Nodding acquaintance

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.