Sebastian – Non-Fiction Short Story Excerpt
Opening Paragraph
… and then he paused and looked at me for a moment and smiled, not the smile of a street jokester or comedy club hopeful, but the smile of a person thoughtfully and sadly trying to connect the darkness and chill of the evening with the remembered sunlight and warmth of rural Georgia and the stars and constellations he beheld in New Mexico. Then, after a moment, he asked me to take his picture and I, quietly surprised but deeply touched, said, “Yes, I would like to do that, but only if I can ask you a question after I take it….”
***
Excerpts from Story
It was a couple of days before Christmas and my wife and I were visiting my daughter and her husband in “New York”, though factually they lived in Jersey City across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan, but they, especially my son-in-law, insisted it was still really almost New York. And as I came up the stairs from the Grove Street subway station, the second stop in Jersey City after leaving Manhattan and speeding under the Hudson, I saw, surprisingly and pleasantly, a farmers’ market in the square around the station. My keeping-up-with-the-herd pace slowed, and as a delighted little boy, I was attracted to join all other bundled-warmly commuters moving and milling about the brightly lighted stalls and the Christmas trees twinkling with strands of small bright crystal-clear or multicolored lights.
***
So, I finished my tour of the outdoor market and, yes, it was delightful, satisfying, and fun. I, at least of all my family, am making the effort to meet and talk to people in New Jersey. Then as I was leaving the plaza, as I began to walk pass the entrance to the subway, I saw near the top of the subway stairs, a man saying something to a couple who just passed him by without looking at him or responding. Then, after a second or three of still smiling and watching them walk away, he, a very pleasant looking, neatly dressed young black man wearing a red Santa Claus cap with an enormous white fur fringe, saw and approached me, and I stopped. He wore a white polo shirt, a long black coat for warmth and black pants and upon his back was a silvered backpack. When he smiled, very white teeth animated his whole face.
“Can I tell you a joke?” he asked, his voice surprising in the lightness of his engaging words, his smile vulnerable on the edges in the effort to project friendliness and openness to yet another stranger, but his eyes, active and alive, searched my face with a quick and seemingly amused appraisal. In my own mind, I took a step back to take the time to absorb more fully the opening line of the beginning act of this interesting New Jersey persona.
After a moment, I said, “I’m not really into jokes,” which was true to a degree, but then with an attempt to engage and explore and discover and reward his vulnerability I quickly added, “But why would you want to tell me a joke?” I thought that perhaps he was a street entertainer, like a musician, hired by the city to draw and entertain the winter crowd of commuters, and to enliven the already busy outdoor farmer’s market with laughter.
The young man looked at me, again with a friendly, quiet smile, but now his eyes were more thoughtful than amused, and after a moment, his moment, he said, “Because I’m a homeless person and for a dollar I tell a joke, and I try to make people smile.”
***
“Well…you look healthy,” I said, and he smiled, and, after a moment, I also smiled and asked, remembering my manners, “What is your name?”
He smiled more – really a pleasant looking young man, maybe good-looking in certain circumstances – and then he said, “Sebastian.”
“Sebastian,” I repeated and nodded, but then all of a sudden strangely conscious of the injunction from my son-in-law and daughter not to engage vendors in conversation unless I bought something. So I reached for my wallet and added, “Well Sebastian, I know we have been talking so much that I’ve been keeping you from other people who you might have told your jokes to, so here,” I said, as I offered him a few dollars, “I want to pay you for at least some of your time you have spent with me.”
Sebastian again smiled, now with tinges of…I don’t know…perhaps memories. “Can I tell you a joke?” he asked as he took the money.
I smiled and said, “Yes.”
He then smiled more and told me a joke – a dirty joke! – that was rather weak, impotent as humor, and way less than memorable – definitely a C- at best.
“You can’t tell dirty jokes to all the people walking by” I said almost automatically. “You need some other jokes. Do you have jokes for the family?” I asked then paused, realizing there was something important that I had missed with Sebastian in our discussion. “Where’s your family? Are you from New Jersey? Do you have family here?”
Sebastian looked at me for a moment with quiet eyes and then his eyes looked to the cold concrete of the plaza, then after a moment back up to the scene around us, and his lips began to speak – urged on a few times by additional questions from me – of his early life in rural Georgia, of living in New Jersey somewhere, of a recent time in New Mexico on a ranch, on some isolated land … of all the stars he saw there at night – oh, so many – and of the constellations, for him bright stories sparkling within the immensity of a moonless night …
***
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This was is interesting