Sometimes I don’t feel like you know me at all. Whoever “you” is any way, or “me”, I guess that’s what I am saying. Like I walk around these days and I try to write about my summer in this city, this hot and sweaty city, where the homeless have such an effect on me. I find it hard to write honestly when I know who the “yous” are that may be reading. I don’t have that problem with the “you” I write to here. So I will tell you about my summer in the city.
Some days the homeless are the only thing that can make me smile, some days the bring me nearly to my knees. Yesterday, one was having a streetside straw poll over whether a dog or a super bowl ring was more important. He wanted to know my thoughts. He urged a drunk on down the road and then asked for money for a beer. WHen I said I had no money, he asked me to bring him back a cheeseburger or something. I thought about brining him one back but decided to give him money instead, because I wanted him to make his own decision, and because if I were in his shoes I would probably opt for the beer too.
Like tonight I went into the market down the street after having a slice and salad, ostensibly to pick up cigarettes, then I decided I needed milk so I will start eating breakfast, and as I was passing the beer coolers I saw a six pack of Coors. Not Coors Light, but Coors, in the tan cans that have always looked old-timey like the beers they may have drank in sitcoms when we were kids if they had drank beers in sitcoms when we were kids. I remembered a day in Athens when it was hot out and Chad and I ducked into a bar on that Saturday afternoon and we both ordered Coors that came in a bottle that was supposed to look a little like a football, not in the classic cans, but we had them and they were ice-cold and I still remember that being the best beer I had ever had. Possibly because of the heat, or the temperature of the beer, or because Chad was there and we were still young and still thought we were artists, and that anything was possible. We didn’t toast, but those beers were like an unspoken toast to all of the things we would become.
I feel like I have settled at times though. Like I should still be an artist. I should still be trying to always think the other thought. I feel I get trapped at times in my other desires, and my periodic depression, and my laziness, and my self-created little labyrinth.
But then there are the days when the homeless lady comes by and tells me about the bus ticket back to Chicago that one man bought for her so she could go back and get her ID, and about the pre-paid cellphone that another woman had given her, and about the government program she was going to enroll in once she had her ID, and when I reached for my wallet, she told me she didn’t need anything, she just wanted to share the good news with someone.
Then a few days later I saw her again and she asked could she borrow $1000 until business picked up, and I laughed and she said it was good that I have a sense of humor unlike the other man who pulled out his wallet when she asked the same question, and said he had no cash. I gave her what I had which amounted to about $2.32 and she thanked me and gave me a hug which lifted my heart a few inches.
And then there was the one young homeless guy who stared at me with a crazy smile and I tried not to meet his eyes and then he walked by and in a startlingly high-pitched voice, he exclaimed, “I can fly.” And I hoped that he could, because I have a house and he doesn’t, but if he could fly, since I cannot, life would seem to be a little more fair.
These are the things that I think about in this city in the summer, when it’s hot and I wonder where they all sleep at night. Not where the ducks in central park go in the winter, but where do they sleep when this heat is this punishing. I wonder do they have friends, and if I will see them the next day and when one of them doesn’t show up for a week, or for two weeks, or a month, I really get worried about where they are, and what happened, and I hope it is jail, or a famuily member took them in, or something better and not the thing that I cannot say here, and could never find out about because I don’t know their names too much and no one else really does either.
But most days they are there and they are good, and they say “God bless you,” and I say it back, and I believe somewhere in that space in between is where we are all supposed to live our lives.