I browsed the beaten-up paperbacks tucked messily into the wooden bookcases that leaned and tottered under the weight of its contents. Spotting several copies of an old James Patterson, carefully pulling them out of their spots, I blew dust off of the cover as if revealing an ancient map with treasure to discover. Some copies were water damaged, others with peeling covers, but the writing was legible, and they felt well read.

I counted out $13.74 for the cashier while he analyzed each cover carefully.

“These are all the same book,” he said with a wry grin.

“It’s for a book club,” I replied.

I walked the two blocks back home with five paperbacks stacked in my arms, happy to give them new owners. Turning the corner, I heard a familiar laugh and a voice boom out, bouncing off of the surrounding buildings in the Lower East Side.

“Well hello Ms. Tatyana! You’ve got some books for me?”

When I was a little girl, my mom and I spent hours most weekends preparing hundreds of lunches for the homeless. I felt like a doctor getting ready for surgery. I would line up all the materials, prepare brown paper bags, and pick the ingredients. My job was to carefully extract each piece of bread and lay them flat on the counter, where my brother would spread peanut butter and jelly, line up the ham and cheese, then assemble each sandwich (I desperately wanted this job, but was too little to hold a knife). We’d then bag everything up and drop meals off at our church, where volunteers would distribute them to those in need. My parents were always humanizing strangers; homeless people wanted PB&Js just like me.

Whether it was making bagged lunches with my mom, volunteering at the local crisis pregnancy center, or talking to people on the D6 bus with my dad, I was never afraid to talk to new people. My friends always worried I’d end up in a bad situation; I tend to make connections with complete strangers.

As I got older, whenever I interacted with those dealing with homelessness, I imagined what they had been through to get to this point. I tried to pinpoint a set of circumstances or decisions that could have led to their difficulties. This perception of homeless people was a pitying infantilization. There are over 653,000 people experiencing homelessness in the United States, and the number increases daily. All of those people didn’t get there in the same way: there isn’t a singular reason for suffering; homelessness is not linear. Yet, I felt better about myself thinking about them this way. It selfishly made me feel good to feel bad for them. In doing so, I objectified and tried to fit them into boxes, where human beings simply cannot fit. Mike never fit into a box.

I met Mike one night, illuminated by the backdrop of a classic New York laundromat. He stepped out of the darkness, frightening me in his sudden entrance to my life. While I was used to making friends with strangers, I had this unfamiliar fear settle into the pit of my stomach. Immediately I took an inventory of my surroundings. All alone on a side street downtown, no lights to illuminate the happenings below, I feared for my life.

 “Do you have the time?” he asked.

He brushed past me to the curb where a crumpled blanket streaked with dirt lay abandoned. Placing his hands on his hips he leaned over with a grunt, gripping the fabric before standing. He flapped the material into the wind, shaking off leaves and wafting the pungent odor of urine embedded into the fabric out onto the street. 

“Come on sweetheart I don’t have all day. What time is it?” He said, still smiling through his gruff tone.

“Oh! Of course…it’s about 9.” I replied.

“Lovely. Then I’m good to set up.”

 I watched as he laid down a blanket and balled up sweatshirt as a makeshift bed on the concrete. I wished him a good night and walked two buildings over to my apartment. Clutching the keys in my coat pocket, I felt the cool metal against my fingertips. I didn’t realize how hard I’d been squeezing until I went to unlock the door and found deep indentations from the metal grooves and a smattering of blood pouring out from cracked broken skin. Stepping inside, I breathed deeply, relieved to be home after a long day and then all at once consumed with guilt. He just wanted to know the time; how could I be so cruel?

The next time I met Mike, he introduced himself to me. We talked for a little over an hour about his journey from Florida to New York after fighting as a semi-professional boxer in the sunshine state. After briefly working in the fashion industry, he turned to boxing again to make ends meet and suffered a back injury. He was prescribed opioids which he said took over his life. But Mike didn’t like to focus on that. He wanted to talk about the friends he’d met on the streets, his adventures around New York, the several times he was arrested for loitering, and above all, the culture of the city. He was fascinated by politics, religion, and art, which led us to discussing literature and our favorite novels. 

I began to bring Mike books. He read them voraciously, finishing hundreds of pages in just a day or two. He couldn’t get a library card without an address or a license, yet another barrier to access for those experiencing homelessness. To be eligible for a library card, you must prove you live, work, attend school, or pay property taxes in New York which the homeless cannot provide. Most shelters can barely afford necessities, let alone books, so Mike turned to the generosity of strangers to fulfill his love of reading.

As the winds of winter swept into the city, blanketing the streets in their icy chill, I worried about Mike outside all on his own. One night while making some tea, I decided to bring him a cup too. Bundling up, I shut off the screaming kettle and prepared a cup of chamomile for my unlikely new friend. I grabbed a blanket and headed down the street towards the glow of the red laundromat sign that greeted me just before Mike did. Four of his friends huddled in a circle next to him, handing a cigarette back and forth.

“Hello old sport!” He exclaimed. Pushing up from the ground he walked towards my outstretched arm where the steam from the mug met the frigid wind. Nodding his acceptance, he grabbed the mug and blew on the top of it before closing his eyes and leaning into the steam.

“Did you finish Gatsby?” I asked smiling.

“I did. And you know what? I get it – Daisy seems like she’d be a real knockout.”

I laughed as he turned and rummaged through his bag.

“Well, I’m really glad you liked it.”

“Yeah, thanks for letting me borrow it. If you’ve got any more, I’d love to keep this going. I missed reading.” He said, handing me my old beaten copy of Fitzgerald’s once dismissed classic.

The Great Gatsby tells the tale of mass grandeur and obscene wealth veiled in the trimmings of high society. It celebrated American prosperity and European devastation in the wake of World War I. A century later, 37.9 million people live in poverty in the United States. Americans in the top 1% control more wealth than the entirety of the middle class. This is not the mark of a prosperous nation, but of one that seeks to serve those at the top at the detriment of those at the bottom. I thought about the irony of gifting this book to Mike; how he understood better than anyone else how wealth brings power. He didn’t need Fitzergerald to tell him that.

 I noticed his seated friends passing a book back and forth. One would read a paragraph out loud then pass it to the next person. From that day on, I had my own book club. “Mike and the boys” would set up shop outside and I’d gather teas and books for each of them.

One man named Henry, a Black Vietnam veteran and excellent chess player, couldn’t read. 43% of those below the poverty line are illiterate. His parents had low literacy, and he worked his entire childhood before he was drafted leaving little time to read, like many other Americans. Today, 1 in 4 children in the U.S. grow up without learning how to read. When he returned from the war, he was the victim of racial violence and was denied benefits of the G.I. Bill as many other Black soldiers were. So, Mike would read chapters to him or summarize events in the novel so he could discuss with us.

I learned so many wonderful things from these men in my brief time knowing them. So often, we fear what we don’t know, and that tends to manifest in our relationships with others. Too often, people turn the other way, assuming those experiencing homelessness are struggling because of their own choices. Often, it’s due to circumstances outside of their control: mental illness, addiction, lack of affordable housing, or generational poverty. For Henry it was his illiteracy; for Mike, his addiction. Twenty-one percent of homeless people reported having a serious mental illness in a study about substance abuse, that also found 16% of them struggled with addiction. If these health struggles don’t impact one’s ability to hold a job, it is incredibly difficult to find affordable housing. There is a national shortage of more than 7 million affordable homes which negatively impacts the U.S.’s over 10.8 million low-income families. In fact, there is not a single state where a person working full-time on the national minimum wage of $7.25 can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment. If someone is able to hold down a job, they will spend 30% or more of their income on rental housing. This isn’t sustainable and is a huge reason why so many face homelessness. Reaching out to those facing these struggles is important and makes a real difference.

So, in that spirit, I spent my weekends scouring used bookstores; my weeknights bundled up against Manhattan’s cold; and consistently moved by my new friends’ willingness to indulge a college student looking for companionship amongst bookshelves and the power of storytelling to transcend social division. What a sight we must’ve been, hidden under the glow of street signs, laughing, and analyzing literature: just me and 5 men suffering from homelessness.

After several months of this routine, my lease ended and with it, my connection with these wonderful men. During my final few days, Mike and his friends were gone. Every morning and every night I would canvas the area, hoping to say goodbye to my unlikely friends to no avail. When the movers finally came to take my things away, I heard a distant, “Miss Tatyana!” from down the street. Mike was standing in front of the laundromat and offered a small wave. 

“Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking all over for you!” I said.

It hit me all at once how worried I’d truly been. This man who at one point was someone I was afraid of, now stood in front of me as such a defining part of my life and experience in this complex city. Mike explained he’d been arrested again, for what, I can’t quite remember. But I remember the sweet smile he gave me as he clasped my hand between his. His gloved paw patting my knuckles once, then twice, before he reached into his pocket and placed a Christmas cracker in my hand.

 “It’s what we could afford,” he shrugged.

He turned, grabbed his bag, and walked down the block, away from Mott Street and back into the darkness of the laundromat from where he came.