Chris

Chris wants to connect with homeless people. He doesn't want to give them money, he doesn't want to harass them, he just wants to talk. To Chris, the dirt beneath fingernails always seemed a story to tell; he wanted to hear their lives, he wanted to know them. Chris is a well-off white man and every homeless person he approaches greets him with distrust, with alterior motives, with violence. Chris knows that society has set them too far apart to ever really connect and it pains him. So now he sits on benches outside of train stations and sits closer than anyone else would dare. This is his way of telling them that he cares, that he is not afraid of them, that, to him, they are not the monsters everyone else sees. Chris crumples up the wrapper to his deli sandwich and flashes the most genuine smile to the man on the bench, and for a second the two men have connected.