At Home With the Homeless in NYC
I don’t know if he was one of the regular Penn Station homeless contingent or just a mentally imbalanced indigent, escaping the New York City winter cold for a few hours. He grabbed my jacket sleeve, punched me in the arm, and screamed that I had stolen his motherfucking job, motherfucker.
I shook him off and went to the back of the line at Central Market to buy lunch. He ambled down the corridor. A minute later, two uniform NYPD officers hustled into the storefront. A few people pointed me out and they asked if I wanted them to “talk to him.” Spooked by the entire experience, I sputtered with New York liberal conviction, “I don’t think that’s really necessary, right? He’s gone?” They shrugged. If it didn’t matter to me, then it didn’t matter to them.
This was my most recent one-on-one encounter with the nether dwellers of the city’s mass transit system. It’s not much better in the summer, as the stench is worse when they stagger past. One humid July day, I zigged while a particularly toothless individual zagged. Incensed at my avoidance technique, the woman spit in my direction and drew attention to it, slurring, “Thas wot you disserve!”
These examples are emblematic of the “new emboldened” breed of hostile homeless people. Living in the margins and paranoid of workers attempting to assist them, they almost celebrate their existence. A…
