I was at the bus stop today....

And along came Heli... sort of out of nowhere....

That is the short form for Helmut. Which means bright courage, I believe... and of all the ones with that name I have ever met... none of them were normal in any way...

That guy has crossed my life path so many times, I can barely count them.

I was living in a very small room at the time, four units and a communal shower and wc. He moved in across the way, was very affable, funny.... came from a wealthy family, but was the 'black sheep'. In German, you would call him a 'Lebenskünstler' 'life artist'.... hardly ever worked, lived hand to mouth, and was basically a parasite. But funny.

I think I was in my mid-Thirties at the time... He was my age, and we would just talk. He had a sneakret passion for young guys. Not minors. However... he always found some older woman to leech on. I was amazed that he could DO that... (Gawwd, even at thirty I was so naive...)

At the time, he had a 'girlfriend' who was much older, and am convinced she didn't have all her cups in her cupboard, as we say.... And now I am going to give you an image where you have to wash your brain with bleach....

Peter would come over in the afternoon, and we would be just falling asleep, when all of a sudden, there would be pounding on the door across the way, and a woman yelling 'Heli, mach auf!' (Open up.) And if it took a long while, and a lot of pounding on the door... we knew... He had one of his young guys there, and his window was over the outside landing going downstairs and out of the court, so the kid had to get out that way. And if I asked Heli afterward, we were right in the assumption.

We used to laugh so hard over that... it was pathetic.

We moved into the house Peter inherited. I had become ill and was in hospital, and who was there for six weeks? Heli. Coincidink, as Maddow would put it....

Three years ago, I'm going down a main street from the train station... who do I see? Heli. Was mostly living in Thailand and Cambodia at the time, and loved him some boys, and had become diabetic, and the food was so good, everything was 'under control'. Uh-huh. He had terrible things to say about the Red Cross, and how they 'lived like kings' after the Tsunami, and I thought he was going back there.

But today, waiting at the bus station to go home....

There was Heli.... He is living in an apt over a grocery store up the street from Peter's....

Gawwd, how time flies....

So overweight, hearing aids, glasses.... tja, a shadow of his former self.

So while waiting, we did a quick catch-up. His sugar is hovering at over 300, his blood pressure is so high even his glasses won't help him see well, and on and on. Like two old fishwives at the market gosspiing and I had to speak loudly so he could hear....

And there were two oldies waiting for the bus, and they STARED?

I didn't care...

Actually, I found it funny...

So we rode into town, and he immediately chatted up an older woman, asking her about her dog, and muzzles for them being on the bus, and what the laws are... And she melted.... He said he got himself a 2 month old Pintscher, and feels better because he has to walk him all the time....

Nope, he hasn't changed a whit... But it made me laugh inwardly... muchly....

Such a 'Lebenskünstler'...

One thing struck me, however...

He had seen me going into the social services building last week... 'You don't live here, do you? ' 'Errm, no, it was about Peter, he lives down the street.'

Sometimes I walk around and think I am invisible, or something....

I never pay attention to what anyone else is doing. Kinda creepy...

I was going home one night in my home town, and there was this paranoid man? And he kept yelling at someone behind him, and went, 'Listen, I don't know YOU, and you don't know ME... Let's keep it that way!'

There was no one there.

Let's hope I never get like that...