types of homeless "privilege"

I stand in a ’The Plaza’ and tell smokers of all types and temperaments that they cannot smoke. I might wear a suit to work, but its only to look important.

Except for that one guy nobody talks back, gives me an attitude, or questions who I am and what I am doing in The Plaza. They nod respectfully and walk to the nearby corner.

This “power” has inspired my latent ego to emerge. Sometimes it is motivated by general bitterness, but usually it is motivated by my resentment for blatant blunt smokers that think they are entitled to special privileges of unearned respect because they are recently freed by the law to be degenerate in public.

As much as I enjoy imposing the will of The Plaza onto smokers, it is only enforced within reason. My physical safety is always more important than my personal ego. Looks and mannerisms are everything. A person accusing the wall of “stealing eyes” will not be told to stop smoking the butts that he found in the cracks of the sidewalk.

Therefore, in an act of reverse discrimination, I let Michael, an individual with multiple face tattoos wearing rotten shoes and a browned undershirt, smoke his butts unbothered. I did not even look through him. Like the police in BLM NYC, I do not get paid enough to respond to EDPs. After all, it is not my plaza.

But when Michael spoke to me, asking for a cup of coffee, his voice was timid, straightforward, lucid, and I was intrigued. (Being homeless is all about personality; sometimes street homeless are very demanding, rude, unfriendly, entitled. Yeah, they struggle, but if they are off-putting enough, I won’t want to help.) In Michael’s case, he had become so numb to having nothing, not even a family, that living as a transient in the streets was natural; no one cared if he lived or died addicted to k2 marijuana.

Schizophrenics number the few who have the privilege of getting exactly what they want: no help.

Not all street homeless have schizophrenic privilege; they do want something—mostly familial love—and the least we can do for them is a single good deed of getting them a one-way ticket to a warm bed for a night. (There is no worldly replacement for the love of a family.)

And until he opened his mouth, I gave Michael the privilege of smoking in the plaza undisturbed, before his personality privileged him to some of my rare generosity.