I had a reality check coming out of the movies. I rarely go to a theater, and when I do it's usually to the small independent moviehouse where I am a member -- that means discounted popcorn, and they have olive oil and nutritional yeast to put on it, which I rarely resist. This time, however, I had snuck in a chocolate bar -- cooked, not raw -- to have something to really look forward to, and to fit the theme of the animated short films being shown. I ended up trading candy for popcorn with my neighbors, so we all got the best of both worlds, and the films were wonderful, laughs all around. I sure had a blast!
But as I approached my car, shivering as the temperatures plummeted, I saw a homeless man settling down to sleep on a brick bench under a glaring spotlight, the type they were using as torture to keep "enemy combatants" awake at Guantanamo Bay in last week's filmfest of human rights abuse. I don't know why this particular man got to me; it's not as if I am unaware of our local homeless population, nor do I usually pretend not to see them as I walk or drive past, and I make an effort to at least smile at them, if I don't have cash to help. After all, I have almost been there myself.
Maybe it was how quickly it was getting really cold. Maybe it was the mind-numbing differential between my immediate happiness and his immanent suffering. Maybe it was the sort of emotional caricature, the way he resembled one of the puffy, cute Wallace & Gromit characters I'd just been laughing at, as his layers ballooned out, which was not funny at all here. But something snapped and I stared: this is a human being about to freeze his nuts off.
I literally stopped and asked myself what I could do to help this person, whose face was totally hidden by the pursed sphincter of his hood, obliterating his humanity from the still-mirthful movie crowd and the bar-hopping college kids. I did not have enough money to send him to a motel. Food would not shield him from the now-bitter cold. Short of inviting him home, I could do nothing.
I felt really, really bad as I, like the nice people around me, got into my car and drove away, doing nothing. I realized several blocks away that I could have offered him the blanket I line my hatchback with, but then it's so thin that I doubt it would be worth the space it would take up in his cart. But I also watched myself tell myself that, rather than turn around and ASK him if he would like it. It was as if I was an automaton, conditioned to do the same ol' thing, just drive home and offer a prayer, as if that would really keep his fingers warm.
By the time I got home, the situation felt a bit surreal to me, how all of us just walked by, being free to excuse ourselves that it isn't our problem, they have shelters for "those" people, he's probably drunk, I only brought enough money for drinking and dancing and I worked hard for it, I deserve a good time. And what tipped me over the edge was the knowledge that if he had been, say, a little lost poodle, shivering and whining, most people would have interrupted their revelry to help him -- but not a human being!!
And I had to see myself in that category. Unacceptable.
I hit on the best thing, in my opinion: I took the big foam pad I had, to at least cushion him from the stone. I grabbed half the bills from my "giveaway" jar and drove back to the corner, in a sort of daze. I prattled on in my head, a soliloquy worthy of Plato, examining just why I and everyone else accept it as normal to consider bringing a stranger home out of the cold as completely ridiculous behavior. Why, he might be mad, he could hurt me! He might steal possessions and run away! He might smell up my garage or office or spare room!
Or, God forbid, he might ask to come back again. Or he might ask for a ride back into town the next morning. He might tell me his name and story and suddenly he won't be a shapeless mass of down-filled parkas with a rusty cart of carefully balanced plastic bags, but he'll be someone I know. I'll have to care what happens to him, whether he is mad or a thief or smelly from lack of available showering facilities.
He did not respond to my timid greetings, nor my mousy offering of the pad. Of course, he would have to have the ability to tune out the public domain, wouldn't he, to stay even partially sane and to be able to sleep in at least fits and starts. I put the pad next to him and stuffed the bills into the top bag, and drove back home.
This was a very emotional experience for me, and I did not feel triumphant from it. my belated action brought relief from something akin to a physical pain; ahhhh, that's better, I can calm down again. But suddenly my obsessions over food and how raw or health-producing it is and how much I can have, they all seemed rather silly. I don't want to hear well-meaning congratulations on how "good" I was -- I think I would explode in rage at such triteness. That's not the point -- it shouldn't BE "good" to notice a human being sleeping on stone , it should fucking be NORMAL!! And it's not; instead, it's "normal" to complain about how fat we are, how much money it costs to buy food these days, how tired we are after such hard work driving ungrateful children to soccer and then to McDonalds because we're too tired to chop veggies after a day at the office and it will cease their whining.
Reality check: I am ashamed that my mind can obsess for hours about food and eating, but it couldn't recognize immediately the right thing to do for a suffering man.