For the man with the kind face

I don’t know how to make this less ugly.

There is a rule to storytelling. You can tell an ugly story, but you can’t leave your reader with ugliness only. Do that, and people stop reading.

You must find kindness, poignancy; on a good day, if you’ve got the writing skill, redemption.

I stood over the man, and I was somehow afraid of him.

He was not a thing to be afraid of – my rational brain told me so. He did not have shoes: I could see the soles of his feet through the holes in his socks, and I couldn’t tell if the discolouration of his skin was from dirt, or the shutdown of his internal organs.

He had a grubby blanket over his head. He was slumped on the ground, not moving, leaning against a vending machine.

I admit I would not have noticed him, except that another man leant over him. This other man had a kind face.

I was on my way to work. I admit I stopped a little grudgingly. I asked the man with the kind face, was the man on the ground alright? The man with the kind face said, not sure. Can’t tell if he’s breathing.

I said, tritely, better safe than sorry. I rummaged for my phone in my bag. Everyone was walking past, places to be. I thought about being late to work.

The 111 operator asked me what was happening, told me to stay there, help was coming. She said, can you see a defibrillator around? I said, with a flutter of panic, I can’t: I don’t even know how to work a defibrillator, I need to find someone.

She said firmly, no – you need to stay where you are. I had my back to the man, looked across the busy street, buses and bustlers, a winter workday morning. She said, you need to check if he’s responsive. You might need to resuscitate him.

She said, you might need to resuscitate him. And I drew a breath that skittered about in the tightness of my lungs. And I rounded my shoulders a little, looked down, so the man with the kind face couldn’t hear me. And I said to her, as quiet as I could while commuters moved around me, I don’t want to touch him.

I explained, in something like a mumble, that he had defecated over himself.

There is another rule to storytelling, there must be a moment of reckoning. I suppose I can offer this much.

Perhaps you will not understand this or laugh at it, unless it was your life too, the portrait of Our Lord in the hallway of your Nana’s house, His eyes said to follow you and your soul as you tiptoed past. Maybe it’s stupid: catechism like a grubby blanket, a thing you find distasteful, but on a cold enough day it’ll keep you at least a little warm. A shabby dissolute faith that says, like a stopped clock is right twice a day, you may ignore or abuse your liver, but never your conscience.

There are worse things to be covered in than shit. Shame is one of them.

There was a time I didn’t walk on by.

I remember the first time I saw a homeless person. I was a young adult, visiting Wellington from my hometown in the South Island, where it is too cold to sleep rough.

I didn’t understand what I was seeing: homelessness was foreign to me, and a thing I associated with moral failure and Americans. That man was sleeping in a doorway. I had asked him, timidly, if he was alright. He turned, looked at me over his shoulder with surprise.

I only remembered that later, after the morning with the man with the blanket and the holes in his socks. On that morning, I held my phone; inhaled to force the sob backwards, and with it the excuses, into the cavity in my chest where someone better than this is supposed to reside. And I said – helpless and afraid, and wanting to be both somewhere and someone better – it’s OK, I’ll do it if you’ll tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do.

I admit I was saved, not in any profound way or by someone's deity, but by the sound of sirens.

We waited. I stayed on the call. The man with the kind face moved between talking gently to the man on the ground and talking gently to me. He told me how another time he’d helped out a guy who was drinking methylated spirits.

The emergency workers arrived.

The man with the kind face helped direct them. They wore latex gloves. They moved around the man the ground, talked to him, checked a pulse and breathing so slowed by alcohol they were hard to detect at 8am.

They told us, he’s alright.

I will not impugn the emergency workers: they showed the highest standards of professionalism and kindness, and I cannot fault them. But they cannot have meant that he’s alright. They simply meant, there was nothing they could do.

I could speculate on the journey to that morning. The loss of land, the beating out of children their language, their culture, their mana. The boys’ homes, and their direct route to prison. Deinstitutionalisation to deliver tax cuts; nothing in its place but park benches and grubby blankets. Benefits so low as to support the flourishing of nothing but stigma. Meth so cheap anyone can afford it: houses only for the few.

From where we were, the man, if conscious, could have almost seen the Beehive, but the Beehive could not see him. From that place, I asked myself what the hell is wrong with me, with all of us.

There is a rule to politicking. You can tell an ugly story, but you can’t leave your voter with ugliness only. Do that, and people stop voting.

This is the part of the story where I am meant to offer kindness, poignancy; redemption, if I have the skill.

I picked up my bag. I said goodbye, sheepishly, to the man with the kind face, did not look back at the man on the ground with more than a glance.

In that moment, I could not see the humanity in myself. I pulled my coat tight across me, cried as I looked straight ahead, walked to work.