The Sad Life’s Story of a Man Who Wants Help, Not Pity

The thousands of people who drive through this intersection every day probably see him as a forlorn figure with no legs, propped up on his skateboard and holding a hand-lettered sign that asks for help.

In that sense, Jesse Cole is both a curiosity and a figure of pity. If only they knew how much he detests being either one.

We’re at the corner of Brookhurst and Chapman in Garden Grove, where Jesse Cole, 33, fights every day to retain his dignity. I had seen him months before on a street corner in Costa Mesa and had been too uneasy to stop and talk to him. This week, a couple from Garden Grove drew my attention to him again.

“I’m not looking for pity,” he said, before we even started really talking.

Agreed, I said. Tell me what path led you here.

“You mean being on this corner? Just a stroke of bad luck. First of all, I started having car problems. Two transmissions went out in less than a year, which is kind of negative. My dog died six months ago. I’d had him for 12 years. Then someone broke into my car and stole all my clothes. It just seems like I had three or four negative blows happen all of a sudden. The next thing I know I’m holding a sign on a corner.”

You’ve ticked off several strokes of bad luck without mentioning the obvious, I said.

Jesse said he was born without legs and three fingers on his right hand. His mother’s other three children were normal, he says. “I was determined I was never going to let that get in my way toward people or toward life. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to legs, I’m normal. I can do anything I want to do. I’ve got a good mind. The thing of it is I’ve got to get out of being so depressed. I’ve been asking myself, is it sleeping in the car that’s getting to me? Is it because I’m not working? It’s just a combination of things. I get up every day and nothing changes, man. Just another damn day. Then I have people promising, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this and do that,’ and they’re all liars. Why come up and lie to someone who’s already down on their luck and promise something you don’t even mean to begin with? I don’t understand it. That’s like somebody driving by and throwing a quarter at you.”

He spits out words and stops sentences midway through as if the sound of his own words just make him angrier.

“The thing that bothers me now is that I’ve gotten this negative attitude because I’m not being man enough to get above this. Usually, when something bad happens, I find a way to overcome it. But lately there’s been no victories.”

I had promised him I wouldn’t patronize him, so I asked the question that I assume everybody wonders as they drive by every day: How in the hell do you just keep going day after day?

“I do it just out of spite, I guess, of life,” he says. “When I was 19, I shot myself, but I found out that wasn’t the way to go because I didn’t do it right. The doctors managed to save me. . . . But that was when I was 19. Now I’m 33 and it scares the hell out of me because all of a sudden I’m getting back to the point I was when I was 19. I can’t fight everybody at one time, and I can’t win at nothing, so . . . And it’s weird to me, because it ain’t what everybody thinks. It ain’t got a damn thing to do with legs, man. They assume that’s what it is, and it ain’t got nothing to do with it.”

Don’t you wonder why you haven’t given up before this?

“Yeah, especially now. I don’t even want to see another day. I hate this corner. People throw money at you, I don’t even want to reach down and pick it up. People go by with video cameras. It pisses me off, no end. I don’t want to be filmed doing this. It’s not something I’m proud of. I’m not knocking someone who does it, but the thing of it is I used to be a carpenter, a house painter, I’ve shined shoes for a living, I’ve worked since I was 14 one way or another. I’ve never done something like this. This is where it ends, right here, if I can’t do any better than this. People say, ‘Don’t give up, don’t give up.’ I wonder how long that son of a bitch could last if they were in my shoes and going through what I’m going through. . . .

“Normally, I’m not a mad person, but you can only take so much. After so long, it’s like, goddam, who needs it? I don’t talk to nobody, I got no friends, I got nothing, I got a raggedy-ass car giving me problems. Who the (expletive) could deal with all this? Then people say, ‘You got a good attitude, we see you out here every day,’ well . . . I don’t know, man, I don’t know.”

His favorite job was selling self-portraits door to door. He thinks people bought them because they admired his spirit. He says the recent run of bad luck has discouraged him.

“To be standing here, holding up a sign--that’s not me. I’m not a bum. When I sell a picture, I enjoy it, because I don’t sell out of pity, I sell out of salesmanship. If they want it, they want it. If they don’t, it doesn’t bother me because it’s a product I sell and not everybody wants it, I understand that.”

Jesse said he receives a $500-a-month disability check but doesn’t qualify for other federal programs. His wish list now is short: a van that could double as a place to live.

Why blame yourself?

“I blame myself because I’m the only one to blame. There’s no blaming God; God ain’t at fault. He gives us the power and ability to do things. I’m under so much guilt now; I kick myself all the time for what I’m not doing.

“I’ve been very suicidal, and I’ve fought it. I’ve asked myself why I do fight it. But I have this picture in my mind of being a successful person who could reach out to young people who are on drugs because I’ve been there, too. But I presently don’t think I’m going to hold up much longer, so it looks like my 33 years of living have been in vain. I wish I could stand here and say something really positive and say that I’m really a happy guy and that everything was going right. Or that anything was going right.”

Every thought that passed through my head sounded like an empty platitude. So, I didn’t say anything other than to wish him luck. It wasn’t a wish born of pity.

“Forgive me, man,” he says as I’m leaving. “I’ve had it. I can only be the man of steel for so long. I’m telling you, man, I’m ready to die. I’m ready to kill myself. I don’t give a (expletive) if anybody believes it. I don’t tell anybody that, anyway. But I can’t handle it no more. I mean, goddam, who could? You show me somebody that could and I’ll take my hat off to ‘em.

“I’m not going to spend the rest of my days standing on a corner, with people passing by. No, no, no, never, never, never.”

He had one request. “If you’re going to put my name in the paper,” he said, “don’t use my last name as, ‘Cole said’ or ‘Cole this.’ I hate that. I don’t know why, but that irritates me. It sounds like--I don’t know--it sounds like the person writing it didn’t give a (expletive) about me to begin with.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.