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The Feces Hoarder |
| Written by Susan Cava | |
| Monday, 16 June 2008 | |
 The Feces Hoarder By Susan Cava
I smelled him before I knew him. It was an unearthly scent, perhaps how Beelzebub might smell. Repulsive yet unavoidable and terribly, terribly intriguing.
I stumbled upon this scent when Frank, a neighbor two buildings down, asked me to walk his dog Ramus while he was out teaching. Frank was on the fifth floor of a walk-up building and there was an alcoholic drug addict fondly known as "The Axe Murderer" (because we all knew it was only a matter of time) on the second floor - but this didn't intimidate me, however, something else soon would.
That first day when I reached the third floor, my hand gripped the banister of the stairs, my nose quivered and I was scared. There was a hideous smell of decay and rot about. I quickened my pace to the fourth floor but found the smell even more pungent. I buried my nose in my jacket and went as fast as I could to the fifth floor. I entered Frank's apartment, took a deep breath of the clean air and saw the dog was not shocked at all by my frenzied entrance...he seemed to be expecting it.
Ramus and I cascaded down the stairs; I held my breath every single step and gulped in the air the second we were outside. Later I brought Ramus back and somehow had forgotten about the smell. And then on the third floor, there it was. A stench so foul that to try to describe it would belittle its monstrosity. I dragged Ramus up the stairs and again found sanctity in the apartment...and did not want ever to leave for fear of what lurked.
There was a sprinkling of elderly people paying obscenely low rents in the apartments. I figured one had died, which had become a rather common occurrence. Should I call the police? The Superintendent? Ultimately I decided the least involving thing would be to leave my neighbor to deal with it. So I did the only thing I could think of and left a note stating the obvious, "There is a horrible smell in the building."
The next day I was prepared - when I reached the third floor I flew like lightening up the stairs to Frank's apartment. There was a casual note saying that the stench was "a neighbor." This did nothing to comfort me and again the dog and I held our breath and raced down the stairs.
That evening I ran into Frank and had no choice but to confront the stench issue. He held fast that it was simply a neighbor and then, taking a glance up the sidewalk and down, he leaned in close and said, "It's The Feces Hoarder." I leaned in closer for more.
On the third floor a man known as The Feces Hoarder existed. Frank explained that The Feces Hoarder had a condition by which he did not flush his toilet, if he used one at all. And worse, he collected his own feces. This wasn't possible! This couldn't be! While gagging at this news I demanded some sort of proof.
He said this was all he could divulge for now and quickly walked away leaving me aghast. Frank had described who The Feces Hoarder was; a man I thought was a vagabond who sat on the building stoop sometimes. He was close to 80, wore a tweed blazer, had a very dirty face and white unkempt hair that seemed to always be fighting for a bouffant but failing in the process. He had been here forty years and his name was Ishmael. Behold the Hoarder.
This information was far too much and I did the only appropriate thing I could think of...tell everyone I knew. One and all were instantly obsessed with The Feces Hoarder, disbelieving me until they realized this was far too revolting for me to make up. Ishmael was a minor celebrity and didn't even know it.
The next day I again avoided the smell by only breathing out and moving as fast as I could up the five flights of stairs. I couldn't help but glance at The Feces Hoarder's door and saw that he had placed a bit of dirty cardboard in the peephole - it was too perfect.
Later on Ramus and I were about ten blocks away when there he was. In a woman's purple faux fur pea-coat with poofy shoulders The Feces Hoarder stood. He seemed less aimless, matter of fact he seemed to have a purpose to him. His shuffle was more pronounced, his eyes were less vague, I was spellbound as I held my breath.
I fumbled to get my mobile phone's camera working but stopped just short of a picture. While all would enjoy a picture of him in that ridiculously right coat, it seemed wrong. I did not snap a picture that day but I did follow him until Ramus made it known he was going nowhere near where Ishmael was. The dog was right...his logic usurped my own.
Nonetheless, my fascination only grew. When I learned he had been legally evicted from his apartment, I felt it was just but cruel. Would any man of sound mind logically want to collect feces? Obviously there was a problem and he needed to be evicted as the other tenants in the building were living a life I could not imagine with that smell day in and day out.
Worse, although he was legally evicted he did not understand it. Frank had somewhat befriended Ishmael from a distance years ago and had learned that he couldn't understand why his rent checks were being returned or what the "EVICTION" notices on his door meant. His impending trial was a complete fog to him. His snaking scent always destroyed the pity I should have felt.
I would hang on every word Frank would tell me - how Ishmael was officially banned from the laundry room years ago due to "indecent doings", when Ishmael would creep up to the fifth floor to ask Frank for one dollar for "medicine", that he purchased his "medicine" from The Axe Murderer and that Ishmael had a daughter! She had stayed with him in his tiny apartment allegedly to help but when Ishmael found out she was trying to transfer the lease to her name so she would have the incredibly low rent attached to her name Ishmael retaliated. He urinated all over her clothes and she was never seen again.
I continued to walk Ramus but I wore a scarf to cover my nose. The scarf only did so much - just knowing what was on the third floor gave me the heebie jeebies. One day I was walking by the building when his smell pervaded him on the sidewalk until he appeared. This time carrying a purple bag. I found it disarming that he knew he liked the color purple but not that collecting feces was inappropriate.
I found myself watching him when he sampled different half-drunk sodas from the garbage or staring at him as he lumbered off to wherever it was he was going. Sometimes I would listen in when he and The Axe Murderer would spend hours negotiating the obtainment of a new used pair of sneakers. I even began to inquire to the superintendent or his neighbors about him and was met with cold stares that told me never to ask about the nuisance of Ishmael again.
And then there was the unbelievable; the day they brought in a demolition crew to clean out Ishmael's apartment and all the feces in it. I could not help but watch, along with many other neighbors, as they cleared out piece by piece the dirty, antique furniture from Ishmael's apartment and the endless black garbage bags that contained the remnants of Ishmael's life.
I sat there watching in crude excitement and asked the haggard looking demo crew what it was like "in there". I was met with the kind of stare a soldier in the midst of a war might give you. I shrank back when the unthinkable happened - The Axe Murderer, who happened to live directly beneath Ishmael, came running out of the building shouting that his ceiling had crashed in with feces on it! Hell broke loose and yet there was no sign of Ishmael. Where was he while his life was carted away and we all watched in revulsion?
Eventually the court ruled he cannot be lawfully evicted unless the landlord finds a place for him to go and they can't. The other day a health aide came hustling out of Ishmael's building complaining into a mobile phone, "Hell no! My throat is burning! Hell no! I am too old for this crap! Hell no! If he ain't gonna' clean himself, how can I make him?" I deliriously recited the conversation later on to Frank.
He remains our burden, although I suppose he has been less a burden and more a reeking eyesore as far as I am concerned. Ishmael still shuffles about and I suppose like my obsession with him the Feces Hoarder could not pinpoint the start of when he went from man to hoarder, nor the finish.
Nonetheless I still watch him because I cannot look away. I still talk about him because everyone wants to know. In the many pictures I have now taken of Ishmael (proof for the disbelievers) I have revealed more of myself than him. After all, what is worse? The insane that cannot help themselves or the sane that can but instead stand there and watch?
Copyright 2008 Susan Cava |
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