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Plus, the whole point of this shelter was peace.
It was my favorite in the city.
I had volunteered at three before this one. All were run badly, crammed in people, treated them like cattle at some kind of feeding trough, didn’t clean the facilities and didn’t offer any kind of help.
It wasn’t the fault of the people running them—well, not entirely. Our system was not designed to help these people. The undesirables. We ignored them on the street, shook our heads without making eye contact if they approached us, held our collective breath in the hopes they wouldn’t interrupt our lives.
Which was pretty much what the country as a whole did. Because homeless people were at fault for their own situations. Drug abuse. Alcohol abuse. Bad behavior.
It was not because they were in abusive relationships, or because they had mental health issues left untreated, or they were kicked out of a bad home environment, or because they lost relatively high paying jobs and the economy meant they couldn’t get another one and they burned through savings and loans until they had nothing left.
No, that couldn’t be right. Because that could happen to anyone when the circumstances lined up just so. And we couldn’t believe that these people had one day been one of the collective mass walking past them on the street. So we made assumptions in order to keep ourselves sane, to lie to ourselves about how easy it would be to become the one begging for help instead of the one ignoring the pleas.
This place was different. Largely because Jay, the man who ran it, had lived on the streets for seven years before someone took a chance on him. He was now the CEO of some multi-million dollar company. Well, more than one. All very serious and businesslike hence me not ever remembering the specifics.
He could’ve easily left the streets behind. Especially because of the scars he’d left on his soul. Scars I only knew about because of one night with a lot of tequila. And because people seemed to talk to me.
I invited confessions.
Maybe because I never judged anyone. Maybe because it seemed like I lived life so honestly. So chaotically.
When in reality, I was the biggest fraud of them all.
Jay didn’t know that.
So he told me the horrors he’d endured. The horrors that made him seem cold, cruel, and intimidating in ten thousand-dollar suits, five hundred-dollar haircuts, a handsome face. He wasn’t warm. Didn’t smile. He wasn’t the face of the shelter. No, he was barely ever here.
We’d met on chance.
When he’d been at another shelter, looking about buying the space out for some kind of commercial project. I hadn’t taken to this well, because no matter how poorly this place operated, it still operated. It still fed hungry people, it still gave beds to those without them.
And when I’d tried to speak to him, he’d turned on the ice.
I hadn’t cowered away from him like I’d guessed a lot of people did. I smiled in the face of his grimace. I didn’t let him scare me off with clipped answers and a cold stare. And I eventually somehow gave him the idea to convert another building he owned into a shelter if I helped pick the staff and gave him input.
He’d tried to pay me.
I’d refused.
“I don’t do this for money.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Everyone does everything for money. Or image. Which is the currency in L.A.”
I smiled. “I guess you’re right. But I’m not everyone and taking money for doing this would go against everything I stand for. Helping human beings in need isn’t something I should charge for. It’s something everyone should do without expecting a paycheck.”
“You might be the only one in L.A. of that opinion, present company included,” he said, pointing to his own chest.
I raised my brow in disbelief. If he didn’t care about helping people, he could’ve shut me down, ignored me when I started lecturing him about the residents of the building he was converting into some condo space.
He wouldn’t have offered another building and to provide staff and renovations.
I didn’t say this because most people didn’t want to hear the truth about their worst personality traits. Others, like Jay, who’d convinced themselves that they were some kind of cold and bad person, did not want to hear about their good ones.
So I stayed silent on that score.
And I’d taken him up on his offer.
We found a handful more people who didn’t expect to be paid for helping others. I made sure they weren’t people looking for something on their resume or their social media account. A lot of them were friends from the loft or at least people I knew ran in similar circles.
Jay was impressed.
Impressed enough to buy fancy tequila and get drunk enough on it to open up to me.
