A True Vagrant’s Story
Within the walls of this city there is a great secret. A transient and hungry secret. It is everywhere–street corners and corner stores. While the city sleeps, within warm homes and warmer arms…it sleeps alone. They sleep alone.
This secret is a true vagrant’s story.
The homeless in Austin are plentiful. Bountiful in their gimmicks, sparse in their commodities…they roam the streets while the city sleeps. I have never experienced this before moving here. I have never really known the homeless. It brings perspective to this ill-defined life right now.
Each night I leave my apartment, the coward’s journey to friends’ houses, and I stop at the same red light. It doesn’t matter the time, nor the weather, they are always there. Sometimes they have roses in hand, sometimes a simple sign…
“I don’t bite. I just want a bite.”
I drive with my window down. Always. An open invitation into my world, they must presume. I cannot look at them. My eyes look passed them, above them, anywhere but at them. I cannot look into their eyes, for I fear that their great secret will be shared with me–pain, loneliness, destitution. And I tell myself that I don’t care. A life of bad decisions. A youth gone wrong. Not my problem.
But their eyes haunt me.
I know that their eyes will tell me something different. Their eyes will beg me to pay them mind, and pay them in kind. Their eyes expose not only their pathetic weakness, but my own. I cannot look at them. I have tried. I have tried so hard, but my body will not follow my will. I find things to play with. I rearrange my music, I shuffle trash, I avoid them at all costs.
In the most pure sense, I do not feel bad for them. I am the product of a typical American blue collar family. A work ethic was instilled in me…a sense of duty to God, country, and family. A sense of responsibility. These damned “gifts” are the only reason I am still here. I had a handful of cash and a hankering to move overseas after graduation, but my family and their sense of tradition kept me here. I could not leave them or their ideal life for me.
Cursed as it may be…I was given these gifts in goodwill. These derelicts…vagabonds with wayward souls…were obviously not so fortunate, or worse yet…they cast aside similar gifts in the name of drugs, alcohol, and circumstance. How cold am I…a humanist debasing the most base of my brothers…? But I cannot help it. I hate their eyes, windows into a soul of need. Windows that expose the true nature of myself–a loving person who wants only to help, but is equally selfish and judgmental.
I offer them cigarettes often…a consolation prize. Oh no, you will not eat on my dime, but smoke up and die. It is the smokers’ creed–the communion of our disease, partake and be happy. For your belly is empty, but your lungs are full–full of hot death rolled just for you.
Their secret is no secret at all. My mind constantly fights my heart. It tells me that these zombies are not people, but a life of bad decisions–a story penned by one mistake after another. My mind doesn’t ask if they are hungry, but how in the hell they got that bouquet of flowers? I puzzle myself with anything but their plight. I know they are cold right now…outside the walls and arms of warmth that I enjoy.
I feel so fortunate to simply not be them. To drive. To own anything. The city’s great secret–peddle pushers and gypsies who want and want and give nothing back. Maybe one day I’ll be able to take them in, from head to toe, and our eyes will meet. I do not know what I’ll see in them, but I am sure I know what they will see in me…
Thankfulness. Fear. Pity. And hate.
And tonight, I will lay and wonder about where they are…what they’re doing…how they got through the day…then I will sleep and surrender the streets to them. Yes, while the city sleeps, they roam the streets…
Good night and good luck–you will get little more than that from me.
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