The Yuppie Panhandler

"You must help me. I have AIDS!" she exclaimed, incredulous and amazed, not believing that anyone could refuse to help her ... HER. It must have been her first day and it was amazing.

She was 28, a fresh faced beauty like Jean Seberg or Tea Leoni. Her blond hair had been freshly cut just below her ears. She wore a beige blazer over a navy blue business dress, nylons and polished blue shoes with three inch heels.

She'd clearly done everything right: she had the degree, probably an MBA, she'd worked hard and had risen to middle management. She was neither an addict nor a drunk. And yet ...

Can you imagine the people she must have gone through before arriving on the street? How many rejections she must have had from family, lovers, friends, relatives, colleagues, associates, acquaintances, welfare agencies and charities? And she still didn't get it. She still believed that she was the center of the world.

Nevertheless, she was smart. She'd figured out the business right away. She came over to me at Pine and Van Ness - maybe the best corner for panhandling in the entire city. Cars get stuck at the light, three across and at least three deep, for several hours every day.

I saw her every evening for a couple of weeks and then periodically after that as in time-lapse photography.

The next time, there were holes in her nylons and she no longer told people she had AIDS.

Then her hair turned brown, she had no socks and her clothes were dirty. She'd broken the heel on one shoe and hobbled over to collect her money.

I hadn't seen her for about a month, when she showed up wearing an army jacket over her business dress and Converse All Stars. Her shoulder length hair was tied back back in a bun.

I didn't have a dollar and was looking through my brief case for one that I'd misplaced when a couple climbed in the back of cab.

"Do you have change for a $5?" I asked them as I dug through my things.

They responded with a deep, silent pause so I glanced up. I saw two aging people dressed in black that had the clean-cut, Americana look of a Norman Rockwell painting - only they'd been warped and embittered by too little affection, unpleasant sex and too much money.

The woman stared at me, offended. I finally found a dollar and gave to Seberg-Leoni.

"You shouldn't do that," the woman snapped. "It just encourages them."

"To what? Keep eating?"

"If you feed them, they won't work," the man stated.

"I don't know if she can work - she has AIDS."

"Whose fault is that?" the woman asked archly.

"Actually," I told her, turning around with a smile, "it's mine."

The pair spent the rest of the trip pinned back on their seats, looking as if they were riding with a boa constrictor.

I saw Leoni-Seberg one last time, about a year later.

She looked ageless - as if she'd she'd been born on the streets. She wore jeans, beat-up tennis shoes, a sweat shirt and an army jacket. She'd roughly cut her hair back to her ears. She was still lovely but you had to search for the beauty beneath her raw and reddened weather-beaten skin.

She hadn't lost her sense of self - no small feat living the homeless life. She still stood confidently and asked for money as if it was owed to her. She stared at the people who passed her by with contempt.

She took my dollar without recognizing me and, giving me a businesslike "thanks," waved to a homeless man across the street. He dressed like she did and, like her, looked as if he'd never been anything except a beggar.

He came over and the two of them walked off, striding together, gently bumping shoulders and elbows, talking intimately, counting and pooling their money, planning their future.