Every day that I walk to the bus stop whence I go to school, I look for him. When he's there, he sits on the east side of Crescent Heights, just south of Sunset. He's a black man, middle-aged, of average height and build. I passed him several times without any clue that he was homeless. I still don't know for sure, but there aren't that many people who sit in the same spot on the side of the road for a year and a half.
Why didn't I make the knee-jerk assumption that is usually so easy to make? He's generally sweet smelling, normally clothed, and clean shaven. He gets haircuts. He has no ragged cardboard around him and nary a shopping bag can be seen in his vicinity. After all these caveats, I begin again to doubt that he is homeless after all.
And yet, there he remains, a fixture next to that tall, tall hedge. Most days that he's there, we nod to one another. He doesn't ask me for money and I don't offer it. He has a fairly piercing glance; I usually look away first. I think maybe he asked me for money once, but that memory is hazy and could be completely false. Most of the times I walk past him, I'm barefoot and probably look more stereotypically homeless than he does. I believe I seem less likely to have money than most of the rather well-heeled pedestrians who frequent the shops around that corner.
But maybe, he doesn't ask me for money because he doesn't ask people for money.
I don't know his story. I can't just ask him; he has a right to his privacy, just as much as any Angeleno pacing that stretch of sidewalk with his tiny dog or jogging it with her iPod blaring. If he does choose to share a piece of his story with me, it will certainly appear here. Until then, I keep passing and we keep nodding hello.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Staying human
Various dates, various times, around West Hollywood
We have never spoken to one another. She probably wouldn't recognize me. I say she, but I don't know if that's hir preferred pronoun; ze has a prominent Adam's apple, but otherwise presents as a woman. Ze is black, short, slight, freighted with an impressive number of white plastic shopping bags, and wears neat black fingerless gloves. None of these is what I notice first about hir, however. What I see first is hir makeup.
It's beautiful, always. Hir eyes are outlined in vivid green shadow; carefully shaped, their bold design naturally attracts my own eyes, focuses my attention on hir. Every line on hir face is exquisitely drawn. The foundation is several shades lighter than hir skin, and I wonder if that's hir choice or just happenstance. That color difference gives me pause.
I mentioned hir to my roommate a little while ago, the last time I saw hir. That was a few weeks ago on the number four bus, near the corner of Santa Monica and San Vicente. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was so spectacular about hir makeup. "If that's what makes you feel human,..." my roommate said. That was it.
Whatever hir story, ze certainly feels human enough to go through the ritual of putting on hir face. It's those rituals, those routines that keep us anchored to life, sometimes. Sometimes, they're all we have.
We have never spoken to one another. She probably wouldn't recognize me. I say she, but I don't know if that's hir preferred pronoun; ze has a prominent Adam's apple, but otherwise presents as a woman. Ze is black, short, slight, freighted with an impressive number of white plastic shopping bags, and wears neat black fingerless gloves. None of these is what I notice first about hir, however. What I see first is hir makeup.
It's beautiful, always. Hir eyes are outlined in vivid green shadow; carefully shaped, their bold design naturally attracts my own eyes, focuses my attention on hir. Every line on hir face is exquisitely drawn. The foundation is several shades lighter than hir skin, and I wonder if that's hir choice or just happenstance. That color difference gives me pause.
I mentioned hir to my roommate a little while ago, the last time I saw hir. That was a few weeks ago on the number four bus, near the corner of Santa Monica and San Vicente. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was so spectacular about hir makeup. "If that's what makes you feel human,..." my roommate said. That was it.
Whatever hir story, ze certainly feels human enough to go through the ritual of putting on hir face. It's those rituals, those routines that keep us anchored to life, sometimes. Sometimes, they're all we have.
Democracy
Some evening in late October, 2008. Metro bus #4, heading west along Santa Monica Blvd.
Two giggly teenagers got on the bus with me at Santa Monica and Crescent Heights, in West Hollywood. They were heading for Fairfax, they mentioned; not only were they just a few short blocks away from Fairfax, but they were now going the wrong way. I pointed this out to them, as did the short white/Latina woman sitting in the seat in front of me. We both directed them to get off at the next stop and walk back to Fairfax. After making sure we were serious, they did. The woman and I now had a conversational link established between us; we smiled at each other as the confused young women got off the bus.
Years ago, she used to be a dancer at the Whisky-a-Go-Go up on the Sunset Strip. Then she was in a car accident and broke both her legs--and so she started drinking too much. She couldn't dance anymore, of course, with the legs and the booze. She slept in a park in Beverly Hills for a while--that one on the right there.
We talked about the election; she hadn't voted since helping to elect Bill Clinton. I don't know if she meant 1992 or 1996. She sure loved Bill Clinton, but she didn't know anything about politics since him. I told her that he would want her to vote for Barack Obama, and showed her where to go to register to vote--the Democratic Party office in Century City, in that building on the left just now.
At Santa Monica and Westwood, I said goodbye and got off the bus. She told me she'd try to register the next day, but I don't think she meant it. She waved as the bus drove off.
Two giggly teenagers got on the bus with me at Santa Monica and Crescent Heights, in West Hollywood. They were heading for Fairfax, they mentioned; not only were they just a few short blocks away from Fairfax, but they were now going the wrong way. I pointed this out to them, as did the short white/Latina woman sitting in the seat in front of me. We both directed them to get off at the next stop and walk back to Fairfax. After making sure we were serious, they did. The woman and I now had a conversational link established between us; we smiled at each other as the confused young women got off the bus.
Years ago, she used to be a dancer at the Whisky-a-Go-Go up on the Sunset Strip. Then she was in a car accident and broke both her legs--and so she started drinking too much. She couldn't dance anymore, of course, with the legs and the booze. She slept in a park in Beverly Hills for a while--that one on the right there.
We talked about the election; she hadn't voted since helping to elect Bill Clinton. I don't know if she meant 1992 or 1996. She sure loved Bill Clinton, but she didn't know anything about politics since him. I told her that he would want her to vote for Barack Obama, and showed her where to go to register to vote--the Democratic Party office in Century City, in that building on the left just now.
At Santa Monica and Westwood, I said goodbye and got off the bus. She told me she'd try to register the next day, but I don't think she meant it. She waved as the bus drove off.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Happy Valentine's Day
Saturday night, 14 February 2009, about 7:15 PM, corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights.
A very tall black man, rail thin, looking ragged. I'm in my tuxedo, on the way to UCLA for, of all things, Renaissance dancing; the contrast is too sharp, too painful to miss. He's talking with two other homeless men at the bus stop, one of whom has a boombox. I'm trying to be as small as possible, not get noticed by them, but it's hard in the tux.
We start to talk; I don't quite recall how. Probably he asked me for money and I said I didn't have any. A lie, of course; I had a ten dollar bill in my wallet. His story, as I can remember it:
Years ago, he went to college, but he didn't finish the last year. SUNY Albany on a full basketball scholarship. He thought he could play in the NBA, but he only made it to semi-pro, the "best of the rest," as he called it. He left basketball (aged out? couldn't sign with a team?), and went to New Jersey, where his aunt lived. She gave him $50, and somehow he made his way to LA. Now he's on the street, a basketball player and a pianist who has neither ball nor instrument. Probably doesn't have the skills to use either anymore. He sang a few bars of "Hey Jude," wished me a happy Valentine's Day, and strolled off westward along Sunset Boulevard.
A very tall black man, rail thin, looking ragged. I'm in my tuxedo, on the way to UCLA for, of all things, Renaissance dancing; the contrast is too sharp, too painful to miss. He's talking with two other homeless men at the bus stop, one of whom has a boombox. I'm trying to be as small as possible, not get noticed by them, but it's hard in the tux.
We start to talk; I don't quite recall how. Probably he asked me for money and I said I didn't have any. A lie, of course; I had a ten dollar bill in my wallet. His story, as I can remember it:
Years ago, he went to college, but he didn't finish the last year. SUNY Albany on a full basketball scholarship. He thought he could play in the NBA, but he only made it to semi-pro, the "best of the rest," as he called it. He left basketball (aged out? couldn't sign with a team?), and went to New Jersey, where his aunt lived. She gave him $50, and somehow he made his way to LA. Now he's on the street, a basketball player and a pianist who has neither ball nor instrument. Probably doesn't have the skills to use either anymore. He sang a few bars of "Hey Jude," wished me a happy Valentine's Day, and strolled off westward along Sunset Boulevard.
Migratory posts
To inaugurate the new blog, a brief recapitulation of the two relevant posts on the old blog.
Saturday, 31 January 2009
I participated in the 2009 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count on Thursday night. Thousands of volunteers scoured the entire area (except, oddly, Pasadena, Glendale, and Long Beach, which all have separate counts), counting the homeless people who were visible on the streets. Two years ago, the total came to 73,000. That is a fucking mind-blowingly huge number. Seventy. Three. Thousand. Every night, that many people sleep on the street, in boxes, in abandoned cars or RVs, under tarps, in makeshift tents. Just in LA. After counting my area with my partners (1 inhabited encampment, 2 abandoned encampments that didn't count), I trudged to the nearest bus stop to head home. At the bus stop, I became involved in a rather intricate conversation with a homeless man. Usually, I avoid eye contact with crazies at bus stops. That night, I couldn't justify doing so. Not after spending a few hours determinedly searching for the people whom I (we) so often would rather ignore. So I let him catch my eye, saw his weather-beaten face light up when he realized someone would acknowledge him.
He was very drunk and somewhat mad. He smelled awful, and explained the reason behind each aroma in uncomfortably honest detail. He was taking the bus to a liquor store for more booze, though he had no money for bus fare. Despite all of that, despite the fact that he occasionally patted my shoulder in a too-familiar way, we had a fascinating conversation about Rod Serling and our favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone. Mine is Mirror Image, by the way; his is either Long Live Walter Jameson or The Night of the Meek. He knew who starred in his favorite episodes, what years the series was a half-hour show and what years it was a full hour, and a great deal more. He acted out scenes from his favorites in the rightmost lane of Sunset Boulevard. His excitement was incredible; I would have believed him if he told me that nobody had ever been willing to listen to him talk about his favorite show before. He broke my heart.
I can smugly pat myself on the back for volunteering, for giving $30.00 a month to a homeless youth shelter, for taking time to really listen to this man whose name I still don't know. But at the end of every day, there are still 73,000 people sleeping on the streets of this sprawling city while I lie in my comfortable bed and blog, listening to my hedgehog run on his wheel. I don't know how to deal with that.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
One of the most successful—if not the most successful—spin-offs in entertainment history is the television show known as Frasier. Spun off from Cheers eleven years later, Frasier had nothing to do with its parent show, beyond the existence in both settings of Dr. Frasier Crane, and it lasted another eleven. Similarly, Empty Nest and Nurses had very little to do with The Golden Girls; The Golden Palace had somewhat more to do with it, but tenuously. Spin-offs are usually done in this manner, departing from the parent's premise entirely (Maude, anyone?) but retaining a popular character or feature of the original (usually the impetus behind the spin-off) to boost initial popularity.
This brief television history disquisition is by way of announcing that this blog is getting a spin-off. I have been mulling over too many posts that have gone unposted lately, and they are all very clearly thematically linked. Therefore, I have now created (though not yet posted in) On The Street, Where You Live: encounters with homelessness in Los Angeles. I'll be using it mostly as a venue for sharing stories, stories either of my experiences with homeless people or of their experiences in their own words. This has little to do, really, with my personal/professional/political life that I regularly give an accounting of in this forum, and that's the point.
The lives of homeless people far too often have absolutely nothing to do with the lives of the homed; these people are invisible to me (us), except when they impinge on my (our) personal space—olfactory and visual, as well as physical. Part of Los Angeles' obsession with privacy/privatization consists in that determined invisibility, in the concealment of social/societal difficulties that are, in Douglas Adams' rather pointed phrase, Somebody Else's Problem. The nationwide demise of the public sphere results directly in this kind of everyday callousness, the insensitivity to human suffering that is absolutely necessary to live any kind of normal life in the big city.
Will this new blog do anything for these human beings I so blatantly ignore? Not really, not concretely. But their stories deserve to be shared as much as mine, and they probably don't have blogs. It will do something for me, the author, to pass the stories on and imagine that they get heard. It will do something to me as well, and I hope that that something happens to anyone else who chooses to read it. Maybe there will be a few extra volunteers at the 2011 Homeless Count. Maybe a shelter will get one extra donation.
Maybe a homed person will see a homeless person as person first, and homeless second. That's all I ask.
Saturday, 31 January 2009
I participated in the 2009 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count on Thursday night. Thousands of volunteers scoured the entire area (except, oddly, Pasadena, Glendale, and Long Beach, which all have separate counts), counting the homeless people who were visible on the streets. Two years ago, the total came to 73,000. That is a fucking mind-blowingly huge number. Seventy. Three. Thousand. Every night, that many people sleep on the street, in boxes, in abandoned cars or RVs, under tarps, in makeshift tents. Just in LA. After counting my area with my partners (1 inhabited encampment, 2 abandoned encampments that didn't count), I trudged to the nearest bus stop to head home. At the bus stop, I became involved in a rather intricate conversation with a homeless man. Usually, I avoid eye contact with crazies at bus stops. That night, I couldn't justify doing so. Not after spending a few hours determinedly searching for the people whom I (we) so often would rather ignore. So I let him catch my eye, saw his weather-beaten face light up when he realized someone would acknowledge him.
He was very drunk and somewhat mad. He smelled awful, and explained the reason behind each aroma in uncomfortably honest detail. He was taking the bus to a liquor store for more booze, though he had no money for bus fare. Despite all of that, despite the fact that he occasionally patted my shoulder in a too-familiar way, we had a fascinating conversation about Rod Serling and our favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone. Mine is Mirror Image, by the way; his is either Long Live Walter Jameson or The Night of the Meek. He knew who starred in his favorite episodes, what years the series was a half-hour show and what years it was a full hour, and a great deal more. He acted out scenes from his favorites in the rightmost lane of Sunset Boulevard. His excitement was incredible; I would have believed him if he told me that nobody had ever been willing to listen to him talk about his favorite show before. He broke my heart.
I can smugly pat myself on the back for volunteering, for giving $30.00 a month to a homeless youth shelter, for taking time to really listen to this man whose name I still don't know. But at the end of every day, there are still 73,000 people sleeping on the streets of this sprawling city while I lie in my comfortable bed and blog, listening to my hedgehog run on his wheel. I don't know how to deal with that.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
One of the most successful—if not the most successful—spin-offs in entertainment history is the television show known as Frasier. Spun off from Cheers eleven years later, Frasier had nothing to do with its parent show, beyond the existence in both settings of Dr. Frasier Crane, and it lasted another eleven. Similarly, Empty Nest and Nurses had very little to do with The Golden Girls; The Golden Palace had somewhat more to do with it, but tenuously. Spin-offs are usually done in this manner, departing from the parent's premise entirely (Maude, anyone?) but retaining a popular character or feature of the original (usually the impetus behind the spin-off) to boost initial popularity.
This brief television history disquisition is by way of announcing that this blog is getting a spin-off. I have been mulling over too many posts that have gone unposted lately, and they are all very clearly thematically linked. Therefore, I have now created (though not yet posted in) On The Street, Where You Live: encounters with homelessness in Los Angeles. I'll be using it mostly as a venue for sharing stories, stories either of my experiences with homeless people or of their experiences in their own words. This has little to do, really, with my personal/professional/political life that I regularly give an accounting of in this forum, and that's the point.
The lives of homeless people far too often have absolutely nothing to do with the lives of the homed; these people are invisible to me (us), except when they impinge on my (our) personal space—olfactory and visual, as well as physical. Part of Los Angeles' obsession with privacy/privatization consists in that determined invisibility, in the concealment of social/societal difficulties that are, in Douglas Adams' rather pointed phrase, Somebody Else's Problem. The nationwide demise of the public sphere results directly in this kind of everyday callousness, the insensitivity to human suffering that is absolutely necessary to live any kind of normal life in the big city.
Will this new blog do anything for these human beings I so blatantly ignore? Not really, not concretely. But their stories deserve to be shared as much as mine, and they probably don't have blogs. It will do something for me, the author, to pass the stories on and imagine that they get heard. It will do something to me as well, and I hope that that something happens to anyone else who chooses to read it. Maybe there will be a few extra volunteers at the 2011 Homeless Count. Maybe a shelter will get one extra donation.
Maybe a homed person will see a homeless person as person first, and homeless second. That's all I ask.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)