Homeless Man Speaks

Designer java for a regular Joe

Much of what we’re told is suffering is actually just choice masquerading as suffering.

DAN G. HILTON

Twice in the past week I’ve found myself standing in line behind a homeless person at an expensive café. While I owe much to the noble coffee bean, I try not to drink chain-store brew — nothing pretentious, it’s just too expensive for my budget. Besides, the best-kept coffee secret in my town is a little joint that sells organic, locally-roasted Joe for a buck a cup.

Sadly, I just needed quarters for the laundry machines. And early Sunday morning, when banks and shops are closed and most residents still asleep, expensive chain cafés are one of the few places to get quarters.

Sunday, as I stood calculating just how many loads needed to be done, I watched as the homeless man in front of me (it’s true I made an assumption, but his odour, demeanour, and dress would be admissible evidence in any court of public opinion) ordered and waited for a grande vanilla latte ($4.85) and a low-fat fruit bar ($1.85).

Avoiding all eye contact, he dropped a large handful of nickels, dimes, and — yes! — quarters on to the counter. Good fortune for the next man in line, tasked with the day’s laundry duties.

He grabbed his steaming beverage as it arrived, snatched the bagged fruit bar from the clerk, left a few nickels and dimes behind on the counter, and darted out the door without saying a word. He got his morning bean, I got his quarters, and everyone was happy (except perhaps the two young women behind the counter who wrinkled their noses long after he left).

Let’s face it: everyone needs a caffeine jolt once in a while, even the homeless. What’s the point of spending all your time begging for change, sleeping in parks, and living on the streets (which can’t be easy or pleasant at the best of times) if you can’t treat yourself to a cup of grossly overpriced coffee once in a while?

I’d even go so far to say a morning cup of coffee (or tea, if one prefers) should be a Charter right, enshrined: One cup for all. A true egalitarian gesture; a leveller of the coffee-drinking playing field.

But the ritual (I call it that now) of watching homeless people on their way out of expensive cafés, oversized to-go cup in hand and a kind of false shame in their eyes, has become much more common these days. I’ve seen it several times this week alone. And while many tax-paying citizens might be upset or angered by this apparent contradiction (“The poor should act poor!”), I think it’s great. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Years ago I used to worry much about the homeless, the result of an encounter with a kindly old man when I was about four years old: “Dad, why is that man digging in the garbage can?” I asked.

“Because he has nothing to eat,” was my father’s characteristically blunt response. We kept driving, but I never forgot the image, the answer, or the man.

But after talking to a self-proclaimed “street refugee” who squeegees windshields during the day and panhandles for change during the night, I learned that today’s homeless have a lot more disposable income to spend. “I make an easy 20 bucks an hour either way, when it’s busy,” one young lady told me as she washed the cracked windshield of my 14-year-old car.

And so she should. After all, these are heady economic times, boom years in the truest sense. Just this morning I was sitting in a very un-trendy café, sipping my coffee, and reading (in a borrowed newspaper) about the Canada-wide labour shortage. Canada, it seems, is importing workers: from Mexico to pick fruit, from Germany to build bridges, from the U.S. to manage companies, and from just about everywhere else to do just about everything else.

If the homeless can’t benefit from this economic windfall and set aside a little more of their disposable income to enjoy an expensive cup of coffee now and then, when can they?

But regardless of my own circumstances (freelance writers rarely make 20 bucks an hour on a good day) each time I see a homeless person sipping on a latte, grooving to tunes played on an unseen MP3 player, or feeding their companion animal expensive canned dog food (mine gets the cheap dry stuff) I don’t get upset. I feel good.

This is how I know that much of what we’re told is suffering is actually just choice masquerading as suffering. And how can we feel bad for people who make their own choices?

Of course, not every homeless person chooses a life on the street. Many are there for reasons far beyond their control: mental illness, drug addiction, health problems, poverty. In these circumstances, there are few choices. But in many Canadian cities, a growing majority of those on the streets could probably choose to be elsewhere, if given an incentive to make that choice. Alas, freedom of choice poorly exercised is still freedom, and still a choice.

But no matter. The homeless cappuccino-drinkers I often chat with have reinforced a long-standing belief (or maybe a bias, I’m still not sure) that there are few truly hungry on the streets of any Canadian city. Whether right or wrong, misinformed or wishful, this is the inescapable conclusion that keeps me, and many others as well, walking right past those cardboard “Spare Change? Need Food” signs without a second thought.

Many years ago I learned first-hand that the truly hungry — financially and otherwise — are invisible. They live in run-down houses and government-subsidized apartment buildings, they shop for used children’s clothing and toys, they skip meals or shoplift frozen pork chops so their families might eat, and they do what they can to make ends meet while holding on to their dignity.

These are the people who deserve our thoughts, our compassion, our understanding, and above all our help. But we walk right past.

So hat’s off to the latte-and-fruit-bar homeless (call it a subculture).

It’s not easy doing what they do in these times of nationwide economic growth, prosperity, and labour shortages. Indeed, they deserve a break. Don’t we all?

Dan G. Hilton lives in Victoria, B.C.

© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This essay on the Globe and Mail site.

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Philip’s response to this essay.

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