“Hi. I’m not going to hurt you. I didn’t mean to startle you. My wife is 3 months pregnant and we wanted to know if you can spare anything. Anything at all.”
What am I expected to say to that? Being approached as I step into my vehicle at night in front of a Half Price Books (notorious for big spenders) is jarring to say the least. But how am I supposed to respond? I respond in the negative, that I don’t carry cash.
“Thanks. God bless.”
That’s an incomplete thought. And probably insincere. God bless what exactly? There’s a time period when I would have jumped at the opportunity to help someone in need. I routinely pull over and help people push their derelict cars out of the road, afterall. But a decade or so back I used to give money to people who asked for it. Whether from surprise or pity, I used to respond in the affirmative.
Houston has a different feel to it, a different desperation, depending on the area you visit. You start to recognize the faces at street corners after a while and even begin to notice their rotations from one crowded intersection to the next. Veterans, entire families, and the rugged, ruddy, individuals with a wild look in their eye. The eyes. You can see the silent shame in some, the ambivalence in others. All of the gazes are piercing, challenging, whether it’s a challenge to a physical confrontation or an emotional game of chicken is actually harder to discern than you’d expect. If a man had a sign requesting food, I had no problem with handing over one of my taco trio. If I carried tacos on me at all times, I probably still would. The problem is I know of stories like from my truck-driver grandpa, a kind soul who once offered a man to take him to whatever restaurant he wanted. The man declined and asked for cash. You can hold a sign saying you’re hungry, a respectable need, but if this baser necessity isn’t being sated, where does my hard-earned money go?
Escorting a female friend to her car from a club downtown, we exited through the back and made a beeline for the parking lot. It wasn’t an alley, per se, but we were approached seemingly out of nowhere. “Give me a dollar.” Being young and scared out of my skin, I cracked my wallet open before I had a chance to think. “Hey, you got more in there. Gimme more.” Thankfully it wasn’t a mugging, because I found my balls as I said, “You can’t have more. You asked for a dollar and you will take it.”
That incident always stayed with me about how lucky I was, both in not getting stabbed but also with the fact that I actually had more than a single dollar. I appreciate my good fortune, and that must mean something to someone, somewhere. Whether I give or not, I don’t sneer.
A “correct” way to beg probably doesn’t exist, but having a funny sign or being honest is a step in the right direction. I’ve given a beer to a cute beggar at one corner, to which she smiled and chugged the dehydrating drink in the middle of a scorching day. I’m not certain what startled me more, the fiercely toothless smile or the fearsome speed at which she tossed the empty bottle into the gutter. She picked up the “I want Booze” sign and returned to her position. It used to be fairly common for Houston beggars to dump brown water on your windshield and watch your reaction after scrubbing it with a squeegee. At least that is the semblance of a service. I would slip a dollar through a narrow window slit. The same street corner would see newspaper and flower sellers, both of which I have bought for no good reason. I’m not going to lump that honest job in with homelessness, but the function is still the same. Standing out on a corner for long hours seems like a marketable asset at some point. One of my friends is paid to hammer temporary signs into illegal grass patches and to wave an advertisement around sometimes.
The beggars that stand out to me, though, are the clear deceptions. I’ve seen entire bedraggled families lined up as if for a photoshoot. I’ve witnessed a man scrounging through my job’s dumpsters out back, then literally speed off in a cherry-red corvette. I’ve come to find that green combat jackets are easily purchased from the Salvation Army (an odd branch of the military?) and that the amount of “donations” in a major metropolition area can sometimes exceed a minimum wage job.
I’m a priveleged child, for certain, but haven’t always lived as such. At some point in my existence I did maintain a single bedroom apartment with a mere 20 hours a week at a cashier job to keep the money flow. Ace Checks cashed my income and took their cut. I lived alone. When my car didn’t work, I took the bus. I unplugged my refrigerator after calculating the kilowatt/hour consumption of each major appliance. I read books while sitting near the gas stove vs. turning on the AC/heater for that same reason. I had a jar of quarters for both the pay phone two blocks from my home and the neighborhood laundromat I had to read even more books in while guarding my clothes, all to the off-kilter rumbling of the cheap machine beneath me. My best friend was named Ramen. The point is that I made it work with minimal resources and nominal effort.
There will always be homelessness, regardless of the economy’s state. But I believe in choices and work and options. Everyone could use a little help, maybe even deserve it from time to time, and some of them will even apply the given help towards the stated purpose. But I’m far too jaded at this point to be guilted. I’ve got none to spare.