We Mourn Max Rouette
I really, really liked Max Rouette. I coached him beginning to end on his VAMP story with our friends at San Diego City College. We sat at a cheese steak restaurant by campus and laughed about how, of all the ways he could have caught a felony, hosing down a cop with a fire extinguisher was probably the funniest. Which he definitely did.
So Say We All found out about his death from an NBC reporter the same early morning he died: he was run over by a drunk driver. The reportage of his death was what one can expect from local broadcast journalism, it's not their fault, but it did him dirty none the less—by harping on his run in's with the law. They'd like you to know his charges have been dismissed now, since he's dead. Great writing. Such awareness.
Max deserved to live in a society that cared for its people, which ours does not. He struggled with mental illness--no more than many of my friends or I do--but he had no resources and no help. I know he found joy in his time as a student at San Diego City College because he told me, about how he finally felt treated like a full human being, and the time and attention paid by his professors met the kindness and sensitivity he gave back to the world.
Like when he was homeless in The Bottoms--East Village--but still had the bravery and selflessness to care for someone else and guide them to help, even though it meant risking interacting with the same police who were throwing his neighbor's tents into garbage trucks. The same police who get more and more resources while the libraries who helped him find housing and college have been cut.
I'm sharing Max's performance because that's who he was when he was allowed to be seen for the brilliant lad he was.
I am so angry, not even at the woman who killed him--her life is over, and her story is likely tragic too--but that nothing for all of our tax dollars caught him.
I saw a lot of kids die when I was with UNMISS, and we were told it was outside of our capacity to change things. Maybe it was, maybe it just wasn't the priority. But I've been back in the US for 17 years. What's storytelling worth if it's just for eulogy. If you're English, you'd say that was weepy, but I'm not a moderate liberal who thinks every starfish you throw back into the ocean makes you a better person. It doesn't. There aren't good people, there's only change.
It has become unbearable. It should be. I have witnessed too many Dostoevsky's horses, as have we all.
I hope you're spraying down god's angels in heaven with a fire extinguisher, Max, right before you burn it all down.
Justin Hudnall