Starfish and Hope: Perceiving the Homeless

When you’re living on a budget, there are some things you skimp on, consciously or not, and there are some things you don’t. Three meals a day start to seem excessive. Why do I need breakfast AND lunch when I can have brunch? Certain everyday items suddenly seem prohibitively expensive. How badly do I need to shampoo my hair every single day, anyway? and boy, my pasta making skills are getting better and better. But even if I can’t actually afford go out to dinner, I can still damn well look like I can. My down jacket definitely would have been warmer, but I let the apartment door lock behind me and thumb the two buttons snug on my pea coat. I catch my reflection in a car window as I descend to street level, and I hear my friend Leslie’s voice in my head. You play guitar, right? Acoustic, how did you know? You just seem like someone who would. She laughed and she gave me a look, and I granted her the concession: I’m a total American-fratboy stereotype. I look the part tonight, dressed like Winter Yuppie Ken – stonewash jeans, Sperries, charcoal classic wool coat, and plaid button-up – unkempt hair and beard that look a bit too purposeful to be believably Bohemian. I’m like a cutout from a corny blind date. I enjoy rock climbing, playing acoustic guitar, writing in my free time, and meeting new people. I’m just a small-town waiter with big dreams! Would you like a long walk on the beach with that bullshit?

I try to ignore the fact that I opted to dress up instead of dressing warm for a 10-minute walk to work, where I’ll only have to change anyway, and head off into the paved labyrinth that will spit me out in front of the Back Bay Social Club. People are moving hurriedly in two directions, with me and against me, pushing up and down the street littered with stop lights and stopped traffic. Their eyes stay down, fixated to phones, or they bore through each other with thousand-mile stares. The people are moving like rats in a maze, scenting cheese, and the rats are huddled warm under trees and awnings, watching the human traffic with interest or awe – or maybe it’s something else. It’s hard to read rat emotions. You’re doing that thing where you try to attribute meaning to something meaningless again, part of me chastises another part of me, which retorts, would you rather we just wander through a world devoid of purpose, assigning random values and ignoring potent symbolism? I think this part of me is probably wearing thick-rimmed glasses and wearing a scarf. They begin to argue – they’re not very good roommates – and I start to tune them out. They’re always doing this.

Boston is currently fighting through the awkward month of seasonal puberty, going through lots of changes it doesn’t understand; mood swinging from 65 to 35 in a day, sun to rain, just waiting for its clouds to open and its temperature to drop (protip – that’s a metaphor.) There are cold nights, like tonight, but they’re not consistent, and I’ve underdressed and overdressed more times this week than a runway model. Most people are on the same page tonight – heavy jackets and high collars, scarves and gloves, or hands in pockets. The pigeons are huddled together in eaves. Even the moon looks cold.

Work starts late, and the sun is on its winter schedule, going down earlier and earlier as the year draws on. My apartment has a window that opens onto what the architects probably called a “courtyard,” but is more similar to a chimney. If the person across the courtyard from me opened his window and asked for a cup of sugar, I could hand it to him without leaving my room. Well, if I had any sugar. He’d have to ask for empty beer bottles or dirty laundry to actually receive anything in return. Because of the confines of this vertical corridor, my room doesn’t receive any outside light, meaning I can wake up groggy and confused at 2PM, wondering why I’m awake before the sun is. By the time I get out of the apartment to head to work, the sun is usually already down. It’s like living in Alaska. I’ve gone half a week without seeing the sun before.

Looking ahead, I can see an odd eddy in the flow of people; the sidewalk is as double-wide as it’s been the whole street, but people are curving to the right, shrinking into a bottleneck on the road-side of the pavement. As I get closer, I start to hear a jangle like a can of BB’s, and I know exactly why everyone is staring ahead so resolutely as they herd themselves to the side of the pavement. There are so many reasons why we ignore the homeless, but their most potent force is to put themselves right in the public eye, and let pity play hard upon the heartstrings of some. I begin to hear his familiar plea as I draw near: “Spare change, please? Sir, ma’am, spare change for the homeless…” The crowd parts and I catch a glimpse of the man, and I recognize him immediately. I’ve seen him before, from the window of a bus. He’s made of leather, folded in many times upon himself like a crumpled receipt. His nose makes a complete C in his face when looked at straight on, like a broken nose that not only never healed, but that was never re-set. His nostrils point southeast on the compass of his face. He had been plodding along past a bus stop with a wide, stomping gait when I saw him first, and as I watched with my forehead on the window, he leaned heavily to the pavement, picked up a cigarette butt that someone had just ground out, brushed off the end, and dropped it into his pocket for later. As I recall this and his face gains purchase in my memory, I suddenly realize that he is staring straight at me, the single member of the pushing crowd not staring blindly ahead. I look up quickly, but he has already honed in on my recognition of his presence and although I am still many steps from him, he speaks to me directly, ignoring the crowd. “Sir,” he says, and I see him staring in my peripherals, “sir, please. Some change, a dollar, anything?”

I draw even with him, staring ahead, and I hear him shake his Starbucks cup once, weakly. He is old enough to be my father. I walk past, staring straight ahead, betraying not a head shake, no facial apology, no admission of his existence. The problem of homelessness is a great one, too great to be addressed by a single man, and a single man I am. I’m already on a short budget. If I gave money to every pitiable panhandler, I’d be left a pauper myself. I hear him speak as I depart from his station, and his voice grows softer as draw away. He says, “Have a wonderful evening, sir. Happy Holidays.”

I continue on. My collegiate mind identifies this as a logical fallacy, an appeal to emotion. There is, of course, no reason he deserves my money more than I do. I work like a slave for my money – I have four part-time jobs, two of them volunteer. Truly, I reason, there is no reason he deserves any money from contributing society, if he is contributing nothing in return. The homelessness isn’t without cause, I remind myself callously, be it addiction or illness. Neither of which I can do anything about with a dollar – one of which I could actively hurt. Behind me, I hear his coin jar begin to shake again, like a gypsy tambourine. There are homeless people on every corner. Why should I give to one if I can’t give to them all? And if I give at all, how am I supposed to decide who to give to – give to the most talented homeless person? That seems like it defeats the purpose, and seems a little too close to BumFights for me to feel comfortable with.

The light ahead of me turns red, and I stop at the corner as cars blaze past me. It’s cold, and as the wind cuts through my jacket seams I realize that I’m hungry, too. I finger the money in my pocket – about seven dollars – and wonder what sort of food I should use it on tonight. Nothing seems appealing, and everything seems expensive. I check my watch as I bounce on my toes – only five more minutes until I get to work and get inside for the night. I’m already cold from being outside for just ten minutes, and I’m not coming up with any cheap dinner solutions. I’m hungry, cold, and now irritable, but at least there’s an end in sight, and thank goodness it’s soon. Because I would hate to stay out for much longer in this cold.

God damn it, empathy.

It takes me less than a minute to retrace my path, and he sees me coming from the whole block away. I hold the seven dollars palmed in my hand like I’m paying drug money and shake his hand, passing him the folded bills. I don’t know what I expect him to say. I guess a thanks is in order, and I hadn’t thought much past giving him money, but as I hand him the cash he gushes “Thank you! Oh, thank you!” emphatically enough to make me incredibly self-conscious. I look into his face, and I can plainly tell in his eyes that he doesn’t give any shits or thanks about me. It’s not a “go fuck yourself,” but it’s certainly not a “thanks, now I can eat tonight.”

“No problem,” I say, and for some reason I don’t leave. He doesn’t say anything, and I don’t know what I’m waiting for, but I feel uncomfortable – like “Cut, take the money back and hand it to him again, re-read your lines, feeling this time people!” uncomfortable. Like we’re acting, and it’s clear to me he’s playing a role. He thinks I see him as Homeless Man #1, and myself as the Rich Charitable Gentleman, and now that he’s read his line for Grateful Charity Case #1 and I’ve paid off my guilt and received a little feel-good in return, he’s expecting me to smile and quote him a Bible verse and walk away. But I’m still here, and he’s almost as uncomfortable by that as I am. We’re misunderstanding each other, I think. That’s not why I gave him money. Why did you give him money? part of me asks, was it for him, or for you?

I try, but I don’t know what else to say. “Here,” “Thanks,” was supposed to be the end of it, and he’s looking everywhere but me now that we’re in this uncharted territory. Here There Be Uncomfortable Dragyns. And I don’t have time for a life story – I don’t really even have time to still be here – but I am, and grasping at conversation threads I idiotically decide to go with “So – what are your plans for the night?” Classy. Are you trying to pick him up or something? Now we’re both uncomfortable and I feel like an idiot. I guess I am a little curious about the daily life of a homeless man, but “so what are you doing tonight” was probably an insensitive way to phrase it.

“I don’t know,” he says, caught off guard. “I’ll eat, probably get some sleep in one of the ATM booths. Then at 6 am I’ll catch the bus to the shelter.” He’s looking up and down the street, everywhere but at me. He wants me to leave. I oblige.

The altruism coin goes like this – heads, you helped a human being, tails, you’ll never make a difference in the big picture. As I cross the street in the biting cold, I remember a story my friend told me once, a famous adage called The Starfish Story. In it, a man walks down a beach littered with starfish washed up by the waves. He sees a man approaching, picking up starfish at intervals and tossing them back into the ocean. As our protagonist approaches, he stops the starfish-flinger. “Why are you throwing these starfish back?” he demands, “look at the length of this beach! You’ll never save them all! How can you possibly make a difference?” The man looks at the starfish in his hands, then throws it into the ocean and replies, “I made a difference to this one.”

Six hours later, work finally spits me chewed up back onto Boylston Street. I’m tired, grumpy, still poor after only making around forty dollars for hours of work (waiting is a gambling game), now I’m cold, and I’m still fucking hungry. God damn it. I lower my head into the blast wind and start for home. In the course of four blocks, I am accosted by five homeless men. One of them follows me an entire block, asking if I’ll pay him to do a one-hand pushup. “Don’t be afraid of the one-hand pushup man!” he shouts until I finally say “I’m sorry. I already gave money tonight.” They all say the same thing when they leave – “Have a good night, Happy Holidays.” I feel played for an emotional fool, hungry, cold, and poor to boot. But at least I made a difference. At least I threw one starfish back into the sea.

I round the corner towards my house. In a stone archway, I see my starfish man with the crooked nose. He is unconscious, and he is cradling an empty gallon of Listerine in his arms.

Despite my most nihilistic efforts, I still believe in the starfish story as an accurate allegory, but not for the same reasons. I draw a different moral, and I think the story ends too early; it needs one final line: “And the two men watched the starfish as it flew out over the waves, and then disappeared under the ocean.” And there, the story ends, because no one really knows what happens. The man walks on, basking in the goodness of his deeds of the day. And that starfish could very well have been saved in that act – saved from the sun’s baking rays, or from choking on our air. But it is just as likely that as soon as the starfish dropped out of sight, it was snatched up by an ocean predator and eaten – or thrown back into a polluted chemical spill – or the man had simply thrown an invasive species of starfish back into an embattled and fragile native ecosystem, contributing to its ultimate destruction. No one knows. That act could have truly helped, but there are exactly equal odds that it only contributed to more hurt. But people keep on telling the starfish story, to children and classes and feel-good seminars, generations and generations, because in the end, the moral of the story doesn’t follow the starfish. Nobody ever ends with, “And the starfish lived happily ever after.” The moral follows the man, who walks happily down the beach in his dopamine-glow of altruism, even though he will never know if he helped or hurt. It’s never as simple as the choice to help or hurt. So why do we give? What return do we get for our money – we are throwing it away as surely as throwing a starfish into the ocean – so why do we continue? We have no guarantee our money will help, or that it will be used correctly; as soon as we give it, it is gone, and we know nothing more. With the knowledge that we may have just hurt as equally as helped, we should stay our hand, but homelessness persists, and we must assume that it is on the alms of others. We keep giving – why?

In the end, the moral follows the man. The starfish might not all make it, but it won’t be for lack of him trying. That token effort is like a toll – a small payment to allow him to feel that something is being done, that there is some sort of good force at work somewhere. It is not the act itself, but the assurance of goodness in the world, that he pays to feel. To feel that someday perhaps there will be a beach to walk upon where the waves are gentler, and the starfish sit comfortably on their seafloor homes. The man continues on, knowing he will never save them all, but instead of walking down a beach of corpses, he walks along a beach of hope.

For more photography by Lee Jeffries, please visit his Flickr page.