The most pessimistic encouragement

I am changing the order in which I am writing these. So the part about something coming back to me? Not before tomorrow.

I think it was the last author event I went to when this happened. It was respite time and too soon to go home, so I decided to walk from Powell's to the Safeway on Lovejoy.

When I got there, there was a guy out front with a sign. I asked if he wanted anything, and he wanted something hot. It was late enough at night that the deli had closed, and there wasn't much of a selection in their warm case. I explained that to him, but gave him some money so he could choose what he wanted. If it had ended there, I would barely have remembered that it happened.

I went to the streetcar stop across the street and waited. I wasn't really paying attention until I heard shouting. The guy was cursing at the security guard and demanding his name and saying he was going to sue. He did not get a name, and eventually he came to the streetcar stop too.

He said that the guard had threatened him with the taser. I guess he had gone in to buy something. Technically, I gave him the money to do that, that's on me. So he was just going to go to McDonald's, because that would probably be better anyway, but he was still really upset.

He also told me that earlier that day a woman had kicked him out of McDonald's saying that they don't serve his kind there.

Now, it is possible to have some skepticism about that story, because McDonald's serves homeless people all the time. I also know that all of the restaurants downtown have locked restrooms to keep homeless people out of them, and most restaurants reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, and that people who don't have a lot of power can get pretty awful with what they have (like transit cops and store security guards).

We ended up riding the streetcar part of the way together, so we talked for a while. I will never forget the giant scabs on his hands. He had gotten an infection and they had to cut it open, but it was probably getting infected again because he had lost his antibiotics. Yes, that made me think of the story from the woman on the bus, and getting rushed off at the end of the line and not collecting all of her things in time. However, I had also recently read an article about HIV+ people in shelters, and how medication is often stolen because other residents hope it will get them high. Medical compliance is not easy on the streets.

This is the other thing that I will always remember, because I was so mad about it. I still am.

"I want to tell you something encouraging, like that everything's going to be okay..."
"But it wouldn't be true," he interrupted, accurately.
"So I'm just going to tell you that you're human, and that matters. And you have to remember it because other people won't."

It was probably the most pessimistic encouragement that I have ever offered.

I wanted to be able to tell him something better, but I couldn't. Maybe his response showed me why: he would not have been able to believe it.

It was clear that night that the world was terrible, but it has gotten a lot worse since then, and I did not see that coming.

The reasoning is still essentially the same: too many value money over people, and even those who would be better off under a more equal system take a lot of delight in the small superiority they can wring out of the current system.

When I worry about the homeless, that's why. I still think about both of them a lot, and I can't be optimistic.