A Yellow Roman Candle

September 20, 2014

              The homeless population here overflows, especially in the University District where I live. You see them sleeping on every stoop on University Way between the hours of 1am and 7am. I’m distantly yet insatiably curious to know these people and their lives, because I fear that the only thing I really know about homelessness is the stereotype that exists surrounding it. Whether the stereotype’s true or not doesn’t matter; the point is, I never want a stereotype to be all I know about something. That’s why I walked up to a group of them with my friend Lauren. She and I are walking down the sidewalk, having a cigarette and pondering life, when we see tents set up right on the concrete and a large group of approachable individuals with lots of backpacks. So we approach them and meet a guy called Bear. He stands in a sea of cardboard signs that, in a nutshell, raise awareness for the need to have a centralized location for homeless people to camp so that they don’t have to be on the streets of every urban neighborhood. A mission I can get behind. Anyway, Bear’s this big guy in his 30s with a beanie pulled low over his head and tattoos creeping up his neck and down his arms. He’s not homeless; he has an apartment that he won’t go home to until he sees his family out here on the streets have a home to go to as well. He’s a leader, an advocate, with an electric energy of safety and benevolence that you sense as soon as you pass within 10 feet of him, and the whole mood of the group is contingent on his presence. He keeps the angry ones calm, the sad ones happy, and the lonely ones accepted. I notice that others pick up on his vibes - people encourage each other to stay out of the way of passerby, no one asks for money, and everyone abides by Bear's standard of no alcohol or illegal drugs. Bear bridges the gap between the homeless and people like me who only know the stereotypes. He’s got a story, a past you could write a TV drama about, and he shares it shamelessly and passionately. He always thought himself invincible, he tells us, until he realized the one person he couldn’t beat was himself. “How did you realize this?” Cancer, he says. Stage 1 prostate cancer. And in fact, his stomach is doing flips from his chemo yesterday, so he excuses himself to go smoke some weed, and if we would like, we are welcome to join.

             I don’t smoke, but hell, why not stand there and have a conversation? We’re accompanied by a woman named Michelle and an older man named Russ. We stand together, the five of us a motley crew, and Bear lights up a joint. It helps with the nausea from his chemo treatments, he tells us. Otherwise, he takes no drugs and drinks no alcohol. I sit on the edge of a cold cement wall and draw my knees up to my chest and observe these strange and wonderful people. This is his dad, Bear tells us and points to Russ. Russ has this fantastic white beard that shakes while he tells me how he left the Marine Corps in the 50s and spent the 60s in D.C. around Dupont Circle and then the 70s in San Francisco, and then finally picked Seattle. They say when you come to Seattle you never leave, whether you’re Kurt Kobain, Jimmy Hendrix, or Russ the homeless guy. Michelle says that even Pearl Jam is around and sometimes you catch a glimpse of the band members walking down the street, and that’s when I realize how strange and ironic life can be, seeing that last night I hung out with Pearl Jam’s guitarist and tonight I’m in an alley with some really awesome homeless people informing me that sometimes you can see Pearl Jam's members around. Anyway, Bear calls Russ his dad and it’s really striking because Bear lost his parents at a young age and ran away from his Boston orphanage at age 12 and hopped a train to Seattle. In the brief time I stand with them I see this authentic fatherhood from Russ to Bear, especially when Bear gives him this big hug and the old man’s eyes light up with this uninhibited joy and it’s all just a little bit beautiful.

What do you think of this Seattle vibe? That’s what Michelle asks me, her raspy, manly voice and masculine face on her feminine body leaving me to wonder what exact gender she could be. I smile and very bluntly tell her that my upbringing was about as Republican conservative white girl as it gets, and that the vibe here in Seattle attracts me and terrifies me all at the same time. Hell, I’m a virgin that’s never smoked pot, living in Seattle hanging out on the streets with some homeless people, and I’m having the time of my life. The answer satisfies her and I like that I can be different here but accepted at the same time. It’s enough that I want to stand with these people; it doesn’t matter how I feel about it. Opinions can be dauntingly arbitrary.

Lauren, Bear and me