I spent a significant portion of last night in a McDonald's, sipping water from a paper cup to make it look like I had the money to patronize them. As a tip, if you're ever killing time or avoiding exposure during the cold season, most fast food places will let you sit for a while if you ask for water in a company cup--keeps them looking busy. It's a 24-hour location in my city on one of the main commercial roads. In a city razed by drugs and homelessness, it makes for top notch people-watching.
Knit together with rich college students, night shifters have a meal before work and regular day shifters are wiping their mouths after finishing supper. The location provides a daily crash course in street-level class relations. If you're curious, I encourage you to sit at any location like this for a few hours between 10 and 12. You'll learn a lot about what's either true or completely false when it comes to the myths about poor and wealthy folk.
After all, rich or poor, we all eat at McDonald's.
Three Chinese students with immaculate skin, lovely hair, and painted nails bob and weave between the horde while waiting for their order. Having spent enough time in Toronto as a child, I can recognize some of their words--'funny' and 'stink.' I briefly sniff under the collar of my shirt before realizing they're pointedly staring at a homeless man whose hood has been drawn so tightly you can only see part of his face. He paces around the store, hissing to himself that he's still human and another phrase I don't have context for; he keeps telling someone who isn't there to 'just do it.' The exchange students filter out, replaced by Persian siblings who eat nuggets by the window. I overhear the sister encouraging her brother to go for it. I wonder for a moment what she means, but after listening in, realize they're discussing his impending Grindr date. I'm not familiar with Persian culture but it's sweet to watch his sister hype him up. The aforementioned man in the hood lunges under their table, picking up a cigarette on the floor. They reel out of his way, only to realize he wasn't reaching for their pockets. They sigh, still-wide eyed, but seem relieved he isn't lurching toward them. He stuffs the cigarette in his coat and enters a fugue state, watching others from the crowd queue up to place their orders on the self-serve screen. I don't know if he's watching anything in particular, and after he spends a few minutes frozen in that state, I'm sure he isn't.
An older couple enters and the husband aids his wife in her wheelchair, navigating the thick crowd. I reach under the table to pull an errant chair out of her way. She nods her head politely while parking at the table next to mine. She waits for him to pick up their order, which he sets out nicely for both of them after a few minutes. I remember Jerid, my brother, and how as his health ebbed and flowed he'd occasionally be bound to one if it suited a temporary loss of mobility following surgery or new medication.
I look back at the other man, still locked in his vacant staring. I'm continually made aware of how our experiences form a kind of literacy which is hard to impart unless someone were to study it at length; the exchange students were raised to fear the man in the hood, or perhaps one of them have been hurt by someone like him.
When I see him wander from corner to corner, growling that he's still human to deaf ears, I'm sad but not afraid. I can barely see his nose and mouth behind the tightly-drawn hood, but I can't see any sign of intoxication.
The common stereotype that homeless people, despite lacking money for food, are somehow rich enough to afford drugs 24/7 hasn't lost its irony to me.
Chances are he isn't psychotic but has spent countless years being spit on, drenched in trauma. Often, people like him are more at risk of stranger violence, rape, or murder than the people who shy away from him like the plague. More likely than not, such experiences are what fractured his spirit, leaving him to seek warmth in a fast food restaurant during its closing hours before returning to the street--a street sadly safer than most shelters in Canada, given horrid operational standards.
