THE DOWN AND OUT: CRACK ADDICTS BUY PITY AND SELL HELLO

I BECAME a gardener 16 years ago because I needed a tangible connection to
nature and to the community I live in.

As a poet, I did a number of different jobs to support myself but found
gardening to be the best complement to my artistic life.

My mind was free while I pruned, planted or raked. Often while I was
working in someone's garden on a beautiful day I would get insights, new
ideas or just relish living in the moment.

People who could not understand the poet directly could relate to a
gardener. Occasionally when I showed clients how to prune a shrub or a
small tree in their own gardens, I felt the poet and the gardener merge.

I was proud when I got my civilservice groundskeeping job and glad to
have the stability of a steady paycheck. But then I went through the ordeal
of being stuck by a used hypodermic wrapped in a crumpled piece of
newspaper six years ago.

I learned that the challenge of my job is not only keeping the grounds
clean and the plants healthy. It is maintaining my connection to nature and
to the community I live in, even though I am directly affected by people
who do not care about community, who are buying pity and selling hello.

Over the past 11 years I have been a groundskeeper at the State Building on
Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street. I have witnessed an increasing
population of people living on the streets, spending whole days on corners
and divider strips holding signs reading "Hungry, Will Work For Food," "God
Bless" and "Every Little Bit Helps."

Years go by, and the same people are still in the same places doing the
same things as little as possible. You do not have to spend 11 years in
this area to see the pattern of panhandling, the purchasing of crack
cocaine, heroin and alcohol and the level of agitation and desperation on a
"slow day" when the immovable mannequins activate and boldly walk up to
passersby to demand change for food.

You can count on one hand the times you actually see any of these people
eat, because food is not important to them. And you do not have to be here
11 years to feel pain for people who still bear evidence that at one time
they were beautiful, hopeful and addictionfree.

They may say something connecting you to them, or you stop and have a
conversation and give money because you believe they really will buy food
and that you have helped them.

Some talk to themselves, perform obsessive movements with their hands,
scream profanities to the passing traffic, and you wonder how they survive,
week after week, but they do.

Years ago I might start my work day rousting a sleeping man from the
handicapped ramp or the planters.

Many of these men reminded me of "winos" I used to see when I was a kid.
They would pack up their sleeping bags and leave without any problem.

Now, each morning my coworker and I have to deal with feces, vomit and
urine that certain individuals do not mind sleeping on top of. There is
also "tweak searching," in which a person desperate for crack sifts through
the bark chips of the planters hoping to find a stash of drugs or one of
the empty ZipLoc bags that rocks of crack are sold in with a bit of
residue to lick off.

I watched a man swimming in the planter, breaststroking, his face in the
chips.

I've been told by my management not to have any contact with them, but
that's impossible.

A woman came running out of the handicapped ramp just the other morning
after slipping in there to do a sex act with a man. She ran by me as I was
sweeping, leaving me to find the man pulling up his pants. This is a
handicapped ramp to a prominent building in one of the best cities in the
world.

Such occurrences have become routine. Most often the people involved are
not held accountable for their actions. Not enough effort is made to
attempt to medically help the crackaddicted homeless.

My work life as a gardener in the Civic Center does not make good dinner
conversation any more, but that is the least of my worries. What bothers me
is that I see my heart closing because I feel my heart closing as I see
through the pathetic poses of the regulars around me the guy who acts
like a robot and waves to everyone, the woman with her kitten on a leash
who sits all day rocking back and forth, the guy with the dog he walks
whenever he gets enough to buy a crack rock at Civic Center Park, the
longbearded toothless man who holds his thumb and forefinger together
asking for "Just a little bit," and many, many others.

I find myself looking away from people I encounter who approach by saying
"hello," and I won't look at their face. I'll look right past. I'll walk
confidently and I won't say "hello" back. I'm not buying the hellos and I'm
not paying the pity.

For more than two years I gave money to an elderly man whose name is Jimmy.
He is from Philadelphia. I used to see him in rainstorms with a tarp over
him as he seemed to sleep while leaning against a wall in Opera Plaza.

I'd find him sleeping in the morning with just a thin blanket over him on
the concrete bench at the bus stop. I'd find his stash of clean clothes in
the shrubs and leave them there because I knew they were his.

Sometimes Jimmy would come up to me and ask for a dollar. But he scarcely
could talk, because he was so dehydrated and his tongue was swollen and
chalky. When I gave him money, he would tell me I was an angel.

I thought Jimmy was a wino. I didn't believe it when told he's a crack
addict. Then one day as I was walking to BART, I saw him smoking his crack
pipe. Now I feel differently when he comes up to me and says "hello."

I know he's trying to sell it, the sham imitation of what I value most, the
feeling of community. And I also know he's killing himself, and I care more
about it than he does.

Once I gave the guy with the dog $5 to pull some weeds. The next day he
told me he couldn't pull the weeds because the cops kicked him out of the
planter.

I knew this was a lie, that he couldn't resist the temptation to buy crack.
He can resist everything that makes life worth living, but not that. Month
after month, year after year, he can sit in the same spot on the corner
and people are getting rich while he dies.

The community of drug dealers and drug takers is so solid that men and
women who would never be on time for a job, take care of their children or
do a favor for anybody, are never late to buy the stuff they need at $5
per rock in the day time, $10 at night for a 15minute high, followed by
intense craving.

It is the only thing, the absolute only thing, they are accountable for.

This should be of concern to all of us. This affects more than
groundskeepers and janitors and street sweepers and the businesses behind
the doorways people are sleeping in.

The dollars I gave to Jimmy, who is like a walking corpse and who is almost
80 years old, are making someone rich. I've helped kill Jimmy and I've
helped his killers profit from it.

When I clean up the filth left by homeless campers at the State Building I
use disposable gloves and disinfectant. I wash my hands several times a
day. I'm careful where I step. I managed to survive my needle stick years
ago without consequence.

But I still feel like I am in danger because of the amount of human waste I
have to deal with every day and the vulnerability that I have to people who
have nothing to lose.

I've discussed innumerable times with my management the problem of stopping
people from leaving needles around and using public walkways as public
toilets.

Even though trespassing and defecating and urinating in public areas is
against the law, enforcing these and other laws in relation to homeless
people comes up against several walls, one of which is the civil rights of
the homeless.

We rely on the cars in the next lane to not swerve into us. We rely on
people to stop at stop signs. We trust that the person next to us on the
bus isn't peeing on the seat.

We also trust that police will do their jobs without regard to how petty or
distasteful it may be at times to deal with transients who smell bad and
are incoherent.

This is what community is, relying on your fellows to follow certain rules
and do their jobs.

Yes, people do not forfeit their civil rights when they are unable to care
for themselves or don't have a home. But that doesn't give them the right
to defile the public areas of the community or to assault individuals
directly or indirectly.

Not all homeless people are a menace. Many of them do odd jobs, clean up
the areas they camp in around The City, and some stop being homeless
eventually.

Some are sporadically homeless, getting clean and sober for a while and
then backsliding. And some of them, like a man named David, have not
forsaken their selfrespect for the choice of living on the streets.

Historically, there always have been beggars and outcasts. But crack
addiction as a lifestyle is a relatively new thing, and we need to find
ways of dealing with it as a society to both help the addicts and protect
ourselves.

What sort of evil substance is crack that it can reduce people to zombies
whose only concern is to keep buying more of it?

What sort of community are we living in that will support this situation by
directly giving money or by looking the other way or by pretending that the
filth created by the situation only affects the people who have to clean it
up?

If it is expensive to take on the problem of drugaddicted people who are
not accountble to the community, it is even more costly to do nothing.

I have seen a lot of people die in the Civic Center area in the past five
years.

Homeless addicts are all ages, all races and economic backgrounds. I've
seen a young man who had a compound fracture of his leg roll up his pants
and beg with the hideous image of the protruding bone in his infected wound
in clear sight. I've seen a father hold up his infant son as he would a
sign to get donations from passing cars.

I don't want my heart to close. I don't want to feel like a criminal who is
being punished every time I go to work by the work I have to do.

People used to come up to me and tell me how they envied my being outside
and working with plants. Now I am forced to think about changing jobs
because it is getting harder and harder for me to recuperate emotionally
and spiritually from the inhumanity I am witness to and victimized by.

San Francisco is the city I was born and raised in. Even if I change jobs
or move away, I don't think the problems caused by the addicted homeless
population will affect me any less.

The people who are buying and selling hello are everywhere, perfect pawns
for the people who are selling them death at our expense.

©1997 San Francisco Examiner