A Life Among Others

by Shannon Biondi

Life on the street is hard. Not because you don't have a roof over your head or because you don't have any personal possessions but because you gradually become invisible. The world stops noticing you and after enough time has gone by you cease to exist.

If you ask a person what they think the worse aspect of being a bum is they'll probably talk to you endlessly about beds, showers, sinks, towels, pillows and all the other things which they take for granted and which we don't have, but homelessness is much worse than sleeping on cold concrete and queuing, hours on end, for a soup that has been run through with water so many times that it goes directly from your tongue to your bladder omitting the whole digestive process and in doing so leaving the destination, your stomach, as empty as before. When you live on the street you face a life of neglect, of hollowness and, worse of all, of loneliness and idleness. You sit on a chunk of cardboard with your back to a phone booth all day and wait for a merciful soul, on which you are fully dependant, to toss you a few coins which, put to good use, will provide you with a short moment of solace in the course of your day. Whether it be a steaming cup of coffee to warm your frozen hands, a juicy sandwich that overpowered your dreams the night before, or the daily newspaper which, once read, while serve as a replacement to the now soggy and torn one which you are sitting on; no matter how you use that money, for a split second, as your hand slips over the counter to pay, you feel human again, you feel like nothing separates you from the dozen or so other customers in the shop, for a moment you regain every ounce of your dignity and for once; you feel alive.

A few years ago I met an old man who'd spent most of his years sitting in doorways, a collection of empty bottles sprawled at his feet. In a casual conversation we once had I asked him where he would be the following day. What he said was incredibly honest and somehow I had the feeling that within his answer laid the summary of every bum's life. "I'll be right hear boy." he said. "I was here yesterday and I'll be here tomorrow and by the end of my life these grey and dulling streets will have taken more things from me than anything before them. First they took my pride, then they took my dignity and along with that evaporated my humanity. They robbed me of my youthful sighs and one day, one day they will steal my last breath."

It's 8:00am. Today is a day like any other. I sit and I contemplate. I look at the world; at its people. It's amazing what you can see when others don't notice you. They see right through me in a literal way, I see right through them in a much more abstract manner. It's funny how all those tiny details can give someone's life away completely. I always say that the way a person walks is an open book into their lives. You can sum up a person just by observing them for less than a minute as they walk past you, inches away from your feet. I see all sorts of people from my spot. I see good people and bad people, white people and black people, the rich and the poor, the sad and the happy, the gay, the straight and the bent. I see the school kids and the elderly couples, the successful young business woman and the heart broken poet, those who have gone through the worst in their lives and those who will never even begin to know the meaning of sorrow. I see them all. "The good, the bad and the ugly."

I know what you're thinking. You're wondering how on earth I can tell if someone is joyful or angry just by looking at them stroll by right? It's quite simple really, you just have to be a really good judge of character and look out for those tell tale clues. A guy who walks with his head bent low, his gaze focused on his feet, his hands in his pockets and earphones over his head is shy by nature. He isn't a rich, self-assured and successful guy. Not yet anyway. He's much more likely to be a poor student considered a loser by the rest of his kind. He's clumsy, timid, he doesn't like to make eye contact because he's afraid of the judgment others will cast upon him, he doesn't know what to do with his hands and he's afraid he'll trip or stumble and give those around him a reason to stare. He's in his own world, safe within his own emotions, his own thoughts and his own music. He probably lives alone and doesn't speak with others very often. This would explain his apprehension of physical contact. He keeps to himself and spends his evenings attached to a computer screen hacking his way through networks and servers using a wide range of complex manoeuvres which he knows better than the back of his own hand. He isn't likely to ever really open up to anyone. He has built a fortress around himself that protects him from the outside world. Now, you probably think this guy is really unhappy but in fact, you're wrong. He's laughed before and he'll laugh again, he'll meet a suited girl some day, he'll find a job in a computer firm somewhere in America and he'll live out his life a fulfilled and happy man. No-one will ever really get to the bottom of his emotions but that won't stop him from founding a family and getting married. He'll be a good husband and, unlike many sons who become duplicates of their fathers, in his case the apple will fall far from the tree and he will earn the admiration and respect of his children. There will always be a part of him which will stay hidden deep within the depths of his soul, a part of him which the world hurt and abused so many times that it retreated to a part of the mind from which there is no return but unlike what the rest of society might expect of him, he will make it, he will live his life to the full and enjoy it and he will prove them wrong and show them that the loser isn't always the one we think.

9:30am. It's amazing how quickly time goes by when you analyse the world and its people. The little details, that's all that matters. Just look out for the little details: the multi-coloured shoe laces, the teddy-bear key ring dangling from the bag, the nervous gesture, the ring on the index finger, the scars. External wounds always reveal the hurt inside a person, you just have to link the facts to the fiction. Of course I'm not always right, I'm probably wrong most of the time, but it's nice to let your imagination run wild and give people lives which - no matter how bad they seem - are always better than yours.

Well, here comes the first good soul of the day. I often see this guy, and he often gives me change. A lot of different sorts of people give me money every day. You've got the playboy who wants to impress the exquisite blond walking next to him, the thirteen-year-old who wants to play it cool in front of friends on his way home from school, the old lady who feels sorry for you, the shy five-year-old who, upon following his parents' command, nervously walks over, gives you a euro and hastily sprints away again at the speed of light to seek shelter behind the skirt of his mother who smiles at you in an apologetic sort of way, you have the young couples who, when they see you, suddenly feel ashamed of their own happiness and feel that giving you a few coins will help in subsiding their guilt. Guilt. I think that's what separates the sincere from the fake. The ones who genuinely mean what their doing and who really honestly want to help are the ones who can't look you in the eye, they're the ones who wave away your thanks because they believe it was the least they could do, they're the ones who give you change, not spare change, they're the ones who can't bare the dawning of the knowledge that there is still much left to be desired in this world of ours and even though they wish they couldn't, they're the ones who really notice you.

One day: twenty-four hours, fourteen-hundred-and-forty minutes, eighty-six-thousand-four-hundred seconds. One day: seconds which turn into minutes, minutes which change to hours, hours which evolve into days and days which melt into years. You don't notice it all fly by. You don't realise that your life is wasting away. You just sit and look and listen. Today will be like all yesterdays and all tomorrows.

6:00pm. I will begin my desperate search for a free doorway, an obscure alley, an empty dumpster or whatever other shelter the city will provide. I shall wrap myself in many layers of old blankets amassed throughout the years and I'll wait.

Wait for sleep to come and carry me away to the land of my dreams where I am no longer hungry, no longer alone, no longer cold and no longer sad. What a wonderful place my head is when I slumber. I am filled with joy while a feeling of warmth and safety engulfs me within its folds in a way which is better than a hundred earthly blankets. As I wait, the music of the city cradles me, drawing me ever closer to the world of dreams which, unlike the hours, shall never melt into reality. My lullaby, played by life's orchestra, is filled with noise which gradually becomes an enchanting melody. The sirens wail as someone dies, the alarms scream as a foolish kid thinks he won't get caught; a shot rings out as someone is slaughtered but the world remains indifferent. Cops will laugh, children will play, women will gossip and life will go on.

Where will I be? I'll be right here. I was here yesterday and I'll be here tomorrow and by the end of my life these grey and dulling streets will have taken more from me than anything before them. First they took my pride, then they took my dignity and with that evaporated my humanity. They are robbing me of my youthful sighs and one day, one day they will steal my last breath. This is my life: a life among others.