Sneaker Tangent

It being Friday, I got out of work early and went and picked up a cheap pair of canvas sneakers. My leather Reeboks had blown out on the right instep... actually, up until today they had only torn a little, but today at work I was suddenly feeling a breeze on my instep, and looked down to see a gaping hole.

I would have liked to have kept them forever, but that clearly wasn't happening. I remember when I got them, though I don't remember the exact date... maybe six years ago? I remember being disappointed in them, not because they weren't perfectly fine, but because I was still mourning the loss of the all-white plain leather basketball shoe. Tennis shoes these days all remind me of short, squat Bradley fighting vehicles or multi-colored spacecraft. I find them aesthetically annoying in the extreme.

So I'm back at the Grey Dog, after having dropped $12.99 on some cheap-ass canvas sneakers. I waited 'til I found a bench in the subway to put them on while the folks on the platform watched. I felt how the newly homeless must feel in those situations; very aware of everyone watching you, judging and wondering what sort of lowlife changes clothes in public.... before the unimaginable grind of trying to stay alive while homeless tends to make you unaware of all that attention.

I've watched the homeless out of the corner of my eye on any number of occasions, marveling at the danger their lot in life presents to someone like me. Someone who lives from paycheck to paycheck (not, certainly to the degree I have in the past), someone who could easily, easily find himself homeless through some random piece of bad luck.

So I've watched, obliquely, both repulsed and at the same time attracted - a function of my own morbid tendency, perhaps?

So many of them seem out of it, but simultaneously hyper-aware. Distracted, drugged or drunk or crazied-out, but highly attuned to the possibility of the next more - the next score.

And unwashed - their smell sometimes seems to me as much a defensive mechanism as anything; a warning system for those who stray too far into their personal space. I've been trapped next to them on the subway and come away almost physically ill.

One man in particular - an older black man with long dirty dreads and a faded crocheted cap, matched to his faded printed dashiki of red and white. And dirty jeans, boots that looked like they were about to disintegrate right off his feet... and I sit here complaining about my leather sneaker blowout.

But the eyes were what got me most. Brown irises - that beautiful chocolate color, but the most bloodshot & unfocused eyes I remember having seen. I half suspected he'd been in a fight and gotten punched squarely in both eyeballs.

Unfocused, but yet they watched.

They knew what was going on around them. They were on the lookout not just to search faces for those who might help - either willingly or through the skillful application of a guilt trip, but also for danger, for someone approaching who might get his jollies by roughing up a homeless guy. Looking not just in defense, but also for a crack in the arm that protects other New Yorkers from the constant barrage of appeals for help.

This kinda stuff makes me unimaginably sad, but it also makes me angry at feeling manipulated. One late night not long ago on a homeward-bound 2 train ride, I found myself on the last car of the train, and had to sit through four separate appeals for help in the space of a ten minute ride. One after another young and old men in varying states of disarray boarded on the last car and launched into "Ladies and gentlemen, my name is [Blah] and I am homeless..." Then he'd go into his one minute prepared speech and, not getting any response, would move to the next car in the line - just in time for the next guy to get on at the next stop and start the process over.

It broke my heart and made me want to laugh; the intrusion made me angry and my inability to help left me feeling inadequate, and the assembly-line/factory quality of the whole production made me laugh at the same time. It was a stew of anger and hilarity.