TRANSCRIPT
I would like to share a few stories about homeless people. Homeless people who I have known in my life. Stories that they’ve told me or my personal experiences with them.
The first story that comes to my mind is just something, a beautiful story to me. I was 23 years old, and I was living for a while in Seattle. I was working as a prep cook in a pizza restaurant, and I was pretty lost at that time in my life. It was a time when I had just finished traveling around the world. I was living in a lot of different places in America, trying to figure out where I fit in. I didn’t know where I fit in. I felt very out of joint with the rest of my life. I didn’t really have any friends in Seattle, but I did have this job, and it was a very important thing to me. That job helped me be grounded, but I was depressed. I was definitely depressed.
So one morning, it was sort of a cold, wet morning. I walked to work, but I went like an hour early before the restaurant even opened because I didn’t feel like sitting at home alone. I went and I was sitting on the steps of my restaurant, just thinking, thinking, and thinking about how sad I was and what I wanted to do with my life. It was gray outside, and I must have looked pretty unhappy because I remember this homeless guy walked by me. He was probably around 40, 45, 50 years old. He was dressed pretty rough, dirty ragged clothes. He had a ragged kind of beard, ragged hair. He had a dirty old hat on, and he just stopped and he looked at me. He goes, “Man, you don’t look very happy.”
I remember saying, “No, I’m actually not very happy. I’m pretty miserable right now.” I just felt I could be honest with him, and I couldn’t be honest with very many other people at that point because I wanted to hide. I wanted to look perfect because I knew a lot of times people don’t like it if you share how unhappy and miserable you are. Well, with him, somehow I felt like I could just drop my guard because I could see that I didn’t have too much to hide from him because he didn’t have too much to hide from me.
Well, this guy looked at me. He goes, “You know, I can see that you really don’t look happy.” He goes, “Here, I want to give you something.” And he walked over to me, he put his hand in his dirty old coat pocket, and he pulled his hand out and he handed me a whole crumpled handful of dollar bills. I think it was like twelve dollars. I was like, “No, no, I don’t need your money. I have a bank account. I’m working. There’s no—because you need it more than I do. Take it.” And so I reached out my hand, and he put this whole handful of bills in, and he goes, “There, and I hope you feel better.” And then he just turned around and walked away. Never ever going, “Oh my God!” And I just started crying.
Well, fast forward ten years, twelve years, something like that. I was in New York City. I was working as a therapist, and I remember one day I walked down to Chinatown. No, it was more than 12 years later. It was after I was a therapist. So I was walking down the street, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. I was down near Chinatown in Manhattan, and there was a homeless guy. I walked past him, and he looked kind of rough. Life had kind of treated him rough, and he was, I think, about 60 years old. Also really dirty clothes, a grizzled beard, dirty hair, also an old dirty hat. And he looked at me, goes, “Hey man, can I have a cigarette?”
I was like, I remember that. The funny thing was that day I was also feeling lonely. I was also feeling unhappy. And I said to him, “Yes, you can have a cigarette.” But then I remember what I said to him was, “You can have a cigarette if you will join me for a cigarette.” And he said, “Okay, I’ll take you up on it.” So we sat down on the stoop. There was nobody around on some corner. I think it was down by Delancey Street, and I rolled him a cigarette first. He held it. He waited even though I had the lighter, and I gave it to him. “Cousin, I’ll wait for you. I want to smoke it together.” I was like, “Okay, this is a cool dude.” And so I rolled one for myself. I lit his, and I lit mine, and we smoked it.
He just talked. He told me about his life. He told me about how he’d been married, how he’d had kids, how he told me he was an alcoholic. He told me how he lost his job some years before, how he was homeless, how whenever he got a little money, he spent it on alcohol, and how he was miserable, and how he had a real problem with depression. And I remember just listening and realizing this guy is not hiding anything from me. And he recognized he got a good listener in me, and he found a compassionate person who cared about him. And I think he loved it that I just wanted to sit with him and smoke. I didn’t want to give him the cigarette and just get away from him.
Somehow what happened as he was telling me this is I remember that homeless guy in Seattle, and I thought, you know, I’m gonna give this guy my money. And I’m like, how much do I have? I think I had about $8. So when it was done smoking the cigarette, when we were done smoking it, I pulled out my wallet and I said, “I’d like to give you what I have.” And I opened it up, and I had eight dollars, a five and three ones, and I gave it to him. And he said, “But that’s all you have! You can’t give me everything you have!” And I said, “No, I can always get more money. I’d like to give you what I have. Plus, I have a bank account. I can take out more money.”
He said, “Well, I shouldn’t take all you have.” He really didn’t want to take it all. I never ever saying, “No, I want to give it to you.” And he was like, he just looked at me, and he took it. And then he started to cry. And he started crying and crying and crying. And he was like, I just remember I teared up just like I am now. And I sat there, and I was crying along with him. The two of us cried, and I put my arm around him, and he just kind of leaned in me, and he put his shoulder in me, and he cried. And then it was all done. He goes, “I guess I think that was the nicest thing anyone ever done for me.”
Sounds like, “Well, I wish I had more to give you right now.” He goes, “No, I wouldn’t even take it if you had more.” And I was like, “Well, I’m happy I could give it.” And he took it, and when he was done crying, I think he told me his name. I told him my name, and he left, and that was it.
I remember another guy in New York City. I’d talked to him for maybe a couple of years. This is when I was a therapist, and he often would sleep on my block. I saw him a lot, and he was in kind of a rough way. And he told me he was homeless primarily because of his depression. He said also he used to be depressed, but he became a lot more depressed once he became homeless. He said also his depression made it very hard for him to work and hold a regular job. He said he didn’t use substances at all, and I saw him a lot, and I never once saw him using substances, so I really believed him.
For one time, we were just sitting and talked. I asked him once, I said, “Can you tell me?” Because he would tell me all these difficult stories about being homeless. “Tell me what is the most difficult thing that ever happened to you when you were homeless?” He sat and thought of it because I’m gonna tell you what it…
Was because, you know, I’ve even been beaten up a couple of times when I was homeless. Because, and that wasn’t the worst thing. I said worse than being beaten up. He said, yep, worse than being beaten up. Said the worst thing that happened to me, he says, I was sleeping on the street one time. It was summer in New York. He said I was sleeping on the street, and I was sleeping with my coat on. I woke up, it was about 7:00, 8:00 in the morning, and I had this really weird feeling that I couldn’t place. And it was a noise. It was just this feeling. And I woke up, and I realized it’s the feeling that somebody’s pouring water on me. And I remember thinking, oh my god, was someone pouring gasoline on him? What is it? I said, what was it? Because I opened my eyes, and there was a dog peeing on me.
And I said, oh, that’s horrible. He goes, no, that isn’t what was even horrible. What was horrible is that dog had a leash attached to it, and there was a young pretty woman. She was probably about thirty years old, and she was pretty, and she had really nice clothes on. And she was letting her dog pee on me. She was watching this happen. And I said, what’s up? Are you doing? And she was like, oh, she got kind of embarrassed when she realized I had woken up, and she walked away with her dog, and the dog walked on. And he goes, what I realized is she thought so little of me that she was willing to let her dog pee on me just because she didn’t want to pull it away. It was too much of an annoyance for her to pull the dog away. So she thought she could get away with it. So she was just letting her dog pee wherever it wanted, and peeing on me did not bother her because I was not even a human being to her. I was nothing. And he said that that almost killed me. He said I almost killed myself after that. He goes, I couldn’t telling you. And for the longest time, he was, I was horribly depressed. I felt so low and so lonely. It’s like, oh my god. And he said, yeah, that was the worst thing ever happened to me in all my years of being homeless. That was it.
Hmm. I’ve also had some bad experiences with homeless people. I remember a few times I’ve had homeless people get really angry at me, rage at me. Just the other day, I was walking on the street, and there was a homeless woman, and she was throwing garbage all over the place. And I was the only one on the block, and she started saying horrible things to me and insulting me, and even followed me a little bit. And okay, I was a little uncomfortable. I didn’t want to get into a confrontation with her. I just ignored her, but I wasn’t really so physically scared of her. I’ve had some other homeless people physically intimidate me. That has happened. I’ve never actually been physically attacked by a homeless people that they’ve said things. I’ve met homeless people who are immigrants from other countries where the transition did not go well to this country. They ended up on the streets. Not easy stories.
Often I tell those stories when I travel around the world, especially when I travel to countries that are not rich, where people are not rich. So many people have this dream, oh, I’m gonna come to New York, and it’s the land of magic, and wonderful things are gonna happen, and I’m gonna become fancy and famous, and I’m gonna make lots of money, and great, I can’t wait to transition to America. And I think, well, doesn’t always work so good. I’ve seen quite a lot of people who are immigrants. Yeah, it was too difficult. They didn’t make it in New York. It was a hard story.
Sometimes I’ve called 911 when I see homeless people on the streets sleeping in the snow in New York City, realizing that nobody’s going to say anything. They’re just lying there, and people are walking by. Then people can be so cold to homeless people, not want to see them, forget that they even exist. I’ve called the police to get it and have an ambulance come get them off the street so they don’t die. I’ve seen a lot of homeless people raging on the subway. Sometimes I play guitar when I travel on the subway just for fun. If I have to take the subway for 45 minutes, just play a little guitar and sing. People often love it. On this, I had homeless people dance. I thought homeless people give me money when I play guitar on the subway. That’s happened quite a few times. I’ve had homeless people sing along with me. Sometimes they can sing great. I’ve had homeless people sing harmony. I’ve had homeless people request songs. Can you? And they want to sing, and I’ll sing harmony along with them. Many times they shake my hand. Many times I’ve put my hand out, and they’re shocked because nobody wants to touch them. They’ve been very touched, literally emotional, when I shook their hand.
So overall, basically what I’ve seen with homeless people is people who are incredibly strong. Life hasn’t always treated them the best. Often they’ve had a lot of trauma. I’ve talked to a lot of homeless people when I was a therapist who had horrible things happen to them in their childhood. Very rarely have I met homeless people when I was a therapist or people who were formerly homeless who talked about having really good childhoods. Mostly horrible childhoods, lots of trauma, lots of abuse, lots of rejection, abandonment, adoptions, parents dying, parents in psychiatric wards. Awful, awful things happening. Abuse. Often it’s like they really did not have a good start in life, and this is just the final end point.
I’ve met some people who were formerly homeless who really got their lives together in all sorts of different ways, who became incredibly useful to other people. And then the other thing is, as I travel around the world a lot, sometimes I feel like, not that I’m exactly homeless, but kind of like being homeless a little bit. Many, many times I’ve slept in airports. I’ve slept in train stations. I’ve arrived too late at night, and I’ve slept on the floor because I don’t feel like traveling into some random city that I don’t know and having to pay all this extra money to arrive somewhere at 3 o’clock in the morning only to sleep through for three hours. So I’ve slept on the floor of a lot of different airports. Not easy, not fun, but interesting and also a chance to gain some empathy. Also thinking, yeah, I’d rather spend my money in different ways, but also thinking this is not something that I would want to do for more than one or two nights in a row.
Also, another thing, when I’ve talked to a lot of homeless people, they say if you don’t have mental problems to begin with, try being homeless in a city, especially when it’s unsafe, or it’s cold for more than three or four nights in a row or a week or two, especially if you’re alone. You probably will have mental problems after that experience because it is so incredibly stressful.
Another thing I’ve heard from a lot of homeless people, especially in New York City, is they say I don’t want to sleep in a shelter. Even though New York City has all these different shelter programs, they say I don’t want to sleep in shelters. And I said, why? It seems like a shelter would be better than sleeping on the street or sleeping in the subway. And often what they say is shelters are dangerous. There’s gangs in shelters. It’s really not safe. People steal your stuff. People can hurt you. And lots and lots and lots of people are sick in shelters, so you get sick. And a lot of times the people who work in shelters are not very nice. They’re rigid. They don’t treat us with compassion. And also there’s tons of rules. You have to leave at seven o’clock in the morning or six o’clock in the morning. You have to come back exactly at five o’clock, and if you don’t come back, you’ll lose your bed, or we can take your stuff, and it’ll be hard to get your stuff back. A lot of times what they say is, yeah, even though sleeping on the street is really stressful, at least I have my…
Independence and my independence, even though it may not be very nice, gives me, or gave me, some degree of dignity.
I’ve also met quite a lot of homeless people who band up with other homeless people so they feel safer, so they don’t get attacked, so they’re not so vulnerable. These are all stories I’ve heard, these stories over and over and over again.
And what I find, again and again, probably to repeat myself a little bit, is by listening to the stories of homeless people, I learn about people who really actually are often incredibly strong. Who, even though life hasn’t always treated them that well, and they’re often in the worst places in their lives, they have a lot of resiliency, they have flexibility, and they have also a lot of life experience outside the realm of the life experience that I have.
And in that way, I can learn from it, and I really respect that. Oh.