SRQ Daily Columnist Diana Hamilton, after living 35 years in Sarasota, labels herself a pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream

A September ago this week Dr. Robert Marbut sent us out, clipboards at the ready to count our homeless, to ask men women black white Latino young old crippled drunk skinny fat clear-eyed quiet loud humble defiant smart and the barely coherent, “may I count you?”  Will you tell me, a stranger, a woman who sleeps safe each night in a soft bed out of the rain the cold the heat, confess to me, tell your story, share your most intimate shame.  Did you sleep on the street, or in that camp beyond the ditch, or behind that dumpster, or under my house, or at the Sally alongside 100 farting snoring whimpering others?  I know because you trusted me. You slipped and fell and just couldn’t get up. You got sick, the economy tanked, you drink, broke your arm, followed someone you love down the rabbit hole, and your dreams—when you do sleep—are all steamy jungle desert sand sticky red fear and look here, see my dog tags?

A long disappointing hard year later I see you again there outside the laundromat, hear you crying hungry into the pay phone, “no, please don’t hang up” and then enabler me kicks in and spits out $10. You trusted me and I owe you something and this temporary relief is everything and all I have. This money, this intangible, this great deceiver, compared to the promise broken, means hardly more than nothing. Only a bed and sleep in a safe place and water and soap and clean clothes and good food is tangible, is true, has meaning, and for now there is no such place for one such as you dirty desperate hungry crying outside the laundromat. 

I/we lied the worst of lies—the hope lie—when I told you, crouched down beside you in that encampment strewn with sodden couches that if I counted you we would know how many beds to plan for, and that I did not know I lied doesn’t make it any less so. But you knew, and you let me count you anyway. And that hope lie is behind us, and between us now as I watch you scurry —please buy bread and cheese to go with that wine—into the Save-a-Lot.

Minutes away I’m home, my clean clothes in a drawer, on hangers in the closet.  I feed the three brother cats, bathe, eat dinner, go watch Jeopardy with my neighbor, then popcorn and Project Runway and later a few pages of P.D. James before turning out the light. A September ago we were so sure, so pure in purpose—innocent liars to ourselves and to those we counted. And now here we are again moving into fall, then winter with our street teams (god bless ‘em), Homeward Bound bus tickets and feed-the-meter-not-them scheme trying to bluff our way out of this colossal mess and ignoring the truth: it’s not them who needs fixing; it’s us. 

SRQ Daily Columnist Diana Hamilton, after living 35 years in Sarasota, labels herself a pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream