About 2 years ago, i had the pleasure of spending 2 weeks in a psychiatric facility after a severe depressive episode. While there I encountered many characters. There was the pervy old guy who farted in my face, sweet kid named Malik who liked to frighten the nurses and a bipolar pothead named Charles who was severely in denial about his diagnosis. My favorite, however was a guy called Lil Nate. Lil Nate was this homeless guy who looked like a tiny , black, toothless Santa Claus. He was about 5’2″ and spoke like a tornado. He never bathed and always had this little wet spot on the front of his pants like he’d wet himself, which judging by the smell, he had. You never knew what you were going to get when you spoke to him. It could be really unnerving at times. Everyday he had a new identity for himself. My favorite was Sweetback. Sweetbackwas a badass who taught me how to disarm a gunman, then 2 minutes later Lil Nate was back, telling me that only the devil smiled all the time and that I should stop smiling at him. Then he told me he was father, Elijah Mohammed and things got a little weird. The next day he’d be back to normal, well as normal as he could be. Sometimes Nate was so lucid I wondered if the rest of it was an act. Maybe he just go off on making people squirm.Either way I grew to like the man a lot and apparently he liked me too. He got all misty eyed when he found out I was leaving, and told me I was a good kid and that I should be happy. It was pretty sound advice that I am trying to put into action. About 2 months ago I ran into Lil Nate outside of a store, he was pretty wasted and didn’t remember me, which bummed me out but whatever at least i still have my memories.
