He lives at the mouth of an alley. Two blocks east of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Five blocks northwest of Underground Atlanta. Six miles west of my third floor luxury apartment. Millions of miles from my world, my perceptively invulnerable reality.
My watch tells me I've been walking through Atlanta for over an hour. I pause, raising the camera to my eye. My finger gently squeezes the shutter release, the warm plastic slipping in my sweaty palms. Blood rushes through my ears. I hear my heart beat and the faint imaginary static of my shoes sizzling on the pavement. Another hundred steps, I turn left. The sign above is loose on its hinges, not a breath of wind to disturb it. It reads Fairlie St NW. It's no more than an alley to me. In seven months, what sits at the end will inspire me. In five minutes, with embarrassment and intrigue, it will open a small window to my darkest fears.
There are two men in the alley with me. A hot sun bakes the asphalt infusing the stale air with the musky pungent aroma of urine and dumpster fumes. Overhead the rubber belts on the air conditioners scream ceaselessly, the benefactors of building tenants oblivious to their piercing shrills and constant lifeless self-sacrifice.
The first man is asleep, legs outstretched. A flat bottle inside a tall paper bag rests molested next to his stomach, its upturned cap by his shoeless foot. My awareness becomes discomfort. I notice myself unconsciously walking diagonally toward the opposite wall of the alley. As I pass, I see his chest rise and fall in quick gasps. I notice the wet concrete beneath his swollen abdomen as the potent smell of his shit stained pants hits me. His eyelids aren't closed, but his eyes aren't open. I turn in shame, quickening my pace. The camera's weight is too much for me to lift.
Just past the misery of the first, I approach the second. At the mouth of the alley, he sits with one leg crossed over the other in a wheel chair I'm not sure he needs. With his chin down, he shakes his head back and forth, muttering something I can't understand much less hear over the wailing air conditioners. Their cries become madly deafening and hysterical. His swollen, jaundiced hands broadcast an untold story of alcoholism, malnutrition, and possible liver damage. He clutches a white napkin in his right hand.
I am about to begin my last year of college. Groomed by conflicting cultures, I believe the best years of my life lie ahead. Yet, I consider the reality that the nameless man in the wheelchair in front of me felt this at a point in his life. At some point, his hope and inspiration surrendered to misery and pain. I'm standing in this alley as an observer violating my optimisms with the stark reality of causation. I raise my hand to my head attempting to wipe the sweat from my brow. The camera. Holding my breath, nervous, I squeeze the shutter. Snap. I pray the sound doesn't bring him out of his delirium, that he doesn't get up and curse me for immortalizing his misery. Tearing my heart out, I can't cope with the amplitude of his curses against himself, God, and anyone else responsible for his malcontent.
Hands trembling, the camera falls to my side. I dislocate myself from my own embarrassment as I walk away, too ashamed to ask of he needed anything from another human being. The distance between us grows. Over the next seven months, I tell my closest friends the story of this day many times over from the comforts of living rooms and bars. I share the photograph I took. The nameless man at the mouth of the alley never leaves my memory. He waits; sitting in the unanswered miserable darkness of the places we don't dare to visit; not in our cities; nor our minds.
