Alex By Ariadne Blayde Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Class of 2012 Abstract: This essay explores the author s encounters with a local homeless man, questioning her relationship with him and the moral dilemmas it raises. 1
There s a homeless man on my block. I see him sitting by the grocery store, asking passersby for change. I see him writing cardboard signs. I see him almost every day. He s skinny, bearded and walks with a loping stride, a bit of a strange twinkle in his eye. As soon as I saw this man I wanted to help him. Why? Because I ve grown up with a sense of moral obligation towards the downtrodden, of course. Helping the homeless is what any good person would do. And besides, he looks a little like my dad. And so I set off to do good for this unassuming man on my street. Not wanting to give him cash because I figured he would spend it on cigarettes, I decided to give him food instead. Whenever I saw him outside the store, I would try to buy something for him along with my groceries. But these gestures never seemed to work out. Once I bought him a cup of hot soup and brought it out to the curb, only to find that a cold drizzle had begun and that he had left. I wandered the neighborhood in the rain for ten minutes, searching for him and feeling sorry for myself. Eventually I returned to my apartment and abjectly ate the soup myself. Another time I rushed through my grocery trip in order to buy him a bagel, and - success at last! - he was still there when I emerged from the store, but was shouting a torrent of homophobic slurs at a passing stranger. I froze, bagel in hand, and quietly headed the other way. My consistently thwarted attempts to help the homeless man became an item of amusement, a story that I told my friends. But I refused to give up! At this point I was really insistent on helping him, and the effort turned into something of a personal crusade. Every time I saw him I would run into the store and come out food in hand, but my attempts were always ruined. Finally, on a freezing December night, I saw him shivering in a blanket outside the post office and dashed into the pizzeria across the 2
street, silently willing him not to move. I paid for a slice, ran back and held it out to him. His eyes lit up when he saw the hot pizza. You read my mind, girl! he said. Knowing that he must be tired of feeling so anonymous, I asked his name. Alex. On the stairs up to my apartment I felt a burst of adrenaline, a flush of warmth. I shyly congratulated myself for my good deed, wondering how many other people on the cold dark streets of New York would have made such a gesture. I decided to be Alex s guardian angel. From then on, I often asked what he wanted at the store on my way home from work always froot loops and whole milk. I set bags of my boyfriend s old clothes on our stoop and smiled when I saw him wearing them later. There s Alex, I d think happily. I d even point him out to my friends that s Alex, my homeless guy. Once when I saw him napping on the cold sidewalk I brought down an old pillow and lay it at his feet, and a few hours later I saw him cuddled up with it. I imagined him waking up with it and lifting his eyes to the heavens in silent thanks for this simple kindness, wondering if maybe he wasn t invisible after all. And then one day, my little world of good deeds came crashing down around me. Having seen Alex on the street, I picked up a carton of macaroni from the hot bar while grocery shopping with my boyfriend. I winced a little when the server slapped the price tag on it: eight dollars, a little much for my budget. Before we could pay, though, I saw Alex get up from his spot outside the store. I told my boyfriend to stay with the groceries and went after him. I ran out into a light snow, chasing him around the corner into the darkening evening. He was already nearly a block away, so I called after him- Alex! Alex! He stopped and turned to me as I caught up to him. What did you call me? 3
Alex. Remember, you told me your name? Oh. He paused a moment, then turned to go again. I was out of breath. Wait! I bought you some- some macaroni, my boyfriend s paying for it now, I ll go get it for you and- It s freezing. I ve got to get out of here. I didn t understand. But I just bought you some food. Hot food, if you ll just wait- I ve got to go, girl. It s freezing out here, he said, and loped away. My boyfriend rounded the corner with our groceries. Well, where is he? We went home and I tossed the macaroni in the fridge, angry. I had wasted eight dollars and been humiliated. Alex didn t need me; he didn t even remember me. From that point on I ignored him when he begged for change, and took my time in the grocery store without a thought as to whether he would be there when I came out. A year passed and he became just one of the many homeless faces in my neighborhood and I became one of the many strangers who passed by his outstretched hand without a glance. We like to believe that goodness is inherent in us, that we do the right thing simply because it is moral. I ve always considered myself a very good person, rejecting cruelty and indifference, helping the needy, even being vegetarian: I extend my realm of empathy and compassion to include animals, a step further than many people are willing to take. But my encounters with Alex led me to some unsettling new questions about what morality really means in my life. Where did my desire to do good come from? Did I 4
really want to help this man, or was I driven by something else as well? That slice of pizza only cost me $2.15, but the satisfaction I got from it was priceless. Just think: for the low price of two dollars and fifteen cents, you can enjoy a moral high that lasts for days! The look on that shivering man s face when he catches a whiff of the hot pizza you purchased just for him not to mention that impressed look on your boyfriend s face when he finds out what a saint you are. I fear that these things were more of a motivator for me than any true obligation to do good. Because when my sainthood was thrown back in my face when all my warm and fuzzy feelings of good karma were crushed in the instant that my offering was rejected I stopped giving. Maybe it s normal for us to want some kind of return on our good deeds. After all, they re not always convenient. For those first few months, I spent enormous effort (at least it felt like it) trying to take care of Alex, hunting him down in the effort to help him. Those ten minutes wandering my neighborhood in the rain with a cup of soup felt like the most noble thing on earth. But when I go to see a show and look at the list of benefactors in the program, I wonder how many of these people would be donating their money if they didn t get their name and donation tier printed here for all to see? If they weren t invited to galas where they get to show off to all the other gracious patron of the arts, hear speeches and toasts in their honor? Maybe that s human nature. But that s not what morality should be about. I shouldn t give to Alex because it makes me feel morally superior, I should do it because I m not superior because I realize that under different circumstances, I could be right in his place. The mere fact that I have more than Alex and deign to share some tiny fraction 5
of that with him doesn t entitle me any moral high ground, or give me the right to decide what s best for him. Maybe he just doesn t like macaroni. The next time I see Alex, I ll give him a dollar. And I won t feel good about myself because of it. In fact, I ll feel bad about it, because I ll know that I m going home to a warm bed and full refrigerator and a safe home - and I ll know that if I gave Alex the ten or fifty or even a hundred dollars that I was planning to spend on clothes or dates or something equally frivolous, he would be that much closer to having a warm bed and a safe home too. Maybe one day I ll be enlightened enough to do that for him. For now, I ll just try to stay humble. 6