#6

I work with a man named Saul

He’s in his early fifties, is a bone thin hirsute, a yoga freak, an ex-mime/actor, often volunteers for both life drawing courses and his local Jewish retirement community, a paranoid conspiracy theorist, a stoner, a lecher, a Korean “massage” frequenter, wears thread-bare clothing with beret, and basically one of the oddest most entertaining individuals that I have ever met.

Saul’s antics will frequent these Journal entries.

Some time ago, a coworker and I were walking into work together. Once we were in sight of the building, we saw Saul chaining his bicycle up to the back of the building. A large unsavory individual was quickly approaching him from behind. He had mistaken this skinny, disheveled hairy old man as an easy mark and was about to steal the bike. My coworker and I were too far away to do anything and too surprised to yell out to him.

The thug loudly and aggressively addressed Saul, who was crouched near the pavement, playing with the lock.

Immediately upon hearing the man’s voice, Saul sprang up, spun around like some ILM doctored kung-fu character, and was holding a straight edge razor to the mugger’s throat. His eyes were bugged out and the veins were bulging from his chicken throat. He yelled out at the monstrously large thug in his raspy high pitched voice, “Get the f….. Away from me, Mother F…..er!!!!!” before lunging forward and waving the straight-edge back and forth.

The mugger was terrified and kept jumping backwards half a step with each swing of the razor before turning around and walking quickly down the street, panic stricken and humiliated.

As the mugger disappeared down the street, Saul, with the razor still in his hand, screamed out to him, “Come back here Mother F…..er! I’m going to cut your f……ing dick off!!!!!”

I haven’t seen the mugger in the neighborhood since.