When I grew up in Providence RI, there was a stone wall on Thayer Street in front of the Brown Bookstore, where the Homeless used to hang out until the cops herded them over to the local Episcopalean church for the night. This was back when Churches were open to all — day and night — and the Homeless situation was not so cloaked with euphemisms, such as Unhoused People, to make the subject more palpable to the wealthy. In fact, back then all those wall-dwellers and street walkers were referred to as Bums, sometimes lazy Bums. My parents passed that wall each evening on their walk. They didn’t know it, but those people were my friends. I knew their nicknames and I used to stop by after school and hang out, spooning my Del’s lemonade and talking with Walking Man. I always felt so much more at ease hanging with that fringy crowd, listening to their old adventures, than I did anywhere else in my life. It wasn’t so much that I fit in, more that I wasn’t forever judged for not. One afternoon, I bought a wooden bird from a street vendor and it came with a thick, pink rubber band that you’d wind tight, before setting it free to watch it soar back and forth through the air, hoping it didn’t collide with anyone’s head. I was around eight and not strong enough to manipulate the band. So Space Man wound it for me. He was reed thin and so tall it was like his whole body reached for the sky. Talking about the stars was his favorite subject — thus the nickname. He wound the band tight and then let it loose, relishing the chase even more than me.

When I’d pass that wall on those evening walks with my folks, the silent understanding was that none of us knew each other. They were the Homeless and I was walking with my middle-class family. If my Dad stopped and gave the Quarter Man his .25 as we walked past, then we would cross the street on the walk home so as to avoid any awkwardness. The interaction had already been completed and now he was invisible, again. Cellophane people evaporating into the night.