The Indigence Monster

"I slept with Lady Gaga last night. Now look where I am."

This was the boast, not of some B-list celebrity or rich socialite, but on the cardboard sign of a man begging for change during lunch hour in the Financial District. He sat, cross-legged in the recessed doorway of a soon-to-be-opened store, in the posture typical of New York beggars in winter: bundled up and hunched over the sign and plastic cup before him.

This is all I can observe of him in the glimpse I have as I, too, hurry by. And I wonder for the umpteenth time where these people sleep, how they survive, and how often a passerby resists the current's flow and the pull of multiple destinations to stop and give some change, or, even rarer, talk with the person. Coward that I am, I don't have these conversations, but I imagine this man's sign would lead to an interesting one.

One thing's for sure, though. He would not be telling me that he was "born this way" to sit on the street risking cold and indifference. No one is.