“Let me guess, classes are over and you’re coming home to get drunk,” the homeless man said to me while sipping a 40 of Steele Reserve and sporting a cheek to cheek grin.
“You got it Mike, you’re always right on,” I said, as I thought about what a perfect way this was to be greeted week after week, on Friday afternoons after Brandeis University classes, at age 19. Every Friday without fail I got lectured on American society, learning all about Thomas Jefferson and his story of rags to riches, and came home to see Mike sitting on my doorstep. Typically I continued the conversation from just a meet and greet.
“How was your sleep last night?”
“Great Nate, nice and warm. Haha I didn’t even mean to rhyme and I still did. Love it when that happens.”
Mike had made a comfortable home for himself on the couch in our basement, which had no lock thanks to our landlord named Dick, who let us hand in our rent up to 2 months late so long as he didn’t have to fix the broken ass house. But I didn’t mind Mike’s presence, didn’t mind that he slept two floors below me. I appreciated his rotten-toothed smile because he was the happiest and savviest homeless man I had ever met. Well, I suppose he was the only homeless man that I had ever really met. Regardless, this was a relief because generally speaking I hate homeless people. I can’t stand them. Not because they beg for money, that I can get over. And not because they’re dirty, I tend to go a few days without a shower myself. It’s simply because they are bad at being homeless and that I know I could be a superior homeless man than most of them, which isn’t even my job. If I’m better than someone at their job, and it’s not my job, then they really suck.
For example, I know at least thirty different places that I could sleep in my home city of Boston, hidden in different nooks and crannies of different public buildings and businesses from Libraries, to hotels, to bus stations, which are relatively warm and comfortable, so that I would never have to spend a night in the cold. Yet I hear on the news, stories about homeless people who die in the dead of winter because they freeze to death. It’s inexcusable. If I, a man with a home, could successfully scramble for shelter if the situation called for it, then they have no excuses because they have no home. This is what they do for a living. There responsibilities are to stay warm and beg a little. Three dollars in change is three fast food burgers when ordering off the dollar menu. Beyond food and shelter there isn’t much to it. And if that job is too hard for them, if they can’t find a warm place to sleep, I understand, but then I must ask. What the fuck are you doing in New England? Please start walking south. I know it will take a long time, but shit you have nothing else to do. Get yourselves to Florida or at least Alabama. What’s that you say? You don’t know which direction South is? Then look up to the sky and follow the migrating birds. You have no excuses. You could even hitchhike and take the weight off your legs. And if even this is too difficult for you, if you’re not as smart as the birds who’s brains I have to imagine are less than 1/10 the size of yours, then still I am willing to forgive you. However, please do me a favor and get caught stealing some shit so you can go to jail where you will be housed and fed on the rest of societies’ money. But Don’t freeze to death. If you are homeless and shelter-less during a Boston winter and you succumb to hypothermia it’s not an accident, it’s inevitable.
