Stupid
The other day I gave money to a guy on the street. It was quite a lot of money, in the usual context of those things. At most, you tend to jangle around in your pocket for change, right? Maybe, just maybe, you reach for a dollar bill. More often, perhaps, you don’t reach for anything at all. But this time I was stuck. I fell pray to a Grand Ploy, to a masterful salesman’s pitch, to a sense of pity and guilt and humanity and gullibility and fear and, perhaps my greatest flaw at that moment, selfishness.
“Miss! Miss, could I just talk to you for a second, please,” the man said. He was standing on the corner of 12th Street and 6th Avenue, clinging to the handle of a rolling suitcase, extending one hand in a desperate plea. I had just gotten out of my last class of the night and was rushing to make it to a dance. Had I crossed the street upon leaving the school building, had I seen the minefield ahead and cut a wide circle around it, I might have escaped the impending mindfuck. “Please, don’t worry, I’m not gonna attack you or anything. I’m just a stupid ol’ fag in trouble. Could you just hear me out for a second?”
I should have counted to one and fled. I should have pleaded lateness, invented a missed deadline. These very thoughts ran through my head as I stood there, unmoving. Why wasn’t I moving? Something about this poor soul. He seemed despondent but not crazy, at the end of some rope, but more in an anguished everyday-stress sort of way than a twitchy, strung-out, Must Keep at Arm’s Length sort of way, as if one form of distress were more deserving of people’s time than the other, as if it were legitimate for only a certain kind of overture to be answered by the willfully oblivious.
“O.K.,” I said. “Go ahead.”
I’d challenged him to a story, and boy, was it a good one. Something about being a minder of costumes for The Drowsy Chaperone. “Do you know The Drowsy Chaperone? You do?! Oh, good! None of these other idiots running around have ever heard of it. Wow. So…” Something about getting locked out of his apartment down here and needing to get the keys up there and urgently needing to get at the costumes, which were locked inside the apartment, and the fate of something or another riding on his ability to get into the damned apartment, and oh, god, how he hated having to ask this but he really was in dire straits. All this accompanied by gesticulating and deep sighs and frantic glances up and down the street, and he wasn’t getting to the point and I really did need to go, and so finally I said, “O.K., all right, so what is it that you need?
“What do I need? Oh. I just need cab fare. I need to get up to 81st street and back down here.”
My wallet was out. Why was it out? I looked inside. All I had were bills larger than I would ever, under rational circumstances, think to give to a stranger on the street. But I was caught up in it now, entranced by this man’s impressively specific tale of woe. I was so busy imagining Broadway dancers with no clothes and the ensuing uproar and this poor “fag in trouble” losing his job and then really being in trouble that my usual common-sense mechanisms had gone into lockdown. “Cab fare, eh?”
“Yes! Cab fare. I promise, you can hold my iPod if you want to. I can give you something to take as collateral. I just need the cash because I need to get to these things before I’m totally screwed.”
If I walked away and his story was true (not that I’d ever know), I would be the villain-bitch punch line at his next cocktail-party performance. If I walked away and his story was untrue (not that I’d ever know), I might feel vindicated and yet at a morally relativistic loss. If his story was true and I gave him the money, my karma points would shoot through the roof, and only happiness and light and subway trains waiting in the station for me, and only me, would be guaranteed for at least the next, oh, month. “Here. Just take it. It’s enough to get you up there, if not all the way back down. That’s all I can give you” (all I can bear to give you, all I am physically capable of giving you, all this lockdown mode will abide).
“Oh, thank you!” He reached for the money. I noticed for the first time that his hands were rough and coated in grime. Not quite costume-handling hands. “Thank you, thank, you, thank you. Seriously, what can I do -- do you want to see the show? If I could get you tickets, would you go? Can I reach you somehow, to pay you back?”
I wanted it to be over. At the moment the money left my possession and became his, the reality had socked me in the stomach. I didn’t want him to be able to reach me. I wanted him to go away. And yet he was insistent.
Then, another train of thought: My denying him the ability to prove himself would be yet another form of cruelty, a judgment on his dubious character. It would mean that in the end, even though I had given him the money, and even though I had in so doing ratified the ostensible truthfulness of his story, I did not believe him. And in denying him access to me, I would have passed a final, callous sentence.
I took out a business card. “Here. You can call me at this number. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Oh, great! Great. Who should I ask for? I mean, I don’t want to bother you. I don’t want to get you in trouble. Is there a secretary, or--”
“What? I don’t know what you’re getting at. Just call me. Or leave a message. That is my number. If you call it, you’ll reach me, and only me.”
“Oh. O.K., I just didn’t … O.K.”
“Listen, I have to go. I really am trying to get somewhere.” I was already backing away, turning to leave.
“O.K.! Thank you so much! Really, this is such a huge help!”
I descended to the subway and swiped my card. I stood there waiting -- no train waiting for me. I realized that if he really needed to get uptown and back, I could have insisted he come with me. I could have bought him a Metrocard. I could have forced him to prove the veracity of his claims and watched him get on a train. But I had not. I’d handed him enough money for a good meal or maybe enough to put him well on his way to a good fix. I’d been the perfect mark. The perfect chump. All in the name of good karma. And where was my freaking train.
