Dad sleeps too heavy. Some people, like Mom, are light sleepers. I think it’s because she has really large ear canals. Even from upstairs and down the hall she can hear the living room TV. I have to keep the volume turned extra low to watch anything with gun shots, car chases, or people who use any swears worse than the word “ass”.

But Dad is different. Once he goes to sleep, the only person that can wake him up is himself.

Dad teaches Chinese History and Chinese Language Studies at USC. He says reading Chinese is a lot more tiring than reading English because you actually have to think. Also, he says that when he was growing up in China he could never sleep.

“There are too many people in China,” he says, “So many people. Also Chinese people are always yelling all the time. Even when they just talking they sound like they yelling. Very noisy in China.”

Dad’s only picture from China.

Dad’s heavy sleeping used to be a really cool thing about him. When Mom would go visit Aunt Darshan in Berkeley I could watch whatever I wanted after ten PM. Even Skinemax. That kicked ass.

For a while even Mom didn’t mind Dad’s sleeping. After dinner he would lie down on the couch with a book and say, “I gotta read now,” but would immediately fall asleep instead. And she’d curl up on the couch and put his arms around her. They looked funny lying there like that, him snoring into her hair.

But these days she gets really annoyed at him when he goes to sleep after dinner. He used to help her wash the dishes but now he just goes to the couch with his book. She once got so mad that she threw a wet dishrag at him and it wrapped around his face. She got even more pissed when he didn’t even get up and she had to peel it off of him.

Also one time I had a Bach Society recital early on a Sunday morning and Dad was supposed to take me but I couldn’t get him to wake up. Nothing sucks more than having to lug a miniature sousaphone on the Santa Monica Blue Bus. It definitely doesn’t outweigh being able to watch Skinemax.

“Your father’s sleeping his life away,” Mom said while dumping egg shells into the composter, “He goes to sleep hoping that everything’ll just get done and he won’t have to lift a finger.”

“Maybe he has some type of disorder,” I said.

“Yeah. Your father is lazy.”

Mom tested this theory by not doing anything for two weeks. She didn’t Windex the kitchen, didn’t vacuum, didn’t cook, didn’t do any chores at all in the hopes that Dad would pick up the slack.

But Dad didn’t do anything. He just slept with his books. Every night we ate tofu dogs and cold couscous. Dishes piled up, and according to Brian Yamagashi the kitchen sink started to smell like a hobo’s anus. I wore the same jeans for a whole week even though there was a serious PB&J stain on the crotch.

Eventually Mom got totally frustrated and gave in. While we finally cleaned the kitchen, I jumped when she broke a dish in the sink. Then she broke another. And that’s when she stopped washing altogether and just stood there. All I heard for a long time was the water running.

And in the living room, Dad slept.

Around this time McKenna adopted this program called the CEC - Complete Education Curriculum. Some parents were mad that their kids were only doing math and science stuff and weren’t reading enough books about culture.

“I don’t intend to raise a robot,” said Dr. Westhelm at the Parents and Teachers Together meeting, “I want my son to be exposed to a liberal arts education, to be well-rounded. I’m talking about literature survey courses, art classes - ”

Wolfgang Westhelm was actually already pretty good at drawing, but he only really drew two things: Buffed out warriors and Lara Croft naked.

The Lieutenant Governor of California, Ruis Munoz, had toured the McKenna campus earlier that morning and echoed Dr. Westhelm’s concerns:

“The State of California has always set aside generous funding for the McKenna Learning Center and other public institutions that educate our most brilliant youngsters. After all, these are our future leaders.” He took a sip of bottled water. “But California needs leaders not only in the sciences but in the arts, culture, politics…”

It was around this time that I was wishing that they had sent the real Governor instead of just his lieutenant. Then I could’ve gotten him to autograph my copy of Terminator 2. Plus Brian Yamagashi wanted to ask him if he had ever murdered anyone with his bare hands.

So that week Professor Stamp and Dr. Pants met with the Board and they came up with the CEC, which pretty much only meant that everyone had to start taking these gay art classes taught by these hippie ladies. One of them was named Shoshanna and when she lifted her arms up you could see that she had braided her pit-hair. It was totally nasty.

Also some of us in the older echelons had to start doing these sociological impact projects. It was Dad’s turn to take me to MLC that day but he overslept, so when I got there I found out all the really cool projects had already been taken. Shelley Stevens got “Graffiti: Street Art or Atrocity?” Magdalene Johnson got “American Turntablism”. Wolfgang Westhelm got “Videogame Violence and Its Cultural Impact on Society”.

I got “Homeless in California: Patterns and Solutions”.

I told Zooey that the project I got sucked ass.

“Your project doesn’t suck ass, Arnold,” Zooey said, “It’s the most hands-on, most worthy project of the bunch!”

Zooey is 25 years old. She’s my student counselor, which means that it’s her job to make sure I do all my MLC work. So she’s always on my back all the time. Plus she keeps trying to frame things so they sound good but in the end you know they’re still crappy.

“Dude,” Brian Yamagashi said, “Following hobos around sounds like it sucks ass to me.” (Brian Yamagashi’s current favorite word at the time was “hobo”.)

“‘Hobo’ is a derogatory term,” Zooey said, “They’re called Transients.”

“Whatever,” I said, “I wanna do Videogames with Wolfgang because that sounds awesome.”

“Now Arnold,” said Zooey in her talking-to-a-puppy-that-just-peed voice, “You and I are going to have a great time with this project. We’ll explore the social and psychological impact of homelessness all over Santa Monica. It’ll be splendid!”

Zooey was the only person I knew that used the word “splendid”. And anything she called splendid usually sucked.

“Hearing peoples’ life stories will be really interesting,” she said, “I think you’re really going to learn something.”

We spent the next week talking to homeless people and asking them fill out a questionnaire. Most of them were pretty nice because they were lonely and just wanted to talk to someone. And that was OK, but around the same time Shelley Stevens got to help paint a new mural on the side of an elementary school. Magdalene Johnson got to interview DJ QBert, and Wolfgang Westhelm got to play Grand Theft Auto.

“…I came back from Vietnam when was 22,” said a homeless guy named Ralph, “And they spit on us. I was 19 when I went and I came back 3 years later, a man who had seen too much death already. And all I wanted to do was drink… And so I did. And the girl I was gonna marry was already married to another man, and my mother was suicidal - she had been that way while I was growing up too - and I tried to take care of her but she killed herself… She killed herself… And that’s when I discovered Heroin…”

What Zooey thought would be “splendid” turned out to be really depressing. And while everyone else was having an awesome time, all we got was blisters from walking all day and tape recorded interviews that always ended with people crying. All it did was make me tired and sad.

This stuff even started to get to Zooey. She tried to stay upbeat, but one afternoon after spending the day interviewing homeless people, I spied her in the dean’s office talking to Professor Stamp:

“I just don’t think this is an appropriate project for an eleven year-old,” she said.

Through the crack in the doorway I could see Professor Stamp’s blubbery mouth frown. “These projects are all about real-world situations designed to stretch our students’ thinking about real-world events -”

“I know, but this situation is a little too real for a child.”

“There’s no time to assign a new project,” said Professor Stamp as his bulk shifted in his seat, “You’ve already invested a week in this. That’s seven afternoon sessions of time frittered away… Just do two more days of interviews and guide Arnold to the simplest conclusion you can come up with. Something optimistic, even if it’s manufactured.”

And then he shook his finger with each word: “And no more junkies!”

Later that day they were pouring new cement on the sidewalk in front of our house so I came in through the back door. And the first thing I saw was Mom on the phone, hugging herself tight like it was cold. Her eyes were red, and as soon as she saw me she wiped them real quick and said, “I’ll call you back” and hung up.

And then I got this sick feeling in my stomach, the kind you get when you realize you just missed overhearing something that you know you wouldn’t have wanted to overhear in the first place.

“Arnold,” she said, her voice trembling in a weird way, “Are you hungry? You want me to heat up some quiche or something?”

“Where’s Dad?” I asked. In the living room there was an empty sag in the couch where Dad normally took his Thursday afternoon nap.

Mom wiped her nose with a dishrag. “Arnold, your father is going to stay with Uncle Chung for a while.”

That sick feeling got stronger. “For how long?”

“I don’t know,” Mom said, “That’s up to him.”

And it’s weird — her saying that made me feel really exhausted. I felt too tired to move, too tired to do anything. I didn’t want to go back to MLC the next day, I didn’t want to go to UCLA, and I didn’t want any quiche. I just wanted to crawl into some place tiny and quiet and not see anybody.

And that night, even though I felt totally tired and totally out of it, I couldn’t sleep.

Zooey said that we only had to do one last round of interviews. Then we would take all of our recordings and the photographs we shot and put them together in Final Cut and make a documentary. That was OK with me, though I was dreading having to listen to all the peoples’ sad stories over again. The first time was hard enough.

So Zooey and I were walking around Douglas Park when she said that she had to go to the bathroom. (Zooey claims to have the world’s smallest bladder, which may be a joke. I’m not sure.) So she gave me the camera and tape recorder to hold while she went into Adrian’s Bagels to pee.

And that was when I saw him across the street.

He definitely looked homeless to me - dressed in old clothes, his body in that slumped, defeated posture that I had seen tons of times in the past week. But there was one thing that was different about him from all the others we had interviewed: He was much younger. Maybe thirty-five years old at the oldest.

So I walked over and pulled the questionnaire and a pen out of my bag, ready to hand to him as I asked, “Sir, I’m doing a school project and was wondering if you could give me permission to do an interview?”

But he didn’t turn to look at me. His eyes were fixed on someplace else. I turned to try to see where he was staring - it was either at a parked Buick or the front window of Martell’s Used Bookstore - I couldn’t tell.

“Sir,” I said again, “If you have time for an interview it would really help me with my project.”

Again there was no response. He just stared straight ahead. His mouth moved slightly, as if slowly sounding out a word, but there was just silence.

And now, up close, I could see that his clothes weren’t worn out like the others’ - they were just old, the kind of things that Grandpa would wear. Or rather, the kind of things he would’ve worn when he was younger. And instead of being faded and ragged, they were well-kept and clean.

Then I tapped him on the arm… But the strangest thing happened: I pulled my hand away because as soon as I touched his sleeve, I felt a pinch of cold, like I had just touched flagpole in winter.

That’s when I saw that there was steam coming off of him, like an ice cube left out in the open. He was surrounded by a very thin layer of very cold air. I had never seen anything like it.

That’s when Zooey walked up to me saying, “Arnold, I’ve made a decision: Screw Professor Stamp. We’ve done enough interviews, we’re going home.” But when she saw the man standing there frozen, she stopped in her tracks.

“Sir,” I asked, “Are you OK?”

“Let’s go, Arnold,” Zooey said, “Leave him alone, we’re done.”

The man never turned to look at either of us; it was like he saw some far away disaster coming toward us in slow motion, and he was unable to warn us. It was like swimming through invisible mud, stuck.

He didn’t even say anything when I snapped a picture of him with the camera. But then Zooey grabbed my wrist and pulled me away.

“Is he OK, Zooey?” I asked as she quickly walked us away.

“Arnold, between you and me, I think that man’s on drugs.”

But I knew that he wasn’t. Not that I’d ever seen anyone on drugs in person, but I have watched HBO. And people on drugs are usually totally wigged out, not comatose.. Unless they’re on mushrooms. Plus drugs do not make the air around you drop to freezing temperatures.

Every time the bus rolled by Douglas Park I looked out the window and saw him. Sometimes he was in the same position he was in when I first spotted him; other times he was in a totally different place in the park.

“Hey,” I said to him one morning, “My name’s Arnold. What are you looking at?”

Again, he didn’t respond. He just kept staring ahead at whatever he was staring at.

So that afternoon I mapped out the following diagram of his movements:

I noticed that he walked very, very slowly around the park in the same pattern. It took approximately one hour and twenty-two minutes to walk to the end point, at which point he slowly turned around and returned to the exact same position he had started in.

I saw this cycle occur fifteen times over the course of three days. I would’ve stayed longer to observe him but in the late afternoons Spike TV started showing the third season of Star Trek.

There were moments during his movement when he reached out as if to grab something, but there was nothing there — just air. Like whenever he got to the bunch of trees across from the BBQ pit at the thirty-three minute mark - he’d reach out grasping for something and suddenly frown, as if he was expecting something to be there, and that he was really disappointed that he had missed it.

In fact, he walked through the pattern with a really sad look on his face, like he was being denied something wherever he went.

So that was pretty weird. But even weirder was what happened when we downloaded the digital camera pictures into iPhoto:

His was the only one with this weird effect in it. I showed it to Zooey, who said that I must’ve turned off the flash or something.

“It’s not dark,” I said, “It’s just all ripply. Like when the Predator turns invisible.”

“This camera’s way too complex,” Zooey said, “You must’ve changed some setting or something.” Then on the Mac she dragged the photo to the trash. But while she went to go get a Snickers bar I saved it onto my hard drive.