I was reminiscing today about a first date I had back in the late summer/early fall of 1991. I had only spoke to her on the phone previous to this time, until this one day she came to my work to meet me. Since I’m a chicken shit for the most part, I was loving it. I offered to take her to lunch and she accepted.

I worked in downtown Boston at that time, a few doors down from the old Boston Garden. At that time the Grateful Dead were in town, and the Deadheads had conglomerated amongst the entire area, from Canal st to Friend st. It was a wild week. The smell of incense and pot were in the air all week and permeated in your clothes.

I also had the pleasure of witnessing a couple having sex in the back of a van. There’s nothing quite like the quick glimpse of the back of a man’s ass. Why couldn’t the girl be on top for christ’s sake?? I’ll never get that view out of my head. It’s kind of like when my pal Steve & I rented Shaft in Africa. If we knew Roundtree was going to run around with a spear shaking his bare ass at us, we might have rented Coffy instead. Sheesh.

So I had to bring this girl to lunch by weaving through the crowd of tie dyes to bring her to eat. After lunch, we headed back to my place of employment. On the way, this fella named Steve stopped us. (not to be confused with the Roundtree ass-hating, friend Steve). I am NOT exaggerating when I tell you that this guy hadn’t showered in a LONG time. His hair was matted down so much it could have passed for a Speedo swim cap. He had only 2-3 teeth total that I saw when he opened his mouth. He was wearing this brown corduroy number from the 70’s. He could have passed for a shorter, dirtier hippy version of Joe Buck.

We had a interesting exchange. He had a heavy drawl and at that time I had a ‘wicked’ bad Boston accent. It went something like this:

Steve:  “Hah! Ah’m Steve…. Ah hitchhahked all da way from Virgin-yee”.

Jeff:     “Hi Steve. How ah you?”

Steve:   “Great! Can ah read yeeou a po-em?”

Jeff:      “Shu-ah” 

So, he reads the poem to us. I can only paraphrase it for you and give you a small piece. It went something like this:

“FUCK the government. FUCK the government. FUCK the government. FUCK those of you who take from society”.

I think you get the point. 

Jeff:      “Wow! That was awesome, Steve. Would you take a couple of dollahs fah reading it?” 

Steve:    “Ah would be much appreciative. Thank ye”.

I gave him a few bucks and then went to shake his hand. When I did, I was overwhelmed with horror to find that the man had NO thumb on his right hand. There was just a tiny stub there. I’m glad I didn’t do the slide-in handshake, where your hand slides in for a strong shake. Otherwise, I would have had the unpleasant encounter with the stub. Luckily I just went for the soft approach so I was able to notice the handicap. I ended up shaking the tops of his four fingers.

As we were walking away I was stupefied. I had shaken a dirty hand and I couldn’t wait to get to work to wash up. This to be no offense to good ol’ Steve, mind you. I have OCD as you now know.

Well, I wasn’t much different back then. Well, at least that girl ended up being my girlfriend… I can handle extra wash time for that.

When I tell most people this story, they ask me what I thought happened to his thumb. I never really thought about that. But I did always wonder how the guy hitchhiked. 

 

 

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