Yesterday morning, that is Sunday June 16, I was wending my way through the ghetto out to Paradise Found to have breakfast with a historian and educator who has kind of adopted me as a pet brain. I began with a one mile trek through the ghetto, thankfully silent as the hood-rats and white-trash slept the slumber of the stoned. At the bus stop I read a V. J. Waks novel about a killer mutant babe while a middle-class black youth eyed me with obvious fear; bald and dressed in black steel-toe boots and black cargo shorts with a sleeveless shirt, arms sporting razed stick welts from yesterday’s sparring.
‘Being trash has its perks’, I mused as a squad of rats from Fire Base Doritos rummaged through the corn chip and cheese curl bags at my feet for their Sunday morning repast.
‘No panhandlers—nice.’
I transferred buses at a suburban shopping center, and boarded behind an angry ghetto girl that was rude to the middle-aged male driver, who I made certain to be respectful to. This driver had a thing for the forced ‘good morning’ making sure to make you feel like a heel if you did not promptly say good morning. This is a bit unfair, as bus patrons are so conditioned to always put on a hard face to frustrate strong-arm robbers interviewing potential victims and to discourage the legions of panhandlers, who were thankfully absent here as well.
I returned to Ms. Waks’ book only to be interrupted by a blazing example of virulent white trash. The man had boarded the bus, attired in sleeveless shirt and cargo shorts with backpack just like I, and then began shouting at the driver who had the gall to be courteous. He was acting angry, even psychotic, turning on the bus driver, “Leave me alone and do your job sir. You work for the MTA and the MTA works for me. I don’t have to kiss your ass any more than I have to kiss her ass right there!” he wolfed, pointing at the angry ghetto girl who was angry no more, and shifted restlessly in her seat.
I was getting angry at this guy because I knew, and everybody on this bus knew, that he was only getting racially ballistic on this bus because he and I had parity with the two black males on this bus. Deep in the hood, at 15 to 1 odds he would have mumbled ‘Good morning sir’ and slinked to his seat. But here he was a badass. I suppressed the urge to slam his head against the window, and went back to my book.
Fifteen minutes later I offloaded, and made certain to wish the driver a ‘Happy Fathers’ Day.’ But he had soaked up enough white hate this morning to make his reply stiff and forced. Unable to make things right I returned to my Darwinian mindset, and then recalled, ‘I am in Paradise Found, not a combatant within five miles. I can wander about in this postindustrial service economy wonderland without concern.’
I read as I walked across the lot to the food market. As I made the entrance a skinny middle-age black woman was cussing out a grungy white barefoot panhandler, “Fuck you boy, fuck yo-all niցցer!”
I selected some almond milk and took my time picking out the cereal. As I checked out, and checked out the twenty-something woman buying baby food—I know, that is wrong on multiple levels—I noticed that my cashier was a handicapped African woman who could barely reach the scanner. As my Darwinian ethics continued to desert me, even to the point where I discontinued my ogling of the fertile young lady, I broke down and donated a dollar to some bleeding heart cause or another—even attempting to sign my name on the donation slip with my oft-broken hand.
‘What’, I asked myself, ‘would the Great Khan think of me now?’
‘Am I a woman—albeit a dyke—destined to descend into a living hell of effusive misplaced compassion?’
‘Have I lost my edge?’
‘Will I actually give money to that bum outside when I pass him by?’
‘Please’, I prayed to the cruel and heartless Nordic ancestor that I sincerely hoped lurked somewhere in my genome, ‘let me have the strength to despise the weak, to cast a dark shadow across their—No, I’m getting soft; can’t even muster a soul-damning curse!’
I smiled pathetically at the struggling woman behind the counter; as much impaired by her physiology as I was by the bleeding-heart ethics somehow brought to the surface by Mister Good Morning the bus driver.
Out the door I went.
I was headed for the panhandler, whose grungy little hand even now was receiving a dollar bill from a well-dressed black business man who walked like an athlete. I raised the book to read as I walked and headed toward the begging zone, hoping that I would not be tried, that the author of The Case for the Panhandler Genocide would not show the yellow streak!
The dirty feet under the too long jeans retreated behind the propane locker and I walked on reading about mutant babe Gerda Tau eating some scientist alive. Then, as I hit the begging zone I heard its plaintive voice, “Excuse me Sir, I don’t mean any disrespect, but could you spare some change?”
He sounded pathetic, broken—nice even. I stopped and closed my book, looking over at him with the same narrow gaze I had given the youth at the ghetto bus stop hours before, and he had the same reaction, swallowing hard, and stepping back. Only he was more pathetic, burying his hands in his pockets and rounding his shoulders, looking teary-eyed at me from under his brows. He had a wife-beater shirt on, representing a venerable American institution that he was surely incapable of continuing. He had long soft brown hair in a ponytail, a lazy or damaged eye, and a wimpy half-assed go-tee that could not conceal his weak chin.
I switched the book to my right hand and slid it into the side pocket of my cargo shorts to extract my wallet—I know, my portrait is being taken down from the Arуan Nation Compound fence even as you read this—and said, “Sure pal, I’ve got something for you.”
As I extracted my wallet hope lit across his face—a fat wallet it was, stuffed with thirty ones and some more lofty bills as well. He actually stepped forward in a shaky manner, his shoulders shuttering a little, and pursed his mouth for the obligatory thank you.
Note: There is no way this guy survives a day on a major corner. The crack-heads would beat his ass and toss him over the guardrail into the drainage ditch below. He has found a niche though, where the worst he has to fear is some chick who hates her fast food job chewing him out.
I opened my wallet and slid out a brand new card, not plastic, but a business card. He seemed happy to see it. Perhaps I was a homeless advocate about to proffer a halfway house or shelter pass? Maybe I was a born again commiseration vector willing to feed him so long as he listened to my sermons, as my father had done with the bums he had scraped off of Baltimore City streets in the early 1970’s?
He seemed confused when I handed him the Harm City card, so I said, “Look, when you save up enough change to buy a computer, go online, go to the Harm City page on that website, and scroll down to Panhandler Nation. By then you’ll be famous.”
I replaced my wallet in its proper place, and winked at him as he stammered, “Th-th-thank…you, sir…” and I walked away, hoping that I had effected a compromise that would please—or at least not invoke the wrath of—Genghis Khan and MomMom LaFond.
For readers concerned with ‘Beard Boy’ as I have affectionately named this most polite panhandler, I will make this promise: If I pass his way again I will pay him for an interview. If you are concerned with his plight please note how much money you think I should donate to his indigence, and any questions you would like me to ask on your behalf.
