Tracy has a black eye.
I see her this morning walking with a box of kitchen utensils and several blue ice cube trays. She has a big box she can barely carry. She is wearing pyjamas. She is wearing slippers. She is walking down the sidewalk in front of McDonald’s in Edgewater. There are plenty of people out, doing errands, going to work, looking for donations, and walking their dogs.
She says hello; I respond. I ask her if she is okay.
“I am fine and I am tired,” she whispers. “I am hungry.”
For some time now, I have been asking her if I can interview this friend. When I first met her, I noticed she was very polite. We have always gotten along well. Sometimes I buy her coffee, other times I wave if I see her across the street.
She tells me about various things she has been through. She tells me it is okay if I tell people her story so they might avoid making some of the mistakes she feels she has made. I do not judge her, she does not judge me.
I tell her I will change all the details so people will not know from my piece I am talking about her. I ask her what name I should use. She tells me “Tracy” was her favorite aunt, now deceased, who raised her because she did not get along with her actual mother. Tracy gave her a fur coat when she died, and she left her some money, which Tracy used to study how to “burn hair and do faces.”
Tracy has been in and out of rehab for drugs. She “cannot kick the f*cking habit,” she admits. She has tried many, many times. She has a little boy she has not seen in over a year. He is now in first grade and she loves him, misses him. She wants to see him, but she does not know where he is and she is not allowed to know.
Tracy is homeless, and the judge reportedly told her she cannot have contact with family members until she “gets her act together” and gets off the streets. The judge supposedly told her he was “disappointed that she is such a bad mother she would rather be homeless and party in the streets” than take care of her son.
Tracy says she is not mad at the judge. She says the judge is right.
Tracy says she does not know why she loves drugs so much. “They are killing me every day and I still love drugs.” She says she “loves how they taste, how they feel.”
I ask if she has a plan. She laughs and tells me she always has a plan… it’s just that the plan gets lost in the b*llsh*t that goes on every day.
She has been in many programs, in many groups. She says the best ones are twelve-step programs because the leaders “have been through it themselves” and “they don’t treat you assh*les like most counselors do.
I ask her about this part. I ask her what counselors do and should be doing.
She responds that so many people will judge you, harass you, threaten you. “With them, it’s all books and theories, and the m*therf*ckers just use fancy words to be as rough as somebody who kicks your ass on the street.”
(Editor’s note: This is important feedback for counselors I think, and I make a note to myself to explore this topic more in future interviews and conversations.)
I tell her I want to know more about what counselors do, what they should be doing instead, and what advice she would give them.
“Do you think it does any good to tell them?” she asks, surprised.
I say it might.
She continues, “Well, first of all, they need to know the addict sitting there is a f*cking person… not a problem.” They are always putting you in categories and “saying stupid sh*t like ‘How does that make you feel when people treat you that way,’ “ she adds.
I shrug my shoulders, and I ask, “Why is that bad?”
“Because they should actually HELP a Godd*mn person, not ask how they f*cking feel!”
I say I agree. So I come back with, “What sorts of things should they be doing or saying, then?” I tell her they probably do not know what it is like to be homeless… or to want to do drugs or to want to get drunk.
She sits there for a moment, counting on her fingers. “Do you know I have been homeless almost four years now?” She reminds me she has lived in group homes, in a nursing home, and in a special facility when she had a nervous breakdown and lost her son “to the f*cking system.”
I say that is not much time outdoors, then.
She looks at me, surprised. “That is all separate from living outdoors,” she explains.
I ask what kind of place she sleeps in now. She says she has slept on the trains, on the porch at her “man’s place,” and most nights behind X, a store in the neighborhood. I am not familiar with where that spot for sleeping is. So I ask her about it.
“We have some big sheets of cardboard that used to be boxes from the store.”
I ask her, “You sleep on those at night?”
She answers, “Yes, with my man and a couple other guys.”
I say, “Oh, okay, none of my business what goes on,” and chuckle. We have a friendship, we can joke this way.
“Well, as wild as it might sound, there is nothing going on between me and the two idiots who sleep by us.”
Again, I say, “Hey what happens in paradise, stays in paradise.”
And she leans forward and confides, “I think those two assh*les are more interested in f*cking around with each other than with me…but I don’t ask ‘cuz they always have cigarettes and it is good to have two more guys watching out for me.”
Against my better judgment, I ask how she got the black eye.
She starts to cry, and she says it was not planned. “I don’t remember how I got it.”
I tell her she is probably lying and she just smiles, asking if I can buy her something to eat.
“Of course, I can,” I smile back, and we head to get a bunch of **muffiny-burgers-with-eggs-inside and two large coffees.
We walk down the sidewalk, and she says she wonders why I have not asked her about the box of “new kitchen sh*t” she is carrying.
I look at her and tell her it’s none of my business.
She holds my hand as we go to breakfast.
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**Editor’s note: Often, people agreeing to be interviewed want to tell their story so badly they look for me. They often want other people to know their story so the same mistakes can be avoided in other people’s lives. They will even say this several times during the conversation.
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Super-big thanks go out to donors like R.C. who gave me a stack of “coffee cards” as he calls them to help me get interviews from people. I have lost track of how many cups of coffee and how many burgers and muffins I have bought for people on the street who are hungry, tired, and sad. And disgusted with the world.