Essays

I am walking down the street. A hispanic man approaches me in front of Walgreens. His matted hair is pulled back in a black bandana, and his face is scruffy from too many nights spent on the street. Decked out in dirty denim, he looks more like a caricature of himself than a real person. "Got any money for a starving artist? You look like an artist, I can tell. You're an artist, you got style." His words fly out into the air, rolling fast like dice. I am wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, not exactly proclaiming 'artist.'

I take him to Starbucks and buy him a coffee, ask him about his life. He is overpolite, shifting his weight as if he knows he is taking up too much space. He tells me the usual stories: his wife left him, he has a problem with alcohol, went through rehab. His gaze intermittently shifts around the room as if memorizing the exits, unaccustomed to the yuppie confines of the coffee mecca. He tells me he used to live in London, when he had a place to stay and steady pay. They treat people good there, don't humiliate them like they do here. While he says this, the woman behind the counter sternly rattles off a warning in her clipped spanish, Don't go harassing people asking for coffee, you can't keep coming in here like this. I reassure her he's here on my dime, but she doesn't hear me. "He does this all the time," she tells me, offering an apology while glaring at him through narrow slits.

I hand him his coffee, and he thanks me several times before bolting outside into the winter air, where he feels warmer.

I walk out into the cold, clasping the coffee in my hands and warming myself in the steam. I think about the all the homeless people who are on Robertson Boulevard, that greet me hungrily on my lunch break. They are the invisible people, identifiable only by grubby hands reaching in the periphery.

They are human.

I don't have money to buy every man and woman coffee-- in Los Angeles, that would put me out on the street. But I can go out of my way to look people in the eye, say hello, acknowledge. You are human, I recognize that. Sometimes, that is worth more than a handful of pocket change.

Posted June 11, 2004 12:59 PM