A Year with Joe

On a cool, crisp, fall morning — a refreshing oasis in the lingering Houston heat — I meet Joe Jones. Joe has been painting the window signs at Neighbors, a bar in my neighborhood.

He talks about how he drafts his designs on paper, makes holes along his lines, and then, holding the design up on the window, he brushes baby powder through the holes. When he removes the paper from the window, he can see his design by the traces of baby powder.

“You know who came up with that? Michelangelo, he did it for the Sistine Chapel,” he shares. He talks about intent, and freehand painting, and being a sign-painter all over Houston, way way back, when what are now decals on trucks would be hand-painted, with gold-leaf applied for flourish.

The deep, warm timbre of his voice and melodic cadence of his speech transports me to a more colorful time. He’s painted signs downtown, in the Heights, in Montrose, in River Oaks, for clients big and small, restaurants, cafes, bars…signs I've used to guide me without knowing the hand behind them.

Joe sees my bike and his eyes light up. We talk bikes for a good hour or so. He loves to bike around, leisurely, sometimes carting his supplies with him. We talk about the rush rush of the times of today, the obnoxious, tiring, incessant drum of capitalism.

For now, I watch Joe paint a Christmas wreath on the front door. He beckons me closer to show me his tools and colors.

I snap some photos of Joe painting. Joe says he feels like he’s reaching a point of recognition just as he’s facing old age. “Isn’t that strange?” he muses.

It comes time for him to go home. He talks about taking the bus. I insist on driving him back, and taking Neeraj with us. Something about Joe’s demeanor pulls me in. I can sense that Joe really wants to show us his place and belongings.

We follow Joe up a flight of slippery stairs. We enter. Our eyes adjust to the darkness and we see a crowded world of wonder, set up as an artist studio by Joe, for Joe: foam sculpting tools, drafting tables, his creations and shelves of art books. His bike with a hand-painted sign hung in the frame – Joe Jones, Sign Painter and Artist. No couch, no bed. Joe watches us pore over his books, his signs, his tools.

A precious life. My precious brother.

You tell me to come sit with you during one of your dialysis appointments. You have me feel the warmth of your blood through the polypropylene tubes. I feel an itch in my nose, and an ache in my eyes.

Why, why, why are you inside out?

You shake your head with anger at this mechanical, clinical process called dialysis, how strange a thing it is for the human body to experience.

Sometimes it feels like I make you do so many things. I put on a brave face and say, Joe! What will we eat today! knowing full well this is just a game we play, where I put on a show eating with my outsized appetite, trying through osmosis to infect you to eat more than 3 bites.

I become sensitive to the design of places, how you labor to make it to the front door, how you put on a show for me as if to say — see, I’m strong, I’m walking well, please sis, don't baby me. You are proud, stubborn, sovereign: like my mom, like me. It’s a dance each day, how much you let me help you, how much I let you suffer.

The next several months are a blur. We walk up and down your stairs, to and from the car, some days effortless, some days, you grimace in pain with each step. We sit in traffic. You catch all my wrong turns and laugh when I duck cops after I get two tickets driving with you.

We sit outside your apartment, talking for hours.

We are in and out of the emergency room. We take you to appointments with this specialist and that specialist. You are somehow at least 5 separate ailing body parts to the system.

After a CAT scan one day, a technician tells me in earnest, “You’re doing a good thing.”

Am I?

I think of all the times I could’ve done something different, all the times I could’ve gotten Joe to more extensive care sooner, or could’ve been firmer with Joe about his appointments, upsetting him and his trust, but extending his life, by months…bed-bound as he may have been.

You oscillate between thoughts of death to dreams of riding a motorcycle again to Galveston beach.

Sometimes, I ponder the timing of my entering into his life as he’s on his last leg. Am I... His grim reaper?

His Charon,
here to ferry him to the underworld after collecting a coin?

His xolo dog,
walking with him to his death?

Might I see you through just another month, another week, another day?

We begin to work through your apartment, your belongings. In your art I see your hands. In your supplies I see your mind. Heaps of paper, foam, construction signs, a wealth of materials you collected from wasteful, corporate hands. You had grand designs for them, plans to breathe new life into them…all pointing back to our first conversation about capitalism, modernity, neglect, and how to cope, how to find the beauty in it all.

Your little family of late-caretakers will remember you and tell your stories, share your life. We will take your ashes to places where you wore your heart on your sleeves – Galveston, Las Vegas, Philly, Vietnam, Thailand, and finally, your birthplace – New York City.