Life As Performance Art 157

Living in a rapidly gentrifying disadvantaged neighbourhood of Vancouver does present its challenges. And surprises. And sometimes shocks. I often like to brag that I've seen it all, heard it all, maybe not quite done it all (but let this get your filthy little imaginations going this morning, Gentle Reader!) What I saw, two days ago, Friday, is something I am still not able to unsee. That's right, Gentle Reader. I have just been shocked, grossed-out. But not traumatized. Traumatized is a word you use for having survived war zones, armed robberies, mangled bodies as a first responder, or childhood abuse (and I don't mean strictly enforced bedtimes or being forced to eat your broccoli!). It is a word so overused by the delicate who can't even cope with a broken nail, or the fact that they cannot get into a prestigious university, that I would like to see the word trauma and all its variants placed on the banned words lists for at least the next decade! Trauma is the official anthem of Snowflake Nation! What I saw Friday, was a likely homeless young street guy, casually applying an electric razor to his nether regions, while leaving precious little to the imagination. I was just leaving my apartment, taking the back exit through our enclosed parkade. Through the fence, there he was, his bright red sweatpants lowered and I didn't have to guess what I was seeing. When he saw me, he at least had the good sense and decency to at least partially pull up his bright red sweat pants and return to his street friends on the other side of the alley, though he was still exposing his very pale white derriere. Even though I still don't get this rather gross nonsense about manscaping, it is interesting that someone living on the street, not knowing where his next food is coming from, would obsess over something so trivial. Perhaps he wanted to look his very best for his next hookup? Or maybe his girlfriend, if he has one, has ordered him to trim and shave. Who only knows? Or cares. I suppose, as a homelessness survivor myself, I can understand that one will grasp at whatever triviality in order to preserve one's sense of dignity, even if it manifests in ways that are so visibly undignified. But right now, Gentle REader, I still cannot unsee this act of furtive but so very public manscaping, and I want badly and desperately to unsee it. It's like being hit by a Madonna or Michael Buble earworm (apologies to any fans of those two, er, performers, and I suppose you can't please anyone, but maybe in twenty years or so I will be able to listen to their music without irony and actually enjoy it, just as I have but recently come to actually enjoy, without irony, the music of ABBA! No kidding, Gentle Reader! In the meantime, we have to keep thinking of how we ended up living in a society where, in a country as wealthy and internationally prestigious as Canada, there is actual homelessness on the streets, the alleys and sidewalks, under bridges and viaducts, and in public parks. This has so little do to with drug addictions or mental illness, and almost everything to do with living in a country and an international community that has lost its moral compass and ethical rudder, and become so ethically defunct and so greedy and materialistic that no one really thinks twice about throwing overboard the poorest and most vulnerable in order to preserve the prosperity of the fortunate, lucky and strong. It shouldn't be that hard to solve. Neither, if enough of us really cared enough, would it be that difficult to solve. But people are really deficient in basic kindness and compassion, or so it seems. While I am numbered among those who work against climate change and global warming, I sometimes wonder if, for some of us anyway, it is far easier to care about the future of the planet than some of the individual and very poor people who have to live here, especially those of us who are left in the margins, having to live, sleep, urinate, defecate, and, yes, even trim their pubes out in the public open. Could we work, perhaps, a little bit harder, at integrating our concerns, that getting people decently housed and saving the planet are really one and the same thing, that they are integrated concerns, and that it should never be either or, but both and? But I still wish I could unsee that guy trimming his pubes in plain and open view. Hurry up and get that poor idiot housed!