When I reached down through the haze to scratch, I realized that I was drenched. Slowly I slithered out from under that colossal mudslide of sleep. I kicked down that wet sheet, pried my body out of the bed, and rotated to a sitting position. Instinctively I groped for my cane, but it was nowhere bedside. The drunken dome of my skull was feverish, and my eyes were hot gel. Although I had a basic control, simple logic, and partial recall, I had not yet detoxified. The gravitational pull was never stronger, inertia never more tempting, but slowly I assembled a whole picture. Old men on double decker cots were regimented tightly around the room so that it held a maximum capacity I had peed in the underside of one such cot, I was naked and wet; slowly all these details dripped onto the sizzling hot frying pan of my brain. On my hands and knees, I felt for my clothes, but I found nothing. I was sure of only the floor. This I pursued to a wall and got to my feet and fumbled around the double beds, only able to open my eyes for long blinks. I was cold but it didn’t matter. Hand over hand, I moved along the rough wall toward a distant door frame of light from which I heard a groaning sound.

When I finally got to the door, I had to readjust to the fluorescent lights, which overexposed the filthy, tiled bathroom. On the very first of a row of unpartitioned toilet bowls an old black guy was making miserable sounds as he tried to shit. I held to the wall, squinted at the floor, and limped over toward the farthest bowl. The floor tiles were cracked. The opposite side of the room was lined with marble urinals. I went to the last where I was about to pee when suddenly my stomach started kicking. Barely had I turned around when my face started spilling gunk. I almost fell head first into the crapper. For several minutes I was stuck there in spasms, as all, dating back to those ledge sandwiches, vomited up. “Whoo wee, I remember gettin’ dat sick once,” I heard someone behind me say. After finishing, I turned to a gathering of derelicts who were watching.

Slowly I got to my feet and could feel my bloated bladder bursting free. Turning around, I just made it in time for the high arc of urine to hit the marble urinal. In spite of all the agony, all the aches, in spite of the hangover that made my eyes feel like they were spilling out of my head, the transparent piss that was racing out of me brought me to new heights of glory and ecstasy.

“Did they start serving yet?” the black guy at the end shitter asked the exiting spectators.

“Not yet, but yous better hurry. Ernie already turned on the lights.”

“That Ernie’s a scoundrel!” laughed the old guy as he tugged up his trousers.

I hobbled over to one of a line of sinks. The damned sink only had a single faucet; a cold water faucet that had one of those fucking overwound springs that would snap off unless a hand actively applied a constant life-force to hold it open. I jerked with that fucking faucet, trying to wash my face and body, but it was no damned good. Finally I went over to the toilet and took a wad of coarse toilet paper and used it to plug up the drain. Then I filled the dirty basin with cold water and submerged my wounded face in it. When I finally took my face out of that icy water, I was still drowsy as hell so I gave the face a couple stinging slaps. After that, I stroked my fingers slowly over my stubbled and scabbed face, and looking at the blood on my fingertips, I realized that I had broken open a couple of scabs.

“They serving!” I heard someone yell outside. Because there were only those sanitary, “deodorizing” blow driers, I gently patted my face dry with the coarse toilet paper.

Outside the bathroom, a network of fluorescent lights revealed a large barracks-like room packed with men, mainly black and old. Many of the beds were already empty I took a sheet off one and wrapped it around my naked body. Then I followed the others out to the stairwell. There was a long motionless line along the right banister. I got on the end of the line and waited, trying to hold that filthy sheet around me, toga style. It kept slipping off. Several times, I had to move up a step because the big guys were cutting in down in the front. Finally the line started moving, one step every minute or so.

“There’s my main man.”

“Shake my hand, Ernie.”

“Go get ’em Ern.”

“Hey Ernie, is you still datin’ dat Loni Anderson girl?”

A fat middle-aged guy with apple cheeks, cauliflower ears, and a potato nose wore a fresh T-shirt and a white apron, and as he moseyed up along the procession of broken and dilapidated men, each one either offered a hand or a comment. I held the banister tight in one hand and the sheet tight in the other, and waited for Ernie.

“Where the hell are my clothes?”

“Well, would you looky here,” Ernie said in a loud and humiliating volume and added, “New Jersey’s awake.”

“Huh?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“This ain’t Saint Patty’s day and you ain’t at McSorley’s. I’m talking about how on every major weekend the cops dump me with you drunken Jersey boys. Do me a favor when you get home and tell your friends that before they pass out here, the least they can do is wear an ID tag. Even luggage has that much. Bed space is a hot commodity in these parts.”

“Hold on.” He talked too fast for my shaky comprehension.

“You hold on. When things calm down you can call Mommie and Daddy in my office—collect.”

“No one I know would accept the charges,” I replied drunkenly but he didn’t seem to hear. He just kept walking away down the stairs, and I stood there holding the banister.

Finally I could see the front of the line moving down the stairs. The men were disappearing into a doorway. When I went through the doorway, I first picked up a tray, then a bowl, mug, spoon, and napkin. Next, someone in white put a small carton of milk on the tray, and the next guy in white put a full ladle of oatmeal in the bowl, and another guy put an orange on the tray. The last guy filled the mug with coffee. Then I took a seat. There was no exchange of words. I had trouble doing this while holding the sheet around me. Men ate everything completely, but due to my sickness, I could only eat one or two bites of the oatmeal.

“You want the orange?” someone asked me, I shook my head no.

“Geez, let him have a chance to finish.” Big Ernie appeared behind me.

“Da man say he didn’t wan it.”

“You can hold on to the orange until you get hungry” Ernie said to me.

“I got nowhere to put it,” I replied, referring to my nakedness.

“Follow me, I guess it’s time for that collect call.”

“I got no one to call.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean this is it.” Ernie looked to the floor and was quiet for a moment. “You telling me you have no family?”

“Right.”

“How ’bout friends?” I shook my head no. “You must be at least twenty-five.”

“Twenty-three,” I corrected.

“You seem like an intelligent, well-mannered white boy. Tell me how an intelligent white boy can live twenty-three years without a single friend? There must be someone.”

“I ain’t from here. I used to have friends, a lot of them. But…” My toga slipped, I caught it and tightened it around me again. He looked at me with pity and waved for me to follow. Leading me back up the stairs, he quickly took me to a dark and windowless side room. There, he nipped on a light revealing a mountain of old clothing.

“This is kinda the lost and found.” He then paused and smiled and added, “Actually, it’s more like the live and die. Take what you need. Winter ain’t over yet.”

“I know you don’t have to do this. Thank you.”

“If I let you go out like that,” he said, “I’ll have mini-cam crews down here doing their breaking story about how we set our boys naked to the streets.”

He then left and I rummaged through the pile of old clothes, mainly rags. They were filthy and stinky and full of holes and fleas. I dressed in layers. The cleanest undergarment that I could locate was a pair of itchy wool plaid pants that had the seams sliced open. I put these on. Over them, I pulled on a pair of army khakis with a big shit-resembling tar stain over the ass. There were no finds in that pile. For an undershirt, I found a paint-speckled T-shirt that read, “I Survived The 1980 Transit Strike.” Over that, I used a petroleum-based, fluorescent red short-sleeved shirt that felt carcinogenic. Over that, I put on first a sweater, then a jacket, then an overcoat. On my head, I placed a beanie. There were only two pairs of shoes that didn’t have serious ruptures in them; a pair of hiking boots that smelled like something had died in them, and a clownishly floppy pair of white tennis shoes. There were no socks.