I imagine what irks people most about homeless populations, beyond safety considerations, is the idea that they aren't pulling their weight.

Yes, it's annoying when people give the appearance of not trying their best. We seem to appreciate when folks at least give the appearance of pulling their weight, even if they're not actually doing so. There is a certain type of entitlement which runs contrary to the notion of best efforts, of giving back to society, and I think this is what fundamentally bothers people in discussions within this arena. 

​Sometimes that suspicion is accurate. We– imagining ourselves as homeless for a moment– we can get pushed to a point where we no longer care to participate in a social contract we perceive has wronged us, and ride whatever fragment of entitlement our bruised egos can salvage.

There is one societal group this behavior severely disadvantages: 

Other homeless people. 

Those who are actually trying. During the most difficult time in their lives, these folks, on top of their troubles, have to deal with overcoming the perception of– of all things!– laziness. Can you believe it? The passion with which I have heard certain homeless speak on this issue is staggering. I remember Leroy, not realizing he was raising his voice, as he expounded on the sluggish complacency he found in some of his shelter-mates. 

Pretty often, however, folks really are putting in the effort, but we just can't tell, masked as those efforts are by mental health or circumstances too complex for us to grasp. For our own psychological well-being, our view of humanity is more inclusive of positive truths if we just give people the benefit of the doubt. To explain:

I'm talking to operator Gary at the end of the line. He and I may vote for different presidents (although probably not in this crazy election!), but that doesn't mean we don't have a lot to share and learn from each other. Gary once gave me the best relationship advice I've gotten in ten years. I'd tell you what it is, except we're not on The View... tonight he's telling me about a recent incident on his bus.

He's approaching Rainier and Othello southbound. The zone was empty, but three young guys are running very quickly toward the bus. The lead guy and the oldest, a teenager, is extremely fast, though he's carrying a basketball and some other items. Quite a ways behind him is the second guy, younger, and even further behind that individual is the third guy, who isn't running very quickly at all. 

Gary shared with me that he was thinking, okay: this is one of those things where three friends are running for the bus, and the first one actually makes an effort and holds the bus while the other two slowly swagger on, doing the pimp roll, like they own the place.

As somebody needed to get off at Othello anyways, Gary pulled over. The first kid raced up to the bus. The other two were still back there somewhere, catching up. Gary, thinking on what he'd been thinking about, decided to say something. He said to Kid A, "How come you're so much faster than your friends?"

He intended the comment as an implicit appreciation of Kid A, who'd put in the effort. Bus drivers appreciate a little hustle. Kid A caught his breath and said, "well, one of them is a lot younger, so he's not as fast. And then the other guy, well, the other guy has asthma."

There you go. They really were trying their best. Gary felt completely chagrined. You just never know. 

Yes, there are those don't try. As someone with significant experience with the homeless in this job and elsewhere, I can say that group is small in number; things are generally more complicated. But even so, are they less deserving of the right to be human? A thought worth considering:

When we start blaming the oppressed, and complaining about how "they smell funny," or "they're getting free stuff," what does that say about us? About our sense of entitlement over others? 

We don't get to choose who we serve. Gary came up to me an hour or so after he told me the above story, now that we'd arrived at the opposite terminal. He had one more thing to add. That's what he said. "We don't get to choose we serve."

"Oh, that's brilliant," I replied. It encapsulated something I really like about this job. "Hang on, I need to write that down," I said, tearing off a transfer to do so.

What dignity is there if we only give to those we like or who share our views and football teams and life philosophies or who we think are pretty? To give great customer service only to people we like is absolutely nothing to be proud of, and no type of meaningful skill. It is the egalitarian nature of giving, of serving all– this is the true challenge. To recognize the humanness of every person and deal with that, and that alone: that is the discipline. As Clint Eastwood once said:

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

---

​This is a follow-up post; here's Pulling Our Weight, Part I. Also a big thank you to Mr. Lukas (yes you!), friend and former Seattle resident with whom I had many excellent conversations, and provided the above Hester quote late one evening on the route.

Look, I'm not going to pretend she wasn't cute. She was. I thought she was. Was she my type? Not a question I can answer. I couldn't know enough to tell. I think a lot of people are beautiful, but don't you quickly lose interest sometimes, when you hear how far apart the two of you are in perspective? Doesn't the urge to fall asleep overwhelm you when they start talking about how they don't really like books, hate art, and don't care about poor people? I digress.

As a photographer, I'm platonically allowed to observe that she looked great. I was compelled by the lack of pretense in her appearance, dressed as she was in a collared flannel, unpressed, and trim pants, jeans probably, that I can hardly remember. Nothing's less attractive than trying really hard. Indulge me, friend, and imagine her wavy, unbrushed dark hair blowing in the wind, no makeup applied or needed, taller, a sort of scrappy confidence; definitely not a student. Wide open brown eyes and a jawline Dürer or Fra Filippo Lippi would have loved painting. When did Third and Seneca become a Botticelli meadow? Okay, I'm done. You get the picture! 

I didn't pass her up, is what I'm trying to say here. She got on without incident. We exchanged brief hello's, a clarification about where the bus was going, and she took a seat not at the front but near, the first pair of forward-facing seats. 

It was a meandering, uneventful ride. The 49 in front of us was grabbing most of the passengers, and though he skipped the occasional stop when possible to spread the load between buses (as per policy), we got only a few stragglers. Our friend in the collared shirt was buried in her phone, texting mostly, smiling to herself: the silent smile you don't know you're making when you're absorbed in thought. In so doing she missed a staggeringly beautiful sunset she'll never see again.

It seems to be a generational quirk, this tendency to ignore what's around you for the sake of secondary experience. I for myself soaked up the scene as much as the circumstances could allow. The conflation of yellow clouds and pink sky, grading so transcendently down to grey and baby blue… ah, Nathan heaven, something right out of Bierstadt, or maybe Claude Lorrain. Now I was the one smiling to myself. 

She didn't quite know where she was. She spoke loudly on her phone now, making plans to meet someone, relaying between her phone and myself where we were, saying things like "I'm getting close to Campus Parkway" to the mostly empty vehicle. 

I wasn't attracted to her so much as curious. You meet people where the pieces don't quite seem to fit, where the looks and behaviors don't line up with each other or themselves; she was tomboyish and feminine at the same time, confident but somewhat lost, agreeable but unaware of the social faux pas of loud phone conversation. We could get annoyed by this last element, or think less of her, but to myself I thought, there's a story here. I can only see the surface. I wanted her to feel accepted.

"Um let me see," she told her phone. "There's a Shell station, there's a... Forty-fifth and,"
"Forty-fifth and Eleventh," I said.
"Forty-fifth and Eleventh. Yes okay. Bye."
I caught her eye in the mirror, trading a smile. She was standing now, swinging lightly to the bus's slowing groove. I said, "is it gonna be a fun night?"
She laughed, and laughed again. "I just got outta jail," she said, the last syllable slanted downward, a hint of revelation and embarrassment, the deprecating exposure of self. 

We need to love people in moments like that. 

"Oh, congratulations," I exclaimed. Now I really wanted her to feel accepted, unjudged. The first moments back out can be formative. Give her that warm space, genuine and level. She tilted her head in a smile as she said, "thank you!"

Isn't that one of your favorite things, to hear the phrase uttered which such appreciative gratefulness? There are times when it positively threatens to be music. 

I was saying, "gosh, that's a huge deal!" 
"It is, actually!"
"Well, you brought the sunshine back! So thank you."
"Thank you! Good." Laughter.
"Have a really great night!"
"You too, thank you."
"Thank you so much."
"Thank you."
"Thank you."

​We were talking over each other at the end there. Those last several thank you's swirled about together, gratitude and respect splattered out in a cappella, a makeshift chorus in the first minutes after sundown. We were trading the Glow, building on the blocks of it, each taking the effort to remind the other that yes, there are good people out here, people who see the better sides of you, the common and living good.

Tran's telling me an anecdote from earlier in the day. Have I told you about him? Tran's the scruffy Vietnamese guy who knows all about cars, a mechanic in another life or maybe still, and whose sister runs the restaurant on the corner. Despite his repeated and patient coaching, I definitely can't pronounce the restaurant's name, but what I can say is their Vietnamese fried rice is the best in the state. Tran brought me a plate once, on some improvised styrofoam. I was in heaven.

Tonight he's dressed as usual– dark sweatshirt and dark work pants, clothes you don't mind getting grease and oil on, his hands the product of his trade, crusted and grimy. He's very personable, easy to talk to. Certain people, in the impression they make on you, overwhelm their own physical appearance with sheer magnetic force of personality. His scrappy, frankly vagrant look doesn't register nearly as much to me as his beaming disposition.

"I go buy some food earlier," he said. "And then I sit awhile the bus stop."
"Yeah?"
"Talk to nice beautiful girl." You have to understand, he's not a creep. Non-creeps talk to ladies too.
"Oh very nice,"
"Yeah and tell you what. When the 7 come in, me and her get on the bus, I follow her, I carry her stuff, but I left my backpack over there. When I go to I-90 I come back my backpack gone." 
"Ooohh, no!"
"It's okay. It's okay." 
"I'm sorry!"
"It's alright. They say it's got a price!"
"Yeah, you pay the price. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't!"
Tran spoke about how some people think you can get away with things, that if you steal something no one will know, but he no longer finds that to be the case. He was expounding on the philosophy of this further, but I was distracted.

That's Rose, standing at the approaching stop, stooped over her still-unreplaced stroller (which is the focal point of this story). "Oh," I bemoaned. "Rose did not get a new stroller! I told her to get a new stroller!" 

Tran wasn't hip to what I was referring to. I opened the doors and called out to Rose.

"Rose, did you get a new stroller?"
Diminutively: "no."
We made a deal, I thought to myself. We agreed on a deal. I'm not going to renege. I need to hold my end of it up. I didn't give her $20 for absolutely nothing. "You did not get a new stroller. I'm not gonna pick you up." 
"Alright."
"Alright. I'll see you again."
"That's fine," she said.

Tran was flabbergasted. He's been riding my route 7 for years, and years and years. Nathan the ever-friendly bus driver, famous for letting anyone and everyone ride, refusing service?? And not only that, but the passenger being refused acting entirely agreeably about it? What gives? Clearly some 'splainin' was in order.

"Why you no pick her up, and she's not angry?"
"I gave her twenty dollars. To get a new stroller. And she did not get a new stroller! That's why she's not angry, is because she knows it's her fault."
"So, you give her twenty dollars,"
I gave him the thirty-second episode recap: "yeah because, her stroller is very slow. It's broken. And I thought, okay. I want to solve this problem for me and all other bus drivers." And her too, most importantly.
"Right."
"You know? Just fix it myself. Like, here, go by a new stroller."
"How you recognize,"
"'Cause she's the only one who looks like–"
"No no, the rollers, how you tell,"
"Oh, 'cause they're broken at the front, the wheels are turned the wrong way, they do not roll."
"But, it still rolls alright, or she give you hard time…?"
"No, they don't, and she also she gets very angry. That's the main thing. The stroller doesn't roll, it's slow, then she is very angry, screaming at everyone,"
"For what?"
"I don't know. Just you know, some people are very angry."
"Okay. Personality."
"But I told her, here. I'm giving you money. Go do this!" We laughed. "So, maybe she will get one. I hope so." 

Tran grasped the subtleties, and summed up the situation with perfect succinctness:

"See, she, we… Americans, we love to learn from hard way!"
"Yeeaaahh! So true!! That is the American way! So strange!"
"I learned enough– I mean, never enough, but enough for myself,"
"Yeah. we're always learning."
"But I tell you, the more you learning, the more they give you work, the more stupid we are." He elaborated. "I learn all my life: the only thing, the only thing, we have to face it ourself. We have to take in whatever. If you try to run mill around, you can't deal with it, you never gon' get over it."

And how. Avoiding problems gets us approximately nowhere. We only learn from challenges if we choose to do so, and part of that involves a conscious decision on our part. If we don't act, we grow stuck and wooden, left behind in the ever-moving flux of the world. Face it ourselves, as he said; no point paraphrasing that golden nugget.

"I believe karma," he added. 
"I believe karma too. You put out something good,"
"Yeah,"
"It'll come back."
"You go around, you come around, right?"
"Exactly, what goes around comes around, so true!"
"Never can get what you're stealing, right?"
"Ha, totally. Have to pay the price!"
"Okay!"
"Always good, Tran!"
"You take care, I see you!"

I hope there's another chapter to this stroller saga. I'll keep you posted.

---

Third and Final part to this lil' saga, here. 

"Hey guys," I called out. This was a trio of folks about my age, milling about the Men's Shelter a bit after ten PM. In a Disney movie, they'd be the villains: sagging shades of tattered grey and black, folds of clothing encrusted in debris, pockmarked skin, uneven, hair laying about in clumped and oily strands.

"Hey," said the taller one, responding to my welcoming tone in kind. One of the others began putting on the bike. You're supposed to verbalize or signal that to the driver, and Mr. Tall did so. "He's putting on the bike," he said, adding, "obviously," with a hint of grinning camaraderie.
"Tight."
"Hey, do you think I could ride with this transfer–"
"Sure yeah. D'you wanna exchange it for a newer one?"

That stems from a habit of mine to offer transfers when people ask for rides. Mary Engelbreit once said, “If you don't like something, change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. ” Freeloaders asking for and receiving a free ride and subsequently asking further for a free transfer at the end of the ride used to be a source of irritation for me. To get around this, I began preemptively offering a transfer when they first board, eliminating the second interaction. It's usually unexpected for them, and always goes over well. How could it not?

"Whoa, thanks," he said. 
"Thanks for being honest, man." Folks of a certain visual stripe are not used to being treated kindly– let alone equally– by authority figures, and his pleasant surprise registered this. As for myself, I was grateful for his mirroring my attitude. Acknowledgment feels good going both ways. His shorter pal stepped in, having overheard us, and voiced my enthusiasm for mutual kindness in simpler terms:
"Dude, you're the coolest bus driver I've ever seen!"
The first gentleman chimed in with, "I'm always honest. I can't stand no BS, that's why."

The bike-riding portion of the trio was now paying the fare, listening, and said to me, "yeah as long as you're honest, in my experience most drivers let you hang. Probably almost all bus drivers are hella cool. Just be like, I'm a dollar short.…" He reflected. "'Cept this one time, I was ten cents short and I said is it okay if I ride, and the lady bus driver was like, that's between you and Metro Police!"

Now, that's actually not the worst line in the world, but the true meaning of the line rides entirely on the manner of delivery. You've heard it before: fifty percent of communication is through body language; another twenty-five percent is tone of voice; only the remaining twenty-five percent is relayed in actual words. And it was evident our friend had received a tone, if you know what I mean.

"Oh my goodness!" I exclaimed.
"Yeah!"
"Ten cents!"
"It's like, you're gonna call the cops over that shit?"
"The cops aren't even gonna care!"
"Most downtown bus drivers are hella cool though," he enthused. "You kinda hafta be, driving around out here. At night."
"Exactly," I said. "My thing is like, I don't know if this guy has five brothers."
"Or five guns!"
"Exactly!"
"I got held up last week at Jack in the Box."
"What? Right down there?"
"Yeah, these three kids came up to me, five kids actually, three of 'em had guns. They thought I was this guy they were lookin' for, and they came up to me and my buddy. Then the guy they were actually looking for rolled up in a car, he got out and shot a bullet into the ground, started yellin…."
"Oh my goodness. That's crazy!" 
"Dude,"
"It's worst when it's kids. There's something wrong about that."
"Yeah. Yeah. They were fifteen, sixteen."
"Wow."
"But I mean you know, that type of unprovoked shit usually never happens, when you really think about it. Honestly when you actually think about it, it's like all you gotta do is one a two things: be nice, or avoid. Be nice, or avoid. That's basically it. Ninety-nine percent of any situation…"
"Oh I totally agree," I replied. "And the thing is you usually only need to do the first one."
"Straight up. The avoid thing, that's fuckin' like, point one percent of the time. How long you been bus driving?"
"Nine years."
"You always drive at night?"
"Always!"
"You always drive the 7?"
"Always!"
He brayed forth an exclamation which managed to contain enthusiasm, pity, admiration, laughter, and no small amount of respect, all in one syllable. He said, "Sheeeeeeyyiitt! Well, you already know!"

He left to join his friends up front, and the three of them expounded on various subjects together. They talked about which places were best for "getting all the benzos you could want," and which juvenile detention facilities offered the best meals. Kirkland came up poorly in their estimation. They waxed rhapsodic over Shell gas station's prepaid phone selection. Mr. Tall pulled the bell for Eighth and Jackson.

While all three were outside, waiting for the bike-riding friend to collect his bike, I overheard one speak to another, not intending me to hear: "okay, that was the coolest bus driver I've ever seen."

I imagine they were referring to my welcoming attitude, which they may not receive terribly often. Treat them like the good you know they have in them. I used to be an insufferable brat once. When did I begin turning it around? Who helped plant that seed? Whose example did I look up to, who didn't preach or judge, but just was? It all has to start somewhere.

Eighth and Jackson is as good a place as any.

I can think of a few moments through life which stand large in my memory, formative scenes etched into my character. My parents and I, a toddler, sitting on the floor around a yellow lamp in a one-room basement, our home at the time. Taking a picture of my parents, the settings on the old camera just as my father had shown me, the camera's perched on the rock I'm crouched behind, and they're way out there on the beach's waterline, waiting for me to click the shutter. Kneeling amongst a cluster of candles and graffiti at a memorial in Paris, taking in a photograph of four smiling young people, all of whom had been alive the night before. I was unable to hold back tears.

One such moment occurred just the other night. I pulled into Rainier & Henderson, the route 7 terminal in Rainier Beach, to a cacophony of whirring blue and red flashbulbs, with emergency response vehicles and personnel littered all over the roadway. There he was on the other side, across the street, sitting in the bus shelter, clutching his stomach. 

That's Gary.

White lights hot on him, direct, his green uniform polo soaking toward a darker red. The ambulance had just arrived, and here's the fire department. Men and women in uniform, behaving quickly, setting down cases of instruments and cutting open his uniform. They're at work. Seconds matter in a time like this, and they know it. Seattle Police is everywhere, King County Sheriffs also, they're talking amongst each other, heads turned into radios. 

People wondering what's going on. 

A bus is blocked by the activity, and another behind it; two teens talk with a few of the policemen, gesturing down the avenues, describing the suspect and speculating on escape routes. It's a fraction of a second of a thought, but I'm pleased at that part of the image: white cops and young black men working together, united in the urgency of addressing an obvious wrong. I hear a woman's voice, a woman in scrubs specifying: "looks like a two inch blade. Four, five stab wounds."

Operator Gary Fuller is a friend of mine. In life I've seen strangers being killed, injured, or dead; but never a friend. They're standing him up now, helping him rise. He's surrounded by aides and officers. I'm working my way through the crowd. They've scissored his uniform off now, wrapping the bandage around his body to stem the flow. I remember noticing one of the EMT staff putting on a bouffant cap. His blood speckled the length of the sidewalk, and would remain visible after everyone had gone. It dribbled so freely, and I remember being confused: I've forgotten how easily a body can be torn open, how all the flesh and organs we never see are right there beneath the skin, living and real as day.

I pushed through the officials, not knowing why. What could I offer that they couldn't? Was I interfering with the process of things?

He saw me. "Nathan!"
"Gary," I said. "Gary."
"Nathan," he said, and then he laughed. He was smiling. He gave me a thumbs up: "Rainier and Henderson, baby!" 

I stand in the shadow of the size of that moment. The events of the evening will be formative for him in a way he will shape later on. For me, no lecture or stack of books could educate me more than his bearing in those minutes, in that context. 

This is a way to react when the chips are down. 

There's still blood coming out of him, for pete's sake. To live on the thread of the act of self, of being thrillingly alive, and go ahead, let yourself be exhilarated by it. Is anything else a bigger deal?

"Love you, man," I called after him, as they finished tying him down on the stretcher and preparing an IV drip. I needed him to know that he is loved in this world, loved and respected and appreciated by family and strangers, by his children, coworkers, and yes, by the passengers too. I sincerely hope he, and other drivers who get assaulted, don't read the passengers as an entity which is against them; but rather a collection of random individuals, all of whom have nothing to do with the one person who antagonized them so on a particular night. I said it again. They were loading him into the vehicle.

I said, "hey, can I do anything? You want me to call someone?"
"Hey– yeah. Tell Dispatch to call my wife."
"Done. Got it."

The event was minutes old. I would go to my bus and begin relaying information to the coordinator. What happened, what did the assailant look like. I would work with several people trying to get a description the coordinator could put out. The street kid who was still there was the most informative. I told him, "shoot, you give better descriptions than the cops!" Four other drivers were milling about, some of us on the phone with our superiors, all of us reeling. It was too early to try to make sense of things. I wouldn't begin thinking logically about the event until a day or two later.

Gary is my leader on Sundays, and my bus therefore had double loads for a while as I picked up his waiting passengers in addition to my own. I gave them the best ride I could, buoyant, balancing out the thoughtless negativity of what had happened with a truckload of caring, the good treatment of Gary's people I'm sure he would have appreciated. I felt like being generous. 

But what kept coming back to me was his grin. It didn't make sense, and it was beautiful. 

That's called strength of spirit.

---


Note: this event is a little more complicated than the news-media would have you believe. That's not what this post is about, however. All I'll say on the subject is, the news wants you to be terrified. Don't they always? Don't buy into their fear-mongering. Please.