I’ve known Troy for a few months now. He’s had good days and bad days and okay days. Mostly, his mood matches the weather - or the weather his mood - I'm not entirely certain which comes first.
I’ve caught him on rainy days and cold windy nights when he’s said no to dinner because it was, “too fucking cold to spend another night out on the street.” He needed all the human traffic he could get to raise 25 pounds for a bed and breakfast or end up sleeping on the ground again. I’ve caught him on calm and cloudy days when he nods and says what’s up, and asks what I’m up to.
I’ve caught him on bad days when he is haunted by memories from his past. He gets angry at the universe then and raves about how God couldn’t be real. “If He is, He hasn’t done me any good,” he says. I’ve also caught him on warm evenings when we’ve sat down and talked about everything from politics to love to his degree in math at the university.
“…I wanna go back and get my Masters, man. I’m 26, I need to get my life together. I have two kids, and I get to see them every weekend, but I need to get my life together. I blame myself for my kid’s death, and that of the woman I love,” he says as he looks at the tattoo of her name on his wrist.
"I fucking hate sitting on the street and begging like this every night, and can you believe it, someone stole my sleeping bag. Someone fucking stole my sleeping bag - and my cup, can you believe it?! I went down the street to get a hotdog, and when I came back someone had stolen my cup - It had 10 pence, and maybe one or two 20s and 1p’s – but who fucking steals a homeless man’s cup?”
He looks at me, shakes his head in disbelief and continues.
“I wasn’t always homeless you know. I had a job, I actually worked at a car company and earned quite a bit of money. But then my kid died, and my wife killed herself and after that, I just lost it - got into drinking and all that. I spent 10,000 pounds on rehab trying to get myself clean and then couldn’t keep my house because I was spending all my money on rehab - so that was gone as well. But you know, I’m a smart guy - been to school, studied mechanics - I can pay a mortgage and my taxes, I can drive… but people, they look at me like I’m stupid… and a junkie - I mean, I get it, maybe 90% of us homeless people here are junkies, but there’s 10% or so that’s actually genuine.”
“But how do you tell the difference?” I ask.
"You gotta know their story - ask them again and again. I know this guy from Fiji who helps me out every month - for several weeks straight, he came up to me and asked me the same question over and over again, “what’s your story?” See a junkie’s gonna change his story, it’ll be a car that hit him one time and a motorcycle the next -come ask me again and again; my story’s not gonna change - cuz it’s true.”
“Yeah…”
He looks up from his rant as a lady drops a few pounds in his most recently acquired run-down cup.
“God bless you! Have a good Christmas!” he calls out to her.
“I’m just hoping that God shows me what to do," He continues. "Man I’m tired of the streets. It’ll be another 4 years before the government can help me. They says that because I had money in my bank account all those years before I became homeless, I can get a job and I don’t need their help. But I can’t get a job without a house and they won’t give me a house because I don’t have money – so it’s all just fucking messed up.
One guy, he’s a millionaire. And someone like me, I’m the same as him. We’re all the same. But I just need help from the government to get back on my feet you know? And all these people walk past and look at me like I’m stupid - I says why is it that when you don’t have a house, you’re suddenly a bad person? Man walks up to me and says, “I’m smarter than you.” I says to him, “we’re the same, the only difference is that you have a house, I don’t.” But somehow I’m a bad person… I’m probably smarter than half of the people walking around here...
Anyway, I’m gonna pack up and head out soon. You walking down that way?”
“Yeah…”
“Cool, I’ll walk with you.”
