That Time I Gave a Homeless Man $40
[From 2010]
A friend from college was scheduled to play with his jazz band in the city. I’d looked up the venue they were going to perform at: Cleopatra’s Needle, a tavern on the upper west side of New York City. It seemed like a nice place to grab a late dinner. Maybe I’d even chat with some musicians over a latte. In any event, I always have a great time in the city.
Riding the train up to NY Penn Station, I was confident the destination wouldn’t be overwhelmingly difficult to find. I didn’t recall the exact address, but I knew it was somewhere along Broadway.
Finally getting to Broadway
Relief settled in my mind when I arrived at the intersection of 33rd Street and Broadway; all I had to do then was keep my eyes open. Only a few hours from midnight, the city was wide-awake, as could be expected. Despite the fact it was a Thursday, the crowds obviously saw it as another exciting night out in The Big Apple. I found myself walking past a throng of people gathered around a hotdog stand.
“Excuse me miss, you have a minute, please?”
The voice, actually not coming from the mass, belonged to a tall and skinny black man standing aside to himself. Probably in his late thirties, he wore a simple black shirt and parts and carried nothing but a large umbrella at his side. It was obvious he hadn’t shaved in a few weeks.
“Just a quick minute,” he said.
Not having the emotional detachment to completely disregard him, I turned in his direction, keeping my distance (in case he was a skilled pick-pocketer), “You alright?”
(Visiting the city fairly often, I’ve learned that if any unfamiliar person initiates a conversation with you in the streets, you’ve either cut them off, in which case they have every intention to gesticulate their outrage, or, they are houseless. In this case, the latter proved true; I’ve always had a weakness for them.)
He started talking about the hardships he was going through. Being as brief and direct as possible (since it’s rare that a New Yorker- as he supposed me to be- stop very long to listen to anything), he informed me how he was from Chicago trying to get back to his family. He spoke slightly too fast for me to understand everything; I imagine he was trying to say as much as possible before I walked away.
From what I gathered, he’d been reciting poetry along the streets for about a week now trying to make spare change. For a homeless man, he presented himself decently and in a polite manner. Having the notion he was giving a wholehearted effort to escape his predicament, I pulled out a few dollar coins, eager to start on my way to the show. Taking the tokens in hand, he pondered for a moment, “Mam, please. I know you can help me.”
I stared at him in disbelief, “You’re kidding me, right?”
He wasn’t kidding
It wasn’t the first time I’d been charitable to someone on the streets, but never in my life had I witnessed someone with anything less than 100% gratitude, even for just a few dollars. He pulled out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from his pocket, explaining how some couple had been gracious towards him after hearing a poem of his. Now only $40 separated him from a long bus ride home.
This man was actively doing all that he could (or so it seemed to me) to get back on his feet and return to his life. He wasn’t sitting on a busy corner with a cup waiting for someone to pick him up. He wasn’t sitting there thinking about how he was thousands of miles away from a family he’d probably never see again. He was honestly reaching out to people hoping they might be receptive.
That night I wasn’t wearing any kind of fancy clothing- I had no Rolex around my wrist and wasn’t showing off any designer sunglasses. I wore sneakers that were old and torn and a casually fitted t-shirt. Never mind that I was a teenage girl that anyone could assume was likely drowning in student loan debt. So how he supposed I had any kind of money is still a mystery.
“Please“, he repeated.
Glancing at the clock, it was already half past ten and I didn’t exactly know where I was going. Ignoring his comment, I asked, “Happen to know of a place called Cleopatra’s around here?”
He didn’t. In that moment I began to see how both he and I faced our own separate yet personal dilemmas; we stood silent for a moment. I realized he was just as human as I was.
“You don’t have any family that will help you out?” I asked. He started telling me (in his over-paced manner) about Illinois and how he was swept all the way out to the East Coast.
Equally as interested to see the band as to hear of this man’s way of living, I insisted that I had to get going and walk down Broadway, and I invited him if he wanted to walk along with me. He explained how he too needed to travel a few blocks down through Times Square.
Walking down Broadway
As we were conversing about life on the streets, William explained, “It’s not fun going from a nice bed one night to being homeless the next.”
“Especially out in the city- I could imagine how much harder that has to be.”
He stopped and looked at me, “Could you?”
This remark surprised me. After a moment of silence, I honestly confessed, “I have a pretty good idea.” He looked at me as if he didn’t believe the implications of what I’d said. I laughed to myself and changed the subject, “No luck finding a job around here?”
He mentioned schizophrenia as why he couldn’t find work. Uncontrollable episodes, one surfacing just this past week, prevented him from sustaining a job doing even the simplest tasks.
The condition did help him, however, in making creative improvisations for his poetry. I’ve always been fascinated by the disorder, but he seemed even more stunned than I that someone would have an interest in knowing more about it. In my perspective, what were the odds that on the streets of New York I would run into an individual with whom I have always wanted to converse with? In some humorous way, I almost felt like I’d met a celebrity—his overgrown beard, plain shirt, and dark sweatpants were a means of keeping the cameras away.
At one point while we were talking, I discovered that we had veered off Broadway while walking with him down one of the cross streets. We found it funny and admitted the conversation was worth the extra couple blocks in the wrong direction. Not wanting to cut the encounter short, I asked, “Do you like jazz, by any chance?” I informed him of the show I was planning to attend, and offered to buy him a coffee.
“You won’t believe this,” he told me, “but I’m a music producer.” Apparently at one point in his life, he wasn’t only writing poetry, but also putting music to it.
“The two must go hand-in-hand for you, no? If you’re on the streets improvising these poems, I’m sure you could be a good rapper.”
“I am!” he exclaimed. The passion he had was undeniable. Stopping right there, he started to beat-box a rhythm and rapped about the people going by, noting how none of them really knew where they were going. He rhymed of how the people in the city are blind to reality. I laughed out of enjoyment as I was taken aback at how absorbed he was with his performance.
At one point, a couple of people started standing around us, thinking he was a street performer and that I was the first passerby to give him an audience. While he was spitting his lines and as the bystanders were being entertained, I noticed a contentment grow in me. I was proud that in that moment I wasn’t a mere onlooker, like everyone else, but that I actually knew this man, at least to some degree.
After he finished rapping and the small crowd dispersed, we continued walking, laughing about the reactions of people. Our conversations were all random and unprovoked, but the whole dialogue was fluid. A few blocks later, we started arguing about whether having some sort of supernatural ability would be worth anything.
“Let’s say you could fly,” he started, “what good would that do? Nothing! It would cause havoc; people wouldn’t know how to use that power responsibly.”
I found it funny that I was now talking about something I’d given in depth thought about. I chimed in, “It would give us perspective!” He looked as if he wasn’t impressed with my response. By this time, we were both fully engaged in the topic. “Perspective as to our true nature and abilities,” I elaborated.
He responded by going on a tangent, as we often did that night, “You know that we’re not real, that we’re not physical beings, right?” And off we went down a whole other tangent about the difference of being a physical versus spiritual being, and what that all really means.
With conversations like this passing between us, it was no wonder the city scenery faded, and no wonder that hours went by without either of us realizing.
Walking along the Theatre District, (in the direction we hoped was towards the cafe) I would occasionally pause our discussion by inquiring at the security stations for the whereabouts of the restaurant. After a while, I could predict the guard’s response before I’d even asked the question: a confused-one-eyebrow-raised look, followed by apologies for never hearing of the cafe.
At every intersection we were about to cross, William would pause our exchange dead sentence and insist that we change sides so I could “walk on the inside” – he described it as proper etiquette for man and woman walking in city streets. I had never heard of this before. I later learned it was so the woman is on the “safer” side of the street, further away from cars and potential danger from it.
As a young child, I remembered having traveled on that same avenue. My brothers and I would amuse ourselves in the back seat of our old caravan, staring dumbfounded at all the blurring bright lights as we drove by. It was like a new world—we didn’t have skyscrapers like that back at home.
More in common than is different
Looking back, I wish I’d have paid more attention so I would’ve known where I was going on that Thursday. I felt like a tourist in the city, (which, arguably, I was). We passed Times Square, and I commented on how people from all over the country—Chicago included—visit here every New Year’s Eve for a great celebration. Neither William nor I had been there on New Years before.
I never made it to Cleopatra’s that night. Ironically, the set had finished a few hours earlier than scheduled—never mind the fact that even after walking for hours, I was still on the other side of the borough. It turned out Broadway was much longer than I thought.
As we were about to go our separate ways, he once again pleaded for any help I could give him. Almost having forgotten that I’d be conversing with a houseless man this whole time, I thought back to the last few hours and how he had not made reference to me giving him money.
I realized how uncommon it was for someone like me to walk around with a houseless man at all, despite his being schizophrenic and my having prior engagements in the city. Yet somehow it seemed if I denied his request again, I would be the one left with regret. Battling within myself, I decided to follow my gut instinct. In disbelief of what I was doing, I saw my hand extend toward him once again—this time with two $20 bills in it.
Do you believe in karma?
On the train ride home, I still had mixed feelings about whether I did the right thing. Looking for some sort of assurance, I asked a fellow rider if he believed in karma. “No way in hell,” he answered almost instantly, not needing to give a second of thought to it.
Lying back in my seat, I stared out the window as the towns flew by. Somehow, as illogical a decision I felt I made, my pockets didn’t feel so empty and I didn’t experience the deep pang of regret that I was afraid of.
In retrospect, I didn’t go to the city for merely a show, but for some sort of enjoyment: some time to sit back and think about things, to hear new perspectives. When it was all said and done, I spent my time in the city that night and received all that I’d asked for. I’ve heard it said how some of the most interesting conversations an individual will have will be with a complete stranger; I’ve always been a skeptic, but that Thursday evening was clear evidence of it.
It may very well be true that everything William said was a lie from the beginning, but if that‘s true, I must admit, he did a great job at it. I rode home with racing thoughts about things I hadn’t considered since I was a child. I also mulled over the value of $40, but the thought was soon pushed away as the other things we discussed came to mind.