Street Treats!

Maybe it's the remnants of any hunting/gathering instincts in me, but I have this habit of picking up things I find on the ground. I don't typically pick up trash (per se), but if it strikes my fancy, I'm taking it.

In my early days working Downtown, there was this large, red cardboard heart that was on the street along my walk from the Red Line Station to work. It caught my eye, and found it very interesting, aside from my natural affinity for hearts. In time, the thing would travel a bit, going up and down the street. One day, when I had a giant bag with me, I walked past the thing and swooped on it. It was a part of a box of chocolates, and even though it was on the street for some time, and it naturally became more and more ragged, it still looked good, and I still have it to this day. I've even photographed it a few times.

That's only one of my many, many street treat experiences. Jacks and I didn't intentionally look for things to pick up, but we wound up taking posters and signs that weren't properly tacked onto a surface. The rule was, if you can't get it off with your bare fingers, it's not a treat.

I think people have come to expect that of me, mostly. In more recent years, I haven't been doing it as much, as there was a time it struck me as not a safe and "adult" thing to do. After coming from lunch one day and taking Joy and Zeb back to PCC, I found this hamster toy that had the oozy stuff coming out of its mouth deal, kinda like those pooping pigs and cows, only this time, it came out of its mouth. I immediately picked it up and wanted to keep it, if not for Joy's outburst of "DON'T PICK THAT UP! What are you doing?!?!?" as I removed it from the ground. At the moment, I felt as though I really did something bad, and regretted picking the thing up, as much as I wanted it. In order to somehow assuage my guilt, I placed it on an access key port to lower those hydraulic barricades so electric carts could go through campus. Surprisingly enough, it stayed there for several weeks until it just vanished. I wonder had this happened a little later in getting to know Joy and she getting to know me would she have said anything? Oh well.

I do still have it in me, though. After re-moving my car around the neighborhood, I happened upon a disk, face up on the ground. It didn't look like it was there long, or at least it didn't seem like it was shuffled around a bit for the surface looked relatively smooth. I had no intention on keeping the disc, but my curiosity got to the best of me and I decided to pick it up and see what it was. Maybe it was someone's burned CD, or an album...who knows? When I pick it up and flip it around to see what it was, I see the title and images printed so that you can't really see what it says, "GAY GANGBANGERS" and it had a bunch of guys getting it from behind. If I assumed correctly, I happened upon someone's lost male gay porn.

At this point, I had two options. I could either put it back where I found it in hopes that the person who accidentally dropped his/her precious gangbang porn would find it no longer in possession and think that it maybe was on the sidewalk of some small Pasadena street, or put it back. I wasn't going to be all, "EW! GAY PORN! BAD TOUCH!" and toss it away, because that's just downright silly. It looked clean anyway. At the same time, it would have looked kinda funny if I just ever-so-gently placed the disc exactly where I found it as well. Of course, this would also mean some other person may happen upon it and keep it for themselves, thinking, "YAY! FREE GAY PORN!"and I found that thought to be wrong. So I decided that I would be that some other person who happened upon it and kept it for themselves, thinking, "Um...I now have gay porn."

I brought it back to work with me and left it on my desk, face down (obviously). I hope my boss all of a sudden realizes he needs to find a disc on my desk and checks to see if that one is the one he's been looking for, only to find gay porn instead of artwork.

I just don't know what to do with it. I don't believe in throwing perfectly functional things away (I have a hard enough time throwing away marginally functional things), but I have no reason nor desire to have/watch gay male porn. Maybe what I should do is dedicate some time, scouring the mean streets for random items, as well as gather the ones I already have, and in time, I'll have a collection of them and create some art installation using just found objects. If I'm lucky, and there are more people out there in the world like my roommate who just kicked our old DVD player to the curb simply because it wasn't working as well as it used to and she no longer wanted it, pair it up with a television, and I've got a gay porn screening.

What will probably happen, most likely, is that I'll finally bring it home or have it somewhere, get really really drunk with people, somehow remember I have the thing and decide to put it on for shits and giggles, only to probably turn it off not long after it was played.

Maybe I should just find a lonely homosexual male who likes that kind of stuff to give it to...provided, he doesn't already have that one...