As Useful as an Ashtray on a Motorbike.

My sleep is back-to-front this week, and I’m on duty to feed my Aunt’s (who’s actually my cousin but is just of a relative age where it’s nicer to call her my Aunt) cat while she is overseas. So, after having ‘breakfast’ around midnight, I decided to go to her place to feed the cat. I open my front door to find…

two sleeping homeless guys!… but with “cat-like reflexes” (thank you C.J. from The West Wing) I manage not to step on them and quickly shut the door again. They’re totally blocking the alcove and I can’t get passed them without aid of wings.

Panic sets in (thank you PTSD). My heart pounds, I tremble down to my core and I pace up and down the hall, randomly checking my peep hole to see if they’re still sleeping.

My brain ticks over – they’re asleep… still asleep… good… what on earth do I do? I can’t leave my apartment but I don’t want to call the cops or anything on them. For, despite my apparent fear I’m not actually afraid of these two sleeping young blokes. They’re asleep, for goodness sakes and soundly given that I still haven’t woken them up despite putting on my silly music CD, which consists mainly of Tom Lehrer. Laughter really is the best medicine sometimes.

Then I really start to giggle. I’m standing there, staring at my door and asking myself what in creation I’m so scared by.

I guess part of the answer lies in the fact that my brain was comfortable in the understanding that I live in what’s termed a ’security building’. Only for the time being since it’s a new building, I am in fact the only tenant. So ’security building’ I now know is only a reality if you have neighbours who give that buzzer at the bolted steel gate some semblance of shared meaning. That buzzer does nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing to deter entry simply on its own. No, indeed it’s the people who rely on that buzzer that give it its value as a method of security.
Without other people in this building that buzzer is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. It’s merely a notion of security: a placebo, if you will, at best.

It was just so random and eventually I called the cops. By the time the cops showed up some hour and a half later the homeless dudes had left. I assume my poor rendition of Lehrer’s Masochism Tango scared them off, as well it should have.

I do feel a bit remorseful at having called the police but the homeless guys were trapping me in my apartment, after all. I reckon they must’ve thought the building was still uninhabited, which I can’t altogether blame them for given that my blinds are currently made from old newspaper sticky-taped to the windows.

By and large I have nothing against the homeless. By which I mean that I’m not any more or less scared of them than the grocery clerk. To my mind, they’re both equally likely to be serial killers in their spare time and if I’d have a conversation with one then why not the other?

Maybe it’s naive or perhaps cultural paranoia hasn’t quite reached saturation level in Australia but I do think that people are people: talking to someone is no more dangerous, necessarily, simply because they don’t have a home to go back to after you’re done with the conversation.

If I’d had my way about it I’d have offered them a nice cup of tea and had a chat. I’ve done it in the past – at boarding school we had homeless young men/women who lived outside our building and I would often sit and chat. They were interesting to talk to, if nothing else. Certainly more interesting than a great many of my classmates and saner too, I thought. I also currently volunteer at a homeless shelter in the city sometimes so I know, in practice, that there’s nothing to really be scared of. At least no more than usual but even I’ll admit that context is a factor. Since I don’t have neighbours and therefore my ’security building’ is merely secure in theory I decided that I’d call the police and let them deal with it.

Turns out I’m chicken after all, or perhaps just practical? There’s only so big a risk I’m willing to take for the sake of a good conversation and at 4am risks rarely look like the best plan unless you’re just plain desperate.