Tony's returns. Night one.

Tony arrived with a bag from Target and the backpack we had given him. He had been staying somewhere on the Westside of Los Angeles (a favorable area) for roughly 10 days with some guy who had taken some romantic interest in him and then offered him some work, manual labor of sorts, like painting. But that story alters later, as he commuted from Silverlake (closer to Downtown Los Angeles or DTLA) to this guy's place in stories he tells me in days to follow. Perhaps it changed along the way. I am not doing a police investigation, so every detail isn't my primary objective. Once again, he had been robbed of his things, but not all of them. Among things that he seemed most disappointed about was that he has food there and couldn't get back in to retrieve it. Evidently the guy threatened to call the police if he didn't leave the property. My impulse would likely have been to let him call the police if he had my things. But, I am not him. I must remember drugs are involved, emotions were running particularly high it sounds here, so probably not worth seeing what judgement call the LAPD or whatever jurisdiction he was in would make over canned food and whatever else he might have had there. While I don't think Tony had drugs in his possession, he might have had paraphernalia, probably was some form of high and the other guy it sounds like may have been the source, creating a bad scenario all around and the homeless guy standing outside could most certainly lose out. Add that Tony is a person of color (Latino) and I don't believe the other guy is and let's face it, being the one legally on the premises builds credibility from the get go.

Unlike Tony's last visit, when he was hungry and could continually eat, he wasn't particularly hungry the first evening. He collapsed and slept some 13 hours the last time he was here. He was most certainly high on meth and he drank some 3 or 4 mini bottles of wine from the things he bought at Target. He has this particular taste for wine, red wine specifically. As a millennial Latino Angeleno who worked with kids in physical fitness it wouldn't have been my first thought of drink of choice. But we should not stereotype...

What we did see that night for the first time was he does have periods where he begins to be a bit delusional, has paranoid thoughts and rambles about them. That said, they aren't those of a "crazy man" making no sense carrying on, but these were sometimes out of nowhere yet very detailed and thought-out  theories of how Ariana Grande's father is worth $47 million (which might be roughly true and I just looked up her family history writing this) and that is why she had a chance, OK,  perhaps? But then evolved into something about her mother had him followed?, Father followed him? On a bus to California from NYC when he moved back here. Why? I didn't even want to ask. He would also see locations on television and seem to have been to many of them, some being so specific and potentially correct as the site that was used for filming rather than the location presented for the program it's hard to refute the idea he is mistaken or just making things up. But I have traveled a good bit of the world. I just don't remember hotel rooms of mediocre hotels or the tables at diners nearly as well as he seems to do. But, when and why was he at all these places? It is possible as many he mentioned were in New York and he lived in Brooklyn for several years. It certainly reminds you that people who are homeless often fell from "normal" lives.

For someone who had left and soured things with me following that, he returned and acted like an old buddy. Perhaps I was more vulnerable as well as this is all part of my mission as Executive Director at the HRM Foundation (hrmfoundation.org.)

Click here to read about Ariana Grande's father
Click here to read about Ariana Grande's reconciliation with her father
Arianagrande.com