Character Development

*This is from another of my 'Great Stories' submissions...

In the last weekend, I went through a hearty round of character development. That is, during my week as the graveyard shift leader at the warming shelter I met a ton of characters and have struggled to log all of the fun details ever since. Here is my best attempt...

St. Louis has at least two resident psychics, and they don't like each other very much. Our psychics, Ryan and Stu, both got in an argument Monday night. Most of my service time was spent talking down Ryan and convincing him to go to bed or else killing time with Stu as he sobered up and avoided bothering other people.

Ryan had an interesting philosophy in that the world revolved around two opposing forces of "3-C's". On one side was the survival-of-the-fittest "C's": corruption, competition, and killing. On the other were the more humane "C's": compassion, courtesy, and caring. His life, and everyone's, is a battle between the two as we strive to be more humane. It was a nice sentiment and was made legitimate when he offered Stu a cigarillo as a gesture of good faith. Unfortunately Stu was still on the surly side and refused.

The rest of my night I spent listening to Stu's monologues of poems, bible passages, and sermons. Stu was really took the prize for biggest character that night. He calls himself 'Minister Stu' and prides himself on being the best at quoting scripture in all of St. Louis. This unfortunately comes off as a holier-than-though outlook-- he is judgmental of many of his fellow guests and blind to his own faults. His constant complaint is the noise of other people, whether during movies or quiet hours. However because of his inability to keep quiet that night, his talking went so far as to drive out one other guest at four in the morning.

What made Stu interesting and also tragic was his weird mix of opposites in his personality. He extolled morals, but was a jerk to his neighbors. He said that while he had a lot of Faith, he had very little Hope. His faith bolstered the idea that he was here for a reason (to do good), but he was currently in a ‘rut’. He talked about his dependence on alcohol, though he would never admit to being an 'alcoholic' because of some biblical passage. In the past he had tried AA, but thought of the fellow members as weak for relying on each other for support and not on God. Telling us his story, preached that he was reliant on God but was unable to ask God to take him out of his pit of alcohol. It was heartbreaking to hear that his faith, which could be his biggest ally-- a reason to continue good work in the world, was what he used to justify his continuing dependence issues.

Late in the morning, Stu’s story took a turn from the tragic to the weird. He had been having a long conversation with Dan, a guest that was having trouble getting back to sleep. Dan was also a Christian (a much more model Christian, in my opinion) and very good at remembering scripture, so Stu was really enjoying it thoroughly. Dan, at some point, brought up science fiction as a topic that he was interested in and was going to use for a talk in his lay-ministry. He mentioned UFO’s and that he didn’t think they were real, but he was going to use them as a metaphor. Out of nowhere, Stu went off on him about the truth of UFO’s. To Stu, there were millions of universes out there and UFO’s were totally real. How did he know? Because he was a psychic. He challenged any of us to have a reading where he would hold our hand and tell us about ourselves. Intrigued, I gave him my hand and he told me that I was having housing issues and that I had a relationship that I couldn’t let go of in my past. One of the other volunteers had something about a family or friend and troubles with a child. Another had a relationship with a man that was going to go sour (which was great, since she was a lesbian).

It’s been hard for me to make two-cents out of some of the experiences I had at the shelter, and I think that night was a model for it. The stories I heard were at the same time profound, tragic, and off-the-wall. It has been an experience, though at times frustrating, will stick with me for-better-or-for-worse.