Rendez-vous with a drunk

Yesterday, as I was biking home from downtown Aarhus, I decided to stop by my favourite spot in the forest. It has benches and a great view of the beach below, the beach to the south (Moesgaard, my childhood wilderness), the marina and the incomparable container port or whatever those things are called. I sat down and stared into space.

A man walked up and sat next to me. He told me he was born in Italy and moved to Aarhus when he was 1. He said "I know this forest better than my own pocket, if I had any pockets". He told me he was a drunk and had made a complete mess of himself the night before. He told me he was 52, double my age and proceeded to ask what kind of person I was. I told him I was the kind of person who enjoys a spot like this one. He talked about studying philosophy, learning martial arts and drinking all your money away. He said he had no cigarettes left and that he once climbed to the top of the crane at the nearby construction site. When he came down he called the company that owned it and asked how high it was. 50 meters.

An older man came by and said that if he - the drunk - was considering to take the giant leap from a crane, he should let his hair grow first so that he would be landing on something soft. And maybe bring a pillow. Then he looked at my bike and said he wanted to steal it. His family standing a few steps away frowned on the whole thing. The old man said that they should put different screws on bikes even if it's more expensive. He said he liked its colour (it's bright and fancy green). The old man and his family walked off. The drunk told me he had written a personal add for the local newspaper.

"Ice cold psychopath with no sense of humour seeks woman for mutual blaming"

We laughed. He told me he had studied communication for 13 years. He used to study philosophy in university but got annoyed with the never-ending reading. Later, it turned out he had been involved with Scientology and that's where he learned about communication. In his opinion, a new dictionary for academics - called Blue Language as in blue collar/white collar distinctions - was the saviour of all the snot-nosed kids at the universities. He said that his soldier friend tried to communicate in wars. That wars begin when communication stops.

He told me I was a nice person and that on top of that I even look nice. He asked me to check out his window when passing by as it has a skull with a crystal inside - and when he turns on the light in the room (lamp made out of posters), the eyes of the skull light up. Next to the skull, he said, is a statue of Lenin. It looks weird, he said.

On my way home I wondered why I never met such people before...