Kindred Spirit

One of the first real friends I made in the shelter was Kindred. I spotted him sitting across the cafeteria from me one afternoon and I noticed that we seemed to be staring at each other. Later I found out that we both thought the other looked familiar but neither of us could figure out where we’d met. On my part, I always thought it was because he looked like a funny character from a popular sitcom, but he hated the resemblance so I tried not to bring it up too often.

He was ten years younger than me, with an old soul and cynicism that made him seem closer to my age. We were both Black, but with his pecan brown skin and soft curly hair, he had a look that suggested a diverse ancestry. In fact, his hair was the first thing I noticed about him—I was insanely jealous of his hair. It was afro length, and bunched in loose twists. I just knew that if I tried the same look I’d resemble a frayed, dirty cotton swab, but he pulled it off with style.

Normally a guy like Kindred (good-looking, smart, sarcastic as hell) would have been my “type” but a couple of things prevented that. For one thing he was straight. While he was comfortable with having gay friends, he was totally into women and made no bones about it. Also, I wasn’t trying to be part of a homeless shelter romance. I’m not sure what that would have looked like, but I wasn’t trying to go down that road. I’ve seen people (of all different orientations) engage in amour sans-abri (“homeless love”), but I wanted to fix my own life before affixing it to anyone else’s.  

We would hang out whenever we had free time, working on our respective writing projects. Jointly we came up with ideas for a graphic novel about a moon man and a perpetually stoned koala bear. In a way, the insane adventures of Milton The Moon Man and Kairo the Koala kept us sane. We’d share inside jokes about others in the shelter, exchanging knowing looks every time Calm Down Phil would bounce into the room. I think we both thought of ourselves as different from everyone else. Not necessarily better (at least not most of the time) just apart. We both readily admitted that we weren’t “about that life.” Kindred was one of the few people I could see myself socializing with once we’d left the shelter. In a lot of ways, he was my lifeline; he was my connection to the creative side of myself that I’d been afraid was dying in the shelter environment.