Less Than Hero Read online

  Vic looks at Randy over the top of his glasses. “You realize nobody has any idea what you’re talking about.”

  One of the drawbacks, however—other than the risk of multiple organ failure and getting your fingers and toes amputated—is that you can’t always depend on a steady monthly income to pay the rent. And it’s hard to hold down a part-time job when you have to take three weeks off so someone can collect your blood, urine, and semen while pumping you full of antipsychotics.

  So sometimes you have to find other ways to make ends meet.

  Get a job you lazy bastard!” a middle-aged man says as he drops a dollar into my hat.

  I thank him and wish him a nice day.

  “Shove this up your ass!” A twenty-something guy displays a George Washington around his middle finger before flicking the dollar at me.

  I give him a nod and a smile.

  “You’re lousy in bed.” A thirty-something woman throws a handful of singles in my face. She gets a couple of steps away before she turns around and marches back over to me. “You’re the worst fuck I’ve ever had!”

  I press my hands together in front of me and bow my head.

  I’m sitting on a bench in Central Park near the Naumburg Bandshell, watching the tourists and locals walk past. Summer is in full bloom, delivering warm days and blue skies, which is good for business. Any panhandler worth his alms can make enough from Memorial Day to Labor Day to support himself for the rest of the year.

  None of the other guinea pigs panhandle in order to earn some extra cash. Randy does some part-time gigs as a bouncer to help during the lean volunteer months, while Charlie, Vic, and Frank pick up temporary shifts here and there making deliveries, working flea markets, putting up drywall, or taking any other short-term work they can find. But I don’t like driving in Manhattan, I hate flea markets, and my carpentry skills peaked with Lincoln Logs. Besides, why would I want to work for someone else when I can be my own boss?

  On a typical four-hour shift, I earn $10 to $12 an hour, which is better than minimum wage, and I don’t have to pay any taxes or deal with any corporate hierarchy or worry about making an off-color joke and getting sued for sexual harassment. And during the summer and peak tourist seasons, I can take in $15 an hour without even breaking a sweat—$20 an hour if I put a little effort into it. You can’t earn that much slinging mochas or working on a burger assembly line at McDonald’s. True, I don’t get any health benefits or food discounts and I have to deal with getting heckled by teenagers, but I get fresh air and sunshine and the chance to meet new people.

  “I hope you rot in hell, you son of a bitch,” a man says and gives me the change out of his pocket.

  I give him the peace sign and tell him to come back again.

  Other than writing words on a piece of cardboard and picking high-traffic locations, panhandlers don’t need any specific skill to earn a living. You don’t have to know how to juggle or perform magic tricks or play a musical instrument. Those are buskers, performing for tips and gratuities in parks and plazas and transit centers. Sometimes even in restaurants, bars, or cafes.

  Billy Joel was a busker who cut his musical teeth working in piano bars. Some other famous buskers include Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, George Burns, Steve Martin, and Penn & Teller.

  Most decent panhandlers tend to steer clear of buskers and respect their space, choosing instead to find locations where they can benefit from the crowds without encroaching on the performance. But there are panhandlers who hover around buskers, intercepting customers and taking the potential donations for themselves.

  In the busking community, these are referred to as spongers.

  Other panhandlers run little extortion schemes, harassing marks until the busker pays the panhandler to go away. Some panhandlers also steal donations, instruments, and props.

  These are the ones who give the rest of us a bad name.

  I could earn more money if I learned a skill like juggling or playing the harmonica or making balloon animals, but performing for my tax-free donations would mean having to practice, and I’ve never been a paragon of self-discipline. Plus large crowds give me performance anxiety. And most of the guys I know who make balloon animals are pedophiles in training. So instead I just come up with creative signs that help me to generate some supplemental income.

  MY PARENTS SNORTED MY COLLEGE FUND CREDIT AND DEBIT CARDS NOT ACCEPTED MY OTHER JOB IS GETTING HIT BY A ROLLS-ROYCE

  That one doesn’t always work, but it makes me laugh. And a happy panhandler is a prosperous panhandler.

  “You deserve your miserable existence.” A woman crumples a dollar into a ball and flings it at me.

  I thank her for stopping by.

  The sign I’m displaying today says:

  WILL TAKE VERBAL ABUSE FOR MONEY

  When I first started using this sign a couple of years ago, I received the standard insults and derogatory comments meant for me and my wasted life. For what I represented. For what I’d become.

  A social tumor.

  A rash on the ass of civilization.

  An oozing pus bag of failure.

  More often than not, the insults weren’t accompanied by a donation but by malicious laughter. Sometimes people spit on me, which isn’t technically verbal abuse, but when you’re a panhandler, you can’t expect everyone to be on the same page.

  But after a while, once people saw me around Central Park with my sign on a regular basis, they started to feel comfortable with me, to understand the freedom I was offering, and they started to open up. Now when most people approach me, rather than showering me with personal attacks and derogatory invectives about my existence, they vent their frustrations about anything that’s troubling them. The problems that they’re unable to deal with.

  Jobs. Relationships. Family.

  “I hate you, Mom.” A young woman wearing a Columbia University sweatshirt tosses a dollar into my hat. “You’ve ruined my life.”

  I get that a lot.

  It doesn’t matter if the object of their frustration and anger is male or female, mother or father, husband or wife. I’m an androgynous receptacle of disparagement. An ambiguous catchall of angst.

  Sophie is concerned that I’m allowing myself to take on the projected anger and frustration of the people who pay me to hear their confessions of hostility and resentment. She thinks I’m putting myself at spiritual risk.

  “The human psyche is like a sponge,” she says. “You can’t help absorbing some of their negative energy.”

  While I appreciate Sophie’s interest in my spiritual health, I don’t share her concerns. It’s not like I’m holding on to any of the rancor directed at me. I don’t take it personally. I don’t bring my work home. Plus, in a way, I feel like I’m providing a valuable service. Earning the money they toss and fling and throw at me.

  I’m kind of like a mendicant therapist. A panhandling priest. Absolving my flock of their sins in exchange for whatever they care to leave as a contribution; offering a sliding scale of emotional succor.

  “Go fuck yourself, Kaufman.” A guy in a suit donates a dollar to my cause. “I don’t need this job or your bullshit TPS reports.”

  In some countries, begging is tolerated and even encouraged. In Buddhist countries like Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, monks and nuns traditionally live by begging for alms, as did Buddha himself. A number of religions hold that a person who gives alms to a worthy beggar gains religious merit—a sort of spiritual credit they can cash in when their time on this plane of existence has come to an end.

  Even in traditional Christianity, the rich were encouraged to serve the poor. Talking about criminals, prostitutes, beggars, and other people generally despised by society, Jesus is supposed to have said, “I am the least of these.” So apparently giving to a beggar is the equivalent of giving to Jesus.

  Not comparing myself to the Son of God, but at least it’s good to know he thought so highly of panhandlers.

  So I sit and I listen and I smi
le and I thank my flock for their words and their donations and their abuse, and after four hours, I’ve earned eighty-seven dollars and change—which is a good seven dollars more an hour than I typically earn using any of my other signs. At that rate, doing this full-time, I would earn more than forty-five grand a year.

  Tax-free.

  But if I used the same sign every day, it wouldn’t carry the same weight. I’d become just another unimaginative panhandler, preying on the goodwill of my customers—which is why I like to mix things up. Plus it makes me appreciate days like this.

  Besides, with all of the competition out there, HOMELESS & HUNGRY: PLEASE HELP just doesn’t cut it. You have to be more original. You have to come up with something that stands out in the crowd. Otherwise, you might as well be a mime.

  As I start to collect my money and my sign, a teenager on a skateboard rides up, calls me a dream-crushing asshole, then throws a handful of quarters at my feet.

  At least I know I’m making a difference.

  I pick up the quarters, which have scattered across the concrete, and call out a thank-you as the kid rides away. At the same moment, my lips go numb like they did at the research facility in Queens last week. This is followed by an overwhelming sense of exhaustion, as if I got run over by the Sandman.

  The kid glances back and gives me the finger as I close my eyes and let out a yawn that seems to last forever. When I open my eyes again, the numbness in my lips is gone and I feel refreshed. As if I just took a power nap. I’m wondering what the hell that was all about when I notice the kid on the ground in an unconscious heap, his skateboard rolling away.

  I look around to see if anyone noticed, but no one’s paying attention, so I walk over to see if the kid’s okay. He’s on his back, out cold, his head turned to one side. His lips are moving but I can’t hear what he’s saying, so I kneel down next to him.

  “Hey. Hey kid, are you okay?”

  He moves and I think he’s coming around, but instead of opening his eyes and sitting up, he rolls onto his side, puts his hands under his head, and curls up in a fetal position.

  I think about calling 911, but other than a couple of scrapes on his knees and elbows, he doesn’t look like he’s suffered any serious injuries. Besides, what am I going to tell the emergency operator? That there’s a teenager with a skateboard sleeping in Central Park? Like that’s news.

  Instead I sit down on a nearby bench and watch over the kid, wondering if I should do anything or just mind my own business. I’m still sitting there a few minutes later when he suddenly yawns and stretches and opens his eyes, then sits up and looks around like he’s trying to figure out how the hell he got here. When he sees me, he gives me the finger, gets on his skateboard, and rides off without a word.

  Most people wouldn’t understand what I do or why I do it. They wouldn’t choose it as a lifestyle. They wouldn’t encourage their children to pursue it as a career.

  This is an example of what not to do with your life, they would tell their sons and daughters while standing in front of the Professional Guinea Pig display, which is located in the Museum of Natural History right between Drug Addict and Reality Television Star in the Hall of Social Failures.

  This isn’t the way I imagined my life turning out.

  To be honest, I don’t know what I imagined. The problem is that I never had much imagination or ambition to begin with and just sort of drifted along as I got older, waiting for something to happen. I haven’t so much participated in my life as I’ve watched it like a spectator, hoping my team finds a way to win.

  Not everyone has their shit figured out. Sure, some people do. They’re the ones who actually stick to a plan and make all the right choices and end up with the life they imagined.

  The rest of us don’t really have a plan but just make it up as we go, like Indiana Jones. For some, things work out and they end up rescuing the girl and having a ride named after them at Disneyland. For others, they discover that trying to win the lottery isn’t a viable plan for living happily ever after, and end up as a disappointment to their parents.

  Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad.

  I did attend college and earned a bachelor of science in marketing, but only because I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to do. I just buzzed around from one major to another like an aimless honeybee that had lost its magnetic compass and graduated with a BS in marketing because that was the major I was pollinating when graduation rolled around.

  When my parents call every few months to ask me how I’m doing, I tell them I’m into volunteer work, which isn’t exactly a lie. But even if I was affiliated with the Red Cross or the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society or the Peace Corps, they would still think I was wasting my life. They’ve never accepted that when it comes to my goals, I’m about as ambitious as a suntan.

  I’m sitting on a bench at the south end of the Mall in Central Park, doing a little sun worshipping while eating a black-and-white cookie from Greenberg’s. About thirty feet away from me, a Fairy is perched in front of the Japanese maple that’s the centerpiece of the Olmsted Flower Bed. The Fairy wears a seafoam-green sleeveless dress with matching green wings and a yellow chiffon skirt that conceals her feet and the pedestal upon which she’s standing. Her face is painted a soft white. Not so much that she looks like a mime, but just enough so that she appears otherworldly. She holds a single red rose in her left hand. In front of her sits a painted yellow wooden box with a narrow opening for donations.

  The Fairy stands perfectly still.

  She’s a living statue, the hidden pedestal she’s standing on adding a good twelve inches to her height, making her appear more than six feet tall and giving her added stature . . . which is important if you want to be noticed.

  For the last hour, dozens of people have walked past her, some stopping to smile or take pictures, most giving a cursory glance, while about two out of ten walk up to the Fairy and deposit a single dollar into the yellow box at her feet.

  The moment the dollar falls into the box, her face animates and she comes to life, one hand reaching into a satchel on her hip. She removes something from the satchel and holds her hand out in front of her, fingers pressed together and pointed down. When the person who donated the dollar holds out their hand in response, the Fairy sprinkles a pinch of pixie dust into their open palm, then turns her hand over and blows the remaining pixie dust into the air, coating the person with fairy magic.

  It’s an elegant display, smooth and graceful, as if her limbs are gliding through water.

  Most of the customers don’t know what to do. Some of them just laugh or smile and continue on their way, while others blow the pixie dust back at her, which kind of defeats the purpose. After all, she’s a fairy. She doesn’t need any more pixie dust. But the act of reciprocation seems like the appropriate response. Every now and then, however, someone walks away looking sour and annoyed while brushing the pixie dust off of them.

  Some people just don’t appreciate fairies.

  In addition to the Fairy, there are a number of living statues in Central Park, including the Historian out behind the Met, the Eggman over by Strawberry Fields, and the Silver Skater across from the Wollman Rink.

  While those are all good locations with significant foot traffic and the opportunity to attract large crowds, they’re actually better suited for street theater, acrobats, or puppeteers. Sheer volume can work against a living statue, causing potential customers to pay more attention to everyone else around them rather than to the silent street performer standing off to the side. By design, the living statue doesn’t stand out in a crowd or attract attention. Sometimes the location itself can be a liability.

  In busking parlance, the location is called the pitch, and the right pitch is essential to success. Standing in front of the Olmsted Flower Bed that complements her costume and character, where everyone walking south along the Mall beneath the canopy of American elms can’t help but see her, the Fairy has picked out the perfect pitch.

&nb
sp; In the time I’ve been sitting on the bench, she’s had a total of fourteen paying customers. At $14 an hour, presuming she were to do this for eight hours and make one dollar per customer, she’d take home $112 per day. With a regular schedule, that comes to $560 per week, about $2,300 per month, or $30,000 per year.

  But this isn’t a nine-to-five job. And the foot traffic changes from hour to hour, week to week, season to season. Plus fairies don’t tend to work during the winter. So even if she takes advantage of the summers and holidays and weekends, which are prime busking times, the best she can hope to make is about $20,000 per year. Still, it’s tax-free, with low overhead and fresh air in a beautiful park with trees and sunshine. That’s better than earning twice that amount sitting at a desk and having to deal with a middle manager who’s projecting his insecurity issues onto your performance review.

  Once I’ve finished my black-and-white cookie, I get up and walk over to the Fairy. Her blue eyes stare forward, fixed and vacant, her mouth open in the faintest hint of a smile, her head cocked slightly to one side as if she’s listening to some distant music, her arms perfectly still.

  The Fairy is a vegan. Mid-twenties. Short brown hair. She has a dimple near the left corner of her mouth. Her breath smells like fennel.

  “Are you going to be here much longer?” I ask.

  Buskers often vie for prime locations, sometimes sharing pitches on a rotational basis. Otherwise it’s first come, first served. Every now and then, a busker will send someone to fend off a pitch until they arrive, though squatting is frowned upon in the busking community. Snake charmers are the worst offenders, with contortionists coming in a close second. Plus they’re fucking prima donnas.

  For the most part, the buskers in Central Park tend to get along with one another, but fights can and do happen. I’ve seen competing street musicians nearly come to blows. And it’s not uncommon to see a fire-eater and a ventriloquist slugging it out in front of the Hans Christian Andersen statue.