A true story.
We met while crossing a street in Little Italy. As I stepped onto the curb in front of a 7-Eleven, I heard someone ask a question.
“Sorry?” I looked to my right. He was dark, his hair wild, his clothes black not just in color but in grime.
“Do you have a dollar?” His English carries a slight accent.
“No, I don’t. Sorry.” It was true—I never carry cash anymore. And I was sorry.
“It’s okay.” He moves on. I walk slower, trying to widen the distance between us without being painfully obvious.
I have an envelope of cash at home. $100 in five $20 bills that I withdrew from the bank just two weeks ago. I had been planning that for a while: go to the bank, withdraw some cash, keep it in my wallet just in case. But the envelope was still sealed and sitting on my desk.
The man walks over to a parked black SUV. Through the windshield, I can see the driver turn towards him. Sunglasses cover his eyes. He looks friendly, his mouth doesn’t look stern. For a moment, I’m hopeful. I pick up my pace.
“I met you before, right?”
The voice comes from my right side again. He was walking beside me now. I look over at him and our eyes meet.
“No, I don’t think so.” I shake my head. That question feels like bad news.
“What’s your name?”
“Jacky.” I kind of mumble because I’m not 100% confident about how truthful I should be.
“What is it?”
“Jacky.” I say more loudly this time. I shouldn’t be rude.
“Jacky.” He repeats.
“What’s your name?”
He says something unfamiliar.
“Galbino?”
He nods excitedly and repeats his name. I’m still not sure I got it quite right.
“How old are you?” He continues.
“30.” I shaved off a year. “What about you?”
“29.”
“Oh.” For some reason, this feels like a heavy truth. He’s young to me now, since I have two years on him.
“Are you married?”
“Yes,” I reply with a smile. Happy because I love my husband, but also because I feel like this protects me, somehow. “I’m actually here to watch him play music tonight.”
He suddenly stops and faces me. He looks me in the eyes and says, “Your eyes are very beautiful. You are very beautiful.”
“Oh. Thank you,” is all I have to say. It stirs up uncomfortable memories of compliments from pushy hopefuls, like a guy who invited himself into my practice room to tell me that I’m lovely and that he’s a great kisser—wouldn’t we be perfect together?
“Can I hug you?” The man opens his arms.
I wave both of my hands in front of me, a double ‘no’. “Sorry, I don’t really like hugs.” But truthfully, I’m afraid of his grime. The palms of his open hands are dark, like soil, like the color of his shirt.
“Hey, do you need water or anything? Would water help?” I hope this will make him forget about the hug.
He thinks for a moment. “Do you have bread?”
“Bread?”
“Yes, do you have bread?”
“No.” I look down at my fanny-pack-turned-crossbody-bag, half wondering why I hadn’t thought to keep a pastry in there. “There was a 7-Eleven back there. They probably have bread, right? Would that help?”
He nods vigorously. We turn and start walking back.
“I’m homeless,” he says suddenly.
“Oh.” I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react. “That must be hard.”
He smiles a bit. His teeth are small, and there are spaces between them. But they are straight as if he’d had braces when he was an awkward teen.
“Why are you homeless?”
“I do drugs. Meth. Methamphetamine.” He half smiles again.
“Oh.” We walk a few steps in silence. “Are you still doing drugs?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that’s not good, you know.” As the last word leaves my mouth, I realize that maybe there’s no use in saying such things. Something I’ve recently been reminded of during phone calls with my mother, incoherent and confused, just like when I was little. His silence hovers between us.
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“San Jose. Like Santa Clara area.”
“Oh really? I used to live near there. Around Fresno.”
He looks surprised. “Oh, Fresno. Yeah, I know Fresno.”
“Did you go to school in Santa Jose?” I ask.
“Yes, but then I was locked up.”
“Locked up?”
He nods again. “Juvie.” Then he says, “Where are you from?”
“Uh, Fresno. Kinda.” Maybe he didn’t believe me.
“But you’re … Asian?”
“Oh, yes—yes, I’m Asian.” I wonder if I should tell him I’m Taiwanese or perhaps Japanese. I settle for, “my parents are Chinese,” which is not quite true, but kind of. “What about you?”
“Mexico,” he tells me, pronouncing it in Spanish. He smiles and says it again, adding the name of a city, I think. It sounds like Michoacán, which I think I recognize.
“How long have you been in San Diego?” I ask.
“Four months. But I’ve been homeless for two years. After my parents got deported.”
We reach the 7-Eleven. Turning the corner, I see a woman with scraggly blonde hair and dirty clothes sitting next to the entrance. She must be homeless too. I wonder if he’ll say something to her, or if she’ll say something to us, but we pass without acknowledgement.
I open the door to let him through but he gestures for me to walk in first. I think maybe he’s being a gentleman.
The sandwiches are on display near the entrance. But he walks towards the aisles further back, filled with chips and other foods.
“Do you want water? Maybe bread?” I point at the loaves of white sandwich bread on a bottom shelf.
“Maybe a Hershey’s bar?” He asks.
“Oh, okay. Sure.” I wait for him to walk to the candy aisle.
He takes a couple steps and then comes back. He comes closer, looks me in the eyes again, and says quietly, “Will you come with me?”
For a second, I imagine that he could’ve been a boy two years younger than me, telling me that I have beautiful eyes, asking me to come with him—but this is not that reality. My thoughts abruptly swing to a dark place: where does he want me to follow him? Is there an exit in the back of the store leading to an alley? Is there a drug dealer waiting for him next to the refrigerated drinks? My thoughts raced but even then, my gut didn’t scream out in fear, perhaps too confident in this brightly lit box of a store.
“I don’t think they’ll like it if I walk around.” His eyes look past me. Without looking back, I understand that he means the employees. One ringing up a customer’s order, another stocking the hot food.
“Oh, I see. Yes, I’ll go with you.”
We move forward now. He looks at the sliced bread loaves for just a second before moving on. In the next aisle, a white man is mulling over the chocolate bars. When he notices us waiting to peruse the bars, he moves out of the way. Casually, like any other time someone else comes up to look at the items you’re looking at and you feel like it’s time to move on.
“Hey, how do you spell your name?” I ask as he crouches down to look at the bars.
He looks up at me as he spells, “G-a-b-i-n-o.”
“Ohh, Gabino. Gabino?” I say it again for confirmation.
“Yes, Gabino,” he nods. He holds up a Snickers bar. “Is this okay?”
“Yeah,” I nod emphatically, trying to reassure him and convey that it was no big ask. “Do you want anything else?”
He moves more confidently now, standing up and striding towards the soda fountain. He points to the stacked cups, asking “Cann I get this?”
“Yes, of course, whatever you want.” I was starting to feel like ‘whatever you want’ was not going to be much.
It was quite unlike the time when a man at a gas station approached me, an embarrassed smile on his face, asking how my day was and could I possibly spare some change to fill his tank? I didn’t have cash that time either, so I offered to use my card. My mom had walked over to the two of us awkwardly watching the numbers climb higher. She had eyed his car, later telling me that it was an older car, but a nice, well cared for 2-door coupe. I had tried to stop at 4 gallons, “think this will get you to Upland?” but his face twisted and he asked, Can you round it up to $25? I stopped at $25.05.
I watched Gabino grab a cup. His motions felt normal, his hand sure. It surprised me, for some reason. I thought he’d be hungrily grabbing at everything in the store.
He filled his cup with ice. He pushed the button for Coke, letting it pour into the grate for a second before putting the cup under the spout.
I laughed. “I do that too.”
“You do?” He’s focused on filling his cup.
“Yeah, to get the other flavor out, right?” Or maybe it has something to do with balancing the syrup and carbonation.
The cup is two-thirds soda, one-third foam. He sips the foam. I want to tell him that he should fill it up to the top, but then he turns back to the machine and tops it off. He grabs a lid but it’s too small, almost falling into the cup. I expect him to put it back but then he drops it in the trash and grabs the correct lid. It makes me wonder if he worked in a place like this before, maybe a fast food restaurant where anything that becomes unsanitary is immediately tossed. My mom used to work in those places and would tell me about how much waste they threw away every day. Someone dropped the tub of hot sauce packets? Swept straight into the dumpster.
I had worked in a small mom-and-pop store where my co-worker, an older Shanghainese lady, would turn over the napkin left over by the last customer. With the dried drop of soy sauce hidden, she placed a fresh pair of chopsticks on top. If a customer didn’t finish their tebasaki (Nagoya style fried chicken wings), she’d put it aside in the backroom. “I give to my dog.”
Gabino seals the cup with the correct lid, and we start walking over to the register. I’m worried because he hasn’t grabbed water or bread yet. I point at the hot deli, with rolling hot dogs and chicken strips piled in a tray behind glass.
“Are you sure you don’t want any hot food?”
He shakes his head but then asks, “Maybe Reese’s?” He points at the chocolate bars next to the register.
“Yeah, of course,” I say again. I watch him walk over, following closely. As he grabs another candy bar, I can’t help but feel like I’m with a younger sibling or friend, on a casual outing where I insist on treating them to something nice because they had an off day and could use a small dose of happiness.
He sets his food and drink on the counter. I take out my wallet as the cashier scans the barcodes on the candy bars. He turns the cup to find the barcode, asking “Will that be all for you?”
“Yes.” We don’t make eye contact as Gabino steps back to let me pay. The total is $10.97. I tap my card. The payment processes and the cashier thanks us. Gabino grabs his cup and turns to leave.
“Don’t forget this,” I grab the two candy bars and hand it to him.
“Thank you,” he says.
We head towards the exit. This time, he walks out first.
“Thank you,” he says again. He opens his arms, suggesting a hug again, and this time, I decide I can manage that. We touch each other lightly, my hand settling on his back. I’m surprised—though he smells and though his shirt is grimy, it’s not unbearable. I wonder how long it’s been since someone hugged him.
We pull apart. He looks into my eyes and says something about a blessing or being blessed. I suddenly realize that we are about to part ways. I thought he might have lingered longer, to tell me about growing up in Santa Clara. Or about how much he missed his parents and when he last heard their voices. Or if San Diego has been kind to him or what he had wanted to be when he grew up. If he had ever worked at a McDonald’s before, tossing wrong-size lids into the trash.
He repeats his thank you and the blessing thing. Maybe it’s something he’s trying, as if that’s what you’re supposed to say if you’re homeless and someone spares you a glance.
“Take care of yourself.” I tell him. Through our eye contact, I try to convey that I accept his blessing, and that I truly hope he will be okay.
I turn towards the direction of the plaza a few blocks over, towards the sound of brass and drums. I see the homeless woman sitting next to the door reach a hand up. She says to Gabino, “Hey baby, could you give me a piece of that?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He starts unwrapping one of the chocolate bars. I watch them for a second, wondering if he’s giving her a whole bar or just a piece. I wonder if I should ask if she needs anything.
But I don’t. I start walking away. I pull out my phone to check my directions, turning the corner and heading away from 7-Eleven again.
Five minutes later, I arrived at the plaza. American flags fly in an arch above the stage where a drum kit is set up. The performance is not for another half hour so the speakers are playing pop music, volume at 11. The ground rumbles with the booms of the subwoofer. It’s deafening and rather frightening for me, a musician terrified of hearing loss, to see people seated right beside the speakers, slices of pizza in hand.
On the street, young girls dressed in summer fashions hop out of Ubers. Some lean back in to say bye to parents dropping them off. A woman pushes a stroller, carrying two small dogs, ribbons on their ears.
A woman is dressed in a flowing blue dress, her hair in perfect waves cascading down her back, swaying as she walks next to a man dressed in a short-sleeve collared shirt, shorts, and sandals. I think about my coworker, who said that men should pay for first dates because women already spend too much on their clothes and makeup, not to mention getting their nails and hair done, because women are expected to be beautiful.
My husband finds me lingering on the sidewalk around the corner from the spectacle. He asks, “Want to get a cannoli? We get free cannolis since we’re performing tonight.”
“Sounds good.” I follow him into the Little Italy Food Hall.
A party of eight hovers around the tables closest to the door. It looks like a family date, two couples and two sets of kids, standing at the tables next to the cannoli stand.
“Excuse me,” the man closest to us says. We step back as he and the other man move two tables together. He has a sleeve of tattoos. On his wrist is an Apple watch. I bet they drove here in a Tesla and send their toddlers to daycare, meeting their friends on the weekends like this to enjoy their upward trajectories.
In front of us at the cannoli bar is a family of five, two parents with their three boys. It looks like there’s a fourth kid on the way. Maybe they’re hoping for a girl.
The menu offers 6 different shells: plain, chocolate-dipped, or toppings with a side of cannoli shell. At least 6 filling options and even more toppings. An un-dipped cannoli went for $6, a dipped one for $7. A box of four goes for $28, with extra toppings on the side.
It reminds me of downtown Los Angeles where I once worked, seeing homeless people sitting on a curb on wealthy, artsy Grand Ave, surrounded by Gehry architecture. In San Diego, the courthouse where we said our vows overlooks the ocean. In Little Italy, people decked out in their finery splurge on a meal or a cannoli. Expensive apartments are fitted with glass balconies, overlooking the festivities.
I have a sinking feeling. Today, I will think of a man named Gabino wanted nothing more than a Snickers bar, a Reese’s, and a large Coke. But tomorrow, I will wake up, memory faded. Fueled by dreams of owning a home, financial security, and a life of luxury, I’ll get back on the hamster wheel in pursuit of more, more, more.
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