Holiday Guilt

Around Thanksgiving, I began to notice an interesting phenomenon. I used to half-jokingly refer to it as “Holiday Guilt.” Among the excesses and commercialism of the holidays, some volunteer groups feel compelled to give more generously of their time and resources. Large groups of volunteers flooded the shelter, fixing elaborate meals. And rather than making us line up to get our own food, the holiday volunteers had us remain seated and brought our meals to us. Since I normally sat close to the kitchen door, and I hate waiting for food, that arrangement suited me just fine.

The week before Christmas, the volunteers starting showing up with gift bags for us. There were some variations, but for the most part they all contained the same things. Warm hats, gloves, toiletries, and socks were all included. Lots and lots of socks. We joked about being “sock rich,” having the luxury of changing socks once—hell, even twice a day. There were so many matching pairs of socks floating around the homeless community that it was like some sort of secret club. I’d see someone on the bus wearing cheap but warm grey socks and think, “I bet those came in a gift bag with a card attached that read ‘Jesus loves you!’…”

I always had a soft spot for the kids that came with the volunteers. Occasionally, one or two clearly showed that they wanted to be anywhere but there, but that was the exception rather than the rule. More common were the well-spoken, polite ones that reminded me of a younger version of myself. In an on-going attempt to teach me compassion, Joan and The Captain used to take me to volunteer at a nursing home in our town. I was, for the most part, a pretty compliant kid so I went along with the program. My parents, the rest of our church group, and I would spend a few hours on Saturdays with the nursing home residents. We’d pass out care packages of homemade cookies and sugar free candies, sing hymns, and doing arts and crafts. I used to look at the residents and wonder what it must be like to be that dependent on the generosity of strangers for companionship or basic human needs. I had no way of knowing that time and hard living would one day answer that question for me.

One of my favorite groups visited us Thanksgiving evening and spent a few hours with us. It was a group of Hispanic Seventh Day Adventists and they were one of the first groups I encountered that did anything more than feed us and leave. The food they did serve was amazing: roast turkey prepared pulled-pork style, spicy Spanish rice, and servings of some of the best caramel flan I’d ever tasted. Other churches and restaurants were having special meals for the homeless, so some guys just weren’t hungry. Others, being unfamiliar with Hispanic cooking, passed on the trays. I made out like a bandit that night. Two guys handed their trays over to me, and I was only too glad to devour multiple servings of delicious food. I also copped four servings of caramel flan from guys put off by the look. In a way, it turned out to be a more traditional Thanksgiving than I’d expected. I was thinking I’d be depressed since I wasn’t with my family, but it turns out several helpings of tryptophan will do wonders for one’s sense of contentment, regardless of the surroundings.

After serving us, some of the volunteers lined up against the wall of the tv room and sang for us. They strummed a guitar and sang contemporary Christian songs while I ate like a king. Their singing didn’t seem like an attempt at recruiting, just an honest expression of the love of God they wanted to share with us. After singing some, they broke off into smaller groups, having earnest conversations and getting to know some of the residents of the shelter. Again, it never felt like they were looking for us to drink the proverbial Kool-Aid, they just wanted us to know that God loved us, and in a way, they did too. They looked us in the eyes, smiling genuinely, and making casual conversation about everything from sports to guys’ plans to get out of the shelter.

The Siete Dia Adventists, as I began to call them, visited a few more times while I was staying at the shelter. Each visit, they were the same genuine, kind people they’d been on Thanksgiving night. I don’t know how many souls they saved in all those visits, but I do know they were regular reminders that not everyone looked down on the homeless.

Allen likes to drink

By the time Kindred made his return from Holly Hill, I had become friends with Allen. Allen was a creative-minded chef with a quick wit and sarcasm that mirrored my own. And in that grand tradition of food service professionals, Allen loved to drink. A few nights before Christmas, he and I met after work for drinks, and Allen dropped $150 on food and drinks. By himself. Which presented a problem since we were in "The Program" (Progressive Housing Program), and were barred from drinking. By the time he finished his second "last" gin & tonic, he was swaying like an antenna in high wind.

We chain-smoked cigarettes the whole walk back, hoping to mask the smell of liquor and bad decisions. Having bluffed my way through roadblocks and cop stops before, I knew how to carry myself as we checked in at the front desk of the shelter. Allen, on the other hand, was a mess: sweating heavily, he was having a hard time regulating his footsteps. He vacillated between mumbled apologies and fits of giggles, when he managed to tear himself from the task of watching his feet as he walked. Apparently he didn't trust them to follow the given commands, with good reason.

Every person entering the shelter is subject to being searched. That meant that getting Allen back inside the shelter for the night would take some luck. One whiff of the fumes he was breathing would lead to a closer examination, which would have been disastrous. But fortune was on our side: the deputy who was working the door gave us a perfunctory swipe with the metal-detecting wand, and the front desk staff barely tore themselves from their conversation to get our bunk numbers.

I left Allen in the hall, stumbling back toward his dorm. Residents weren't allowed in dorms to which they weren't assigned, so I was prevented from actually tucking Allen into bed to make sure he was down for the night. Twenty minutes later as I heated up some canned goods I'd stashed in my book bag, Kindred approached me with wide eyes, asking, "Hey man, what the hell is that white boy on? He is gone." Dread tickled at the base of my neck as Kindred filled me in on the twenty minutes that had just passed.

Instead of making his way to bed, Allen had staggered outside to the smoke area, where he managed to impress everyone with his lack of coherent speech. Not one to let that stop him from attempting to speak, he finally nodded off in mid word. The quiet was so sudden that someone was scared he'd died and went to get help. He'd been awakened by the looming presence of the front desk staff with an assist from the deputy on duty. In what can only be described as The Miracle Before Christmas, they believed his assurances that he was just tired and would go to bed once he'd smoked his (unlit) cigarette.

My friendship with Allen presented something of a challenge to me. On one hand, the last thing I needed in my life at that point was an excuse to drink. Allen was as predisposed as I was to engage in Inappropriately-Early Drinking. I can't, in all fairness, call Allen a bad influence though. He never dragged me into any trouble. It was more like we were holding hands and skipping drunkenly down the road to ruin, side by side.

In Allen's favor was a simple fact: he was undeniably cool. We got each other's random pop culture references; we understood each other's devotion to a sometimes harsh industry; we both enjoyed toasting that industry with the free drinks we boasted we could talk out of the bartenders of the bars in downtown Raleigh. Whereas Kindred was like a younger version of me, Allen felt more like a peer. His mistakes mirrored mine, and his bad decisions had ended with results similar to my own.

The night before New Years Eve, Allen fell apart. I was walking home from work when I spotted a figure walking towards me through the cold drizzle. From as close as a block, I could tell that the hunched, stumbling person was Allen, and he was drunk. The fact that he was already drunk at 5:30 in the evening, plus the fact that he was walking away from the shelter in that condition, didn't bode well. Though he looked right at me, his eyes were glazed and bloodshot, and didn't recognize me. I spoke his name, startling him into recognition. Relieved to see a friendly face, he hugged me and launched into a rambling story about how he'd "lost it...just lost it."

I knew he'd gotten some new responsibility at the restaurant where he was cooking. In fact, that very morning he'd been given the keys to open the place and take a large food delivery. At first I thought he meant he'd lost the key, but that would hardly have explained his appearance: wet, disheveled, with spots of blood on his shirt and face. Turns out that the food shipment was much more complicated than he'd anticipated, and he panicked. He was smart enough not to raid the bar, which was monitored by a security camera. But when he stumbled onto a few bottles of white wine in the cooler, his fate was sealed. He was found later, passed out in one of the booths, his half-empty to-go cup of wine still at the table in front of him. He was, of course, fired.

He managed to talk his way into enough alcohol to keep him pickled until it was time to return to the shelter, where he promptly got into a fight with another resident. He got briefly tossed around before being tossed out of the shelter. By the time he encountered me, he'd stashed his things under the bridge where some homeless choose to make their homes. He was planning on sleeping under said bridge, but I wasn't having it. By Providence, before I got off work, my boss had given me my tipshares for the week, so I had enough for a single in the cheap motel across the street from the shelter. Allen nearly convinced me not to, but as it began to rain harder, I redoubled my arguments and convinced him to accept my gesture. I tried to soothe his wounded ego with humor, "Hey man if you're worried about paying me back, you can just take your top off and dance for a few minutes, and we'll be square." His laugh was deep and genuine, and it was the first one I'd heard since running into him that evening.

I hugged him in the parking lot, making him promise to get in touch with me and let me know his plans. I crossed the street, wondering what would become of Allen. When I next heard from him, he was still homeless, only this time it was in Hawaii. After getting fired from the restaurant, he'd collected his final paycheck and bought a ticket to the land where palm trees sway, intent on an adventure. He knew neither a soul in Hawaii nor where he was going to stay, but the same could have been said of his arrival in North Carolina.

He spent a week catching waves and chasing a constant buzz, then returned to the mainland, broke. Deciding he needed a major course correction, he went into a year-long rehab program and that was the last I heard of him.

I only knew Allen a short time, but we'd become close friends in that time. It was the kind of intense friendship borne of shared suffering and struggle, and it had changed me. Allen had served as a live-action Afterschool Special: "I'm Besties With an Alcoholic!" As I watched his life fall apart one drink at a time, I'd begun cutting back on my own drinking. Long after Allen left for Hawaii, I'd find myself remembering his decline as I turned down a drink with lunch.

Kindred takes a vacation from homelessness

After I got the job at the cafe I had less time to spend with Kindred. We'd still go to the library to collaborate on our graphic novel, but work took first priority for me. Even though Kindred wasn't employed, he treated getting a job like a job. He'd catch the bus or walk to temp agencies, or he'd go to the library to fill out online applications. When we weren't working or looking for work, we'd watch TV together or just sit around talking about our lives. In a way Kindred was my best friend. I didn't want to share my circumstances with even my closest friends, and I didn't feel comfortable coming out to most of the guys in the shelter, so nobody really knew all sides of my life. Except for Kindred. He was one of the few people who knew my sexuality and my residential challenges and accepted me anyway.

About a week after I got the job, I had my first late shift. I was assigned to work the bar at a reception at the museum and didn't get back to the shelter until 11 that night. I made it into the cafeteria to eat before lights-out (I used my food stamps to buy some food at the store on my way back), so there were still some people watching TV with me. One of them was a young guy named Jimmy who was obsessed with Japanese animé and spent all his free time watching movies and playing video games on his laptop. Turning to me he asked, "Hey man, where's your boy Kindred? He wasn't in the mandatory meeting tonight and I haven't seen him." I was so tired that I didn't think much of it. I assumed Kindred had already gone to bed, and said as much to Jimmy.

After I finished eating, I was heading back to my dorm when I heard two staff members talking about a light-skinned guy who left after some heated words with one of them. Immediately my stomach began to sink and I checked Kindred's bunk as I walked past it in the darkened room. It was still made up from that morning, and clearly hadn't been slept in. I stuck my head in the bathroom to see if maybe he was in there--no Kindred. Hoping against hope, I went out to the smoking area outside to see if he'd bummed a cigarette off someone--no Kindred. As I slowly walked back to my bunk I started considering where else he might be. His relationship with his family seemed strained at best--he hadn't reached out to any of them Thanksgiving day and seemed opposed to even trying to do so. He intentionally kept his circle of friends small, and none of them seemed to be in a position to help him. I could only hope he had found a place to stay and wasn't "sleeping rough" under the stars.

From a purely selfish point of view I hated to see him gone because of the loneliness that now loomed large. I knew I'd miss our effortless friendship and the feeling that I wasn't alone in my struggles. As I laid down in my bunk, I said a quiet prayer for him. I prayed that wherever he was, he was safe and warm and confortable; I prayed that he knew how much his friendship meant to me; I prayed that, whatever path he was on, it would lead him to the happiness and peace he deserved.

A few days later the mystery was solved when I got an instant message from a woman on Facebook. Without any preamble, she told me Kindred was in Holly Hill, a local mental hospital. She told me he wanted my number so he could call me directly. When I got him on the phone he explained that his recent efforts to secure disability (on the basis of mental illness) had backfired and he'd been involuntarily committed. Turns out he was a more convincing actor than he'd anticipated and was "diagnosed" as bipolar. His reaction to this diagnosis was the basis for his involuntary committal. He spent two weeks going to counseling sessions and trying to convince them that he was okay to cut loose before they finally agreed. Kindred never again mentioned the possibility of getting disability on the grounds of mental illness. I guess he figured he'd lived enough of the real thing and didn't want to play that game anymore.