So I Invited a Homeless Guy to Dinner in Raleigh, And I’d Do It Again
Great people are everywhere, it’s on you to find them.
As previously stated, I really don’t like people. Annoying people, at least, they are fucking annoying and self-absorbed and they don’t know how to drive and they are tedious and… well… you get the point.
This week, I was in Raleigh, NC at the same time I accepted a promotion to Managing Editor of Going Concern which is awesome for me and for Going Concern too but the timing was, to put it mildly, difficult. I’d planned to be in Raleigh with my boyfriend weeks before I was even offered the job, but being there at the same time meant I’d have to find a good place to work and set the time aside to do it while my hack boyfriend was off being a hack at his conference.
After I wrapped my day, I went out for a walk in downtown Raleigh and a man approached me asking if I had a light. He was holding his cheek, clearly in pain, and I said “no sorry, I don’t have one but are you OK?” I try not to presume but maybe he was homeless, maybe he was hurting, how could I know?
He had a toothache. A bad one. And yes, he was homeless. That was all I knew at the point I said “walk with me, let’s go get you some Advil at the store.”
CVS was closed, so we walked to the nearest liquor store. I bought him two packs of Advil and a pack of Newports. He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t expect anything. But he needed a break on the sore tooth and hey, why not some cigarettes too?
So we kept talking. Turns out, he’s an engineer. And a math genius, all with a bunch of degrees to prove it. But lo-and-behold, life — the bitch she is — wasn’t kind to him after a few turns, and here he was trying to get by on the streets of Raleigh. At that point, waiting for my boyfriend to wrap at his conference, I invited this guy to dinner with us.
“We’re at the Busy Bee,” I texted my boyfriend, “and I met someone I want you to meet, he’s joining us for dinner.” Thankfully I have an understanding, not at all jealous boyfriend who won’t even bat an eyelash at me inviting some strange black guy I just met to dinner with us. Lesser men might wonder what the hell their girlfriend is doing talking to strangers but my boyfriend knows if I’m saying we’re going to dinner with some weird guy, it’s for a reason.
At this point, I should confess something I don’t readily talk about. When dot com tanked in San Francisco back in the early 2000s, I was pretty much out on my ass too. I hitchhiked out to California from Utah in 1999 with my then husband and even flew a sign while we were squatting in a nice abandoned place near the TV station. So I get it. I get just scraping by and looking for people to give you a break. That part I understand.
So that is most definitely why, even now, a decade later, I seek out the shining stars, wherever they are, and I especially feel that because I have been so lucky in the last 5 — 10 years, the least I can do is give back. Be that an Advil or a light, whatever.
We had a good dinner with my new friend Nelson the engineer. He, like me, is too smart for his own good. But I knew that the minute we started talking on our way to find him an Advil in downtown Raleigh.
Anyone can dump their leftovers on a “poor homeless guy,” but not everyone would sit down to dinner with that same person. There is nothing “poor” about my new friend, he’s just been hammered by circumstance, which even those of us who have lucked out can relate to, especially in this economy. And that’s what I saw the moment we started talking about his background, which led me to say “my boyfriend is on his way from his conference, would you join us for dinner?”
After dinner, I gave Nelson my card and told him to email me. I don’t have any leads on jobs for him but I have no doubt if I did, he’d jump on it and kick ass because all he wants to do is work and pay taxes and pay electric bills like the rest of us “lucky” enough to be stuck in the matrix of being a regular old asshole going to work and paying bills.
Open your eyes, folks. Exceptional people are all around you, and sometimes they are a homeless guy with a toothache and if you have the ability to buy the guy an Advil, then do it, because you are lucky enough to have the $4 to do it, and he’s lucky enough to have bumped into you. My friend Nelson taught me that, and it was so worth the Advils, the Newports and whatever we spent on our lively dinner at the Busy Bee Cafe in Raleigh together, just Nelson, me and my boyfriend. As divergent as all our life experiences are, we were still just 3 people out of however many billion on this planet having a good dinner in Raleigh, and that was enough.
We ran into Nelson again this afternoon, on his way to the library to email me and it looks like he has a few interviews this week. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and I hope he hangs onto my email to check in a month later to say he’s living in a nice apartment in Raleigh, doing fiber optics or math ed or whatever makes him happy because he deserves it.
When I returned to Richmond tonight with my boyfriend, I looked around my downtown apartment and saw the piles of cat litter and dirty clothes in a different way than I had before I left. Because my new friend Nelson reminded me how lucky I am to have the bills and the responsibilities and all the crap I hate dealing with, because he has none of that but wants it so bad just so he doesn’t have to wander aimlessly in Raleigh looking for a break.
And if I end up back in Raleigh with my boyfriend, the first thing I will do is email my friend and invite him out to another dinner, not because I need the reminder that I’m lucky, but because we’re all just humans on this journey together and the best we can do for one another is treat every person we come across as an opportunity to make ourselves better, and give back just a little bit in gratitude for all the great things we ourselves have been given.
My friend Nelson taught me that. And I’m so glad I found him to learn that lesson.
Plus the food was really good at the Busy Bee. And that’s really all I wanted, but I got a new friend in the process.
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