Walking home from the Hilton at half past midnight, I sullenly stared at my phone wondering what sort of updates I could check to divert my mood—decidedly, there were none. I didn’t launch any apps, but pushed the power button as a man lackadaisically riding his cruiser bicycle shouted from the street, inquiring the time. He didn’t ask for a dollar, and the time I could give him. (Really, he was asking for my time.) I reached back into my pocket and grabbing my phone pressed the power button to check the time. “12:45″, I shouted back at him. I walked another 15 yards up the sidewalk, when again from the street he inquired the time. I answered back again. “Thanks brotha”, he said, one hand on his handlebars. “Where you from?” he asked. “Iowa”, I replied. “Oh, Iowa huh? You must be a smart guy. Ya’ll a smart bunch out there. Got the highest IQs in the nation, isn’t that right?” he said. “We value education”, I said, flattered despite myself. “Where are you from?” I asked him. “Richmond, California”, he said.
I find it notable that he added “California”, when he very well could have just said “Richmond”. After all, the city is just across the Bay a little south of Oakland. And yet, having lived in the Bay Area for nearly one year now, I had just learned about Richmond. I’d been on a date the night before with a woman who was a corps member of Teach for America and teaches in the Iron Triangle of Richmond, which was rated the 9th most dangerous city in the United States in 2007.
I waited at a crosswalk for the green light and the man continued to chat me up as he rode his bike, looping back and forth across the street. “You sound like a brotha…” he said. “…You sound like a real nigga!” I grinned widely, immediately thinking of Chris and the influence he may or may not have recently had on my demeanor and speech patterns. “How many black people are in Iowa?” he asked. “Not many. Maybe a handful”, I replied. By now we’d been talking for a good two or three minutes, which is a lot considering a stranger on the street is lucky to get more than 5 seconds of my consideration. This man had completely bypassed my “No.” He put me at ease, or at least, he had been priming me. As I crossed the sidewalk, he cruised up near me to the edge of the curb.
“Yo brotha, can I getta dolla?”
Before he even finished saying “can I getta”, I had reached for my wallet and was fishing for a fiver. The man had game and deserved his earnings.
As I put it in his hand, he asked how old I was. “27″, I replied. “How old are you?” I asked him. “24″ I heard, and as I looked over his face I obviously had misheard him. He saw my confused face and repeated “44″. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Stewart”, I said. “What’s your’s?” I asked. “Charles”, he replied. He reached out to bump my fist, “Thanks for being a real brotha”, he said. And as I bumped his fist, I told him to keep my handout a secret, not to let it get out that he was the first man in San Francisco that I’d given money to.
Earlier that evening…
We were standing in front of the Hilton, bullshitting about all the Marina bitches walking by, waiting to hear back from Chris about where to meet up. “They’re definitely not at Eastside West”, I said to David as a mob of blondes in fuchsia, turquoise, and purple strutted by in Grecian-style heels. And then a short Asian lady who was well-dressed and clean and not too weathered in the face, just enough to appear like she didn’t live or beg on the streets, asked us for a quarter because she was trying to buy a five dollar MUNI pass. David sized up the situation and quickly handed her a quarter. My gut wrenched a bit, and as she asked David for another quarter, so did his as he realized he’d been had. She then walked a mere 20 feet down the sidewalk and asked the next group standing around if they had a quarter for her. “As a general rule,” I told the guys, “fuck people who ask for a quarter. Anybody who insists they aren’t a beggar can go to the nearest bodega or ATM and withdraw their own money.”
And not less than a minute after that deceptive Asian beggar moved on, a weathered, tattered black woman, cigarette in hand with a half-inch ash, approached us and implored, “Ya’ll…”, her lip trembling; she had tears permanently sparkling in the corners of her eyes.
And for what seemed like half of eternity, the three of us guys “uh” and “um” and look desperately upward at anything that will allow us to ignore her, just waiting for her to move on. She didn’t. “Ya’ll, I’m not begging, ya’ll, I just, I just…” I realized that neither of the guys I was with was going to deal with the situation. She stuttered a bit more. “We don’t have anything for you. I’m sorry…”, I told her. Her posture straightened and the timbre of her voice strengthened as she bid “God bless you and have a good night!”