The concrete isn’t any harder here than it is elsewhere in the world. The summers not hotter, people no less or more mean, and the diseases and other insidious malfunctions of human life no more vile. But when the roving eye falls on Philip Swann you cannot help but cringe. Even though you fight it. Don’t stare, your mother used to tell you as a child; don’t be so obvious. The curious sight does, however, entrance perversely, no matter unintentional rudeness. I couldn’t help it, either, so don’t feel bad. In fact, I wanted to pull up a chair the first time I saw him around old Columbus Circle. Initially watched from a distance, then cautiously approached, asked him to acquiesce to an interview and eventually, over a long period, we experienced something that converged on friendship. Moved past acquaintances, but not quick to invite anyone over for dinner. The respect exists, the human feeling, the compassion. God, compassion difficult to come by these days. Philip Swann pulled himself out of whatever doorway, alleyway or urban concrete crevice he’d slept in the night before, and set up his flattened cardboard nest on the sidewalk, inches from the foot traffic. Tourists can’t help themselves: they stop and gawk. Denizens of Manhattan pass in a perpetual hurry, used to this sort of thing, jaded, occasionally tossing obligatory dollars for reasons that still escape them. Reasons that can’t quite be pinpointed.
You’d be surprised how many times he receives a twenty; shocked by how many pass without a glance. They’re faking it. The human eye absorbs tons without appearing to see anything. Philip does not have legs. They are somewhere else. He was born with them, possessed them until recently. Well, the last decade - up to the moment of becoming homeless. How he came to the streets is another story. But he’s here and that’s where we find him, without his legs. He’d developed gangrene, nasty infections swirled through his body, absorbing and killing. Merciful doctors removed his legs and an eye. Now sores break out over his body; he shows his torso to folks walking the street; he can no longer speak. Philip holds his Styrofoam cup with those hands and makes grunting sounds. Moan some money into my grunting cup. A guttural gurgle and a fair amount of spit. His hands appear to be melting off his wrists, before your eyes, in real time. Sometimes he bleeds onto his flattened cardboard. There goes a man in a business suit; there a tourist family and the children, of course, stare; hippy couple on psilocybin, wearing sandals walking hard from the Nineties down Broadway all the way to Wall Street, and the Styrofoam cup jangling coin. Help Me, Please sprawled paint on a small slab in front of his flattened cardboard roost. Philip drags himself by his hands and who really knows where he goes at night. One morning, a white unmarked van rolled up to the curb, with state tags, and two uniformed officers jumped out of the van and grabbed Philip by his armpits, carrying him like two men hefting a barrel, and they tossed him into the back, doors slamming shut, and one of them hopped to the sidewalk and grabbed the cardboard and the sign and they drove off into the daytime city, nobody stopping in surprise, no one retrieving the Styrofoam cup that rolled, turned, rolled.
