Who is Mr. Brooklyn Jai Charles* ?
a gonzo social work short
He lives off the Rockaway Ave stop on the C train, where Bed-Stuy & Bushwick, start to bleed into each other.
I hear him first as I pretend not to notice a “Yo!” from a distance.
I dial him on my flip work phone (Social work agency budget) for him to answer me on the street,”Yeah that’s me, you Joe?”
“Yeah,” says me dropping an octave. “Mr. Charles?”
I follow him up a walk up, three flights, and he’s panting when we get to his door. He’s wearing a New Era fitted, brown and maroon with the Yankees logo, black horned rimmed glasses, matching faded red leather jacket, and jeans. Straight up early 00s pimp.
Society says he has mental problems, he believes what society says about him. He tells me he has bi-polar (with psychotic features says his therapist who referred him to me).
He struggles with addiction, Benzos and beer right now, says it’s a better mix than before: crack cocaine and hard cheap booze from the corner. Says he wants to be honest about all this.
Says his bipolar puts him into these long lost depressions roaming, blacking out on broken cement, waking up to dandelions in the summer, to frozen dirt in the winter.
Says he has a woman that keeps him straight. Says shes loyal and always trying and that he wanted to do better for her. I half-believed him, the belief left me half-guilty.
“She stayed and waited while I was locked up seven years?” (poor girl).
Says his relationship skills have improved due to previous experience. He wants to do better but he has mental health issues.
He tells me that his mother just passed away and that lead to his most recent relapse back to the harder stuff.
When he’s going through his mania, he gets violent and fights especially if intoxicated. Says it would be better if he just goes ahead and get this surgery he’s been procrastinating on, something about his joints deteriorating. Says it would put him in a walker for awhile and keep him housebound, where he can be preoccupied with his video games and sober up.
Wearing his shirt in his underpants^ he grabs my hand and gives me a bro hug, tells me to call him “Jai” (like J). We talk sports as I led the way down the steps and to the street, says he’s upset about all his Niners retiring (2015, they fire Jim Harbaugh!), this might explain the red but it could be a chicken or egg kind of thing. The sun is shining, warm and beautiful, I’m squinting, I should be wearing sunglasses. Mr. Charles horned rimed glasses start transitioning to shades. Fucking Superfly.
I walked an extra stop to think more about Mr. Charles. The next stop was where the A, C, J, & L cross. A spectacular brown metal overpass, circa early Industrial Revolution, covers the sky thundering with rolling metal crates filled with people safely listening to tiny headphones, inside them, artists sing sad songs, on their way to wherever their journey takes em. Sort of makes you proud of the ingenuity of our kind.
Before walking up, I find a park bench to sit on and light a cigarette. In the park I share the company with a pair of nervous teenagers ready to scare your ignorant grandma, an older man speaking to an old flip phone in a strange European tongue (Greek?). Gray tarps piled in a distant corner which could be another person trying to sleep.
What if Mr. Charles was never convinced he lost it so bad he needed meds? Legal and otherwise. What if he never got so sad to think anything more of himself or his world? What if his roots where more solid, if his moms didn’t succumb to the Crack Epidemic that shattered these communities with families like these?
How we take for granted an unknown peace.
Brooklyn Charles is just the newest name on my caseload. I have to help society decide if this man is dangerous or just another modern Bukowski?
^ I couldn’t help to think how this man… with his plain white t shirt tucked into his boxers… something about him… reminded me of Dad. What if Dad got arrested for a DUI while driving his cab recklessly on the street of LA. What if he was gone for years?
* Names where changed because privacy is a right. #betterpractice
