The stories in this volume compose FAB = -FBA, SUM FLUX, V.2.3. See more stories, and check out the authors featured in this edition here.
It was the second time we’d tried to get up to San Francisco. The first time my friend Anna’s car broke down a half hour after we left and we had to call our parents to get a ride back to town.
This time we made it, in Anna’s parents’ brand-new SUV, blasting our punk cassettes in the high-tech tape deck. After a couple of days, we met a kid named Ozzy. He was skinny, a few years younger than us—twelve or thirteen maybe—mohawk, lots of spikes, not much to say. He had run away from foster care and was homeless, so we decided to bring him back with us, specifically to my parent’s house, which didn’t go over super big. I especially remember my dad’s grim, set expression during the week or so that Ozzy stayed with us. Finally, he offered to drive Ozzy down to L.A., where he said his sister lived and left him there.
Not too long after that, I went back to SF with another friend. We had sleeping bags and had decided to wing it as far as finding a place to sleep.
We got to talking with some homeless people and asked if they had any suggestions. Everyone we spoke to was friendly and wanted to help, full of advice. That night we slept in what we thought was a hidden spot under a eucalyptus tree in Golden Gate park. There were big street lamps nearby and it was hard to sleep with the light shining on our faces all night and the ground was hard and a fog had rolled in and it was cold. I fell asleep after a while but got woken up, too early, the next morning by a nudge to the head from a policeman’s boot: “You can’t sleep here”. I sat up and looked down and saw a pile of human shit off to one side, just a foot or so from where my head had been, and decided he was right.
After that my friend went off to do his own thing for a while and I spent the day hanging out with an older man I had met on the street named Ghost. We sat together on the sidewalk in front of a department store near Haight Street where he liked to panhandle. He had a large can of beer which he poured, at intervals, into a small paper cup, refilling as he drank. His face was bruised and swollen and I asked why and he said that he’d been beaten up the night before and his bag had been stolen. He said it had happened while he was asleep at “the fountain” which was a popular place to sleep if you were homeless and he said it wasn’t the first time and I said isn’t there a safer place you can go and he said no, there isn’t.
I had never panhandled before, so Ghost gave me some tips. “If you want them to notice you, you got to speak up,” he said. “Like this—” He lifted his head and spoke loudly and clearly to a well-to-do looking woman walking by. “Good afternoon, might you help me and my friend here raise money for some dinner?” The woman glared at him and kept walking.
I sat all day with Ghost, panhandling, hoping for enough money to buy dinner at Zona Rosa where you could get a huge burrito for three dollars that would fill you up for a whole day. Sometimes people stopped and gave us some change, but others muttered “Disgusting!” or “get a job!” I was surprised by how angry people were at being asked for money by Ghost, a man who clearly didn’t have any and needed some. Every time someone gave Ghost money he gave half of it to me. It was a lesson in humility and humanity and it didn’t take very long for me to start thinking better of the have-nots than of the haves. The haves, I decided, were largely assholes. It was a good lesson.
It took all day to raise enough money in this way for a three-dollar burrito and at one point I asked Ghost if he ever thought about trying to get work. He took a long drink from his cup before he answered.
“Well, I used to work for the man but I just couldn’t hold down a job and that’s the truth of it. This damn bottle. So now Ghost is what you see and what you get. That’s alright. The only thing is I wish it wasn’t so cold sometimes. This city gets too cold at night, it’s the damn fog. Been thinking about going south sometime.”
“You should,” I said, “it’s a lot warmer, south.”
I talked to Ghost for a long time about going south. “You can get a bus ticket and come to my town!” I said. I went on and on about the mild climate and the beach near the train station. He listened and nodded and said maybe so, maybe so, but I could tell he wasn’t really thinking of going. Finally, just to shut me up probably, he said “sounds mighty fine. Maybe I’ll see you down there sometime.” I couldn’t make sense of it until I realized that for all of the beatings and muggings and cold nights, he didn’t want to leave home.
“But you know, you must be gettin’ hungry,” said Ghost. “How much you got, two fifty? That’s close, that’s close. You’ll get there. You just gotta keep at it; some of ‘em will, some of ‘em won’t.”
Most of them didn’t.
By six o’clock I had the three dollars. I said hang on a minute and went and got a burrito and when I got back I tried to give it to Ghost but he wouldn’t take it. “You earned it,” he said, “you earned it fair and square. Besides, I don’t want no handouts,” he added with a grin and winked.
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Anna this was fantastic. Ghost really got me.
Love the characterisation and the matter of fact start - this is what happened, this is how I got there - and then Ghost takes over the whole story, through the narrator.
And yes, the have nots are definitely more generous. I’ve seen City (of London) life, had friends who were homeless. It’s astonishing how tight people with money can be.