Stranger to the System, Housing, and Excess

Anyone who has the luxurious sense of touch and sight knows what a glorious weekend of Spring weather New York City was blessed with on Sunday. I made it a point to savor every little bit of the outdoors that I could this weekend. Sun-dresses that had been hidden in my closet like refugees were freed from closet captivity. My umbrellas and their rubber boot counterparts took their place.

One of my favorite activities to engage in on a bright and sunny day in the city is people watching at any given park. The best parks for such an activity are without a doubt Tompkins Square park and Washington Square Park. Since I needed to make a trip to the JAS Mart, a delightfully decadent and cheap Japanese grocery and cafe on St.Mark's Place, I decided to go with Tompkins Square due to its proximity.

As I nibbled away at my carrot salad and onigiri, I noticed I was sitting a bench away from a napping homeless man. Being that it isn't an uncommon sight in a New York City public park, I went on to finish my lunch and devour my book. Just as I was reveling in the glory of David Sedaris's keen sense of humor, I notice a NYPD car drive right through the park, next to the homeless man I was perched near. A very tough, rigid looking mamacita got out and poked him, prodding him to wake up.

"Hey, c'mon there Sleepy. Snap out of it! Look alive!"

I find it amusing how New York City Cops (and most cops in general) exude an air of over-inflated authority to those that least deserve their brash attitudes- much like a typical Catholic school nun with a splintered ruler in her hand. I thought the cop was going to follow that statement with something along the lines of, "We're on page twenty-seven of your geography textbook. Please read the third paragraph to the class."

The homeless chap responded with a series of gurgles and moans that, with the right tweak of pitch, could sound similar to a newborn baby waking from its nap. After finally coming into a full state consciousness, the cops drove of on their proverbial Clydesdale horses. I overheard him cursing and critiquing the criminal justice system under his breath.

The gap that existed between the homeless man and me was soon filled by a trio of German lesbians. I immediately became annoyed, because the one sitting next to me lit up a cigarette and aggravated my already inflamed sinuses and cold. I stuck around anyway, not letting the Germans defeat me. How patriotic.

The cigarette smoke soon dissolved in the air and the Germans departed and it was back to just the homeless man and myself again. He looked at me, I looked at him, and he opened the conversation with, "You're still here!"

"Where else am I going to go on a day like this?"

"I have to tell you, you're the most beautiful thing I've seen in this park all day."

"Thank you, that's very sweet of you to say!"

"D'em girls were from Germany. Hamburg specifically. I recognized d'ey accents from when I was stationed in Germany before departing to Vietnam."

With that little snippet of information, he introduced himself. Juan was the name.

"I know I don't look like a Juan (he was black), but my mother was cuban and my dad...well I don't know what or who the hell he was."

I began to gain some insight into Juan's life and character. He regaled me with his tales of being homeless in New York City. He has lived without a roof over his head since 1988. Juan proved to be a fascinating individual. He was one of the original Mole People living in the abandoned subway tunnels. He told me about the community of homeless people that dwelled under there, unaffected by the outside urban world. A colony united by their poverty.

I learned when he did indeed have shelter nearly twenty years ago, he furnished his entire apartment (the rent only $190.00 a month, rent controlled) with furniture he had found off of the sidewalks. That's not an uncommon practice in they city either. I know someone who was commissioned to do just that for a piece in New York magazine. In a city with such an abundance of resources, Juan proved that one could survive with a strong sense of frugality, resourcefulness, and imagination.

Juan commended me for reading stating, "That'll open up new worlds in your mind. You want a mind that's as wrinkled as a raisin, lemme tell you."

He was refreshingly candid about his own personal struggles and flaws. He admitted that he was ill and an alcoholic. He didn't have a sense of entitlement or belligerence to him. Juan wasn't one that harassed pedestrians for spare change; he earned his meager wages by recycling cans, and finding treasures on the sidewalk and selling them to the flea-market on Avenue A. He also made a few extra bucks every now and then by selling a book that features a story about him called: Stranger to The System.


The writer of the book, Jim Flynn, published the book years ago. SInce he's already made his money from publishing the book, he allows Juan to sell copies on the street and keep whatever he makes. The book is an anthropology of stories told straight from the lips of various homeless people surviving day to day specifically in New York City. Juan's was the most humorous of the tales called, "King of the Supermarket."

Years ago, Juan was on East 14th Street at the Associated Supermarket between 1st Avenue and Avenue A. He was looking for some spare change and the manager of the store finally agreed to give Juan a job sorting out recyclables in the basement. Juan was drunk at the time and in the midsts of plucking out cans and sticking them with their aluminum brethren, he passed out. He awoke after what only seemed like a five minute nap (Juan is prone to passing out, as was the case when I first saw him) but was frightened to discover that hours had passed and he had been forgotten by the staff. He emerged out of the basement only to discover that the store was completely locked up, he was imprisoned inside.

After five-minutes of panicking, Juan calmed himself down completely when he came to the realization that he was a hungry, poor man surrounded by a plethora of groceries, a deli, and most importantly- beer. He first went to the deli and made himself an enormous sandwich. He took a bite out of a pickle then proceeded to put the pickle back in the jar.

As Juan was telling me this he guffawed while saying, "I feel sorry fo' the poor sonuvabitch that wound up buying that thing!"

He continued this pattern throughout each aisle of the grocery store, finally landing in the aisle of spirits. He took swigs of every kind of beer available. He eventually passed out with the residue of his feast smeared all over his face and empty beer bottles lined up around him in the bathroom, that was precisely how he was discovered by he manager of the store.

Clearly, the manager had wound up with an enormous liability and, for lack of a better word, was in deep shit. The manager knew he could be sued, fired, shut down, or all of the above. Juan made a deal with him and said, "You give me the cans I was sorting out and make me a sandwich whenever I damn well request it, and we'll call it even."

It was agreed upon.

I found the entire park-bench conversation to be an enlightening one. Eventually I shook Juan's tough and callused hands to go on about the remainder of my day, thankful that I had actually stopped to take the time to communicate with a stranger. In a time when people use ipods, cell-phones, and Blackberries as an invisible picket fence, it's nice to step outside the gate and really feel and see what is truly there. I'm just as guilty as the next modern bozo out there when it comes to distracting myself and immersing myself in a technological bubble of solitude. Once in a while you have to pop it and acknowledge reality.

I went out Sunday thinking I was utterly broke, but after my conversation with Juan (trite and sentimental as it may have been) I never felt more rich.