20nothing.com

I wonder how homeless people feel about the phrase, “Home is where the heart is”?They would probably have a lot more to say about it than the Beverly Hills housewife who is surrounded by Italian silk couches and Volvo keys. Or the college student who sleeps in a dorm and uses a beer keg as a nightstand. Someone who, for example, lives under a bridge or on the stoop of a Gucci store frequented by the aforementioned, possibly understands the concept that the word home is, really, just an illusion. A nice way of making four walls and some cement sound sentimental. I have also, often, wondered what other phrases must be subtracted from their vocabulary because, something as simple as “I am just going home”, can’t actually be uttered by a person who doesn’t have a house.

My curiosity regarding homeless people started after I had my first real conversation with one. Calling them ‘one’, incidentally, seems as though I am referring to a pencil or any other arbitrary object, and perhaps once upon a time I did have that view against people who don’t have an address. Any attribution I give to The Homeless comes, really, from a place of much more sentimentality than, say, my feelings towards my favorite writing tool. After all, they are still people. It is just that they get defined by the “homeless” prefix rather than the humane suffix.
“You’re not wearing shoes,” a man without a roof over his head informed me just before I skipped inside a store one day in London. I have a tendency to not wear shoes because, to be honest, they are just one more thing for me to take off and lose. The paradox that a homeless person was pointing out such a social abnormality caused me to pause for a moment, think and then have a conversation which ended when he asked for money. I didn’t have any spare and kind of felt like I had let down my end of the stereotypical bargain.
My interest, possibly, originated because I have technically spent my entire adult life somewhat homeless. I have been physically kept off the streets by a generous father who has endeavored to ensure that The Pole or The Curbside are never viable options in my life, but for all intents and purposes, my lack of title deed or self-addressed lease agreement has rendered me a homeless person who lives in a house. My heart has wanted to travel and, therefore, has carried enough baggage to keep me busy for months on end while relying on the kindness of friends in various locales around the world.

Because I like to flirt between subjective anti-materialism and objective material indulgences, I drove to a 7 11 store in between writing to get a Big Gulp – a forty-four ounce bucket of caffeine that gives me every nutrient I need to write the next sentence. After I add scotch. Homeless people frequent the pavements of convenience stores, possibly using the term “convenience” more definitively than anyone who desperately needs a last-minute bottle of wine or packet of cigarettes. More obviously, it is because people with mortgages always have change they need to get rid of after buying their conveniently placed product and, so, such a locale appears to be quite profitable. The West Hollywood 7 11 dwellers are committed twenty-four hourly to both their begging and, for the large part, their drug use. If there was ever a perfectly good reason to drop acid, hallucinate a home might be it.

My sympathy, which edges somewhat dangerously on empathy, started when I saw a homeless man walking along Sunset Boulevard. He stopped in front of a store window, a place that housed items neither of us could not afford, and studied his reflection. His simple gesture of primping his hair turned my focus from my drink of choice to his life of failed choices. After he had run his hand through his hair, he walked away, possibly satisfied that his moment of grooming had improved his situation. I could not get the image out of my head and it distracted my day. What he had done was so identifiable, so human, that it made me realize that even someone with nothing material to show for their life’s lessons still had a desire to have some form of self-respect, that innate human quality where we know we will be judged for superficial reasons. He just had different tools at his disposal to what I have. There isn’t really an outlet for a hairdryer when you don’t have a home, for example. I saw the man again one night on the same street, his hair in the exact same state as it had been in the last time I saw him, and I wondered if he had just stopped to style it or if he was going for the natural hobo look. I gave him money, deciding to forgo my next drink I had budgeted for myself. He probably bought drugs with it. Which is OK. I was only going to buy alcohol for myself so, unless we are going to be semantic, our similarities were strikingly alined.

Outside 7 11 on Santa Monica Boulevard, a fifty-something-year-old man stands proper while reading the paper all day, every day. He greets people, politely and articulately, and looks like a man who has never taken a drug in his life. For all intents and purposes, he looks like my dad with a really dark tan.
“I am going to give him money one day,” I told LA Girl Friend weeks ago, after I had bought cigarettes and last-minute wine.
I needed more cigarettes and drove to my convenience store of choice on Saturday morning, hoping that He had not moved.
“Hello,” I greeted him. “How are you?”
“I am very well, thank you. And how are you young lady?”
He put down his newspaper on the trash can he presumably used as a nightstand. After a few moments of frivolous conversation, I gave him ten dollars and asked, “Why don’t you have a house?”
“I lost my job,” he said. “And there are no jobs for people like me. I don’t have family any more, so I just have to take care of Me.”
I drove away, crying. He didn’t have anyone who endeavored to ensure that a worst nightmare was not his reality. I promised myself that I would return again and, instead of using the excuse to buy cigarettes, I would simply go the address to give him money.

Homeless people are just one of the groups we define by their stereotypes and, for the large part, assume that they are all the same. I have met some horrible homeless people. But I have also met some horrible people who own an iron and an ironing board. To define their worth by their material possessions almost seems arbitrary as, I would hope, at this stage of humanity we are smarter than to judge people based on situations we are ignorant to.
I ran out of cigarettes, because I have an addiction, and drove back to 7 11. I was not impressed that I was returning for such a ridiculous reason, but, true to form, my new friend was reading a tatty edition of The New York Times. One has to assume that he is more well read on current affairs than the people who work at the newspaper. I didn’t have extra cash, but I bought him a Big Gulp, figuring that he probably needed nutrients to read the next sentence.
“Thank you,” he smiled at me. “You have a beautiful heart.”
And then I drove home.