Really it started when I was 14, working my first construction job. I was building playgrounds and there was a level of dirtiness that came with the work. My own parents told me I would end up having to pay for my own clothes if I continued to wear my nice shirts and pants to work. Fair, I can understand that coming home with oil and concrete cooked into my jeans was not reasonable. Moving on into my late teens and early twenties, when buying my own clothing was my responsibility, I understood this even more. Buying a (at the time 60 dollar pair of Levis) to then have them covered in stains and grime less than a week into their life spans, I decided to opt for the 15 dollar a pair jeans from off brand stores, and would by my shirts in the 3 packs, setting a standard for construction jobs for years to come.
the thing about 15 dollar jeans is that they end up falling apart very quickly, especially when any abrasiveness comes against them. Zippers skip, hems come undone, rivets pop at the slightest stress, fast fashion at its finest and on full display. On top of that, do take into mind, on a construction hourly wage, the idea of purchasing nice clothing was also simply not in the budget. The nicest articles of clothing I owned was my boots and a couple pairs of nice wool socks. Everything else would get purchased, used and abused, and then thrown away in the span of two to three months, depending on the project.
fast forward to 2017 and I am back home in Denver working for 14 dollars an hour building high end furniture with one other individual. We were installing tables and benches for a restaurant located in Capital Hill. I was probably two months into my clothing at this time and they were especially ragged. Today, in 2023, and see individuals scratching holes in their shirts and jeans for the whole “worker/ work wear/carpenters look”, and I simply think I would have been crowned king by the local community, given my overall disheveled “worker” look. But in 2017, this was not the look. Far from it I would say. This was still around the time Stomp Clap was on its way out in Denver and Flannels and curly mustaches were the move. I had instead deeply stained hands and arms, cut up and bruised from the work itself, destroyed baseball cap, ripped jeans and boots with holes burned into them from the metal grinders spitting off sparks, a t-shirt that was more stains and dried glue than fabric, and a look in my eyes as though I had not slept in weeks (this probably was true and realistic), I was anything but the normal look for a 20 something male in Denver Colorado.
But that I did not ‘fit in’ did not bother me. In fact it never bothered me. I loved what I did and even though it would require multiple washings at night to get close to my original skin below the grim, I genuinely felt like one of the men in the famous painting, “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper”. A living embodiment of the hard working American, working towards that ‘American Dream’. Hard at work and with a deep sense of pride in my work.
During lunch time one day while at the site in Cap Hill, I decided I would sit outside on the sidewalk so as to enjoy the first of springs warm sunlight, and grab some well needed warmth after a long cold winter in the furniture shop. Its a pain to heat the things so the sun quickly became best friend. I walked outside to grab a spot while I watched my boss head the other direction towards his truck to grab his 5th 2 liter soda and 3rd cheeseburger of the day from Carls Junior, and found a perfect spot next to a pile of junk left by some of the workers inside. A plastic green moving tarp draped beautifully over some card board boxes, giving the perfect spot for my mid day lunch.
I still remember what an outrageously beautiful day it was too. The electric green leafs starting to poke out from the trees near by while the warmth of the sun was not so hot to make me want to seek shade, but just warm enough that the bite of that mornings spring air started to dicipate. Sitting there enjoying a literal brown bagged lunch I had brought from my home; made simply of a sandwich and some flaming hot Cheetos I had packed, and thankfully the restaurant let me take a large paper cup I was able to fill with some stale coffee they had laying around from a morning meeting, I was enjoying life. There I was, eating slowly, and feeling one of those moments of ‘quite peace’, I could only imagine, at the time, was lost for office workers.
But it was not just me enjoying the day. There was a handful of individuals out and about. A lady who was walking her dog who seemed to find something important to sniff every 2 feet (I can only image what a city must smell like fore a dog, must always be changing and an adventure), a couple walking hand in hand, and at the end of about two blocks away, two of what I could only imagine being Colorado’s finest versions of ‘transplant hipster’, were walking down the street, coming from a new, expensive deli down the street. I am talking gauge piercings, flannel shirts of various colors with puffer jacket, tight pants, and tattoos covering each arm, one with the ironic mustache in full waxed beauty. When they got close I noticed that in fact, their steps where right in line with my position. I smiled at them and the moment they were next to me, one bent down and dropped his doggy bag from the deli at my feet while the other proceeded to shove a few crumpled dollar bills in my coffee cup (still with liquid in it) looking at me with a broad toothy smile, while the one who dropped the bag of food off stood back up and did a literal “tip of a hat”, mind you having no hat in sight, simply mimicking the gesture as though he had actually brought his favorite flat cap that he left at his house.
Silent I sat there, of course seeing this all happen in the span of 10 seconds I was unsure as to how to respond besides the whole “hey…um what…?” while looking at the few crumbled bills currently imbibing cold black coffee, but looking back and forth between the two new objects in my possession, and the two individuals, I had no option but a tired brain to grab the food and hold it back up to the one individual and then reach for the wet dollar bills sitting in now what could be considered as simply a finance bros witches brew.
“Those are for you man” said the individual who dropped the doggy bag of food. Looking back at the bag, I responded, “but I don’t want your leftovers?”
The doggy bag man stopped walking while his mustachioed counterpart continued to walk, looking back at me as how could I turn down his generosity. “here take it back” I remember saying as I tossed the bag to his feet. Huffing and with a look that said ‘how dare you’, he grabbed the bag and turned around tossing them with anger into the trash only a few steps up the road, ensuring to say back to me “your loss ass” before catching up to his friend at the light. It was all of about 30 seconds of thinking what the hell just happened when it snapped to me. food and cash. these two thought I was homeless. A kid in his early twenties sitting outside on a literal pile of trash, in front of an unopened store, clothes ripped and stained, the dirt and grim on my face and hands, what else could I have been?
I am not sure many people have been mistaken for homeless. And I get that I am coming from a position of privilege seeing as though I am not homeless, but, it deeply fucks with your brain in that first moment. your brain just sits and thinks “have I let myself go so much that others see me like that?”
The thing is though, the second time that it happens, the cognitive dissonance quiets. Because while this moment was a first, it was not the last time. This became a regular occurrence for me up until leaving that first wood shop half a year later. In between that time, having no more than a couple dozen individuals offering me food, cash, or even one nice convince store owner bringing me a bottle of water and a loosey, asking if I needed a light, I kind of just became numb to it. It did not take long before I simply stoped rejecting, and instead thanking the individuals. And I was not turning these people down because I didn’t feel deserving of these peoples kindness. It wasn’t because I felt that the kindness was more deserved for actual homeless people. For a moment I recalled even once thinking “who am I to strip these people of the good they will feel, for hopefully even just an hour?”. One time a lady gave me a whole 10 dollars before getting back into her G-Waggon and I thought to myself she will go and tell all her friends about how she helped out a young homeless man earlier that day while leaving her pilates class in Cherry Creek. On top of that, I was actively unloading a vehicle with a 30 thousand dollar table and chair set into the restaurant when she did this. Little does she know she probably orders coffee at the very place next door whose furniture I built. But the idea of letting people do good things and feel good isn’t why I stopped turning people down. For a while I really did try and decline all the offers too. But in the end I was just tired. It was one more thing on my plate in the day that I genuinely did not care about. These moments consistently happened time and time again, getting to a point where I couldn’t help but think there had to be some reason why and that there must be some lesson I should be learning.
Sure clothes had to do something about it this I know of, otherwise I would not have started this post off about my crucial decision to purchase the bottom of the barrel in style and wear each article till it was rags. But when taken into account that this would even continue to happen even if I was in new clothing, what could it have been. What about the couple of times that while outside a job site while taking a 5 minute phone call or giving my lungs a break while they workers inside smeared noxious compound around, someone would pass me a handful of change from their pocket and later that evening walking into a grocery store, a man would ask if I was able to spare change, not once changing my outfit.
Still to this day can not understand what it is that I needed to learn or if in fact I did learn anything. Or if anyone should learn from this. Some may say that there is hope behind these individuals actions and that the people of this community will continue to look after those in need. Id suggest maybe taking a solid look at the community and see if you really believe that or if you just want to. Some might say I was in the wrong here but I am not sure how one would go about arguing how I was in the wrong and what the right thing would have been to do.
And maybe this strange time in my life of living on a threshold between being treated as homeless and non-homeless depending on the individual looking at me, has no meaning and never meant to have one. Just almost a decade later, I still think about this at times. Maybe one day it will click for me.
for now though, I can say I buy nicer clothes, and no longer work construction.
*I used that 10 dollars the lady gave me to buy some beer later that evening and thought to myself once checking out, holy shit she probably thought “I shouldn’t give that guy cash, he’ll probably just buy booze with it”.
Leave a Reply