Caitlyn Jenner and the Homeless

Early in May, Caitlyn Jenner caused an uproar by saying -- in a prime-time interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, for crying out loud, not in an inadvertantly-overheard private conversation, as any Republican might be expected to have done -- that California had a homelessness problem, which was epitomized by a friend of hers, who used to keep his private jet in the hangar right across from Caitlyn's hangar in Malibu, from which she was speaking to Sean. 

Caitlyn saw her friend packing up his hangar. She told Sean that he said, "I’m moving to Sedona, Arizona. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t walk down the streets and see the homeless."

Her initial comment about homeless people made it clear that she was concerned about the way that rich people sometimes have their whole day spoiled by having to look at homeless people, and that she didn't care at all about the suffering of those who live and die on the street. Now she's trying hard to pivot to make it seem like she actually cares about homeless people, but besides being a tone-deaf, unfeeling moron, she's also in the wrong party for that. 

For example, she claims that her proposal to de-regulate construction in California will help the homeless. Does she imagine that the newly-unfettered construction contractors will immediately turn to the homeless for the additional labor they need, thus allowing the homeless to bootstrap themselves into roofs over their heads?

Or maybe she thinks that the contractors will build an abundance of homeless shelters, first thing, just as soon as they're no longer required to install those pesky solar panels?

Shoulda stuck to sports, Caitlyn! Oh, wait, you screwed that up too, didn't you?  You see, Caitlyn, who became world-famous by winning the 1976 Olympic men's decathlon as Bruce Jenner, supports Republican efforts to ban transgender girls from participating in girls' sports. Now of course, there's nothing surprising about some Republican politicians supporting such bans. It's consistent with their overall policy of making life as difficult as possible for LGBTQ people. 

But when a transgender Republican woman running for Governor of California says the quiet part loud here, like she did with the homeless, it's not just bad for her. Caitlyn is making the general Republican attitude of ****-you-this-is-about-me a little bit more clear and plain to see than is good for Republicans who are trying to get elected.

Overall, I would guess, Democrats have to be much happier about Caitlyn's campaign than Republicans.

Dream Log: Liev Schreiber's Chili

I dreamed that I was working serving lunch in a soup kitchen in Lower Manhattan. Perhaps most of you already know that "soup kitchen" refers to a place which offers free hot meals to people in need, whether soup is included in the meal or not.

This soup kitchen was a big one, with a dining hall seating hundreds of people at a time. After we had finished serving the people and cleaning up, I fixed myself a tray and went to to eat with some other people who had worked there that day.

As some of you may know, soup kitchen food can range from really terrible to really, really good. This particular meal was nothing fancy -- no-beans chili, corn bread, greens and coffee -- but each part of the meal had been made really, really well.

In this dream, there was no dangerous virus circulating. People stood close together and touched each other. On my way to sit down I smacked Liev Schreiber

on the back, and he joined me to sit at a small table with George Clooney and Jeri Ryan. All of us were bundled up in winter clothing because it was cold at this table. A small window let in some light. Outside it was sunny and very, very cold. Liev and George both had beards. I didn't see any facial hair at all on Jeri, and I looked very closely because it was a very, very pretty face, with no make-up on it, my favorite way to look at pretty faces.

I was nervous the whole time because I was afraid that George Clooney was going to spring one of his famous practical jokes on me, but in this dream, he didn't.

Liev said, "How do you like the chili?" Goerge and Jeri and I all groaned and rolled our eyes and said Oh my God it's good. Liev persisted, "Is it only good because it's cold in here and you've all been working hard, or would it taste good or under any circumstances?" The three of us took that question seriously, took a little time with it, but we still all agreed that it wasn't just a matter of the setting or the circumstances, which admittedly enhanced the ewxperience. We all agreed that this chili was just terrific, period. Liev grinned and asked us, "Did you notice that it's vegetarian?"

We had not noticed. After some very, very close inspection, George asked, "Is this tofu? It really tastes like ground beef." Liev nodded. George asked, "Are you sure?"

Liev said, "I ought to be sure, I cooked it." We asked him how he had done it, and he just grinned and replied, "With great care and skill. And some great tofu from one of our donating stores." George, Jeri and I all raised our paper cups of coffee to toast the cook.

After a while Liev said, "It's always cold in this corner in the winter. It's ridiculous, the walls in this corner are full of holes. Let's patch it up." He took a shopping list for a hardware store out of a pocket and handed it to me for my perusal. I just handed it straight on to George and said, "I never paid attention in shop. I only passed because the shop teacher took mercy on me. I honestly think I'd be the most help by continuing to wash dishes and staying out of your way."

Liev didn't want to give up on me that easily. "You could help out, and maybe learn a couple of things."

"I'm fifty-eight freakin' years old, Liev," I replied. "Thank you for offering me the opportunity, but.. You know: old dog, new tricks." And at about that time, I woke up.

Dream Log: Lost

I dreamed I was traveling from Berlin to Paris. I had taken advice from a man I shouldn't have listened to because he was foolish, and as a result, I found myself by the side of the road in the middle of an extraordinarily complex highway interchange, with a cardboard box in my arms, filled with some of my favorite books. For a moment I thought I could see the television tower in the Alexanderplatz in Berlin behind me, and the Eiffel Tower off in the distance ahead, so that I knew at least that I was pointed in the right direction. Then I realized that Berlin and Paris are much too far away from each other for me to see them both at the same time, and that those things I was looking at in the distance couldn't both be what they seemed.

Traffic was very heavy and going very fast. Running from one side of a one-lane offramp to the other without being run over was not easy, even without carrying the heavy box. It was quite annoying to have to simply abandon those books by the side of the road. I was angry at the person who had given me poor advice, and angry at myself for having listened to him. But I told myself that, although some of the volumes might be hard to replace, it would be even harder to replace my life, and decided that I had to leave them there.

A middle-aged woman wearing a conservative dress and high heels walked past me. She began to cross the road in a leisurely manner, but right away beeping, speeding traffic chased her back to the side of the road, and seemed to let her know that she was in a very precarious situation.

I helped her get off of the highway. I held one of her hands and encouraged her to run as fast as she could. She held her shoes under her other arm.

After a long and frightening struggle, we found ourselves on a sidewalk. She put her shoes back on and thanked me for my help, assuring me that now she was alright. I was far from convinced about that, but she insisted she'd be fine.

It didn't seem at all certain that I would be fine. I was in a French-speaking town, but I didn't know which town. There seemed to be a pronounced lack of street signs saying that such-and-such a town was this way or that way. But, I told myself, maybe those signs were there, and the problem was just that I didn't know where to look for them.

Eventually I found a train station.

A man of indeterminate age with very long curly greying hair was standing behind a counter inside the station. I approached him and asked, "Parle-on anglais?" The man smiled heartily and said Yes, he spoke English. I asked how to get onto a train bound for Paris. He chattered away in broken English, but it was very hard for me to understand anything he was saying. I couldn't tell whether he had even understand my question.

On top of having lost a boxload of books and being tired, hungry and thirsty, having difficulty communicating and not knowing exactly where I was, I was not sure whether there was a sufficient combination of cash and plastic in my pockets even to pay for a train ticket to Paris, let alone to secure lodging and sustenance once I was in Paris.

I thought to myself that, if I eventually began to starve, knocking on the door of a church might at least get me a meal, depending on which church I knocked at.

Civilization In Europe And The US

Today I saw a hidden-camera video made in Germany: a man with rather long hair and a scruffy beard, wearing jeans and a denim jacket, pretends to have some sort of collapse in a downtown area. He appears to have trouble breathing, he staggers around, clutches at his chest, and gradually sinks from a standing position down to the ground. Many people stare but walk away. Finally, not long before he would be lying flat on his back, a young woman rushes to his aid. A moment after that, seeming to follow her example, several others run toward him also.

Then we cut to a very close-up camera -- the man who pretended to collapse is standing up again, he's beaming. He tells the people who came to help: "I'm fine. It was only a test. You did very well."

Then the same man gets a haircut, gets his beard trimmed, is put into a very nice suit and coat, pretends to be having the same sort of problem in the very same downtown area -- and almost immediately he's surrounded by people who want to help him.

Among the comments from the people watching the video: refusing to help the man when his appearance was scruffier was, among other deplorable things, "against the law" ("strafbar").

Against the law. I live in the US, and the laws having to do with homeless people vary greatly from place to place. In many if not most localities, homelessness is not treated as a condition requiring that others help, but as a crime itself. I immediately thought of a video taken recently in Florida by a bystander, in which a police officer slapped and arrested a homeless man for trying to use a public restroom.

I also thought of another video made recently in the US: a hidden-camera setup very much like the German one: a person in shabby clothes pretended to be in trouble in a downtown urban area; then the very same person was groomed a bit and put into nicer clothes, and behaved in exactly the same way in exactly the same place. Just as in the German video, the first time, the person in a scruffy exterior was ignored by passers-by for quite a long time, and the very same person after a trip to a salon and put into rich-people clothes was helped immediately.

In the comments of the people watching this video, it didn't seem to occur to anyone that not helping this person in trouble because of an unkempt appearance could be against the law. Oh, by the way: in this video, instead of a man pretending to physically collapse, the person who appeared to be in trouble was a little girl, maybe five years old, screaming for help and pretending to cry.

The Homeless In America: Ft Lauderdale Cop Slaps And Arrests Homeless Man For Trying To Use A Public Restroom

After this video went public,



the police officer involved has been suspended. But I have to wonder whether he was suspended because he did what he did, or because he got caught. You see, there are communities in the US which try to help the homeless and other poor people, and then there are places like Ft Lauderdale, where this video was made, which in 2014 made it a crime to feed homeless people. For a long time in the US, perhaps for all of our country's existence, in many communities, perhaps in most, it has been the standard practice of the police to try to make life for homeless people so uncomfortable that they will leave town. Ft Lauderdale's law against giving food to homeless people was just a little more public and flagrant than most implementations of this longtime standard policy.

If you've got a video camera in your phone, and you believe that all people are united in some way, if you believe that we're all in this together, please make sure that you know how to use that video camera and how to post videos online.

Worship God Or This Homeless Person Will Starve!

1. An article by a theologian lecturing atheists in HP? How refreshing! It's been literally days since I've seen such a thing!

2. In some countries, there are enough shelters and kitchens to house and feed all the homeless, courtesy of the government, as is universal health care, and it's been that way for decades. I'm just saying, some Amurrkins should look around more.

3. Not all atheists are New Atheists. I'd never heard of the capitalized variety before I started hanging around HP Religion, and by sometime last year I realized I'm not one. (I don't say "bronze age" or give anachronistic and inaccurate depictions of ancient and Medieval history often enough.)

4. Much as I would like to believe that religion is sharply declining, I think many people, both atheists and non-, are making much too much of certain polls alleging a sharp decline in religion, because these polls are not distinguishing between atheists, agnostics, and the allegedly "spiritual but not religious," who of course are religious, but currently somewhat disorganized.

5. Schwartz claims that most of the world's religions are based on the "fight for the oppressed and the impoverished." Actually, they're based on theistic beliefs. That fight has always been optional. Articles like yours are manipulative appeals of the send-money-or-this-puppy-will-die variety: "Worship God or this homeless person will starve!" If the priorities of the billions of the world's Christians and Muslims were as Schwartz claims they are, human homelessness would've been thoroughly eradicated long, long ago.

Me & Rupert, Living High on the Hog in Manhattan

Occupy Wall Street Protests Outside Rupert Murdoch House

That's one thing Rupert and I have in common: homes in roughly the same neighborhood. I spent the night in a house in the 50's in Manhattan once -- that is, a whole stand-alone building which housed a single family, somewhere around the middle of the east 50's. I was homeless and it was the blizzard of '95-96 and this guy said I could spend the night. The house was pretty much gutted. He said it had belonged to his family and was now being sold to the Republic of Kazakhstan. I think he said it was going to be the Kazakhstani consulate. If it was then their consulate has moved at least a couple of times since then. The neighborhood had a distinctly opulent feel, I think many if not actually most of the buildings were still single-family townhouses as they had been when they were built. He showed me to a room that still had a bed in it, went off and found some blankets and a space heater for me, then went off again to sleep elsewhere in the house. In the morning he fixed us some breakfast; then, knowing I was a bookish fellow, he indicated a box of books on the floor destined to be given to charity and told me I could help myself to anything in there I found interesting. I took a slender paperback volume with a yellow cover, slightly taller and wider than a mass-market paperback, with its pages sewn in instead of glued: The United States in 1800 by Henry Adams, published by Great Seal Books. Sixth printing, 1961, $1.25. It's the first few chapters of Adams' History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It's an interesting book, I still have it. If the entire History is as good as these first chapters then it's very impressive indeed. And I say that as one of no doubt very many who found the style of The Education of Henry Adams quite tedious and set it aside after a few pages, so if you're one of the many you might not want to give up on Adams solely on the basis of the Education.

He was a nice guy, that townhouse owner, that night and morning were more pleasant and less difficult than many for me that winter. I'm sorry that I don't remember his name.

Things I Thought of to Say Too Late

It seems most people are very familiar with such things. After the fact, seconds or years later, when the opportunity has passed, you think of the perfect thing to say.

I have some pockmarks on my face, neck, chest and back, scars left over from severe acne, and occasionally I've been very self-conscious about them. I read a short story by John Updike once, about an actor who'd been successful in leading-man roles despite a similar problem. Then, later, Updike published a volume of non-fiction, Self-Consciousness,which contained an essay in which he discusses his psoriasis. I had stopped reading Updike by this time, but just by chance I read a review of Self-Consciousness. It and the short story about the actor combined to make me sort of almost like Updike. I could write a whole long essay about my problems with Updike, but why? It's been done exhaustively and competently by others already, and if I were to do it right I would need to re-read at least several volumes of his work and read several more for the first time. I think he was a mean-spirited, narrow-hearted a-hole. For more detail on the matter, I would refer the reader to William H. Gass, who, in an essay in his first non-fiction collection, Fiction and the Figures of Life,tore Updike a suitably thorough new one.

I have to say, though, that Updike's style, his evocation of the sensual world through words, is brilliant. But in my praise as in my condemnation of Updike I've hardly got a thing to say which hasn't been said and said and said, and this essay is supposed to be about things left unsaid. I was talking about my acne scars. To picture me, think of F. Murray Abraham, Ray Liotta, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Trejo, Edward James Olmos -- and yes, John Updike belonged to my club, too. One of us! One of us! In 1990, I was sitting around getting high with some people in Germany, and this German who was a big admirer of Nietzsche, and whose hair and huge moustache were -- it seems clear to me in retrospect -- deliberately copied from Nietzsche's look -- it was a very popular style in the late 19th century, but it didn't really work in 1990, just as this guy's crude and overbearing personality weren't good advertising for Nietzsche's philosophy, any more than was Kevin Kline's Otto in A Fish Called Wanda-- this guy said to me: "You know, Shteefen, Iff I vas a voman, you know vat I vould like most about you? Your face. Your sveet scah face."

The reply to that which occurred to me too late should be fairly obvious: "And how would you feel if you were a man?" I'm not a fan of James Cameron, but it may well be that the obvious reply never occurred to me until after I a watched an actress say something very similar in Aliens.She was playing one of a squad of US Marines sent to deal with the Aliens, she had some big beautiful arm muscles, and while she was doing a set of pull-ups a male Marine asked her if she'd ever been mistaken for a man, and she replied, "No, have you?"

Sometimes the thing you should have said is short and pithy like that, sometimes it's more involved. In 1996 a man who several months before had offered me a couch for the night when I was homeless, then changed his mind as we were walking toward his place, came up and gave me a deep and searching look and offered me his hand to shake. He didn't have to say anything: he was forgiving me for the particularly hurtful things I had said after I'd suddenly found I didn't have a place to stay that night after all. Of course, he also wanted to feel like a good guy, like he and I were friends, even though he'd turned me out into the cold NYC night. It's not at all clear if this second part was conscious in his mind. But I shook his hand, might even have accepted his hug. (We ran with a very huggy crowd.)

Ever since, I've regretted making up with him. I want so bad to take back that handshake, and to say something like, "No, we're not cool. We're not friends, are you fucking kidding me? Don't worry about it, though. I was not your responsibility, any more than all the thousands of other homeless in this city are my responsibility now that I have a place of my own. I realize you feel very awkward seeing me now, and you want me to shake your hand, maybe hug you, too, and make you feel better. Well, go fuck yourself, life is awkward. If you really want to be cool and deep, you might want to start by trying to grasp that basic little fact. Twerp. We're not friends, I meant all those terrible things I said, each and every one of them, and more. Maybe you are a really good guy. I'll never know, will I? What the Hell do I know about you? You and I will never get close enough for me to tell. You've got absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. Like you said that night, you had to worry about your own well-being first. Absolutely correct. That's what you had to keep in mind. Each and every one of us should take that attitude, or else we'll never be much good to ourselves or anyone else. I really, sincerely do not blame you for a thing -- except, that night and right now, you want to have your cake and eat it, too. Turning a homeless person out into the night is not a crime. No single one of us can bear the weight of the world. But have the fucking tact not to turn them out and ask for their blessing at the same time. Don't explain your problems to them right at the same moment you decide there's no room at the inn after all. Not at that moment. It's just not the time, don't you get that? That's what pissed me off, and what is pissing me off again now -- not that you didn't help me. That's nothing, that much you have in common with almost the entire rest of the world."

There's no end to that answer, to what I should have said when he came up to me with that I'm-such-a-good-dude sincere deep expression on his face and held out his hand. Some replies you didn't think of are short and sweet, some are endless, you could never even begin them properly.

An Amazing True-Life Adventure

Around Christmastime 1995-96 I was homeless in Manhattan. Don't think obviously homeless, with a thick outer layer of funk and begging for change: I was able, though it took a lot of strenuous effort, to stay pretty clean, and instead of constantly asking for handouts I was constantly asking for work. I read a story in the Village Voice at the time about "club kids," young people hanging around dance clubs pretty much full time, who had no homes of their own but who were still managing to sustain a somewhat luxurious lifestyle. My life wasn't quite that glamourous, byt then again I was doing a lot better than a lot of other people one could see on the streets every day. I was also writing a novel.

Some nights someone offered me a couch to sleep on, some nights I didn't sleep. I never got into a shelter: there were more homeless in the city than there were beds for them, and I imagine that hasn't changed. Between various charitable organizations, doing odd jobs, and individuals giving me a meal or some money, I was able to keep myself more or less well-fed, and in more-or-less clenaly-laundered clothes. Eventually I found full-time work and an apartment, and I haven't been homeless since.

The worst part was the fatigue. Even if some kind soul offered me a couch for the night, it seemed I never quite got caught up on sleep, and I was still really tired the next day. I still feel really tired just thinking about that time.

Most of the people around me didn't realize that I was homeless. Someone advised me not to mention it to everyone, that people would avoid me if they knew too much about my troubles. Maybe that was sound advice. One morning I found myself with a group of people mostly my age or younger (I was 34), yuppie-artistic types, attractive and successful, having brunch at a nice place in the West Village. I'd met most of this group through a mutual friend just this morning, and I had enough money that day for a fancy brunch, and although I would usually be more frugal, something told me to hang out that morning, and act as if I were another yuppie.

I was glad I did, because one of the group mentioned at brunch that he had recently switched careers, from attorney to literary agent. I mentioned my novel-in-progress and asked if he'd like to see the chapters I'd completed. He said yes, if I could get them neatly typed up. This was complicated by my being homeless, as everything is more difficult when you're homeless, but a friend let me come to his office and use a typewriter. By the time everything I'd completed was typed up, a couple of weeks, the agent knew that I was homeless. In the meantime I'd researched him a little bit and found out that he was a very good agent. His clients sold a lot of books. And he liked the pages I gave him, and was definitely interested in representing me, once the entire novel was finished.

The problem was, I never finished that novel. I've written two complete novels since then, as yet unpublished. I'm a little hazy about when I actually wrote them. I think it was 2004 and 2005. I wrote them quite quickly. I was determined to write at least 5 days a week and at least 1 page a day, and did exactly that, and most days I wrote closer to 5 pages than 1, and most of the material in the finished novels is pretty close to the first draft. In the same couple of years I also wrote 15 essays, 3 of which I've recently posted on this blog: the one on Tom Paine, the one entitled "Words, Words, Words," and the one on Peter Sloterdijk. The problem with the novel I was working on in 1995-96, and for several years after that, was that I didn't really want to complete it. The problem was subconscious at the time. In retrospect, with the benefit of a decade's worth of hindsight and a grasp of the basics of psychotherapy and self-analysis, the problem is clear: it was an autobiographical roman-a-clef, based on an episode in my life from 1990, and I didn't want to finish the story because I didn't want to let go of that part of my life. In real life, what had happened was that I fell in love with a woman, and we were happy together for a short time, but then she wanted to have some space and time to sort out what she wanted to do, whether she wanted to stay with me or not, and I didn't give her enough space, and so she dumped me. End of story.

I don't know why other people write romans-a-clef, or how true-to-life those novels are, but I was writing this one in order to obsess about this past relationship, to immerse myself in memory, and also in fantasy: I changed the story in order to make it happier, and more flattering to myself. It was not as destructive as actually stalking the woman who'd dumped me, but it was also not wholly unrelated to obsessive stalking behavior. It was not healthy.

I wrote thousands of pages, draft after draft and revision after revision of a book which I intended, consciously at least, eventually to be complete at around 500 pages at most. When I first met the agent I told him I expected to complete the book within a few months, and consciously, at the time, I intended exactly that. After two years had passed and I admitted to the agent that I had no idea when I'd be done, he had lost interest. I can't say I blame him. And he's since gone on to bigger and better things, writing and publishing books himself, and handling book-to-movie deals, and good for him. He's very talented, very dedicated to his clients and very good at his job. I can't blame him for deciding he's too busy to look at the books I've completed. That's what literary agents mostly do: turn writers down, turn down the vast majority after reading a few pages, or just a one-page summary, saving their attention mainly for those few writers whom they think they can represent well. I still haven't gotten that big book deal, any book deal, but I returned from homelessness to the lower middle class, I didn't die on the street, and a lot of homeless people do. And I learned from the episode: I don't see myself ever ruining another relationship by crowding a woman who's asking me for space and time to think things over.

Things aren't so bad. But I sure would love a big lucrative book deal or three, of course.