49. Panhandlers (Guest Blog)

I do not hate the homeless. I understand that mental disabilities, bad investments (real bad investments) and addictions get the best of people sometimes and they are forced out of their homes. I also don’t hate the docile panhandlers, the ones who may politely inquire if I can spare a dime or a smoke. Having lived in Toronto for a year and a half I can say now that this is all they have there. They are mobile rain catching charity cases with a four word vocabulary and a dignified limp. Since moving to Chicago I can honestly say I would gladly let one of these poor bastards escort my daughter to the prom one day. He’d be thrilled. “I’ll pick you up in my shopping cart around eight” he’d say to her with a toothless grin. And we would laugh and have beer and then while my daughter was powdering her nose I would quietly assure him that if he laid one ill advised finger on her I would make sure to beat him to death with a sock full of pennies. And as I stood over his bloodied body I’d be sure to dump the change out on him and say something clever like, “keep the change motherfucker”. He’d then gurgle his dying words “God bless you sir” and I’d say “God damn you” and ram a tin can down his throat…shit where was I? Oh yeah, I started thinking about the piece of shit bums here in Chicago and figuratively took my wrath out on the gentle ones from Toronto. Hmmm and yet I feel no remorse at all.

Anyways, the panhandling here in the Loop (the business and collegiate Mecca of the City) has reached epidemic proportions. In fact last week was Looptopia, a time to celebrate the vibrant and rather affluent neighbourhood in question and it basically consisted of drunk college students doing a slalom course around bums and crack heads while the cops kept us nice and quarantined. I am not surprised the bums crop to this area of the city. It is wealthy and full of naive idealist students who try and prove primarily to themselves that they are at one with the streets, racially tolerant or otherwise compassionate by stopping, digging into their wallets and openly supporting a drug habit. There is one particularly charismatic pan handler who hangs out in front the admissions office who probably makes a hundred bucks a day. He runs his mouth and salutes people and spares no one from an onslaught of clever bullshit, co eds melt for this asshole.

Apart from this type there are those who attempt to scam people with sad sack stories but few locals ever have that. If you are stupid enough to think that man needs a couple of bucks to fill up his car then by all means pay the man, how does a guy with no arms drive a car anyway? Lastly, my hate is most reserved for the scum of the earth. The for mentioned men and women (around here they are all 30-60 year old Black men…I cannot even begin to get into the negativity and racism this brings upon this city and sadly, it’s almost infectious. I hate these men for what they are doing and yet they just so happen to ALL be African American, it is such a shitty feeling, it really is.) Anyway, the last ones I mean to talk about are aggressive as hell and every day I see someone, usually a young woman get corned by one of these giant sacks of shit. They use their size, their blood shot eyes and meth mouth to purely intimidate. They never lose a slow forward momentum at you. They boom incoherent stories about dying children and reach out to touch you with hands that reek of scabies. Then they start to threaten you, it is all a load of horseshit but it’s not really the story they rely on. I never stop for anyone but I am a smoker and if I sit for a cigarette at night sometimes these men will stand over me and do this. They likely would never hurt you, but then they are insane and needless to say it makes your heart pound. How do they get away with this shit? There is this strange open lot of grass near me. It’s kind of park like but not too big, it’s next to some tall buildings and it looks like there used to be something there but now it just an open square that some homeless people use as a toilet. Anyway last week I was walking beside it and a dusty gent in snow pants was in it looking all confused. He had a big nice suitcase for some reason and even the pigeons were laughing at him. As I passed I quipped to a couple walking beside me, “This guy’s trying to figure where the CIA hid his house this time. He could swear this is where he left it.” The man laughed but the woman smiled and said I “shouldn’t make fun of him, it’s not his fault.”

…

Not his fault? Dear sweet Jesus, she is, she is 100% correct! And do you know why? Because she truly believes it is not his fault. You are right ma’am, it is not his fault, it is YOUR fault. You represent a sappy piece of society that would light a candle if overnight I rounded all of these guys up, clubbed them, trash bagged them, and booted them into the Bearing Sea. Her words almost suggest that this man would have his feelings hurt I if had called out to him and assured him that the reason he smelled like shit was because he could not afford to bathe. That the concept of guilt may, I don’t know, jeopardize his delusions that he was a billionaire from the year four thousand and get him to stop smoking rocks. I am reminded of the story of the Good Samaritan. Luke (the guy who runs this site, not the prophet, though I’m pretty tight with him to) will have to verify this but I believe a man was savagely beaten and left in a ditch. A bunch of people pass by without helping until some dude, an inherent enemy I think, gets him all cleaned up and puts a couple coins down at the inn and tells the innkeeper to watch over him. I was thinking of comparing this woman to the characters who ignored the man in the ditch, but somehow now the idea of plopping down a couple of spare coins doesn’t lend itself to metaphor much anymore seeing as that seems to literally be the solution most people adhere to and that Jesus apparently condones. Who’d have thought goodwill could create such a paradox?

And that paradox is panhandlers. The more you help them the more help they want, the more privacy you attempt to give them the more attention they crave…Behold I am reminded of a second lesson. Catch a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for life. This resembles my Bearing Sea solution enough to satisfy me and I volunteer to take them out there and “teach them to fish” if you catch my “drift”. In dead seriousness though it will be a sink or swim scenario…or how about sink or swim and learn catch fish like a bottle nose dolphin? That’s the one I think, let those noble creatures deal with these land barnacles for a while, maybe they will have better luck. Sink or swim gentleman, you are very lucky to be human let alone live in America or your sloth would not be tolerated…well unless you were a sloth I guess, and then I wouldn’t hate you because I kind of like those furry misfits, unless one asked me for change…or a baby ruth bar…hmm…then of course if I did bail him out for one we could become best buds and save Mikey from the Fratellis and claim One Eyed Willie’s treasure thus proving to my friends I’m not such a klutz after all…am, am I still writing this…sorry, it’s 5 in the morning, I must have gotten into the horse radish again. Goodnight peopleifuckinglove

~ by thingsifuckinghate on May 13, 2008.