Karma Bums I was walking home brisk in my Senegalese pants, tie-dye shirt and Native American parka. My mind was racing faster than my feet about some short story I need to write. I had a killer idea; my muse was ready to burst loose. But five steps from my front door, I was derailed when I spotted a man I took for homeless in his tawdry vest, worn red sweatshirt, junkie posture, torn lips and cheeks frozen stiff like icy black marble. I peeled my eyes for a second, trying to discern through my blurry eyes and a stray lock of hair whether he was a certain homeless man I knew from the area. I realized he wasn’t, a twisted relief, because I could tell by the silence in my pockets that I had no spare change for him.
He nodded his head at me, called out a salutary “yo”. I knew he didn’t know me, but I responded with a nonchalant “hey” anyway. He passed by, and two steps later turned around with another, more direct “yo”, this time requesting my attention.
I think he said his name was Dave. He started to explain his situation: he was from St. Thomas, he came here cuz his momz died, he slept over there on the subway, he didn’t wanna beg—oh by the way he liked my shit, long hair, I look kinda like a rock star.
I shook my head back and laughed my silently croaking, polarizing laugh. Some people can’t stand my laugh ‘cause it’s the only answer they receive when asking petty prying questions. Others are able to laugh at my laugh with endless marvel, but never able to tell my why. I was laughing partly because that’s the way I respond to just about anything, compliments included, and partly because I knew that there was no way I could take any compliment as pure. Although I may appear to be utterly alien to society, I am not autonomous nor ignorant. And, as much as I want to change it, I know that business is business.
“I don’t want to beg—“ he said, “I don’t want your money! Please, keep your money. But please, brother, I beg you. I need to ask just one favor. No money! Just a favor.”
“What’s that, man?”
“I haven’t eaten in two days. If you could just buy me some food…”
A more sarcastic hippie would have thought, “Ok, so instead of giving you fifty cents change I’ll buy you a five dollar meal. And then you’ll spend what money you already have on drugs.” Of course no such though occurred to me, and as a dutiful socialist I agreed to his offer.
My doorman stepped out of the building at that moment and eyed me as I stood next to Dave. Now he knows that I chill with homeless people! Although friends often tease, I don’t say this with any touch of sarcasm. I do chill with homeless people. Not just small talk. I’ve had conversations exceeding two hours with three of the most sagacious characters the streets have to offer. One time it was at the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn. I sat down on the corner where the homeboys were blasting Tupac and serving chicken wings for free, and next to me sat a middle-aged hobo with wiry dreadlocks who played the flute with mighty, flighty-fingered zest. Quoth this vivacious bodhisattva: “I always knew I’d either be a bum or a musician. So I decided to be both.” Just recently he had given up his job, truck and home in order to better follow the gospel of his and my best friend, Jesus, whom he cited: “If you were to perfect, go, give away all that you own, and come follow me.” I had previously been very skeptical of religion, as everybody should be, but because I often felt a totally-organic ecstatic trippiness and utterly orgasmic unity with the universe at large, I had been turning on to unorganized, chaotic spirituality. My chat with him iced it. A week later, the day after September 11th, I talked extensively with a homeless guy who sold newspapers and slept on the subway about what the upcoming political situation would be. I was of the opinion that there wouldn’t be a war, despite Bush’s best wishes, because it was a physical impossibility to declare war on an abstract noun such as terrorism. But apparently Dubya outdid himself, eh? And finally, the most recent homeless acquaintance of mine was an older man and self-proclaimed genius who sat prophetically on the sidewalk across St. Vincent’s Hospital, his iridescent-green parka’s zipper opened half way so that the new summer sun beat on his chest. As an icebreaker he told some Monica Lewinsky jokes and wrathfully condemned to hellfire all the businessmen who gave him ugly looks when he walked the city. He continued to tell me that he had been a child prodigy and that he had experienced a vision predicting the fall of the World Trade Center. And finally, we had a long discussion about aliens and whether or not the government knew about them. Creepy indeed, but creepiest is the fact that everything he said made total sense. In each of these three cases, there was no exchange of money involved. Don’t get me wrong, I usually give money to homeless people when I have spare change. One chilly February night I gave five dollars to an elderly man on 112th street with an exceptionally nappy beard, who had requested money for ice cream. He told me to stay cool, and just that was worth every penny. It’s all about the karma, you know? But chilling with these three fellows wasn’t about money or karma. It was just human interaction. Despite extreme differences in race and class, the fact that we were human and alive together in the same time and place brought us together. We had that connection, so we made a connection.
I walked with Dave down 92nd street. I’d always received bad vibes from that block; we don’t have a good history. During the summer, every time I would amble through, someone or another who had registered a disagreeable reaction to my colorful attire would cough “Freak” under their breath, just loud enough to make sure I heard it. Once we had turned onto the block, a character indistinguishable in the bleak darkness and his heavy jacket shouted “Yo Dave!” in our direction. I’m pretty sure he said his name was Dave. Then it hit me. Even the aforementioned sarcastic hippie, that schizophrenic guardian angel/devil that was absent from my shoulders, had not been foresighted enough. His plan was to lead me down the block, and this shady figure would shadow us, and at the first convenient point they’d both mug me. He wouldn’t just get a $5 meal out of it, he’d get all the $180 dollars in my pockets, because I had just been paid and like the street-smart New Yorker I am, I keep all the money to my name in my wallet. This was the first time walking down 92nd street that I was glad to see a few other pedestrians scattered about the sidewalk.
He told me he had a cold. He’d seen my pink eye, heard my hollow cough and groggy croak, so he inquired whether I had the same. Yeah, but I thought I was getting over it. He asked me what I thought of the weather, which is real cliché, but when you don’t have shelter and you’re from St. Thomas it isn’t so trifling a question. When we neared the end of the block, and for the first time there were no people within 20 yards of us, he grunted “Go this way,” and turned to cross the street into an auspiciously empty garage.
“Aw, hey man, the store’s the other way,” I said as I countered his motion by turning the other direction. “I don’t know; you wanna go to D’agostino’s?”
“Oh, I wanna go to my Chinese joint on 94th and Broadway.”
“Ah, damn, sorry man, I can’t go that far. I gotta be home in like, two minutes.”
“Yo! I mean, ya know!” he protested, flabbergasted, and proceeded to explain, “I wanna go to my shit! So as I can sit and chill a little while.”
“Oh yeah I know what you mean, I’m just saying I can’t go that far. Gotta get home. I could give you some money now, or we can stop in the D’agostino’s right here.”
“Ok. Oh, but yo, ain’t that deli up ahead supposed to be good?”
“Alright, we’ll go there.” As we walked to Columbus Bagels on 90th street he continued to try to make small talk, but the only thing he had left to say was that he hoped I got over my cold, which he said five times over the course of two blocks. I offered him a cough drop for his own cold, but realized my Ricola roll was empty.
We entered the deli. He ordered a hamburger. With fries. And then took two boxes of cookies from the shelf. Afraid that he would proceed to clear the store’s entire stockpile, I warned him I didn’t have too much money on me.
“Oh, sure. I got a few dollars of my own if it goes over.” he said as the cashier rung up the items, “This shouldn’t be too much”. I pulled a ten out of my wallet. Six dollars was the price, and I handed over the bill. “Hey man, I also ordered a sandwich, I need some more money, it’s gonna come out to, like, I’d say, fifteen dollars.”
“I really can’t…”
“Aight. See you round.”
“Sure. Bye, dude.”
“Oh, Richard, can I ask just one last favor? If you just have a dollar? Please, bro?”
I pulled the cough-drop wrapper out of my pocket, and presented it. “Nah, all I got is wrappers, man, I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, gave me a pound, smiled, and said, “Oh yeah, and Richard, if I ever see you around—I owe you one.”
I stepped out of the deli with circumspect glances. I caught sight of an indiscriminate large figure in a puffy grey winter jacket lumbering next to the payphone. I think he gave me a look. Not that that’s incriminating evidence, because everybody tends to give me looks. I walked briskly to school, seemingly unfollowed, and slept on a couch in the sophomore area where students drifted through the Homecoming madness. My mind was racing faster than my dreams about some short story I need to write. My muse had burst loose in the form of surreal incantations about a man who most would call a thief, yet never realize that their own thieving necessitated his actions. A man who sells in order to thieve. He sells pity to the Upper West Side liberals that Phil Ochs might have sung about. He sells compliments as gimmicky throw-ins to put the deal on ice. But for young hippie socialists, the cosmic mix of ideology, compassion, and karma sells itself.