I was walking down Santa Monica Blvd this morning and I passed a very young person, ebony skin, 15-20 years old? wearing a filthy hoodie pulled down tightly over the head and slender torso, filthy ripped jeans, no clue as to gender, but I felt instinctively that he was male for no reason I can give you.

As I passed him I was seized with pity, and felt a helpless desire to intervene.

He kept walking. I took out my wallet, took out a 20, put it back, turned, and ran back to him, feeling a growing sense of shame about my immanent offer of cash to this child.

I hurried past him, and then turned, so that he was approaching me again, and I held out the 20 as he got close, as discretely as I could.

He didn’t really look at me, but he shook his head with a mixture of what I took to be disgust and an exhale of futility, and hurried past me, up the street.

My shame grew, and a wave of self-directed anger engulfed me. I stood for a few moments, like a blind creature, aimless, and turned and began to walk slowly in the direction of my original destination, which suddenly seemed redundant and foolish.

Was he thinking Fuck You? What good will $20 do me? Was he past hunger? Was he wanting to starve?

I wasn’t willing to take him home, let him bathe in hot water, feed him some hot food, try to understand whatever he may have been able to tell me about what had happened to him that had brought him to that spot at the end of my lovely street, to cross my path at that moment.  I couldn’t find a willingness in myself to give him anything but a tiny bit of money. My shame grew as I walked, and grew.

5 or 6 hours later it suddenly occurred to me, alone in my condo, painting a small wooden chair, that he may have thought I was offering the money for sex.  I’ll never know what she thought, what he thought, but the world should not be as it is, that I know, and neither should we.