After a particularly long night out on the town, I was smoking under a lamppost outside of one of late night downtown haunts. Looking very l’homme fatal, I saw a man I knew going up to people and asking for change. I do not really know him but his turf seems to be around my own. Occasionally he even asks me. Depending on my mood I may give it to him. This is normally not a something I would comment on but for the first time I noticed something calculated about his actions. He seemed to know, with reasonable accuracy, which people were willing to give him a bit of money.
This struck me as odd. I have always had a problem with identifying meaningful character traits without chatting someone up but this man could simply tell generosity from a brief look.
He has had problems with me. I had always thought of him as particularly bad at his profession. I assumed he was just buckshoting to scrape out money to keep himself in tolerable above ground existence. It turns out that I was the problem in the relationship.
He zoomed passed me without much of a glance. Which was wise, considering I was in a very sour mood, but just past me there was a couple kissing and taking the occasional break for air and to gaze deeply into each others eyes. Neither of them were particularly well dressed to demarcate wealth but despite this the man went straight up to them and asked for some money for {insert reason}. Stranger still, the girl took a five out of her ridiculously small purse and gave it to him. He shuffled a little down the street and found a drunk man holding onto a wall for dear life. I think I saw the glint of silver and brass so he must have scored a twoonie out of the deal.
And this is how he went down the street. I counted and he managed to get 4 out of 5 people he asked. The odd man out may have wanted to give him something but ended up throwing up into the gutter and the homeless man moved away in disgust.
I watched what looked like a young professional wretch up about half a weeks paycheque into the storm drain. While the young turk type was checking the drain to make sure his shoes had not come out through his mouth, I began to think that homeless was clearly the wrong term for a man that could so easily navigate his way through the chaos of 3:30 am Halifax.
This man is merely, to steal from George Carlin, houseless. His home is Halifax circa final call.
Every drunk he picked clean responded in the same way a desk drawer responds to me in my office area. He knew total strangers the way I know furniture and the way some know family and pets.
This type of man is not some romantic vagrant. He is obviously suffering. His clothes never change. He always carries a bit of a smell and his eyes glint of something that could not possibly be natural.
He is like the grotesque, high atop gothic buildings, that offset the prim and proper of the south end. He is their opposite but still knows the culture of the land. Yet I still get the impression that he is more at home in Halifax than the Uncommon Grounds yogi set.
He fulfilled a niché in the city the same way that anyone would when an appropriate environment is available . That does not make him a freak or a mutant but it makes him a true Haligonian. Truer than most because at least he is in sync with the cultural tableau. Which is something that I will never achieve.