Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: Rogue Gallery: Gilbert

Sorry I’m late, internet connection at hotel was down, no way to get online when I was on the base.

You know, I was bored writing football stories as you could probably tell by yesterday’s lame-o story. So, instead of letting a week suffer, I’m going to start a series of stories focused on my “rogue gallery”. Some of these people will likely never be seen again on this site, but there are enough anecdotes about them to make a fun day’s worth of storytelling. Other people appear every once and a while but are whacked out enough to be honored with their own day. This might carry through to next week. I bring you the Moose in the Closet Rogue Gallery.

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Gilbert is the kind of guy you generally hate to be around. Not because he’s an asshole or because he smells or because he sleeps with your sister – the hatred does not come from any of the usual sources. Gilbert is a saint. I mean an honest-to-God saint, not “Oh, so-and-so is a saint, he let me copy his archeology homework.” This guy was touched by God and in turn stole God’s powers. And just being around him was enough to remind you how shallow and worthless your life is. It really only took about ten seconds to get to that point.

He was the RA at the Spanish House my senior year so we spent many a night together on rounds, doing RA stuff. He was older than me, in his thirties, law student. He spent ten years in the Peace Corps, living in some third world country for over a third of his life helping people. Like I said, the guy was a saint; every story with him has to do with him sacrificing a huge part of his life to help people.

Gilbert came up this past Monday, when my boy Guam, also an RA with us, was visiting me. He had interviews with five different law firms in the area on Monday, after which we went out to dinner together. Gilbert is also down here in DC but, admittedly I’ve never seen him here – just never hooked up, that kind of thing.

Guam is all about the money. He has no shame in admitting he wants to be the high powered lawyer defending big tobacco while doing lines of blow off a hooker’s ass. Ok, he has some shame in admitting that fact, evident by the fact that he hasn’t admitted it, but he does like money. We were joking around over dinner and I told him that if he came to work for a firm in DC he might have to go head-to-head against Gilbert who would be defending (pro-bono, of course) the single, unemployed, handicapped, black mother of three children that’s being sued by Ford for some reason. And Guam would have to crush Gilbert and his client; it would be the worst feeling in the world. We laughed at first and then Guam reminded me of a Gilbert story that really sums the dude up perfectly.

Early senior year, at our first RA meeting, we had an ice-breaker. Jane, our director, told us each to go back to our rooms and come back with the single item we would take with us in the event of a fire. We all scramble off, knowing that this was our chance to be witty and maybe slightly touching.

Everyone comes back with the usual stuff. Someone has their CD book, someone has a picture album. I grabbed my laptop, I figured that made sense, those fucking things were expensive. Guam grabbed some random toy off of his shelf because he thought it was funny. But everyone had something that was actually quite dispensable. Except for Gilbert, of course, who had absolutely nothing with him.

We took turns telling everyone what we would take and why. I told them how my laptop was the most expensive thing I owned and had all of my writing on it. I coughed “and all my porn” and got some laughs. Score. Marcelo says he’d want something to play with as the building burnt down – more laughs. Score.

And then it’s Gilbert’s turn.

And he points to his glasses.

And he tells this heart wrenching story about his grandfather that was poor because he always gave more than he could and how his grandfather loved these glasses and when he died he gave the glasses to Gilbert, the only heirloom he could pass on.

It felt like it took Gilbert a half hour to tell this story. And as he did, everyone just stared at their CD books and their electronics and their toys and felt like the biggest dicks of all time. Gilbert’s story was touching, it was well delivered and a great tale of an ordinary man doing extraordinary things, but at the same time it made all of us so ashamed of what we brought.

So, Gilbert’s a saint. And he doesn’t try to be downer; all of his stories were encouraging. All of my stories involved alcohol, hookers and dope. So, despite his intentions, he was a bit of a downer.

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Rogue Gallery: Gilbert

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

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