Street dancers

Are not what you think

Photo by Tokyo on Unsplash

America has a problem.

Okay, America has MANY problems, but one that is front and center every day in any big city seems to be homelessness.

On the mean streets of Phoenix, Arizona, there is a real and visible problem.

Some of the citizens here have been through a lot, and they wear it like clothing.

Every morning I drive just over ten miles from my house to work. The scenery changes along the way from residential to industrial, and with those changes, so do the people on the streets.

Somewhere in those ten miles, you start seeing the innumerable unhoused and transient people. This is a hostile place to be unhoused, with temperatures getting into the triple digits during summer and the low 30’s in the winter months.

I have lived in Arizona for just under twenty years now. In this time, I’ve witnessed the growth of the ‘homeless’ population explode.

In 2009, my oldest daughter chose to live on the streets rather than under my roof because my ‘rules’ were too rigid. Simply put, I expected her to go to school, and if she didn’t go to school, I expected her to get a job.

For at least twenty years, I’ve said that not everyone homeless starts out ‘crazy,’ but homelessness causes some people to become crazy.

Especially on the streets of Phoenix, Arizona.

I’ve written about this topic before because it strikes home with me, and I see it at least twice a day, every day.

This morning, as I waited at a stoplight, my attention was drawn to a slight figure ‘dancing’ on the corner across from me.

A mere waif of a girl, maybe in her twenties, swayed dangerously close to the moving traffic. I’ve seen this movie many, many times on my way to work or home. There’s a three-mile stretch of road where businesses, banks, and fast-food joints line the street.

This isn’t the only place it’s evident, though.

Anywhere you go in this metropolitan area, you can find streets littered with both trash and people. People in tents, makeshift lean-tos, and cardboard boxes. The garbage and leftover trash from their street life are always nearby.

Street corner girl swayed to some silent beat in her mind. Walking back and forth, becoming some sort of human blockage to other pedestrians on the street, unsure of what she might do next.

In one hand, she held a very large Styrofoam cup. When she would dip, the contents would slosh out onto the sidewalk. Her outfit was a dirty belly-shirt and a short skirt.

With her stomach exposed, it was easy to see that she was underfed and overmedicated, most likely on some form of street drug. My assumption immediately goes to meth because there’s such a prevalence of it on the streets of Phoenix.

Because of my distance from her, I couldn’t hear the music or the things she was saying, but it was clear she was hearing something to keep her moving to her own beat.

Clearly, she was riding on some form of a high induced by whatever illicit drug she had taken.

Of course, these are all assumptions on my part, but it’s so easy to recognize the movements and symptoms of the drug-induced haze.

On the corner just opposite her is a man I see nearly every morning. His clothing hangs on him, his hair dirty and his clothes filthy. He holds a cardboard sign that says something, and he motions with his hands, “I’m hungry. Feed me.”

I’m always in the wrong lane to read his message, but it’s clear to me what he’s asking for. Several times I’ve wanted to motion to him to cross the street to the McDonald’s where I would buy him food, but every time, his gaze hasn’t met mine.

I would feed this man if only I could get close enough to tell him to meet me there.

I looked back at the girl. She twirls, barely keeping her footing on the edge of the sidewalk. She looks briefly at the moving cars as if she just realized where she is, but pulls herself upright on the corner and continues to dance.

She bends at the middle and pushes her butt out towards the traffic. A man approaches to cross the street. She stops, looks at him for a second, and continues to dance. She was unbothered and living in her own head.

The man who walks past her also appears to be transient and unhoused. It’s a popular intersection because of the many fast-food places that are nearby. This man has what I call the bowed head shake.

Another symptom of addiction.

Dancing girl continues to dance as I drive through the light on my way to work.

Most of the faces change throughout the day, but many of them are there again or still at the end of my day. My commute takes me past the same three miles or so of hopelessness and hunger.

Sometimes, I’m able to catch one of them as I pull into McDonald’s for my sugar-free iced vanilla coffee.

Can I buy you something to eat? Will you meet me at the end of the drive-thru?

I don’t keep track of how many times I’ve done it. But every time I can, I do.

In some way, I’m feeding my child. Memories of driving around endlessly trying to find her when she lived on the streets of Coolidge and Florence, Arizona, flood my mind every time I see someone on the streets.

On the median just past the overpass, there are some people whom I see every afternoon on my way home. It’s not a prime piece of real estate to beg for money, but they are almost always there.

Several of the men have the ‘bends,’ and I’ve witnessed one actually fall onto the road, just barely missed by oncoming traffic. I think we’re all aware that any one of these poor souls could fall in front of us.

It’s not uncommon to read of a person being hit by a car here. It happens more frequently than you would like to think.

And what happens to these invisible individuals when they are struck down by vehicles, disease, or elements? They go unnoticed, and people like me keep on driving past their old haunts. Some new ghosts stand in their place with familiar signage and dance moves.

They’ve become such a part of the scenery that we don’t see them anymore.

But I still do. I see her face in the blond woman who paces up and down the cement median between six lanes of westbound traffic. Someone’s child out there with her sign asking for money and kindness.

I see someone else’s son with the bends, motioning for people to feed him.

It’s futile to think I could change all of their lives because mental illness took hold long ago. You cannot realistically live on the streets in the 115* heat of Phoenix, where the black pavement radiates upward, making it even hotter, without experiencing some form of mental exhaustion.

It doesn’t seem possible.

2020 was the year of the great pandemic. But every year is another form of it for the homeless and unhoused. I wonder if they are ever really aware of everything going on around them, and whether anyone worries about these lost people as I do.

But down on the corner near the McDonald’s, dancing girl continues to dance, and the traffic flies by. It’s just another day in the life of the American dream.

Are you awake yet?