I never understood this guy. Hell, I never even knew his name. In fact I'd lay money down that nobody ever understood this guy. But I'm sure someone had to have known his name at some point or another. I mean, you can't go through life nameless. In any case, I was rapt with him.

"Boy, when I was just a kid I fell in love with this girl. Man, she was everything. She had everything. Just lookin' at this girl could knock you over, I mean flat on yer ass, a real beauty, y'know what I mean? And she wasn't one of those pretty girls that never got her hands dirty, I come over to her house once and what's she doing? She's fixin' her goddamn car! All covered in grease and smiling for me like an idiot. I'm tellin' ya', I fell in love with this girl."

The man was confusing. It's that simple. Every day he was in the park, every day wearing the same pristine brown suit, the same well-kempt hair, the same clean-shaven cheeks. And every day he had his bottle. Always a large bottle that had originally held some brand of iced tea but it never had a label when I saw him, and it never had iced tea. I used to think it was some kind of alcohol, but if it was, you couldn't tell by smelling it. And he always smoked. Ragged-looking, filterless, cheap cigarettes. He wasn't a good-looking guy and I didn't think he'd ever be a man of high society, but he always dressed as if he were a rich man, and acted the same.

"So I loved this girl, and she loved me, and we're as happy as teenagers in love can get, right? Everything's going great. We see each other every day, the kind of thing you see in movies, where there's a field of flowers and not a cloud in the sky. And one day out of the blue she tells me she's tired of me holding her back, that she wants to stop seeing me." He pauses here long enough to sigh and take another sip. "I never had any idea until she said it, boy. Not a clue. I thought she liked being with me, and she never gave me any reason to believe otherwise, and then I find out she thinks I'm strangling her. It was a mistake I never knew I made."

Every day I'd take my walk, he was in the same bench sitting there with his bottle and his cigarette. He didn't really smoke that much, he'd light up and take a puff or two once in a while and let the rest burn to ash. As soon as one burned down he'd light another.

"Didn't I tell ya'? Everything I do is wrong. Always was, is, and will be. No gettin' around it." Sip. Puff. "I dunno, kid. Maybe I just wasn't meant to be. Or maybe I was meant to be. Maybe I'm just meant to be wrong. I do what I do, and things go bad so that other things can go good. Maybe I'm just here to smooth the way for the bigger people to get by, y'know?" Pause, sip. "No you don't, yer just a kid."

The man always had a tale to tell, a point to talk about, or something, but he was always talking when I was around. I came to talk to him. Or rather to hear him talk. I never was able to say much. Sometimes what he said was judgemental, sometimes plain wrong. Sometimes he was right on and insightful. But I always listened intently to him. I don't know why, but I got fascinated every time we spoke.

"Nothing ever went right. I always made mistakes. I did all the wrong things in school. I lost all my jobs. I lost all my girls. I suppose I turned out how I am because of all that sh-" He pauses to look at me. "-tuff." Puff. He tosses the butt on the ground, grinds it under the heel of a loafer, and lights another stick. "Kid, here's some advice, me to you. I don't know ya' too well, despite seeing you here so much, but I gotta' tell ya' this. Look out for yerself. Recognize your mistakes before you make 'em. Make every decision thinking of how it's end result could hurt you most, and base your decisions on that. It makes things less painful when all's over."

How was I supposed to respond to that? I couldn't. I nodded and walked off. I thought I felt his eyes on my back as I went, but I knew it was just imagination. Sometimes I'd walk from sight, then turn around and sneak back to see where he went. Every time I left he sat watching the ground, lifting his eyes only to take a prim sip from his drunkard's bottle.