The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

S. is new, 22 and gay. He made his way from CA by bus, first to DC and then to NYC. When I do his intake, he tells me it was his dream to come to NYC and I think of all the people here who dream of going to CA. When queer youth arrive here, the bubble bursts pretty fast. Things are expensive, jobs are scarce, the shelters are frightening and the streets are bitterly cold at night. Some youth find their way to safety, a bed at a youth shelter, or at least a drop-in but for many it doesn’t work out that way. At 8am yesterday I woke up to a message from S., sobbing because the other youth at AFC were bullying him and not letting him sleep. For all the funding that flows to AFC, I feel like there should be someone on duty making sure things like this don’t happen. At Sylvia’s, the shelter I used to run, resources are scarce these days and the hot water is broken, but someone is watching all night, keeping people safe. When I call S back, he asks me about other youth shelters but they all stop taking people at 21. This is a consequence of city policy- we fought for a decade to get the definition of homeless youth to go up to 24 and we won. City funded programs and drop-ins now go up to 24, but the City has never funded the youth shelters past 21. This leaves vulnerable young adults to face the traumatizing adult shelters. Even to get to the relative safety of the one LGBTQ adult shelter, created as an acknowledgement of the lack of safety for queer people in the adult shelters, people have to start out at the intake shelters and wait to be transferred, exposing them to the very danger the LGBTQ shelter was created to avoid. On the phone with S, I reassured him that we would figure something out, and encouraged him to come for a psych eval which many housing providers require. At the end of the evening, with the psych eval done but not written up and no beds open at Sylvia’s, I sent him to the least objectionable of the adult drop-ins. He got there late and it was full, but seeing his tears the security guard relented and let him in. But then they insisted his lighter was contraband and wouldn’t let him bring it in and he bristled at the restriction and spent the night on the street. By the time I see him the next day, he is exhausted and hopeless but still not able to deal with a shelter. Not for the first time, I wish we had the space for a shelter of our own. “I didn’t realize how cold it would be,” he says, “you can’t get around the cold,” and he’s right, you can make do without a lot of things, but cold can kill. He is deeply disappointed in the reality of NYC. “Don’t go places you dream of,” he tells me. It’s closing time, but he needs to talk. So we talk about his sexual assault, about the time he tried to get a cop to shoot him, about how he wants to talk about things but can’t summon the emotion that goes with the stories and he worries he won’t be believed. “That flatness is a trauma response,” I tell him, “your brain is protecting you from feelings that are too painful to handle right now,” and I see him relax a little with that understanding. “I can’t kill myself,” he says, “something inside me won’t let me do it.” “Maybe that’s your life force, your basic survival instinct. It’s very hard to overcome an instinct.” He tells me about how he doesn’t believe things will ever get better. We don’t know each other well, but I can sense his trust, so I say something I don’t always say. “I’ve been doing this for more than twenty years,” I tell him, “and I have seen things work out for people, even though it can take a while and it’s hard.” I hope he can hold on to that. He's planning on going to Syracuse the next day to stay with a man he met online. “That could go badly,” I say gently, not wanting to trigger resistance. “I know,” he says with resignation, “it has before.” I write down my cell number - “call me if you’re stuck,” I tell him. I take him downstairs to look for warm clothes. We don’t have much in his size, but we find a sleeping bag which he takes with him. Leaving the building later on, I notice a person sleeping in the unused church entrance to the right. This is not unusual- church steps are one of the places homeless people often seek refuge and the multiple entrances on W 40th are often hosting several folks. No part of this person is visible but I recognize the sleeping bag I just gave S . I stand still in the middle of the sidewalk flipping through options in my mind. But S had rejected all of them and there’s nothing I can do but walk away with the heavy steps my dad - completely blind and sliding into dementia - once called “walking sadly”. Back then I was walking sadly because I decided to leave Sylvia’s after pouring all of myself into it for years. It hurt like hell to leave the clients and the staff, but I could not continue working for the cruel pastor. Now I am walking sadly because I am leaving another little part of my belief in Tikkun Olam, healing the world, like a tiny shard of a shattered blue and green glass orb.