I am Luc of the Street

Fighting for My Life

Got the union behind me now. They’re putting pressure on the brass to put up or shut up: bring a case against me, or drop the charges. Enough of this bullshit.

I’m stoked. My whole body’s vibrating. I haven’t felt this good in a long time. No matter what the outcome, I’m not going down without a fight.

It feels good to stretch my fighting muscles. For too long I’ve stood passively on the outside looking in at the world. I let them shut me out, make me a nothing, their shadow. I holed up and licked my wounds—poor little Luc, little homeless bum; nobody loves him. Like I said before: enough of this bullshit. My bullshit.

Guess I’m the dope who’s the last to know I'm stigmatized by my life on the streets. I never thought I was; I’ve always crowed about those days—how I survived, how tough it made me. I wore it like a badge of honor. But deep inside, Little Luc has been gnawing on a bone of contention: he feels shame.

I'm ashamed of my past.

That’s a kick in the head, huh? But yeah, as a street rat I longed to be loved and accepted by the People. When they rejected me, I guess I rejected myself, shamed myself—same as I did when I got suspended. It makes sense now. It all makes sense.

I thought I learned to get on without the People, told myself I didn’t need them. But I do.

Now this scrappy homeless kid is gonna come out of his hole and fight for himself. Like I did when I was on the street, I’m gonna fight for my life—but this time, it’s not for a scrap of turf; it’s for my rightful place in the great big world.

A Warm Gift

Paris is suspended in icy cold. Endlessly trapped. I haven't felt relentless cold like this since I was a boy.

They called that winter the worst in years, and we lost one of our little tribe to pneumonia that year. You can tough out a few days of cold, but weeks on end? Only the strongest survive.

This winter shows signs of being the same as that one. By now, you know how cold and snow make me itchy, anxious. Maybe I can't rest because I know there are kids out there, my kids, the ones who call me "Papa Lion," and expect me to look after them. In the warmer months, it's easy to keep track of them, but in cold like this, they're hidden away. There are twelve kids I know of, so I better get looking, get them to a warm, safe place. Sure, there are more out there I don't know, who I may never find, but I'm only one man. I can only do what I can do.

What can you do? This is the season for giving, yeah? Wasn't baby Jesus out in the cold on Christmas, too? Think of the cold babies out there right now and give the gift of warmth.

Snow Job

Jean-Paul shook me awake today, excitedly. "It's snowing, Pa." But when I opened my eyes, it wasn't excitement I saw on his face. It was panic.

"Winter's coming so early this year," he said, his brows knitting. I reminded him he had a roof over his head, and massaged away the worried furrow on his brow. "The snow can't hurt you anymore," I said. He blushed, admitted he was being silly—but there was still a hint of dread in his eyes.

Once you've lived on the street, it's hard to enjoy snow. Snow = death. I've talked about this before. Rain, snow, cold—the elements do a number on me, make me anxious, stir up bad memories. Even if my mind forgets, my body remembers. The Little Luc inside pulls my muscles taut with dread. For Jean-Paul, just off the streets a little over a year, those memories are fresh and painful. But even I, off the streets for two decades, felt my gut clench when I looked out the window and saw snow dusting the rooftops of Montmartre.

"Looks pretty," I lied, wrapping a comforting arm around JP as we watched the white death fall from the sky. "Don't you think?" I asked. JP looked at me, warily. "I guess so," he said. "From in here."

In the end, we stayed inside where the snow sort of looked pretty and where it couldn't do a job on us. I flipped it the bird from behind a tightly sealed window, and JP laughed out loud. He flipped the snow off, too, hurled some epithets, and we both felt like we'd conquered the elements.

Les Hommes Sans-Abri

I see them more and more—under scaffolds, in the Metro, in the small parks around town—some with a cardboard sign scratched with the words, Sans Domicile. Homeless. They are often young men, able and strong, but cast out by a quirk of fate, now lonely ghosts of the street, inspiring fear and disgust. Unwanted reminders of the flaws in the system. They are me.

There's a part of me still out there, still cold, still hungry, and like an old addiction, managed but never cured, I have an undeniable physical reaction when I see others toughing it out on the cold pavement. I feel what they do, as sharply as they do. “Courage,” I say as I pass. Courage, I tell myself. Stay strong.

I talk a lot about my days on the street; even romanticize it. And sure, I had some wild times as a kid. It’s all roses when you look back. You forget the unforgiving ground; the knife fights over a scrap of gutter; the pain of starvation. The pain of rejection. You forget how it was to be cut off from love—and how that made you want to lash out. It all comes back when I see them.

Courage.

There are a lot of new faces on the street these days. They're the ones with signs like apologies: Willing to Work; Just Evicted; Not on Drugs. They want you to know it's just a bad patch, that they are like you. I met one guy in Rue Rambuteau who told me he lost his apartment when the landlord wanted it for a relative. Because he didn't have a steady job, no one would rent to him—et, voilà, he was on the street. I asked him why he'd want to sit in the middle of the bustling Les Halles district with a sign, wasn't it humilating? "So they know we're here," he said resolutely. "So they know how bad it is."

I know how bad it is.

Why would someone turn to the street? Because you want something—self-flagellation, a cry for help, to lose yourself, because it's less of a hell than the alternative. Sane or not, conscious or subconscious, it's a choice. For me, the street was a big “screw you” to the orphanage; freedom and autonomy, a means of control over my universe. The street gives you whatever you want—but like a good whore, makes you pay for it. Hell, she still has her hooks in me. 

If you think those on the street are weak or deficient in some way, think again. It takes resolve, commitment. Courage. Next time you see someone homeless, think of me. Keep your pity; give up your respect.

The People

France belongs to the people. We're a republic, a body united, tous pour un, un pour tous. That is, unless you're a sixteen-year-old homeless kid. Then, you're on your own.

"The People" doesn't apply to you when you grow up outside the system. There's no net the People cast to draw the stragglers to their bosom. Stragglers are unsightly, so much debris to be swept outside the inner circle. Just ask someone who lives on the wrong side of the city's péripherique.

A child on the street is a shock to the delicate sensibilities of the People. He doesn't inspire sympathy, he creates shame. No one wants to be shamed on the way to the market.

The People looked past me. I was a defect, an ugly scar. It was a good day when I was shooed away; at least they acknowledged my existence. After a while, I started to turn on the People. If they were going to put me on the outside, I was going to hack my way back in.

Even now, after having been off the streets for two-thirds of my life, I still find it hard to bond with the People. I've never found the same oneness I had with my street brothers. I crave that. But there's something that keeps me from being one with the People, something that still separates me, like a man cut off by the ring road.

Danger of Death

When I lived on the street, we used to hang around the train yards near Rue Riquet and Rue Ordener. There were a lot of good spots for camping out, little abandoned huts and substations that were warm in the winter. My best friend and I would watch the trains come and go, and he would tell me about all the places we'd visit together on those trains. "You and me, Lulu," he'd say. "One day." One day never came because one day he disappeared and left me on my own to look after our little tribe. Maybe he got on one of those trains without me. Maybe he's far away now, living a better life. Or maybe, he's long dead.

Today, on the way to see someone in the projects in the north of the city, I crossed over those train yards on Rue Riquet. I paused a moment on the overpass and watched the TGV trains easing out of the yard, off to faraway destinations. I thought of him, of those days. As I stood there dreaming, my eyes fell on an old enamel sign screwed to the fencing: DO NOT TOUCH THE ELECTRICAL WIRE. DANGER OF DEATH. A funny expression to be sure. Danger of Death. I looked up at the projects in the distance. Death isn't the problem. It's life that's a danger. 

My mind went again to a memory of us boys huddled together in the train yard during one of the worst winters in decades. One of us would die that winter. That's the danger of life on the street. Tant pis. I chose that life and I don't regret it. My best friend chose it, too, eyes wide. He seemed to thrive on the danger of death. He egged it on all the time. That's why I think he's probably dead now. But I'm sure when he saw it coming, he smiled and threw his arms open. He was incredible like that.

It's useless to fear death. It comes and there's nothing you can do about it. Sooner or later, it comes. Me, I made my peace with death long before I left adolescence behind. It's life I still tussle with.

 

The Dead of August

Henri reminded me that he was taking off for the seaside with his wife and kids, and that Girard’s Bar Tabac will be shut until the end of the month. I was not happy about it. I hate August when all of Paris goes on vacation. Life stops. What about those who have to stay behind? What happens to us? How are we supposed to live?

August to me is like a kind of death. When I was on the street, August was the worst time. Everything slowed down and the usual human activity that sustained us gutter rats would dwindle to nothing. Like Lagache’s Grocerette—a place I frequented with my sticky fingers—would close for the whole month. We lived on the food I used to swipe from that old guy, but no shop meant no food. It would get worse and worse as the month wore on and we would be forced to move further down into the city—into the 8th and the Champs-Elysées—where there were at least some tourists. The problem was, that area was also crawling with cops. And unlike the cops in Montmartre who knew us and would often look the other way, these guys loved to round us up in their little wagons. You had to be really desperate and hungry to take chances in that neighborhood, and by the end of August, we were.

Salvation only came with the rentrée in September, when everyone returned to Paris for the new school year. Our lives would improve immediately. Girard’s Bar Tabac would open up again and Henri’s papa would feed me regular. The hunger of August would be gone at last.

Yeah, I suppose I know why I hate August. All these years later, a part of me still feels the dread, the abandonment. Still feels hungry.

Finding Old Ghosts in the Cemetery

Jean-Paul was seen hanging around Montmartre Cemetery today. I headed over there as fast as I could, but I knew he would be gone before I was anywhere near the place. Still, the father’s heart in me held out hope.

It’s not a really big cemetery, not like Père Lachaise, so it didn’t take long for me to make a full search. The only living people I found were the man at the guard station and a pretty woman taking photos. She smiled at me. At least I think she did. If I had been in a better mood, I might have chatted her up. Yeah, maybe.

Instead, I wandered silently around the old sepulchres. Soon, ghosts from my past started to take shape. I didn’t want to see them; they just came—the boys I lived with, the little tribe. This cemetery was one of our places back then; we used to sleep inside the sepulchres to keep warm. Well, the ones with doors we could open. There was one in particular that was mine and his. He was the chief of our tribe and my whole world. He looked out for me, taught me how to survive the streets. We were inseparable. Fiercely devoted comrades. I haven’t felt a bond like that since then, except maybe when I was in the BRI. One day he disappeared just like that, and then I was the chief. Just like that. I didn’t like being chief then, either.

Being in the cemetery today brought it all back—the good and the bad. The loss. I imagine they’re all dead now, those boys I lived with. Ghosts for real. I had Bruno to save my ass; who did they have? Nobody. Not even me because I got arrested and Bruno pulled me off the street for good. Some chief I was. I let them down.

But I won’t let Jean-Paul down. I can't. Can't let him die in the street like a dog. If he would just come home to stay, let me take care of him like Bruno did for me, he would see how much better it could be. I have to find him. I have to. T ou, mon fils ? Don’t you disappear on me, too!