me on the spot. I politely declined and finished crossing the street. Apparently I have some sort of sign above my head that says, 'talk to her, talk to her'.

Don't get me wrong, I did feel very sorry for the guy (and his keeper). I'm sorry he's dying, and that he's had such a hard life. But it still creeped me out.