01 october 2023
Mold
The other day I was moving a lot of bags on the bus because I had no other choice. Between the unkempt bags overflowing with the junk I own, the facial eczema, and the threadbare clothing I've had for years, I looked like a street person. You know, the sort of person so thoroughly discarded by society that we've all agreed not to make eye contact with even when we deem them worthy of spare change? Normally I'd be able to convince myself that I'm being paranoid about how perceive me. I tell myself that not everyone assumes people with fucked up faces are on drugs; certainly people are aware of the various skin conditions that afflict people.
This time I had my paranoia confirmed by a fellow homeless-looking person. They walked past everyone else waiting for a bus and struck up a conversation with me. Their face was also red and puffy, partly from sleeping outside in the cold and partly, I assume, from the substance they asked if I was holding. Twenty years ago asking a stranger if they were "holding" meant you wanted to buy weed. Today, now that it's legal to buy, I'm not exactly sure what they meant. I told them I didn't have anything besides the bags in my hand.
For some reason strangers tend to tell me about their problems. Back when holding meant weed, this made sense. My appearance didn't frighten people. My face didn't cause children to point at me while tugging on their parent's arm to signal that they wish to ask why I look like this. I thought the one perk of looking like a police sketch of a generic crackhead was that nobody would attempt trauma dump on me within fifteen minutes of meeting me. Maybe it's the same thing that draws strays cats to me. Maybe I give off "kind vibes", whatever the fuck that is, even when I'm sitting there staring off into space wondering how I'm going to survive the winter.
They get on the bus and sit next to me near the front where the benches make sense for all the folks who have to transport garbage bags full of cans or all their worldly possessions in a few reusable grocery sacks. They tell me they've been living on the streets for a few weeks and that it's really cold at night. Their sandals are the wrong shoes for this weather. Their thin jacket is going to be wrong too in a couple of week. Their feet are red and puffy like my face. Maybe it's because of whatever drugs they were asking me for that their life is like this. But who the hell am I to judge?
Every impulse 2010s "good tech job, eczema under control" me would have had to judge this person was gone. They mentioned that they were sleeping in the park at night with their partner. I could think of a million reasons why this situation could have befallen them because one of those reasons happened to me: genetic chronic illness time bomb, little social support because I live in America and my family was a bunch of hyper-individualists. Maybe their story was similar and the pain of being cold, hungry, and tired all the time finally drove them to the temporarily relief of whatever the slingers are slinging now.
Or maybe they're a drug addict who ruined their own life. It doesn't matter. Even if that were the case they don't deserve to sleep rough and beg to eat. It would hypocritical of me to feel any other way because whatever line in the sand we draw between who gets helped and who deserves to be left to the wolves is going to have collateral damage of innocent people.
They asked me If I knew where to get a sleeping bag. This was their indirect way of asking for the one I was holding. Vulnerable people tend to fear asking for things because they expect a "no". I know for the next 2 months I have a garage to sleep in and a space heater if I need it. Plus I was tired of carrying the damn thing, so I gave it to them. That reduced the volume of things I own by about 10% (sleeping bags are bulks). I feel lighter. I hope they stay warm tonight.