lunch with detroit

So I'm sitting in a café at the Paseo Colorado mall in Pasadena, California. I'm in front of my laptop, busily working on a paper.

A man walks into the café, obviously a transient. I have my headphones on, but I notice him start walking from table to table, asking different people for money or a meal. I turn up the volume and stay intently focused on the screen in front of me, hoping he might see me as busy and not bother me. No such luck - he comes over and motions for me to pull off my headphones. I reluctantly but politely oblige.

He begins, "Hey man, can you help me out? I-"

I cut him off with a dismissive wave of my hand. "Sorry man," I mumble, and I attempt to refocus on my computer without giving him another acknowledgment. I hope this will send him away, and after lingering for a second, he moves on.

A week or two passes, and I find myself working on papers at that café once again. This time I have theological books and copies of articles scattered about my table, and an open bible sitting next to my computer. The same transient man from before enters the café. He sees me and walks over, and notices my open bible.

Inwardly, my heart sinks. I know where this is headed.

The man asks if I'm a Christian, and I say yes. "Oh yeah, man, I believe in God, too!" he smiles. He asks what I'm working on, if I'm reading the bible, and so on. And, of course, he then asks, "Do you think you could help me out?"

I suppose I still could say no, but it doesn't feel right this time. I get up and we walk together to the counter, where he orders a personal pizza. We then sit back down at my booth and he tells me a bit about his life.

I ask him his name, and he replies, "My friends call me Detroit, because I'm from Detroit." He talks about a brother back in Michigan he hopes to see again sometime this year. He explains that he's in Los Angeles because he likes the warm weather, but he moves around pretty frequently.

He tells me about hanging out with his buddies over by the Pasadena City Hall. He explains that the building is a frequent destination for film crews, and one day a film crew ran all of the homeless guys away from the city hall building because they didn't want them in the shot. A few minutes later, however, the director decided that he liked the way the shot looked with the homeless guys, so they ask the men to come back and be in the scene.

The extras on set get paid. The homeless guys do not.

After visiting for almost an hour, Detroit leaves. I'm slightly annoyed that I didn't get as much done on my paper as I'd have liked, but I'm glad that I got to meet him. It's entirely possible he just scammed me and didn't really need me to buy him a meal, but I've learned more about transient life in my resident community in the past forty-five minutes than I have in the rest of my time here combined. I just wish it hadn't taken an open bible on my table to motivate me into sharing a meal with Detroit.