I glance at my roommate, sitting in the passenger seat of my dirty gray corolla. I find myself, on this Thursday evening in south-west Fresno, parked in front of a run down convenience store with barred windows and ten spay cans worth of graffiti on its walls. A sleeping, or quite possibly dead vagrant is sprawled next to a dumpster fifteen feet away.

The store’s proprietor glances out for the third time in five minutes and shakes his head in our general direction. I figure we have another three minutes until he phones the police.

“Fuck, man, we gotta go.” I mutter, not wanting to sound like a complete pussy, but also fighting down the quickly growing urge to take off at top speed. Traffic laws be damned. I’m sure that I hear a siren.

My roommate, Justin, a 22 year old Reno native, has much more experience with this sort of thing than I do. He sits calmly, eyes closed, face tilted toward the roof, asleep.

This was his idea. Asshole.

The siren grows louder and I see an ambulance in my rearview mirror. It careens through the intersection behind us and pulls to a stop next to the downed vagrant. The paramedic jumps out of the ambulance, and kneels next to the unmoving shape, which is starting to lose definition in the pre-night haze. Justin jerks back to reality and watches the scene play out with indifference.

He leans his head out of the open car window and looks up and down the street before returning his attention to the ambulance crew. There is now a small crowd of five or six onlookers, most of whom will be spending tonight in one of the empty lots scattered throughout this part of town.

“Throw that homeless fuck in the dumpster! He’s a drain on the economy, and he stopped breathing 10 minutes ago!” Someone yells.

It takes me a moment to find the source of the screaming. Its Justin. He has the top half of his body hanging out of the car window and is howling with laughter.

The Paramedics stop moving, and stare at us open mouthed. The backboard is a few feet off of the ground and the mans right hand is dragging on the ground.

The crowd has tripled in size. People are starting to shift restlessly and we get more than one angry glare. Justin notices the attention and calls to the crowd for help. He says his ass is stuck, and he’ll never survive the ride home with only half his body in the car.

The wave of paranoia is sudden and nearly overwhelming. I’m certain that the police are on their way. I struggle to come up with an explanation as to why we’re loitering in the hub of Fresno’s gang, drug, and prostitution sector.

The ambulance is pulls onto the street and accelerates out of view. The crowd starts to disperse, but shifts its attention to us as Justin starts yelling something about minorities and farm animals. Angry faces start to make their way across the parking lot in our direction. Justin flails his way back into a sitting position inside the car as a young black man pulls up next to us. We are momentarily shielded from the mob by the black man’s spotless new Acura.

“Fuckin’ crazy ass white boys.” says the driver of the Acura. “Come on.”

He backs out of his parking space and pulls into the intersection. We follow, and several tense minutes later we are standing in the parking lot of an apartment complex that obviously hasn’t employed a maintenance man since the 80’s.

“Cash.” Says Mr. Acura.

Justin hands him $300 in twenties. Mr. Acura crams it into his pocket without counting. In return he hands Justin a paper bag, and without waiting, gets in his car and leaves.

On the drive home Justin experiences fits of laughter with alternating periods of unbearable sleepiness. At home Justin spreads the contents of his $300 paper bag on the living room floor. Acid, weed, mushrooms, speed. I have to work tomorrow, so I settle for a hit off his six foot red plastic bong and two Vicodin.

I wake up on the floor of my bedroom a full 3 hours before I have to get ready for work. It’s still dark and everything is silent. I walk into the living room to find the TV on mute and Justin spread eagle on the kitchen floor. I decide to leave him alone, and I watch the muted TV until my alarm clock goes off.

I arrive at work at 06:20, a full five minutes before my shift starts. My partner for the day is already checking out our equipment, and I stroll over and pretend to help.

I am dreading the 12 hour shift that stretches out in front of me. I know that after six hours I will lose interest in work, and by the time my shift draws to a close I will have lost the desire to live altogether.

An hour later I hear Justin’s voice on the radio. “Fresno, A117 logging on. Paramedic Justin White. EMT Aaron Holmes.”

I wonder if he hates being a paramedic as much as I do.