John the Prophet

When Mark Hotz came up to visit, we went to Autonomous Government's place, got high and went on top of a parking garage to enjoy the view. Once up there, we heard some shouting down below. Perhaps, it occured to me, someone shouting up at us, in a conversational matter. I could not determine if this was true though.

But after several minutes, from behind us, we heard a shout too. We all turned and a figure stood by the elevator on the other side of the parking garage. He was greeting us. In a purely defensive manner, my friend Mark looked at me and said, "...get ready." I'm pretty sure he was ready to fight whoever this was.

But it was just a homelessmen. As predicted. He got closer and I greeted him. I am as friendly as possible with these people, and almost more positive than with regular people. He had a kind face, stylish beard, and old dirty clothes. He was very friendly, but proved also crazy. He walked up to the side, placing his arms on the wall beside me, Mark to my left, Ashley, then AG. When I exchanged name's with me and everyone else, he said his name was John, but also asked "Who's the girl with the cute butt?" to which AG tactfully replied, "Oh, hi. I'm A..." and shook his hand. A nice save.

I asked him what he did, you know, every day. He told me that he blessed people. I suddenly remembered shaking his blackened dirty hand and feeling kind of funny. This was either the violation of my hygiene, or a religious experience. He also made fun of a passing police cruiser, shouting "Get lost, piggies. Oink, oink, watch out, they'll take you off to Pumpkinland." I inquired as to what or where Pumpkinland is, and he told me it's where they dress everyone up in blaze orange.

I asked him about blessing people, but being fairly burned, I had trouble getting my point across to him. I resulted in just asking him, "Are you a Prophet?" My use of the term prophet intended to be more like Apostle but coming out wrong. He stared at me for a while with a strange look in his eye, and I didn't know if he received my meaning or not. Mark stood very tall behind me with the intention of intimidating him, thinking he was perhaps about to attack me That was not the case though, I think he was judging me. John responded that he believed in Jesus Christ and kind of laughed it off.

At one point prior to that, he complained about getting his bike stolen. I empathized with him hard on this one. He said he knew the guy, but the guy still stole his bike. That just sucks. He told me how he used to get everywhere quickly with the bike, and had fun riding about Portland. But now he has to walk everywhere, and that sucks. I agreed.

When we left the parking garage, he ran into the same elevator as us. We became all simultaneously worried about him following us without saying a word to each other. But when he got in I heard him mutter that he was "one of the good guys." I believed this. At the bottom of the elevator, he took off in the opposite direction to all of our silent relief. I shouted goodbye to him. He was a nice homelessmen.

And I think he blessed me.