While I was drawing this, a boy wearing long, golden-mousey coloured hair, a leather biker’s jacket, black waiter-style trousers, and skate shoes pulled up on a skateboard, flipped the board into the air with his toe, and then caught it.
‘Hey, you got a cigarette by any chance?’ he called to me.
‘No,’ I told him, ‘but if I did have one, I would not give it you anyway, because smoking is for idiots.’
‘Darn!’ he said and laughed, and I laughed too.
‘My name is Daniel,’ the boy told me, ‘but you can call me Blue.’
‘Hello, Blue,’ I said to the boy, and he leaned forward to shake my hand.
Then the boy asked if I lived nearby. ‘I am an empath, I couch surf,’ he said, without waiting for my answer. ‘And it’s kind of cool.’
‘How old are you, Blue?’ I asked him.
’22,’ he said, fishing around in his backpack and finding a cigarette. ‘And I have been couch surfing for four years.’
‘You educated?’ I asked him. ‘You have a job?’
Blue, who was flitting about like an anxious comedian about to go on stage, laughed loudly, which made me laugh too.
‘I was educated at Juvi Hall,’ he told me, as he lit his cigarette and then spat on the road.
‘Blue . . .’ I said, standing up and taking my headphones off. ‘Go back to trade school and become a plumber, you won’t make a dollar off being an empath, and couch surfing when you’re 50 is not much fun.’
‘Why a plumber?’ Blue said to me. ‘Why does it have to be a plumber?’
‘It doesn’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t give a shit if you’re a plumber or not. Just get a trade.’
Blue started laughing.
‘You made a good joke about plumbing and shit,’ he said, and we both laughed again.
A Hundred Houses 