TODO: more to finish about this night, and decide how much to publish to the Internet.
Yesterday’s live stream was filled with surprises, many of them downright terrifying. Sometimes I wonder if people will even believe that those events actually happened. (So many people are willing to fake stuff just to get noticed, unfortunately.) I have to take a quick break and capture what happened so I can remember it later. I definitely didn’t have any trouble remembering it last night. In fact, I couldn’t fall asleep until 5am this morning haunted by what I had seen up close and personal and just couldn’t forget — especially where Eric and Harry were sleeping that night, a night that dipped well below freezing. Ironically, I had to take a sleep aide just to get a minimal amount of sleep and forget that I had just enabled Eric to buy 100 dollars worth of crack (and that he was most likely going to spend all that money on that, because he said so when he thought he was off camera).
Cashing a 100 dollar winning lottery ticket for Eric (to buy crack with) was not my intention at all. I saw a guy without a leg in a wheelchair on a freezing night, far from anywhere that could be considered a safe place to sleep. What the fuck was I supposed to do? There was no way I was going to give him money. I’ve had too much experience to understand that almost never helps their immediate needs. But damned if I let him stay there without help. He gave me the usual bullshit about stuff he needs money for. He was a horrible liar. But still, I choose to give him the benefit of the doubt. I walked to meet his “ride” who turned up to not be working at that time. Now I knew he had no ride home or “to get kerosene”. So on the way to our car we bump into an affluent regional entrepreneur and I paused with him so he could beg from her. I was annoyed, but what the hell. She ends up giving him a “winning” lotto ticket for 100 dollars. So after attempting at one closed Circle-K, we went to another and I cashed it for him. Sure enough, the ticket was real.
I left the camera on and recorded everything he said about me while I was in the store. And after reviewing it when I got home realized just how addicted and lost Eric was. He was saying things like “I don’t wanna spook him.” It’s hard to look past his complete entitled, ingratitude to see the disease he is fighting. I really want to confront him “at church” on Sunday and tell him I know exactly how much he wants to play me. He even tried to trick me into calling is drug dealer for him. I’m so fucking glad that call never went through. I came literally five seconds from putting my personal phone number into a drug-dealer’s phone history. That’s when Harry showed up.
For the record, I never wanted to give Eric money. What was I suppose to do? Just let him cash it himself?
Harry, “the butcher” working at Value Village
TODO
Should I post the VOD?
Against the suggestions of my stream, I went ahead and told (almost) the whole story to Doris. She was visibly affected and terrified for my life, and hers. She reminded me of something very obvious. If I confront Eric about my discovery it could well become something that does not give him pause, but angers him, or worst of all, causes him to share what happened, my name, stream, location, and description with his drug dealer. Eric and Harry might not have phones and resources to do something to me, but his drug dealer definitely would.
Doris then shared that a random person was murdered in August last year about five miles from that location, in Magla park, across the street from where my old girlfriend (the hula-hooper) lived, shot by two desperate young people.
The prospect that I could be putting my families life in jeopardy made me so sick I almost vomited at the rather obvious realization. The whole idea that things to escalate, and that by helping these people falling on hard times would cut into the income of their fucking evil suppliers, terrified me. It didn’t help that I read a whole article on “beggar cartels” that actually remove children’s limbs to make them better beggars and that funding that enterprise is what keeps it going. Every case is different though. It’s a tough question with how to treat them and what to do. But “looking them in the eye” and acknowledging them as human beings is a start (as one author wrote).